Andrew Radford - Linguistics An Introduction [Second Edition]

This page intentionally left blank

Linguistics

Written by a team based at one of the world’s leading centres for linguistic teaching and research, the second edition of this highly successful textbook offers a unified approach to language, viewed from a range of perspectives

essential for students’ understanding of the subject. A language is a com-

plex structure represented in the minds of its speakers, and this textbook

provides the tools necessary for understanding this structure. Using clear

explanations throughout, the book is divided into three main parts: sounds,

words and sentences. In each, the foundational concepts are introduced,

along with their application to the fields of child language acquisition,

psycholinguistics, language disorders and sociolinguistics, giving the book

a unique yet simple structure that helps students to engage with the subject more easily than other textbooks on the market. This edition includes a

completely new section on sentence use, including an introduction and

discussion of core areas of pragmatics and conversational analysis; new

coverage of sociolinguistic topics, introducing communities of practice; a

new subsection introducing the student to Optimality Theory; a wealth of

new exercise material and updated further reading.

andrew radford, martin atkinson, david britain, harald

clahsen and andrew spencer all teach in the Department of Language

and Linguistics at the University of Essex.

Linguistics

An Introduction

SECOND EDITION

A N D R E W R A D F O R D

M A RT I N AT K I N S O N

D AV I D B R I TA I N

H A R A L D C L A H S E N

and

A N D R E W S P E N C E R

University of Essex

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521849487

© Andrew Radford, Martin Atkinson, David Britain, Harald Clahsen and Andrew

Spencer 2009

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the

provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published in print format 2009

ISBN-13 978-0-511-47924-3

eBook (EBL)

ISBN-13 978-0-521-84948-7

hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-61478-8

paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of illustrations page x

List of tables

xii

Preface to the second edition

xiii

A note for course organisers and class teachers

xiv

Introduction

1

Linguistics

2

Developmental linguistics

6

Psycholinguistics

9

Neurolinguistics

11

Sociolinguistics

14

Exercises

17

Further reading and references

21

Part I Sounds

23

1 Introduction

25

2 Sounds and suprasegmentals

27

Consonants

28

Vowels

36

Suprasegmentals

41

Exercises

44

3 Sound variation

47

Linguistic variables and sociological variables

47

Stylistic variation

53

Linguistically determined variation

54

Variation and language change

56

Exercises

59

4 Sound change

61

Consonant change

61

Vowel change

64

The transition problem: regular sound change versus lexical

diffusion

67

Suprasegmental change

70

Exercises

72

v

vi

Contents

5 Phonemes, syllables and phonological processes

75

Phonemes

75

Syllables

78

Syllabification and the Maximal Onset Principle

81

Phonological processes

82

Phonological features

85

Features and processes

86

Constraints in phonology

90

Exercises

92

6 Child phonology

96

Early achievements

96

Phonological processes in acquisition

97

Perception, production and a dual-lexicon model

100

Exercises

106

7 Processing sounds

109

Speech perception

109

Speech production

113

Other aspects of phonological processing

117

Exercises

120

Further reading and references

122

Part II

Words

125

8 Introduction

127

9 Word classes

129

Lexical categories

129

Functional categories

132

The morphological properties of English verbs

135

Exercises

138

10 Building words

140

Morphemes

140

Morphological processes – derivation and inflection

143

Compounds

148

Clitics

150

Allomorphy

151

Exercises

153

11 Morphology across languages

156

The agglutinative ideal

156

Types of morphological operations

162

Exercises

165

Contents

vii

12 Word meaning

170

Entailment and hyponymy

170

Meaning opposites

175

Semantic features

176

Dictionaries and prototypes

180

Exercises

182

13 Children and words

186

Early words – a few facts

186

Apprentices in morphology

188

The semantic significance of early words

192

Exercises

196

14 Lexical processing and the mental lexicon

199

Serial-autonomous versus parallel-interactive processing

models

199

On the representation of words in the mental lexicon

204

Exercises

211

15 Lexical disorders

213

Words and morphemes in aphasia

214

Agrammatism

215

Paraphasias

217

Dissociations in SLI subjects’ inflectional systems

219

Exercises

221

16 Lexical variation and change

224

Borrowing words

224

Register: words for brain surgeons and soccer players,

hairdressers and lifesavers

226

Biscuit or cookie? Variation and change in word choice

226

Same word – new meaning

228

Variation and change in morphology

233

Exercises

238

Further reading and references

242

Part III Sentences

244

17 Introduction

245

18 Basic terminology

247

Categories and functions

247

Complex sentences

250

The functions of clauses

253

Exercises

254

viii

Contents

19 Sentence structure

257

Merger

257

Tests for constituency

263

Agreement, case assignment and selection

264

Exercises

268

20 Empty categories

271

Empty T constituent

271

PRO: the empty subject of infinitive clauses

276

Covert complements

278

Empty complementisers

278

Empty determiners

283

Exercises

287

21 Movement

293

Head movement

293

Operator movement

297

Yes–no questions

302

Other types of movement

304

Exercises

307

22 Syntactic variation

311

Inversion in varieties of English

311

Syntactic parameters of variation