Linguistics An Introduction, SECOND EDITION

1 LinguisticsAn IntroductionSECOND EDITIONANDREW RADFORDMARTIN ATKINSONDAVID BRITAINHARALD CLAHSENandANDREW SPENCERU niversity of EssexCAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSC ambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S o PauloCambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UKFirst published in print formatISBN-13 978-0-521-84948-7 ISBN-13 978-0-521-61478-8 ISBN-13 978-0-511-47924-3 Andrew Radford, Martin Atkinson, David Britain, Harald Clahsen and AndrewSpencer 20092009 Information on this title: publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any partmay take place without the written permission of Cambridge University 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 in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New (EBL)

2 HardbackContentsList of illustrations page xList of tablesxiiPreface to the SECOND editionxiiiA note for course organisers and class teachersxivIntroduction1 Linguistics2 Developmental linguistics6 Psycholinguistics9 Neurolinguistics11 Sociolinguistics14 Exercises17 Further reading and references21 Part I Sounds231 Introduction252 Sounds and suprasegmentals27 Consonants28 Vowels36 Suprasegmentals41 Exercises443 Sound variation47 linguistic variables and sociological variables47 Stylistic variation53 Linguistically determined variation54 Variation and language change56 Exercises594 Sound change61 Consonant change61 Vowel change64 The transition problem: regular sound change versus lexicaldiffusion67 Suprasegmental change70 Exercises72v5 Phonemes, syllables and phonological processes75 Phonemes75 Syllables78 Syllabification and the Maximal Onset Principle81 Phonological processes82 Phonological features85 Features and processes86 Constraints in phonology90 Exercises926 Child phonology96 Early achievements96 Phonological processes in acquisition97 Perception.

3 Production and a dual-lexicon model100 Exercises1067 Processing sounds109 Speech perception109 Speech production113 Other aspects of phonological processing117 Exercises120 Further reading and references122 Part II Words1258 Introduction1279 Word classes129 Lexical categories129 Functional categories132 The morphological properties of English verbs135 Exercises13810 Building words140 Morphemes140 Morphological processes derivation and inflection143 Compounds148 Clitics150 Allomorphy151 Exercises15311 Morphology across languages156 The agglutinative ideal156 Types of morphological operations162 Exercises165viContents12 Word meaning170 Entailment and hyponymy170 Meaning opposites175 Semantic features176 Dictionaries and prototypes180 Exercises18213 Children and words186 Early words a few facts186 Apprentices in morphology188 The semantic significance of early words192 Exercises19614 Lexical processing and the mental lexicon199 Serial-autonomous versus parallel-interactive processingmodels199On the representation of words in the mental lexicon204 Exercises21115 Lexical disorders213 Words and morphemes in aphasia214 Agrammatism215 Paraphasias217 Dissociations in SLI subjects inflectional systems219 Exercises22116 Lexical variation and change224 Borrowing words224 Register: words for brain surgeons and soccer players,hairdressers and lifesavers226 Biscuit or cookie?

4 Variation and change in word choice226 Same word new meaning228 Variation and change in morphology233 Exercises238 Further reading and references242 Part III Sentences24417 Introduction24518 Basic terminology247 Categories and functions247 Complex sentences250 The functions of clauses253 Exercises254 Contentsvii19 Sentence structure257 Merger257 Tests for constituency263 Agreement, case assignment and selection264 Exercises26820 Empty categories271 Empty T constituent271 PRO: the empty subject of infinitive clauses276 Covert complements278 Empty complementisers278 Empty determiners283 Exercises28721 Movement293 Head movement293 Operator movement297 Yes no questions302 Other types of movement304 Exercises30722 Syntactic variation311 Inversion in varieties of English311 Syntactic parameters of variation314 The Null Subject Parameter319 Parametric differences between English and German321 Exercises32523 Sentence meanings and Logical Form330 Preliminaries330 Thematic roles333A philosophical diversion336 Covert movement and Logical Form339 Exercises34524 Children s sentences349 Setting parameters.

5 An example350 Null subjects in early Child English351 Non-finite clauses in Child English354 Children s nominals358 Exercises36125 Sentence processing366 Click studies367 Processing empty categories368 Strategies of sentence processing370 Exercises375viiiContents26 Syntactic disorders377 Agrammatism378 Paragrammatism382 Specific Language Impairment (SLI)383 Exercises38627 Using sentences388 Context and pronouns388 Topic/focus389 Presuppositions392 Doing things with words394 The logic of conversation395 Context and coherence397 Relevance Theory398 Taking turns400 Exercises402 Further reading and references405 Conclusion407 Appendix 1 The International Phonetic Alphabet411 Appendix 2 Phonological distinctive features412 Appendix 3 Distinctive feature matrix for Englishconsonant phonemes414 Bibliography415 Index422 ContentsixIntroductionThe major perspective we adopt in this book regards a language as acognitivesystem which is part of any normal human being s mental or psychologicalstructure.

6 An alternative to which we shall also give some attention emphasisesthesocialnature of language, for instance studying the relationships betweensocial structure and different dialects or varieties of a cognitive view has been greatly influenced over the past five decades bythe ideas of the American linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky. Thecentral proposal which guides Chomsky s approach to the study of language isthat when we assert that Tom is a speaker of English, we are ascribing to Tom acertain mental structure. This structure is somehow represented in Tom s brain, sowe are also implicitly saying that Tom s brain is in a certain state. If Clare is also aspeaker of English, it is reasonable to suppose that Clare s linguistic cognitivesystem issimilarto Tom s.

7 By contrast, Jacques, a speaker of French, has acognitive system which isdifferentin important respects from those of Tom andClare, and different again to that of Guo, a speaker of Chinese. This proposalraises four fundamental research questions:(1)What is the nature of the cognitive system which we identify with knowinga language?(2)How do we acquire such a system?(3)How is this system used in our production and comprehension of speech?(4)How is this system represented in the brain?Pursuit of these questions defines four areas of enquiry: Linguistics itself, devel-opmental Linguistics , psycholinguistics and the outset, it is important to be clear that an answer to question(1) islogicallyprior to answers to questions(2), (3) and (4); unless we have a view on the natureof the relevant cognitive system, it makes no sense to enquire into its acquisition,its use in production and comprehension and its representation in the (1), with its reference to acognitivesystem, looks as if it ought to fallin the domain of the cognitive psychologist.

8 However, the Chomskian approachmaintains that we can formulate and evaluate proposals about the nature of thehuman mind bydoing Linguistics , and much of this book is intended to establishthe plausibility of this view. In order to do Linguistics , we usually rely on nativespeakers of a language who act as informants and provide us with data; and it is1with respect to such data that we test our hypotheses about native speakers linguistic cognitive systems. Often, linguists, as native speakers of some languageor other, rely on themselves as informants. Linguists (as opposed to psycholin-guists, see below) do not conduct controlled experiments on large numbers ofsubjects under laboratory conditions.

9 This is a majormethodologicaldifferencebetween linguists and cognitive psychologists in their study of the human mind,and some critics might see it as making Linguistics unscientific or , it is important to point out that the data with which linguists work(supplied by themselves or by other native speakers) usually have such clearproperties as to render controlled experimentation pointless. For instance, con-sider the examples in(5):(5) a. The dog chased the catb. *Cat the dog chased theA native speaker of English will tell us that(5a) is a possible sentence of Englishbut (5b) is not (the * is conventionally used to indicate this latter judgement). Ofcourse, we could design experiments with large numbers of native speakers toestablish the reliability of these claims, but there is no reason to believe that suchexperiments would be anything other than a colossal waste of time.

10 Native speak-ers have vast amounts of data readily available to them, and it would be perversefor linguists not to take advantage of this. Notice that above we said that the datasupplied by native speakersusuallyhave very clear properties. When this is notthe case (and an example will arise in our discussion of psycholinguistics below),we proceed with more caution, trying to understand the source of logical priority of question(1) should not lead to the conclusion that wemust have acompleteanswer to this question before considering our otherquestions. Although question(2) requires some view on the cognitive linguisticsystem, there is no reason why acquisition studies of small children should notthemselves lead to modifications in this view.