v

Contents

List of Illustrative Material viiiA Note for the Teacher xiiA Note for the Student xiiiAcknowledgements xivSymbols and Abbreviations xvThe Chart of the International Phonetic Association xvii

1 Introduction 1

1.1 A gentle start 11.2 What are the bits? 61.3 What is this book attempting to do? 71.4 A user’s guide to the book 8

2 Semantics 11

2.1 The difficulty of meaning 112.2 Dictionaries and definitions 122.3 Representations and models 172.4 Reference 252.5 Words together 282.6 Sentence semantics (Advanced) 352.7 Summing up 37

3 Phonetics 39

3.1 Getting the phonetics right 393.2 The organs of speech 413.3 Describing consonants 493.4 Describing vowels 553.5 Secondary articulations 583.6 Suprasegmentals 603.7 Acoustics (Advanced) 663.8 The sounds of languages (Advanced) 713.9 Summing up 81

4 Phonology 85

4.1 Learners’ problems and related matters 854.2 Same but different: the importance of contrast 86

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4.3 Transcribing English 954.4 The elements of sounds 1014.5 Sonority 1094.6 More phonotactics 1124.7 Syllabification 1144.8 More or less than a syllable 1164.9 Rules 118

4.10 Tone (Advanced) 1244.11 Summing up 128

5 Morphology 131

5.1 The legal importance of analysing words 1315.2 The bits of words 1325.3 Two types of affix and their implications 1425.4 The same but different revisited 1465.5 Phonological effects in morphology 1485.6 Compounds 1515.7 Where do the affixes go? (Advanced) 1555.8 Reduplication (Advanced) 1585.9 Summing up 166

6 Syntax 169

6.1 Why we need syntax 1696.2 Substitution and word-classes 1716.3 Sticking words together 1826.4 Rules: Observed regularity returns 1936.5 Form and function: You look familiar, but what are you doing here? 1956.6 Ergativity (Advanced) 2026.7 The order of sentence elements (Advanced) 2076.8 Summing up 213

7 Pragmatics 217

7.1 The interface with the world 2177.2 Speech acts 2187.3 Gricean principles 2207.4 Being polite 2237.5 Drawing conclusions 2287.6 Texts 2337.7 Doing gender (Advanced) 2417.8 Summing up 244

8 Conclusion 247

8.1 A summing up and a new start 247

CONTENTS

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8.2 Some fundamental problems in linguistics 2488.3 Some problems of doing linguistics 2528.4 Some links between modules 2558.5 Where to go? 2568.6 Envoi 259

Appendices 261

A: Glossary 261B: Languages mentioned 281C: Answers to questions 291D: Assignments and study questions 315

Bibliography 321General Index 327Language Index 333

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1Introduction

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle

thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved.

(Richard Chenevix Trench 1851)

In this chapter we consider the term language and the subject matter of linguistics, showthat languages differ from each other, and preview the content of this book.

1.1 A gentle start

A much more famous book than this one is described as having the words

DON’T PANIC‘in large, friendly letters on the cover’. The letters just above might not be largeenough or friendly enough, and you have clearly got beyond the cover of this book,but my message here is the same. You are about to begin a new subject. That shouldbe a matter of some excitement. You might not know exactly what linguistics entails,which might lead to a certain amount of trepidation, but it should not be enough todull the excitement. You may have heard reports from other students that linguisticsis very technical or very mathematical. While there is some basis to these comments,it is really rather a small basis. You will not be expected to be able solve differentialequations or do long division in order to understand linguistics and enjoy doing it. Infact, what you will mainly need to recall from mathematics is that in a sequence suchas x2 + y2, the x and the y do not represent a single number each, but that values forx2 + y2 can be found whether x has the value three or the value seven. That’s it. Younow have the mathematical basis for linguistics.

Your background in language study may not be the same as that of your neigh-bour. That should not matter, either. If you have learnt French and the person on oneside of you has learnt Japanese, and the person on the other has never learnt anotherlanguage, you should all be able to cope with the subject matter of linguistics.Alternatively, one of you may have learnt German by living in Germany whileanother has learnt German by being taught it as a subject in school. We will be moreconcerned with the fact that you know that German and English are not just a singlecommunication system with different words attached than with how you have learnt,or precisely what you have learnt. I’ll explain that in a bit more detail in just amoment.

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Perhaps you are aware that you have not ‘done grammar’ in school, while someothers appear to have had exposure to this mysterious phenomenon. Don’t worry;this book will not assume that you know any of that stuff (and may even contradictsome of the things that some people thought they learnt in school, or at least showthat it was presented in an overly simplified fashion).

So, given what linguistics is not, what is linguistics? A dictionary definition issomething like ‘the science of language’, but this requires a certain amount of expla-nation. What does science mean in this context? If you have always done ‘science’ inthe form of physics, chemistry or biology, this may not worry you, but if you have notdone any of these subjects for a number of years, calling something a ‘science’ maymake it sound terribly technical again. So let’s try to explain what we mean by science.In a science like biology, the basis of the science is the observation of natural species,their classification, and an explanation of how they function: how respiration works,how a muscle contracts, and so on. In chemistry, the fundamentals of the science area classification of the fundamental elements, and an understanding of how theycombine, all based on observation of the qualities of matter. So in linguistics, thescience part is first a matter of observation of language phenomena, but then a clas-sification of the elements of language and an understanding of how they combine andhow they work. In all three of these sciences, more complex theory-building derivesfrom this fundamental observation and classification, as we move from the stage ofasking, ‘what bits are involved?’ to asking more complex questions, such as, ‘why dothe elements have the nature they have?’, ‘could a complex form have arisen withcompletely different properties?’ But at the moment, all of that is a long way in thefuture, and observation and classification is what will be involved.

Of course, classification means a certain amount of terminology. Chemists neednames for the elements and for their salts, biologists need names for the species andgenera, for the bones and the muscles and the parts of a flower, and linguists neednames for different classes of word, different kinds of consonant and different rela-tionships between words. The proper use of a particular jargon, in any subject, meansthat we can communicate precisely what we mean much more efficiently to otherinterested people. This is just as true in baseball or cricket or knitting as it is in chem-istry or physics or linguistics. Sometimes expressions from baseball and cricket leavethe specialist domain and become part of everyday language. Yet people from coun-tries where baseball is not played are as bemused by an expression such as out of left

field as people from countries where cricket is not played are by the expression on a

sticky wicket. Sometimes the same thing happens with linguistic terms: a technicalterm like infinitive may escape from linguistics, and either cause confusion amongpeople who do not recognise it, or even end up having a slightly different meaningoutside linguistics from the meaning it has within linguistics. This does not invalidatethe basic point, though: proper use of correct terminology facilitates communication.That is why so much attention will be paid to terminology in this book.

We can begin with two very troublesome terms: language and linguistic. Language

has several meanings, even within linguistics. The sense it has in everyday use inphrases like the Japanese language or the German language is one which linguistsaccept as a useful shorthand, but which they are rather unhappy with. Linguists donot believe that a language has any reality except in the behaviour of people who

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speak the language. In other words, what people do is produce bits of language, andclaim that they are speaking a particular language like German. But when doesGerman shade off into Dutch? Is Swiss German (which most people from Germanycannot understand) still part of ‘the German language’ as its name suggests or shouldit be considered a separate language? Are dialect words part of the German language?(We could rephrase these questions with respect to English: are British and AmericanEnglishes the same language or not? Noah Webster wanted to say that they were not,even in the eighteenth century.) The fact that we can ask such questions indicates whyit is difficult to determine precisely what should count as a piece of behaviour whichinstantiates ‘the German language’. On the other hand, you may have noticed that Ijust used the phrase ‘bits of language’, where language had no a or the preceding it.This is a sense of language which many linguists feel far more relaxed about.LANGUAGE, in this sense, is the output of the human faculty, which we all have, forcommunicating via systems of abstract signs (words and so on). Some linguists wouldalso call the abstract faculty itself language. So here we have a case where a term usedin linguistics has another use within linguistics, and not just the use it has in everydayspeech.

So should we talk about this behaviour as being language behaviour or as beinglinguistic behaviour? The two are synonymous; they mean just the same thing.LINGUISTIC is the word meaning ‘relating to language’ as well as the word meaning‘relating to linguistics’. We might prefer one or the other in individual expressions, butthat is a matter of usage, not one of meaning.

TRIVIA: The number of languages

So how many languages are there in the world? You will see estimates varying betweenabout 5,000 and about 7,000. Does that mean that we do not know? That is preciselywhat it means. One of the reasons that we do not know has already been mentioned:when should we count something as a dialect and when should we count it as a newlanguage? The answer is often a matter of politics as much as – or more than – a ques-tion of linguistics. When the former Yugoslavia split up into Serbia and Croatia and therest, Serbian and Croatian, which had officially been treated as dialects of a singlelanguage Serbo-Croat, suddenly became termed separate languages (reflecting the feel-ings of many of their speakers). So we can gain new languages in this way. But we arelosing languages much faster as people stop speaking them – usually because there areno people left alive who speak these languages. Some estimates suggest that the worldis losing slightly more than one language every two weeks, and that by the end of thecentury the number of languages in the world will be closer to 3,000. Of course, thisdoes not mean that individuals have no language to speak; it just means that theyspeak a different language, typically one with more speakers. These are sometimesrather fancifully called ‘killer languages’, languages which frequently replace minoritylanguages that disappear.

Similarly, linguist is ambiguous. If you are asked by somebody who has never doneany linguistics, ‘What are you studying?’, and you tell them you are doing linguistics,one of the common reactions you will meet is, ‘Oh. How many languages do you

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speak, then?’ There is a meaning of linguist which is ‘person who speaks severallanguages’ (for which we might prefer the term polyglot) and another meaning oflinguist ‘person who studies linguistics’. Of course, a single person may be both kindsof linguist – but that does not make the distinction any easier to cope with. Nolinguist I have met has found a way of warding off this reaction, and my best adviceis to get used to it straight away. Some non-linguists try to use the term linguistician

for the linguistics kind of linguist, but the term comes with such negative overtonesbecause of words like beautician and mortician that linguists have rejected the term(words like mathematician, which are perfectly respectable, have been around a lotlonger, and never acquired these pejorative overtones that arose in the twentiethcentury when words in -ician were used to label professions that wanted a betterimage). So we seem to be stuck with the ambiguous term linguist. It is worth makingthe point that some very successful linguists (linguistics sense) have been monoglotsnot polyglots.

NOAH WEBSTER

Noah Webster (1758–1843) is known these days primarily as a lexicographer, that is, adictionary writer. His linguistic endeavours grew out of the fact that he was a politicalactivist who was very anti-British and pro-American. His conviction that he spokeAmerican rather than English, and the subsequent desire to codify the differencesbetween the two ‘languages’ arose from his political position. He introduced the differ-ences in spelling whereby the word that is spelt as honour in Britain is spelt as honor inthe US, and he advocated removing the <k> which until his time had been found at theend of words like musick. The English subsequently adopted this convention themselves.Webster’s success can be gauged by the fact that any dictionary was often called aWebster’s in the United States.

It was noted above that English and German (or any two languages) are notsimply the same communication system with different words. This is a very impor-tant point when it comes to considering language structures, and it is worth dealingwith briefly here. We can also use the opportunity to talk about glosses. If we take anEnglish sentence like

(1) The hound is dead.

we can translate the sentence fairly easily into German as

(2) Der Hund ist tot.

To make it clear what the structure of (2) is in German, we can add a GLOSS, that is anelement-by-element (here word-by-word) translation of the parts of the sentence, so(2) is better presented as (3).

(3) Der Hund ist tot the hound is dead ‘The hound is dead’

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Note that in glossing the German sentence in (3) we have aligned each transla-tion with the word it translates, and given an idiomatic translation at the end.German and English are fairly closely related languages from the same languagefamily, so you can see the resemblance between the words in the two languages. Ineach instance, one word of German is translated by the corresponding word ofEnglish, and it might seem that all we need to do to get from English to German (orvice versa) is change the words: German words give us a German sentence, andEnglish words give us an English sentence. To the extent that seems to be true in(3), (3) is misleading. The first difference is that Hund in German and hound inEnglish are not actually as equivalent as (3) seems to suggest. Hund is the normalword for a canine quadruped in German, including a hunting dog; hound is morespecialised in English. So a more normal translation of (3) would actually be ‘Thedog is dead’, which misses some of the implications of the first English version. Thesecond difference is hidden in the word der ‘the’. We can see this if we move on tosentences (4) to (6).

(4) Der Hund biss den Kater the dog bit the tom-cat ‘The dog bit the tom’

(5) Der Kater biss den Hund the tom-cat bit the dog ‘The tom bit the dog’

(6) Den Hund biss der Kater the dog bit the tom-cat ‘The tom bit the dog’

Now we see that there are at least two (in fact, more, if we looked at the wholeof the German language) words meaning ‘the’. We get der when something does thebiting, and den when something gets bitten. So the difference between der and den

is telling us which animal bit which animal, to such an extent that, as we see in (6),even if we change the order of the cat and the dog, the particular word for ‘the’ weuse determines which animal is understood to do the biting. To clarify this, weshould change the glosses for der and den, to make clear their importance, but theappropriate terms have not yet been introduced, so we will leave (6) as it is for thetime being. Note, though, that we now have two ways in which German iscompletely different from English: (i) it has different words for ‘the’ dependingupon whether the thing the ‘the’ tells you about is doing something or having some-thing done to it; (ii) English has to use word-order to give you this information (the

dog bit the cat is different from the cat bit the dog), while German can use word-order for other purposes (for instance, to stress something important). So now wecan see that German is not just English with different words slotted in, whatever thesentence in (3) might have implied. More generally, we can say that other languagesdo not work just the way English does. We have to look at each language in its ownterms, and see how it works; we cannot make assumptions about how it will work.(More accurately, we have to be very careful about making assumptions about how

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languages will work: we will see later that there are some recurrent patterns whichgive us clues.) This does not mean that languages are not built up of the same orsimilar building blocks: spoken languages all have consonants and vowels, forinstance (I say ‘spoken languages’ because sign languages used by the deaf are reallanguages but do not have consonants and vowels, for obvious reasons). Rather itmeans that every language exploits the possibilities provided by the human abilityto produce language in a rather different way. This is an important message oflinguistics.

What you must say and what you can sayIt is sometimes said that languages differ not in what they can say but in what theymust say. In any human language (but not, as Bertrand Russell famously remarked,in any animal communication system) you can say that your parents were poor butthey were honest. But as we have just seen with the German examples, in Germanyou have to mark on the word glossed as ‘the’ whether the thing is performing theaction or being affected by it. In English, this is shown by relative position, but notby the words themselves. In English you can say that ‘a friend’ told you somethingwithout having to specify whether the friend was male or female; in some otherlanguages you have to specify that information; in English you might say that Joseplayed football, without having to specify whether you know that because you saw ithappen or whether you simply assume it, or whether someone else told you. InTariana you would have to specify that information. So even to express a simple idealike The dog bit the cat you must specify some information in one language that isnot required in another.

1.2 What are the bits?

There are six chapters which make up the core of this book, and their titles proba-bly look unfamiliar to you at the moment. Between them they cover the fundamen-tals of most linguistics courses, the central ideas of linguistics without which it ishard to move on to larger questions in the study of language. Each chapter introduces you to the basic notions that you need to know about, but then givesyou some more advanced material (which is clearly marked as such) to allow youto develop your understanding if you want to (or if your teacher expects it of you!).

SEMANTICS deals with meaning. Of course, the term ‘meaning’ is not an entirelyprecise one, and we will need to pin down just which bits of meaning we are dealingwith, but that will give you enough of an idea for the moment.

PHONETICS deals with the sounds of speech: the way we make them, the way weclassify them, and (although we will spend less time of this aspect) the way weperceive them.

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CONTROVERSY: Is phonetics linguistics?

Some linguists take the view that phonetics is not part of linguistics proper. If we areconsidering how the lungs function to produce a flow of air, what the parts of the mouthare and how the tongue works to make various sounds in that flow, they claim, that is amatter of anatomy and physiology; if we are concerned with the way the speech istransmitted through the air, that is the domain of acoustics (or, more generally, ofphysics); if we are concerned with the way we hear sounds, that is what perceptualpsychology deals with; and if we are concerned with imitating the sounds of speech ortransmitting them across space (e.g. by radio or on the telephone), that is a matter ofengineering. It is certainly true that phonetics can be a very interdisciplinary subject. Yetthere is some of phonetics that we cannot ignore if we want to go on to do phonologyor other bits of linguistics: phonology works the way it does because of the way of theconstraints imposed by the way we speak; and at the very least, the study of phoneticsgives us an alphabet (the International Phonetic Alphabet) for writing down the soundsthat occur in the languages of the world, and unless we have some understanding ofthat, it is hard to understand many other aspects of why languages are the way theyare. So phonetics is included here. In the words of one famous linguist, it provides ‘theindispensable foundation’ for language study.

PHONOLOGY also deals with the sounds of speech, but in a rather different way.While phonetics deals with the individual sounds of any language and the details oftheir formation, phonology deals with the ways in which the sounds in any givenlanguage are related to each other and interact with each other. If we can use ananalogy from music, phonetics tells you what it means to play an A, and why A on aflute is different from A on a cello, but phonology tells you how that A can be usedto produce harmonies and tunes.

MORPHOLOGY is about the structure of words, how words such as dislike are madeup of smaller meaningful elements, such as dis- and like.

SYNTAX is about the ways in which words can be put together to make up largerunits, such as sentences. In the German examples dealt with earlier, we saw thatword-order in German does not have quite the same function as word-order inEnglish.

PRAGMATICS deals with the way in which we use language to achieve our goals, inways which might not be obvious from the words we use. To take a simple example,It’s cold in here might really mean ‘Will you please close the window?’, but is phrasedas a statement which does not overtly require any response.

1.3 What is this book attempting to do?

The obvious answer to the question What is this book attempting to do? is Teach you

linguistics. While that is obviously true, at one level, it is not a complete answer,because there are lots of books that try to teach you linguistics, and they are not alljust the same. Some books try to teach you about linguistics, some try to teach you todo linguistics; some books try to teach you a lot about language, but not in any depth,others try to teach you less and in more depth; some books are based on a particular

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view of how language works (often called a model of language), others are more theo-retically eclectic.

Obviously, from what has already been said, this book has a fairly narrow focus inwhat it attempts to teach, and attempts to deal with those topics in a reasonableamount of detail. Part of this detail means not trying to pull the wool over your eyes.Where things are controversial, you will often be told that they are (as you havealready been told about the question of whether phonetics is or is not part of linguis-tics). We do not always have the answers in linguistics, and it would be misleading tolet you believe that everything is well understood and agreed when that is not true.At the same time, this device is used relatively sparingly, or no progress at all couldbe made. If you go on with your study of linguistics, you will discover places wherethis introduction has told you something as a fact which is actually rather morecomplicated than you have been told here. This is not just perverseness; everything isdifficult if you look at it in enough detail, and we have to break into the circle some-where, and show you sufficient for you to be able to understand how the pieces fittogether. If you stay with linguistics for long enough, you will have the chance to takesome of these fundamentals up for further discussion, and possibly suggest improve-ments yourself. This is part of the delight of linguistics. Some of the notions are newenough for modifications to them to be accepted regularly.

This book tries to teach you about linguistics, but the exercises are often designedto teach you how to do linguistics. What is the difference? Some people think theyhave understood an idea if they can cite a definition of the idea. With many of theideas in linguistics, I do not believe such an approach is sufficient. Unless you cantake the idea and apply it to new data yourself, you do not understand the idea fully.So, while the text will provide definitions and explanation of how various notions fittogether, a vital part of learning about linguistics is learning to apply the ideas, andvery often this will happen through exercises.

Finally, this book takes seriously the idea that linguistics is about languages. Itwould be perfectly possible to give an introduction to linguistics in which all theexamples were taken from a single language. Indeed, such books exist. This has somegreat advantages: you can assume that the readers understand the language of exem-plification as well as the language of exposition, and you can appeal to their intuitionsabout what is going on in the examples. That approach will be used in some placeshere, as well, so that the most frequent language of exemplification will be English.Whenever possible, the scope will be widened so that the range of ways in whichlanguages solve a particular problem can be studied. Even when we stick to English,you should be asking yourself whether we might expect to find similar examples inother languages, or how other languages might differ from the kind of thing that isbeing illustrated for English.

1.4 A user’s guide to the book

Much of the text is pure exposition: this is what we need to think about, and a way ofthinking about it. This exposition is broken up by short questions so that you cancheck that you are following the exposition. The answers to most of these questions

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are provided in Appendix C, but sometimes, when the answer is needed for furtherexposition, the answer simply follows on in the text.

Some of the exposition, placed at the end of each chapter, is less introductory innature, and attempts to lead you on to consider wider issues in that particular area oflinguistics. Whether you read these will depend on the demands of your course oryour own personal curiosity. They are clearly marked (Advanced). These advancedsections introduce new ways of considering data, and in some cases are less conclu-sive than the earlier sections in the chapter, since they leave you to ask further ques-tions for yourself.

Alongside the text, there are various kinds of interpolation, called boxes inpublishing. We have already met the first kind of box, the controversy box. You donot have to read the material in controversy boxes, but it is there to indicate pointswhere linguists do not agree, to illustrate that linguistics is business that thrives ondispute, and to indicate that the solution that is presented in the text, while it may bea motivated solution, is not the only possible one.

Other kinds of boxes are the summary information box – designed to give you aquick overview of some point, the trivia box – designed to provide you with somebrief bit of information about language or languages, and the person box – designedto introduce you briefly to some great linguist and his or her work.

At the end of each chapter there is:

• a list of the technical terms introduced in the chapter,• some guidelines for further reading, and• some comments on sources for various pieces of information or discussions that

appeared in the chapter.

At the back of the book, as well as the index, there is a list of languages cited with asmall amount of information about each.

Technical terms introduced in this chapter

Gloss PhoneticsKiller language PhonologyLanguage PragmaticsLinguistics SemanticsMorphology Syntax

Reading and references

The famous book referred to in the first sentence is Adams (1979). On what you mustand can say, see Jakobson (1971: 264) who says ‘Languages differ essentially in whatthey must convey and not in what they can convey’, and makes reference to work byBoas. For Russell on poor but honest parents, see Russell (1948: 74). On the questionof endangered and disappearing languages, see Krauss (1992). On linguistics as a

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science, see Crystal (1985: chapter 3). The term ‘the indispensable foundation’ is fromSweet (e.g. 1877: v).

Chapter epigraphs in this and other chapters are taken from Crystal and Crystal(2000).On glossing in general, see the Leipzig Glossing Rules, available from www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php.

Data on individual languages comes from the sources identified below.

Tariana Aikhenvald (2006).

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ablative 235, 261ablaut 138, 140, 261absolute universal 211, 261absolutive 202, 261accusative 179, 202, 261acquisition 257active articulator 50, 261active sentence 261adjective 175, 261adjective phrase 184, 261adjunct 198, 261adposition 17, 261; see also preposition, post-

positionadverb 176, 184, 261adverb phrase 184, 261adverbial 198, 200, 261affix 135, 142, 166, 261affricate 52, 261agreement 175, 261allative 235, 261allomorph 147, 261allophone 87, 261, 298alveolar 46, 261alveolar ridge 46, 48, 261ambiguity 170ambisyllabic 116, 262amplitude 66, 262anaphoric 234, 262antecedent 234, 262antonym, gradable 15, 268apical 48, 262apophony 138, 262applied linguistics 257, 262approximant 53, 262arbitrary 17, 249, 262argument 262Aristotle 249article 179, 262arytenoid cartilage 43, 262aspect 174, 262aspiration 89, 97, 98, 115assimilation 51, 102, 121, 147, 262association line 124, 125, 262attributive 262Austin, John, L. 223auxiliary phrase see inflection phrase

back of tongue 48, 262

back vowel 56, 262bahuvrihi compound 153, 262base 134, 138, 144, 262bilabial 46, 262bimorphemic 133, 262binarity, binary 185, 187, 262blade of tongue 48, 262bound morph see obligatorily bound morphbound variant 87, 262brain damage 257broad transcription 88, 262bronchus 41, 42, 263

Caesar, Julius 235Carroll, Lewis 240case 175, 177, 178, 180, 205, 263cataphoric 234, 263causativity 29, 174, 237, 263central vowel 56, 263Chomsky, Noam 19, 249, 250circumfix 139, 263citation form 144, 263clause 197, 213, 263close vowel 56, 263close-mid 56, 263closed, of syllables 112, 263cluster 263co-compound 153, 263coda 112, 263cognate 14, 137, 263cognate object 29cohyponym 15, 263collocation 33, 263, 309command 219, 263comment 263complementary distribution 87, 88, 147, 263,

297complementary term 16 , 263complementation 30, 263complementiser 181, 193, 197, 263complementiser phrase 263complex wave 67, 264componential analysis 24, 263composition 134, 264compound 134, 151, 240, 264compounding 134, 263conceptual baggage 232conditioning factor 147, 264

327

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conjunction 181, 264connotation 147, 264consonant 53, 264constative (verb) 219, 220, 223, 264constituent 183, 185, 264constriction 5, 264context 256contoid 53, 264contrast 88, 89, 264, 297convention 264, 298conventional implicature 232, 264conversational implicature 231, 241, 264converse term 16, 264conversion 142, 264Cooper, Gary 217cooperative principle 221, 264coordination 187coordinating conjunction 181, 265coordinative compound 153copula, copular verb 196, 197, 265, 311corpus 254, 265countability 20, 28, 265, 292cricoid cartilage 43, 265cross-cultural pragmatics 226cycles per second (cps) 66

dative 264declarative 219, 265defective distribution 94, 265, 299definite article 179, 237, 265deixis 234, 265deletion 123, 204demonstrative 180denotation 13, 265denote 265dental 46, 265dependency tree 185dependent 156, 265dependent-marking 158, 265derivation 144, 145, 146, 147, 166, 265derivative 144, 240, 265description 252, 265determinative compound 152, 265determiner 179, 265determiner phrase 186, 188, 265diacritic 120dialect 32, 180, 251, 252diaphragm 42, 265diphthong 58, 75, 99, 110, 266direct object 196, 197, 202, 266direct speech act 219, 266discontinuity 165distal 235, 266distinctive features 102, 266ditransitive 196, 266divalent see transitivedomination 185, 266dorsal 48, 266double articulation 51, 266double modal 251double negative 169

DP see determiner phrasedual 178, 266durative 136, 266dvandva compound 153

economy 253, 299elsewhere 266, 298endocentric compound 152, 266entailment 230, 266environment bar 119, 266ergativity 202-7, 266established word 134, 266etymology 132exclusive 178, 266exocentric compound 153exophoric 234, 266expiration 42, 266

face, positive, negative 224, 266features, semantic 19, 21, 23, 267features, semantico-syntactic 21, 275features, phonetic 102, 103, 267felicity conditions 218, 220, 267femininity 243field linguist 254figures of speech 31first person 267; see also personflap 52, 267floating tone 127, 267folk etymology 267; see also etymologyfoot 118, 164, 267forensic linguistics 258, 267formal 32formant 69, 267free morph see potentially free morphfree variation 93, 267frequentive 267fricative 5, 80, 267front of tongue 48, 267front vowel 56, 267fundamental frequency 69, 267

geminate(d) 62, 79, 136, 267, 295, 302gender 17, 267genitive 179, 267given information 63, 238, 267gloss(es) 4, 142, 143, 267glottal 47glottal stop 44, 267glottalisation 59, 267glottis 44, 45, 47, 267God’s truth 253gradable antonym see antonymgrapheme 268, 299Grice, H. Paul 223Gricean principles 220, 268Grundbedeutung 34, 268

haiku 117head 152, 155, 184, 185, 213head-marking 158, 268

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328

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headlines 222heavy, of syllables 118, 268Hertz (Hz) 66hocus-pocus 253homonymy 14, 268homophone 89, 92, 268homorganic 52, 114, 268hyphenation 155hyponymy 15, 18, 152, 153, 240, 268

iconic 159, 255, 268illocutionary force 219, 268immediate dominance 185, 194, 268imperative 219, 268implosive 80inclusive 178, 268indefinite article 179, 237indirect object 196, 198, 268indirect speech act 219, 268infer 229, 231, 268infix 136, 165, 269inflection phrase 191, 269inflection 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 166, 255,

264, 269information 217inspiration 42, 269instrument 136, 269instrumentalism 253, 256, 269intensity 66, 269internal modification 138, 148, 269International Phonetic Alphabet 7, 53, 56, 57,

73, 106interrogative 219, 269interruption 242intervocalic 269intonation 239, 242, 269intonational phrase 63, 64intransitive 196, 202, 269intransitive preposition 176, 187, 269intuition 254IPA see International Phonetic Alphabetirony 223

jokes 222Jones, Daniel 55

killer language 269

labial 46, 269labial-palatal 51, 269labial-velar 51labialisation 59, 269labio-dental 46, 269laminal 48, 269language, definition 2, 269language game 124, 270language planning 258, 270language teaching 257languages, number of 3laryngealisation 270larynx 42, 43, 45, 270

lateral 53, 270Leipzig Glossing Rules 10length see vowel lengthlexeme 144, 152, 155, 257, 270lexical gap 23, 270lexicalisation 139, 270lexicography 258, 270lexicon 20, 270lie 217light, of syllables 118, 270linear precedence 194, 270linguist, definition 3linguistics, definition 2, 3, 247, 270lip-rounding see roundingliquid 107, 109, 270locutionary act 219, 270long vowel see vowel lengthlung 41, 42, 270

main verb 197, 270manipulation 225manner of articulation 52masculinity 243mass 20maxim 221, 225, 270median 53, 270melody 124meronymy 16, 18, 270metaphor 24, 31, 223, 270metonymy 32, 270mid vowel 56, 270middle voice 29, 270minimal pair 87, 95, 270, 297modal 192, 251monomorphemic 133, 271monophthong 58, 271monosemy 34, 37, 271monovalent see intransitivemora 116, 164, 271morph 133, 142, 271morpheme 113, 147, 148, 271morphologically simple/complex 133, 271morphology 115, 166morphology, definition 7, 255, 256, 271morphophonemic 138, 149, 255morphophonemic alternation 149, 271morphophonemic variation 149

narrow transcription 60, 88, 271nasal 53, 271nasalisation 59, 271natural class 102, 271near-close 56, 271near-open 56, 271negative face 271; see also faceneutralisation 94, 98, 271new information 238, 271node 185, 271noise 66, 69, 271nominative 179, 203, 271noun 172, 180, 272

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329

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noun clause 197, 272noun phrase 272nucleus 63, 272number 175, 177, 272

object see direct objectobjective see accusativeobligatorily bound morph 133, 134, 135, 138,

272Obligatory Contour Principle 127, 272oblique see accusativeobstruent 52, 272onset 112, 116, 272open vowel 56, 272open-mid 56, 272open, of glottis 44open, of syllables 112origins of language 248

palatal 47, 272palatalisation 59, 272palate 47, 48, 272paradigm 142, 272parallel distribution 272, 297parasynthesis 139, 140, 272paratone 239, 272particle 176, 272parts of speech see word classpassive 272passive articulator 50, 272peak 112, 177, 272performative (verb) 218, 220, 223, 273periodic 273periphrasis 304perlocutionary act 219, 273person 177, 178, 273pharyngeal 47, 273pharyngealisation 59, 273pharynx 42,47, 48, 273phatic communion 219, 273phonatory system 273phone 87, 88, 89, 273phoneme 87, 88, 89, 94, 95, 119, 120, 273phonemic transcription 88, 273phonetic similarity 88, 91, 273phonetic transcription 88, 273phonetics, definition 6, 7, 255, 273phonological word 111, 164phonology, definition 7, 255, 273phonotactics 111, 273Pig Latin 124place of articulation 50, 81Plato, Plato’s problem 17, 248, 249plosive 52, 79, 273plural 177politeness 178, 180, 219, 223, 243polyglot, definition 4polysemy 14, 34, 37, 273popular etymology 273; see also etymologypositive face 273; see also facepossession 213

possessive compound 15, 273possible word 134, 273post-alveolar 46, 273post-vocalic /l/ 97, 274postmodifier 200, 273postposition 177, 210, 274potentially free morph 133, 138, 274Praat 68, 73pragmatics, definition 7, 255, 256, 274pre-nasalised stop 80pre-vocalic /l/ 97, 274predicate phrase see inflection phrasepredicator 201, 208, 274prefix 135, 274premodifier 200, 274preposition 176, 187, 274; see also intransitive

prepositionprepositional phrase 210, 274prescription 252, 274present indicative 142presupposition 229, 274primary articulation 58, 274pro-sentence 176, 274productivity 146pronoun 177, 180, 188, 274proposition 274prototype 23, 145, 146, 172, 207, 274proximal 235, 274psycholinguisitcs 213, 257, 274

qualifier 200, 274quantal theory 81question 219, 274

radical 48, 274realism 253, 256, 274recursion 189, 201, 274reduplicant 161, 165, 274reduplication 136, 158, 166, 274reference 25, 275referring expression 275reflexivity 174, 275relative clause 200, 213, 275relative pronoun 275relevance (theory) 222, 223request 219resonance 67, 275retroflex 50, 275rheme 238, 275rhyme 112, 275root (of tongue) 48, 275root (of tree) 185, 275root (of word) 139, 166, 275root and pattern 140, 275Rosch, Eleanor 24, 25rounding 57, 72, 275rule 118, 193, 194, 213, 275Russell, Bertrand 6

Saussure, Ferdinand de 17, 88, 89, 249schwa 60

GENERAL INDEX

330

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Searle, John 221second person 275; see also personsecondary articulation 58, 275semantics, definition 6, 255, 256, 275sense 275sentence 191, 201, 213, 256sentence adverb 176, 275sequencing 236sex 242Shakespeare, William 178sine wave 67, 275singular 177social prestige 252sociolinguistics 257, 276solidarity 227, 228sonorant 52, 81, 276sonority 109, 276Sophocles 249sound wave 66spectrogram 68, 98, 276speech act 276speech sound 87, 276spelling 4, 149, 155Sperber, Dan 223split ergativity 203, 276split infinitive 169spoken language 23, 252spread 57, 276spreading 125standard language 252statement 219, 276statistical universal 211, 276stem 144, 147, 276stop 276stress 60, 276stress, primary 60, 274stress, secondary 60, 118, 275subject 196, 197, 202, 207, 208, 276subject complement 196, 198, 276subjective see nominativesubordinating conjunction 181, 276substitution 171, 180, 276suffix 134, 276superordinate 15, 240, 276swearing 228, 253Sweet, Henry 55syllabification 114, 276syllable 58, 164, 276syllable peak 110synaffix 139, 276syncretism 179, 276synecdoche 32, 276synonymy 12, 17, 143, 147, 153, 276, 277syntactic atom 277, 306syntax, definition 7, 170, 256, 277

T and V forms 227, 277tag question 192, 242, 277tap 52, 277tatpurusa compound 152, 277tautology 27, 277

tense 235, 277tense phrase see inflection phraseThatcher, Margaret 242theme 238, 277therapy, speech and language 25, 276third person 277; see also personthyroid cartilage 43, 45, 277tier 124tip of tongue 48, 277tonality 64, 277tone 1 (noise) 44, 66, 277tone 2 (pitch element) 61, 124, 277tone bearing unit 124, 277tone language 61, 277Tonga 242tonicity 63, 277topic 277trachea 41, 42, 277transcription 95, 110transitive relationship 17transitivity 174, 196, 197, 202, 277transitivisation 140transitiviser 29, 277tree 183, 185, 187, 213, 277trial 17, 277trill 5, 278trivalent 278; see also ditransitiveTruth Conditional Semantics 35, 278typology 211, 278

uncountability 20, 278universal 114Universal Grammar 195, 245universal tendency 211, 212, 278unmarked 141, 278uvula 47, 278

V2 208, 278valency 30, 278velar 47, 278velarisation 59, 278velum 47, 48, 278verb 172, 173, 196, 208, 278verb phrase 278Verlan 124vibration 44, 278vocabulary 240vocabulary size 257vocal folds 43, 46, 278vocalisation 98, 278vocoid 53, 55, 278voice onset time 98, 278Voice Print 69voiceless(ness) 45, 50, 278voicing 45, 50, 79, 278vowel 55, 278, 296vowel harmony 164, 278, 305vowel length 99, 107, 110, 302

wave 279wavelength 66, 279

GENERAL INDEX

331

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Webster, Noah 3, 4Wh-question 65, 279Wilson, Deirdre 223word 89, 92, 110, 164, 166; see also estab-

lished word, possible wordword, magic 224word boundary 122word family 257, 279word-class 171, 172, 213, 279

word-form 144, 257, 279written language 237, 252

X-bar grammar 195, 279X-ray photographs 77

Yoda 170

zero 141, 142, 190, 279

GENERAL INDEX

332

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Afrikaans 159, 281Alabama 77, 281Amahuaca 77, 281Amuesha 77, 281Arabic 44, 123, 281Aranda 75, 281Armenian 76, 281

Bakwiri (Bakwpe) 124, 281Bandjalang 77, 281Bardi 76, 281Basque 108, 206, 226, 282Beembe 76, 282Bella Coola 111, 112, 282Burmese 106, 282

Caddo 125, 282Campa 77, 282Cantonese 61, 75, 282Cayapa 77, 282Chiquito 241, 282Chukchee 206, 282Comox 137, 164, 282Cree 75, 282, 302Creek 160, 161, 282Croatian 3, 282

Dan 78, 283Dani 25Danish 20, 78, 105, 108, 151, 208, 209, 228,

283Daur 91, 283Diyari 163, 164, 202, 283, 308Dutch 75, 78, 80, 228, 283Dyirbal 160, 203, 204, 205, 206, 283, 306

Efik 80, 126, 283English 258, 312, et passim

American 52, 93, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 105, 154, 236, 251, 296, 300

Australasian 97, 98Australian 52, 97, 101, 105British 93, 98Canadian 39case 180compounds 153deixis 235derivation 141

Durham 97features for 103, 107Glasgow 97inflection 148Irish 96, 97Middle 99morphophonemics 138, 150New Zealand 52, 69, 78, 88, 93, 97, 98, 105,

296, 300non-standard 251Northern 101, 154, 251, 300Northumbrian 251of England 88, 96, 97official language 283Old 71, 287phonetics of 47, 49, 51, 60, 63, 121phonology of 95-100, 106, 113, 118, 123RP 97, 98, 100, 101, 106, 107, 121, 275, 300Scottish 96, 97, 98, 101, 251, 300South African 96spelling of 40Standard 105syntax of 20terms of address 226-7Welsh 97Yorkshire 300

Even 62, 283Ewe 76, 283

Finnish 62, 75, 99, 134, 135, 149, 164, 177,179, 212, 283, 303, 305

French 18, 20, 31, 114, 122, 258, 283, 302deixis 236determiners 188language games 124Louisiana 131, 285morphology 253, 254pronouns 227, 228pronunciation of 47, 65, 72, 85, 86, 105,

108, 111, 112vocabulary 131, 151, 152, 153

German 20, 227, 228, 283, 292, 312German, compounds 151

deixis 236pronunciation 47, 85, 108, 123sentence structure 4-5, 19, 209Swiss 3

333

Language index

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Germanic, common 71, 137Ghomala 179, 283Greek 49, 72, 283, 316Greenlandic 75, 206, 284

Hakka 80, 284Hausa 164, 284Hawai’ian 284Hebrew 169, 258, 284Hindi 52, 204, 284Hixkaryana 210, 212, 284, 312

Icelandic 137, 284Igbo 61, 284Irish 76, 284Italian 20, 52, 62, 65, 76, 142, 227, 228, 258,

284

Japanese 76, 86, 99, 107, 117, 120, 169, 235,284

Kambera 163, 284, 307Kham 210, 211, 284, 312Khasi 80, 284Khmer 135, 284Kiowa 107, 284Kisi 124, 126, 284Koasati 241, 284Koiari 119, 285Kpelle 76, 285Kunjen 80, 285Kurdish 80, 285

Lak 75, 285Lango 140, 285Latin 62, 75, 177, 188, 203, 205, 235, 258, 285Lezgian 108, 285

Malayalam 146, 147, 285Maltese 47, 139, 140, 285Mandan 316Mandarin 91, 112, 285Mangarayi 204, 286Maori 52, 71, 80, 86, 99, 105, 114, 116, 117,

152, 169, 210, 211, 235, 255, 286, 312Marshallese 162, 286Maung 76, 286Moseten 90, 91, 286Moxos 77, 286Mura 77, 286

Nauruan 161, 162, 286Navajo 77, 286Ngenone 76, 286Ngiti 127, 286North Frisian 78, 286

Norwegian 50, 286Nukuoro 161, 286Nunggubuyu 77, 286

Pashto 76, 287Passamaquoddy 93, 287Pitta-Pitta 108, 287Portuguese 258Pukapuka(n) 75, 287Punjabi 78, 287

Quileute 165, 287

Romanian 258Rukai 76, 287Russian 59, 111, 156, 157, 158, 179, 188, 287,

306

Saliba 156, 287Samoan 75, 165, 287Semai 165, 287Serbian 3, 287Serbo-Croat(ian) 3, 287Shambaa 127, 287Shona 127, 287Shoshone (Tümpisa Shoshone) 136, 139, 288Spanish 52, 72, 73, 76, 132, 227, 228, 258, 288St’a’timcets 166, 288Swahili 98, 135, 156, 288Swedish 228, 288

Tagalog 77, 288Tariana 6, 288Tepecano 16, 288Thai 62, 226, 288Tigre 76, 288Tiwi 71, 77, 211, 288Tol 316Tucano 76, 288Turkish 158, 164, 177, 288Tzutujil 156, 157, 158, 289, 306

Urdu 52, 289

Vietnamese 80, 123, 152, 163, 289

Wari’ 107, 289Warlpiri 50, 209, 289Welsh 53, 169, 289Wichita 76, 289

Yaqui 16, 289Yiddish 301Yurak 80, 289

Zulu 76, 289

LANGUAGE INDEX

334

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