Descriptive English Linguistics - An Introduction

Preface to the fourth edition

0 Introduction

0.1 What is linguistics?

0.2 Useful hints for the user

Table of contents

List of boxes

List of tables and figures

1 The core area of linguistics: grammar

1.1 Grammar in general

1.1.1 What kind of thing is grammar?

1.1.2 Subdivisions of grammar and the notion of

1.1.3 General concepts of grammar

1.2 Syntax

1.2.1 Traditional structural categories in the sentence

1.2.2 Generative Grammar: the description of constituent structure

1.2.3 Construction Grammar

1.3 Morphology

1.3.1 Why morphology?

1.3.2 Morphemes

1.3.3 Allomorphs and morphological processes

1.3.4 Inflection vs. derivation

1.3.5 Further strategies of word-formation

1.3.6 Productivity in morphology

1.3.7 Summary

1.4 Language typology and linguistic universals

1.4.1 Parameters of typological comparison

1.4.2 Traditional morphological language typology

2 Phonetics and Phonology

2.0 A brief note on phonetic transcription

2.1 Phonetics

2.1.1 Articulatory phonetics

2.1.2 Acoustic phonetics

2.1.3 Auditory phonetics

2.2 Segmental phonology

2.2.1 Phonetics vs. phonology. The phoneme

2.2.2 Phonemic and phonetic transcription

2.2.3 Phoneme vs. allophone

2.2.4 Neutralisation

2.2.5 Morphophonology

2.3 Suprasegmental phonology

2.3.1 Phonotactics

2.3.2 Syllables

2.3.3 Word stress

2.3.4 Intonation

2.4 The phonetics and phonology of connected speech

2.4.1 Weak forms

2.4.2 Assimilation

2.4.3 Linking /r/ and intrusive /r/

2.5 Writing

2.5.1 Graphemics and spelling

2.5.2 English spelling

2.5.3 Non-alphabetic writing systems

3 The history of English

3.1 External history

3.1.1 The onset: the formation of Old English

3.1.2 The transformation: Middle English

3.1.3 The eve of modernity: Early Modern English

3.1.4 Becoming global: Late Modern English

3.1.5 New communicative modes: Present-Day English

3.2 Internal history and types of language change

3.2.1 Sound change

3.2.2 Morphological change

3.2.3 Syntactic change

3.2.4 Semantic change

3.2.5 Lexical change

3.3 Why do languages change?

4 Semantics

4.0 What is semantics?

4.1 General key concepts of semantics

4.1.1 Reference vs. sense and related dichotomies

4.1.2 Ambiguity, homonymy and polysemy; metonymy and meta-phor; vagueness

“I’m sorry, the professor is tied up at the moment. Can

you ring again a little later?”

4.2 Structural semantics: semantic fields, sense relations and componential analysis

4.2.1 Semantic fields

4.2.2 Sense relations

4.2.3 Componential analysis: the semantic feature approach

4.3 Cognitive semantics

4.3.1 Central tenets of cognitive semantics

4.3.2 Prototypes. Metaphors

4.3.3 Frames

4.4 Formal semantics

4.4.1 Truth values and truth conditions

4.4.2 Logical connectives

4.4.3 Logical relations between propositions

4.4.4 Logical properties of propositions

4.4.5 Predicate logic

5 Pragmatics: the context of language use

5.0 What is pragmatics?

5.1 Illocution

5.2 Conversational maxims

5.2.1 Speakers’ maxims: GRICE

5.2.2 Hearers’ heuristics: LEVINSON

5.3 Relevance theory

5.4 Pragmatic inferencing and language change

5.5 The notion of context

6 Textlinguistics. Conversation analysis. Discourse analysis

6.1 Textlinguistic approaches to text analysis

6.1.1 Grammar beyond the sentence: cohesion phenomena

6.1.2 Cohesion as text constitution

6.1.3 Thematic progression

6.1.4 Coherence relations

6.2 The analysis of conversation

6.3 Discourse in the technical age

6.3.1 The oral – written dichotomy

6.3.2 Media discourse

7 Sociolinguistics

7.0 The realm of sociolinguistics

7.1 Dialect, sociolect, and the standard

7.1.1 Dialect vs. language vs. accent

7.1.2 Sociolect

7.1.3 The standard

7.2 Languages in contact

7.2.1 Minority vs. majority

7.2.2 Bi- and multilingualism

7.2.3 Language policy

7.3 English as a world language

7.4 Pidgins and creoles

7.4.1 Pidgins

7.4.2 Creoles

7.5 Language and gender

7.6 On variation and conditioning factors of its use

8 Epilogue: Specific characteristics of human lan-guages vs. animal communication

8.1 Arbitrariness

8.2 Duality / double articulation

8.3 Displacement

8.4 Creativity / productivity and recursiveness

8.5 Can animals learn human language?

9 Exercises

9.1 Exercises relating to chapter 1

9.1.1 Grammar in general

9.1.2 Syntax

9.1.3 Morphology

9.2 Exercises relating to chapter 2

9.3 Exercises relating to chapter 3

9.4 Exercises relating to chapter 4

9.5 Exercises relating to chapter 5

9.6 Exercises relating to chapter 6

9.7 Exercises relating to chapter 7

9.8 Exercises relating to chapter 8

10 Bibliographical section

10.1 Some useful links for linguists

10.1.1 General sources

10.1.2 Grammar

10.1.3 Phonetics and phonology

10.1.4 Lexicology and semantics

10.1.5 Sociolinguistics

10.1.6 Psycholinguistics

10.1.7 Corpus linguistics

10.2 Important basic literature

10.2.0 General literature

10.2.1 Grammar

10.2.2 Phonetics and phonology. Graphemics

10.2.3 The history of English

10.2.4 Lexicology and semantics

10.2.5 Pragmatics

10.2.6 Textlinguistics. Conversation analysis. Discourse analysis

10.2.7 Sociolinguistics and dialectology

10.2.8 Psycholinguistics. Neurolinguistics. Biolinguistics

10.3 Literature mentioned in the text

11 Index