Bieswanger | Becker Introduction to English Linguistics 5. Auflage basics Eine Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verlage Böhlau Verlag · Wien · Köln · Weimar Verlag Barbara Budrich · Opladen · Toronto facultas · Wien Wilhelm Fink · Paderborn Narr Francke Attempto Verlag / expert verlag · Tübingen Haupt Verlag · Bern Verlag Julius Klinkhardt · Bad Heilbrunn Mohr Siebeck · Tübingen Ernst Reinhardt Verlag · München Ferdinand Schöningh · Paderborn transcript Verlag · Bielefeld Eugen Ulmer Verlag · Stuttgart UVK Verlag · München Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht · Göttingen Waxmann · Münster · New York wbv Publikation · Bielefeld Wochenschau Verlag · Frankfurt am Main utb 2752 56630 Titelei.indd 1 56630 Titelei.indd 1 08.03.21 12: 01 08.03.21 12: 01 basics 45283 Titelei.indd 2 21.06.16 15: 20 45283 Titelei.indd 3 basics 56630 Titelei.indd 2 56630 Titelei.indd 2 08.03.21 12: 01 08.03.21 12: 01 21.06.16 15: 20 Markus Bieswanger Annette Becker Introduction to English Linguistics 4., überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage A. Francke Verlag Tübingen 45283 Titelei.indd 3 21.06.16 15: 20 Markus Bieswanger Annette Becker Introduction to English Linguistics 5., überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage Narr Francke Attempto Verlag Tübingen 56630 Titelei.indd 3 56630 Titelei.indd 3 08.03.21 12: 01 08.03.21 12: 01 IV Markus Bieswanger ist Professor für Englische Sprachwissenschaft an der Universität Bayreuth, Annette Becker ist Akademische Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Mehrsprachigkeit der Pädagogischen Hochschule Karlsruhe. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.d -nb.de abrufbar 5., überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage 2021 4., überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage 2017 3., überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage 2010 2., aktualisierte Auflage 2008 1. Auflage 2006 © 2021 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D - 72070 Tübingen www.narr.de · info@narr.de Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf chlorfrei gebleichtem und säurefreiem Werkdruckpapier. Layout und Einbandgestaltung: Atelier Reichert, Stuttgart Satz: pagina GmbH Printed in Germany UTB-Nr. 2752 ISBN 978-3-8252-5663-0 V Prefaces..........................................................................................................VIII 1 Introduction ........................................................................................ ..1 1.1.. What.is.Linguistics? ......................................................................... ..2 1.2.. Branches.of.Linguistics................................................................... ..2 1.3.. Central.Concepts.of.Linguistics................................................... ..4 1.4.. Bibliography...................................................................................... ..9 2 A Brief History of English ................................................................ .11 2.1.. The.Linguistic.History.of.English............................................... .12 2.1.1.. Old.English.(c450.-.c1150).............................................................. .13 2.1.2.. Middle.English.(c1150.-.c1500)..................................................... .20 2.1.3.. Early.Modern.English.(c1500.-.c1700)........................................ .24 2.1.4.. Modern.English.(c1700.-.present)................................................ .28 2.2.. English.Around.the.World........................................................... .30 2.3.. English.in.the.21st.Century......................................................... .34 2.4.. Exercises............................................................................................. .36 2.5.. Bibliography..................................................................................... .37 3 Phonetics and Phonology ................................................................ .39 3.1.. Phonetics: .The.Study.of.Speech.Sounds................................... .40 3.1.1.. Speech.Sound.Production............................................................ .41 3.1.2.. . Description.and.Classification.of.Consonants.and.Vowels..43 3.1.3.. Phonetic.Transcription.................................................................. .50 3.2.. Phonology: .The.Function.and.Patterning.of.Sounds........... .58 3.2.1.. Segmental.Phonology.................................................................... .59 3.2.2.. Suprasegmental.Phonology......................................................... .64 3.2.3.. Connected.Speech........................................................................... .68 3.3.. Exercises............................................................................................. .70 3.4.. Bibliography..................................................................................... .73 Contents VI C o n t e n t s 4 Morphology ........................................................................................ .75 4.1.. Morphology.and.Grammar.......................................................... .76 4.2.. Morphemes.and.Allomorphs....................................................... .85 4.3.. Morphological.Processes............................................................... .86 4.3.1.. Inflection........................................................................................... .86 4.3.2.. Word.Formation.............................................................................. .88 4.4.. Exercises............................................................................................. .95 4.5.. Bibliography..................................................................................... .97 5 Syntax .................................................................................................. .99 5.1.. Syntactic.Categories......................................................................100 5.2.. Sentence.Types................................................................................103 5.3.. Building.Sentences........................................................................104 5.4.. . Characteristic.Phrase.Structures.and.. Clause.Structures.of.English...................................................... .113 5.5.. Grammatical.Rules.and.Grammaticality................................120 5.6.. Exercises............................................................................................123 5.7.. Bibliography....................................................................................124 6 Semantics ...........................................................................................127 6.1.. The.Study.of.Meaning...................................................................128 6.2.. Lexical.Semantics...........................................................................128 6.2.1.. Meaning.Relations.Among.Words.............................................129 6.2.2.. Word.Meaning.................................................................................135 6.2.3.. Conceptualisation.and.Categorisation....................................138 6.3.. Sentence.Meaning......................................................................... .141 6.3.1.. Meaning.Relations.Among.Sentences..................................... .141 6.3.2.. Sentence.Interpretations............................................................. .144 6.4.. Exercises........................................................................................... .148 6.5.. Bibliography................................................................................... .149 VII C o n t e n t s 7 Pragmatics ........................................................................................ .151 7.1.. What.Does.Pragmatics.Do? .........................................................152 7.2.. Deixis.................................................................................................153 7.2.1.. Person.Deixis...................................................................................154 7.2.2.. Place.Deixis......................................................................................156 7.2.3.. Time.Deixis.......................................................................................157 7.3.. The.Cooperative.Principle...........................................................158 7.4.. Speech.Acts.......................................................................................160 7.5.. Conversation.Analysis...................................................................164 7.6.. Exercises............................................................................................166 7.7.. Bibliography....................................................................................169 8 Sociolinguistics ................................................................................ .171 8.1.. The.Subject.Matter........................................................................ .172 8.2.. Language.Variation....................................................................... .173 8.2.1.. Geographical.Differentiation.of.Language............................ .178 8.2.2.. Social.Differentiation.of.Language.......................................... .181 8.3.. Language.and.Gender.................................................................. .185 8.4.. Exercises............................................................................................193 8.5.. Bibliography....................................................................................194 9 Appendix ............................................................................................197 9.1.. Answers.............................................................................................197 9.2.. Index................................................................................................. .211 VIII Prefaces This. textbook. is. intended. for. beginning. students. of. English. linguistics,. and. for. their. instructors.. It. is. specifically. designed. to. accompany.introductory.classes.to.linguistics.and.does.not.require. any.previous.knowledge..The.text.is.easily.accessible,.as.it.is.written. in. user.-.friendly. English.. Moreover,. it. contains. numerous. ex.amples. and. around. 140. figures.. It. goes. without. saying. that. a. brief. introductory. textbook. cannot. and. thus. should. not. even. attempt. to. cover. all. details. of. a. growing. and. increasingly. fragmented.discip.line.like.linguistics..This.book.is.meant.as.a.starting. point.that.introduces.beginners.to.the.core.branches.and.central. concepts.of.the.field,.addressing  what.linguists.are.interested.in,  how.the.English.language.has.been.evolving,  how.we.produce.and.use.speech.sounds,  how.we.may.form.words,  how.we.may.form.sentences,  what.sounds,.words.and.sentences.have.to.do.with.meaning,  how.language.is.used.in.context,  and.what.language.has.to.do.with.social.factors. Key. terms. are. highlighted. in. bold letters ,. whereas. examples. are. given.in.italics..The.index.lists.all.key.terms.and.the.names.of.the. most.important.authors.mentioned.in.the.text..At.the.end.of.each. chapter,. you. will. find. exercises. (complete. with. answers. in. the. appendix).and.an.annotated.bibliography.directing.you.to.sources. of.more.detailed.information.and.further.reading..The.selection.of. the.material.is.based.on.our.teaching.experience..Individual.chapters.may,.for.the.most.part,.be.read.independently.of.each.other,. although.we.suggest.that.readers.follow.the.order.as.presented.in. the.book. We. are. indebted. to. our. students,. colleagues. and. friends. for. many.inspiring.questions,.discussions.and.suggestions..Our.special.. I X P r e f a C e s thanks. go. to. Werner. Bauer,. Anita. Fetzer,. James. Fisk,. Marlis. Hellinger,.Jan.Hoffmeister,.Gerda.Lauerbach,.Ursula.Lenker,.Sylvia. Mieszkowski,.Carolina.Plaza.-.Pust,.Gregory.Poarch,.Nicola.Prendergast,.Michael.Schiffmann,.Britta.Schneider,.Jule.Türke.and.Christine.Vogt.-.William.for.their.valuable.comments.on.earlier.versions. of.the.individual.chapters..We.would.also.like.to.thank.our.editor. Jürgen.Freudl.for.his.amazing.patience.and.professional.support,. and. Sibylle. Klöcker. for. her. help. with. compiling. the. index.. All. remaining. shortcomings. of. the. book. are,. of. course,. entirely. our. own.responsibility. If. you. have. any. questions,. comments. or. suggestions. for. future. editions,. please. feel. free.to. contact. us. at. Annette.Becker@ ruhr.-.uni.-.bochum.de.and.markus.bieswanger@uni.-.flensburg.de. Annette.Becker.&.Markus.Bieswanger Preface to the Second Edition For.the.second.edition.of.this.textbook,.we.have.updated.the.annotated. bibliographies. at.the. end. of. each. chapter. and.revised. some. explanations. and. figures.. However,. to. ensure. compatibility. with. the.first.edition,.changes.have.been.kept.to.a.necessary.minimum.. We.would.like.to.thank.colleagues.and.students.from.a.number.of. different. universities. -.too. numerous.to. name.them. all.individually. -. who. used. our. book.in.introductory. classes. and. gave. generously.of.their.time.to.supply.us.with.valuable.feedback..Your.effort. is. very. much. appreciated,. even. though. we. have. been. unable. to. accommodate.everything.that.has.been.suggested.to.us..Questions,. comments.and.suggestions.for.future.editions.are.still.more.than. welcome.and.may.be.sent.to.the.email.addresses.given.at.the.end.of. the.original.preface. Markus.Bieswanger.&.Annette.Becker X Preface to the Third Edition This.third.edition.continues.to.follow.the.overall.plan.of.the.previous. editions.. All. chapters. of. the. second. edition. as. well. as. the. bibliographies.at.the.end.of.each.chapter.have.been.updated.and. several. exercises. have. been. revised.. The. chapter. on. syntax. has. been. substantially.rewritten. and.now.focuses.more. on.traditional. approaches.to. syntactic. analysis. and.their. application..We. are. indebted.to.those.who.assisted.in.the.preparation.of.this.edition.. In. addition. to. the. individuals. we. thanked. in. the. prefaces. to. the. previous.editions,.we.would.like.to.specifically.thank.Carina.Farrero,.Guido.Isekenmeier,.Verena.Minow,.Jonathan.Mole.and.Julia. Salzinger.for.their.helpful.comments.on.earlier.drafts.of.the.new. chapter. on. syntax.. We. would. like. to. invite. you. to. continue. to. send. comments. and. suggestions. for. future. editions.to.the. email. addresses.given.at.the.end.of.the.original.preface. Markus.Bieswanger.&.Annette.Becker Preface to the Fourth Edition Just. as. the. previous. editions. of. this. textbook,. the. fourth. edition.presents.central.aspects.of. English.linguistics.in.a.clear.and. accessible. way,. hopefully. inspiring. readers. to. dig. deeper. into. the.subject.of.linguistics.and.its.many.fascinating.branches..Text. and. exercises. have. been. revised. where. necessary,. and. all. bibliographies. have. been. updated,. including. the. addition. of. a. number. of. new.references.. We. wish.to.thank. all. colleagues,. students. and.readers.who. generously. gave.us.their.feedback. and. support.. Our. special. thanks. go. to. Kristina. Kähm,. Lucia. Kornexl,. Verena. Minow. and.Hans. Sauer.for.their.helpful.hints,. and.to.our. editor. Kathrin.Heyng..Further.comments.and.suggestions.are.more.than. welcome.and.should.be.sent.to.bieswanger@uni.-.bayreuth.de.and. abecker@uni.-.wuppertal.de. Markus.Bieswanger.&.Annette.Becker P r e f a C e s X I Preface to the Fifth Edition The. fifth. edition. has. been. updated. and. revised,. preserving. the. structure.of.the.book.and.at.the.same.time.reflecting.recent.developments. in. linguistics.. We. would. like. to. thank. our. editor. and. the. publisher.for.their. support.in. preparing.this. edition.. Special. thanks.go.to.our.readers.for.their.valuable.feedback.on.the.fourth. edition,. and. to. Luana. Ebert. for. her. assistance. in. updating. the. text,.the.exercises,.and.the.bibliographies.. Please. send.your.comments. on.the.fifth. edition. and. suggestions.for.future. editions.to. bieswanger@uni-bayreuth.de.and.annette.becker@ph-karlsruhe.de. Markus.Bieswanger.&.Annette.Becker P r e f a C e s 1 Introduction | 1 1.1 What is Linguistics? 2 1.2 Branches of Linguistics 2 1.3 Central Concepts of Linguistics 4 1.4 Bibliography 9 Contents This chapter defines the scope of linguistics and gives a brief overview of the branches and central concepts of the discipline. Abstract 2 I n t r o d u C t I o n What is Linguistics? Linguistics . is. all. about. human. language ,. that.means.it.is.primarily.concerned.with. the. uniquely. human. capacity. to. express. ideas.and.feelings.by.voluntarily.produced. speech. sounds. or. their. equivalents,. such. as.gestures.in.sign.languages.used.by.deaf. persons..Linguistics.can.be.broadly.defined.as. the scientific study of language .or. of particular languages ..Scholars.who.systematically.study.language.usually.refer.to.themselves.as. linguists ..Compare. the.following.definitions.from.the.Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English: lin·guist / lɪŋɡwɪst / noun 1 a person who knows several foreign languages well: She’s an excellent linguist. ◊ I’m afraid I’m no linguist (= I find foreign languages difficult). 2 a person who studies languages or linguistics In.this.book,.we.will.use.the.term.linguist as.defined.by.the.second. of.the.above.dictionary.entries..From.the.point.of.view.of.linguistics,.a.linguist.does.thus.not.necessarily.have.to.speak.many.different.languages.fluently,.just.as.a.professional.geographer.does.not. have.to.know.the.location.of.all.the.rivers,.towns.and.cities.in.the. world.by.heart. Humans. in. all. parts. of. the. world. have. been. interested. in. language. for. thousands. of. years. and. have. developed. a. wide. variety. of. perspectives. in. language. studies.. As. a. result,. linguists. today. ap.proach.language.from.a.vast.and.growing.number.of.different. angles.or.specialise.in.certain.aspects.of.language. Branches of Linguistics The. field. of. linguistics. encompasses. a. wide. range. of. “ways”. to. study.language,.which.are.reflected.in.the.subdivision.of.linguistics. into. branches . (or. subfields ).. Traditionally,. linguists. identify. five. core branches of.linguistics,. phonetics . (namely.the. study. of. speech.sounds.in.general),. phonology .(the.study.of.the.sound.systems. of.individual.languages),. morphology . (the. study. of.the. cre..-.. “From a linguist’s viewpoint Homo sapiens, the ‘rational’ or ‘knowing’ species, is above all Homo loquens, the ‘talking’ species.” (Matthews 2003: 14) 1.1 | Traditional Core Branches 1.2 | 3 B r a n C h e s o f L I n g u I s t I C s ation,. structure. and. form. of. words),. syntax (the. study. of. structural.units.larger.than.one.word,.i.e..phrases.and.sentences),.and. semantics .(the.study.of.word.and.sentence.meaning)..This.is.also. the. order. in. which. these. fields. appear. in. Chapter. 3. to. 6. in. this. book.. We. will. thus. pursue. a. bottom.-.up. approach,. starting. with. speech. sounds,. i.e.. the. smallest. units. of. language,. and. working. our.way.up.towards.larger.structures.of.language: These. core. areas. of. linguistic. study,. however,. are. not. the. only. branches. that. are. subsumed. under. the. umbrella. term. linguistics.. A.number.of.branches.of.linguistics.have.appeared.in.recent.years. and. decades,. of. which. pragmatics . (the. study. of. meaning. in. context). and. sociolinguistics . (the. study. of. the. relationship. between. language.and.society).have.been.selected.for.this.book,.as.they.are. among.the.most.dynamic.and.widely.studied.subfields.of.linguistics.today..Many.linguists.now.include.both.pragmatics.and.sociolinguistics.when.they.speak.about.the.core.branches.of.linguistics. Similarly. to. sociolinguistics,. which. has. developed. as. a. result. of. overlapping. interests. of. linguistics. and. sociology,. many. other. branches.of.linguistics.have.been.set.up.to.describe. interdisciplinary . approaches : .for.example,.anthropological.linguistics.(anthropology. and. linguistics),. biolinguistics. (biology. and. linguistics),. clinical. linguistics. (medicine. and. linguistics),. computational. linguistics. (computer. science. and. linguistics),. ethnolinguistics. (ethnology. and.linguistics),. media.linguistics. (media. studies. and.linguistics),.philosophical.linguistics.(philosophy.and.linguistics).and. psycholinguistics.(psychology.and.linguistics),.to.name.only.a.few. The.branches.of.linguistics.we.have.mentioned.so.far.belong.for. the.most.part.to.the.traditional.core.or.have.developed.from.the. collaboration.of.linguistics.and.a.neighbouring.field.of.study..We. Traditional core branches of linguistics (simplified) | Fig. 1.1 branch concerned with phonetics speech sounds in general phonology sound systems of languages morphology words and their components syntax phrases and sentences semantics word and sentence meaning Expanding the Core More Branches Different Kinds of Branches 4 I n t r o d u C t I o n will.now.briefly.turn.to.two.examples.of.branches.that.are.distinguished.for.other.reasons,.namely. applied linguistics .and. corpus linguistics . Applied.linguistics.can.be.broadly.defined.as.the.branch.of.linguistics.that. seeks.to. solve.language.-.related.problems.in.the.real. world.. Originally,. applied. linguistics. essentially. focussed. on. the. relevance. of. linguistic. study. for. language. teaching,. particularly. foreign.language.teaching,.but.has.since.much.expanded.its.scope.. Other.fields.of.application.now.include,.for.example,.the.linguistic. analysis. of. language. disorders. and. the. planning. of. national.. language.policies..Today,.the.label.“applied”.in.the.broader.sense.. is. occasionally. even. used. in. combination. with. other. branches.. of. linguistics,. as. in. applied. psycholinguistics. or. applied. sociolinguistics. Corpus. linguistics,. on. the. other. hand,. is. not. defined. by. the.. possible. application. of. the. results. of. linguistic. study,. but. by. the. methodology.used..A.corpus.is.a.collection.of.authentic.language. material,. now. frequently. in. the. form. of. machine.-.readable. databases.. Corpus.linguists. are.interested.in. actual.language.use.. For. example,. linguists. can. search. these. corpora. for. all. occurrences. of. a. certain. linguistic. feature. and. interpret. both. the. number. of. occurrences.as.well.as.the.context.in.which.such.a.feature.occurs. The.variety.of.approaches.and.specialisations.frequently.shows. in.differences.in.terminology..In.this.book,.we.will,.wherever.possible,.use.widely.accepted.terminology.that.can.be.found.in.most. international.textbooks.of.linguistics..However,.it.has.to.be.kept.in. mind.that.there.is.some.variation.in.the.use.of.linguistic.terminology,.even.among.linguists..We.will.point.out. some.of.the.most. important.cases.of.terminological.variation.as.we.go.along. Central Concepts of Linguistics Linguistics. at.the.beginning. of.the. 21st. century.is. still.to. a.large. extent. based. on. the. ideas. of. the. Swiss. linguist. Ferdinand de Saussure .(1857.-.1913),.which.were.responsible.for.a.fundamental. change. of.direction. of.linguistic. study.in.the. early. 20th. century.. This.holds.particularly.true.for.linguistics.as.viewed.from.a.European. perspective.. Saussure’s. ideas. were. only. published. after. his. death,.when.some.of.his.students.compiled.the.Cours de linguistique Ferdinand de Saussure 1.3 | 5 C e n t r a L C o n C e P t s o f L I n g u I s t I C s générale (or.Course in General Linguistics).from.his.lecture.materials.in. 1916..Many.linguists.have. since. considered. Saussure.the.founder. of.modern.linguistics. One.of.the.major.changes.brought.about.by.Saussure’s.ideas.is.the. distinction. between. the. study. of. languages. at. a. certain. point. in. time called. synchrony (or synchronic linguistics ),.and.the.study.of. language. change. over. time termed. diachrony (or diachronic linguistics ,.or historical linguistics )..Saussure’s.call.for.the.primacy.of. synchrony.led.to.a.paradigm.shift.from.a.predominantly.historical. orientation.of.linguistics.in.the.19th.century.to.a.predominantly.synchronic.orientation. of. linguistics. in. the. 20th. and. 21st. century..Historical.linguistics.has.not.completely.ceased.to.exist,.but.it.is.now.rather. based. on. systematic. synchronic. descriptions. at. different. points. in. time. during. the.history.of.a.language. Another.major.change.was.caused.by.Saussure’s.call.for.the. primacy of the spoken word ..Most.linguistic. study.in.the.19th.century.had.been.concerned.with.the.written.form.of.language,.but. Saussure.(1983: 24).insisted.that.“ [ t ] he.sole.reason.for.the.existence. of.the.latter. [ i.e..the.written.form ] .is.to.represent.the.former. [ i.e.. the. spoken. form ] ”.. This. notion. is. of. fundamental. importance. to. Saussure’s.model.of.the.linguistic.sign.(cf..Fig..1.3). A.further.fundamental. change. of.direction.in.linguistic. study. that.is.connected.with.Saussure’s.ideas,.and.the.last.we.would.like. to.mention.here,.is.the.transition.from.a. prescriptive .(or.normative). period. of. linguistics. to. a. descriptive . approach.. Descriptive. linguistics.aims.to.describe.the.facts.of.linguistic.usage.as.they.are. Synchrony versus Diachrony | Fig. 1.2 Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) “The object of study in linguistics is not a combination of the written and the spoken word. The spoken word alone constitutes that object.” (Saussure 1916: 24-25) Spoken versus Written Language Prescriptivism versus Descriptivism 6 I n t r o d u C t I o n in.practice,.whereas.prescriptive.linguistics.attempts.to.prescribe. rules.of. “correctness”,.i.e..to.lay.down.normative.rules. as.to.how. language.should.be.used..Since.the.beginning.of.the.20th.century,. linguistics.has.been.increasingly.critical.of. prescriptivism .and.has. been.favouring.the.approach.of. descriptivism . At.the.heart.of.Saussure’s.ideas.is.the.focus.of.linguistics.on.the. structure .of.the.language.system.shared.by.members.of.a.certain. speech.community..This.is.why.the.Saussurean.type.of.linguistics. is. also. referred. to. as. structural linguistics (or. structuralist linguistics ).. The. centre. of. study. is. the. language system . (or. langue). and.not.the. concrete. language use . by.the.individual. (or. parole).. Structural. linguistics. aims. at. the. description. and. analysis. of. all. elements.of.the.language.system.and.the.relationships.that.exist. between. them.. These. elements. and. their. interrelationships. are. investigated. at. all. structural.levels.of.linguistics,. such. as. sounds,. words.and.sentences. Related. to. Saussure’s. call. for. the. primacy. of. the. spoken. word. is. another. one. of. his. groundbreaking. contributions. to. modern. linguistics,.namely.his.model.of.the. linguistic sign ..According.to. Saussure,. the. linguistic. sign. is. made. up. of. two. inseparably. connected.parts,.like.two.sides.of.a.coin..The.linguistic.sign.consists.of.a. sound.or.usually.a. sound sequence (or. sound pattern ),.the.so..-..called. signifiant.(or. signifier ),.at.the.level.of.expression,.and.a. concept ,. the.so..-..called.signifié (or. signified ),.at.the.level.of.meaning: Saussure. emphasises. that. there. is. no. internal. natural. link. between.the.sound.shape.and.the.meaning.of.the.linguistic.sign.. Neither. does.the. form. of. a. word. dictate.its. meaning,. nor.is.the. meaning.predictable.from.the.form..This.is.illustrated.by.the.fact. that.the.same.concept.can.be.referred.to.by.completely.different.. Structuralism The Linguistic Sign Saussure’s model of the linguistic sign (adapted from Saussure 1983: 67) Fig. 1.3 | meaning expression [ tri  ] concept (signifié/ signified) sound pattern (signifiant/ signifier) Arbitrariness 7 C e n t r a L C o n C e P t s o f L I n g u I s t I C s sound. patterns. in. different. languages.. For. example,. the. same. animal. that. can. be. represented. by. [ dɒɡ ] . in. English,. is. usually. referred.to.as. [ hʊnt ] .in.German.and. [ . ʃjɛ̃ ] .in.French..The.relationship. between.the. sound. pattern. and.the. concept.is.thus. said.to. be. arbitrary ..The.principle.of. arbitrariness .of.the.linguistic.sign. states. that. the. connection. between. the. sound. pattern. and. the. concept.of.a.sign.is.by. convention .only. There.are,.however,.a.small.number.of.expressions.for.which.the. principle. of. arbitrariness. does. not. hold. completely. true.. Words. such. as. boom. [ bu  m ] . or. bang. [ bæŋ ] . show. at. least. a. partial. correspondence.of.sound.pattern.and.meaning..Such.expressions.which. include. sounds. that. are. similar. to. the. noises. they. describe. are. called. onomatopoeic .. Onomatopoeia .is.thus.frequently.cited.as.an. exception.to.the.principle.of.arbitrariness.. The. important. influence. of. Saussure’s. ideas. and. structuralist. linguistic. thinking. on. modern. linguistics. is. essentially. undisputed..However,.at.least.two.other.influential.linguistic.schools.of. thought.have.to.be.mentioned.when.we.speak.about.the.discipline. of.linguistics.since.the.beginning.of.the.20th.century. One. of. the. other. important. schools. of. thought. started. to. develop. around. 1930. and.is. commonly.referred.to. as. functionalism . (or. Prague School of functionalism ).. Functionalism. partly. continues.structuralist.ideas.but.focuses.on.the.function.or.functions.of.language.and.individual.linguistic.features..For.example,. the. so..-..called. organon. model. of. languages. as. suggested. by. Karl. Bühler. distinguishes. between. three. main. functions. of. language: . an.expressive.function.that.allows.the.addressers.to.express.their. own.beliefs.and.feelings,.a.representative.function.that.allows.us. to. talk. about. the. world,. and. an. appellative. function. that. allows. the.addresser.to.make.a.request.or.issue.a.command. Arbitrariness of the linguistic sign | Fig. 1.4 [ dɒɡ ] English [ hʊnt ] German [ . ʃjɛ͂ . ] French meaning expression Onomatopoeia Post-Saussurean Developments Functionalism 8 I n t r o d u C t I o n Since. the. 1950s,. a. linguistic. school. of. thought. called. generative linguistics . (or. formalism ). has. become. increasingly. influential,. particularly. in. American. linguistics.. The. term. generative. was.introduced.by.Noam. Chomsky.in.his.book. Syntactic Structures in. 1957.. Extremely. simplified,. we. can. say. that. the. generative. approach.reflects.the.fact.that.all.speakers.of.a.language.can.produce,.or.generate,.a.theoretically.unlimited.number.of.grammatical.sentences.from.a.limited.number.of.means,.i.e..words.and.the. rules.for.their.combination..Chomsky.distinguishes.between. competence ,.the.knowledge.we.have.of.the.language.we.grow.up.with,. and. performance ,.the.speech.we.actually.produce..Our.complete. knowledge.of.our.native.language.is.often.also.referred.to.as.our. grammar .. Generative. linguistics. is. traditionally. most. influential. in.the.subfield.of.syntax. Today,. structuralism,. functionalism. and. formalism. exist. side. by. side. in. modern. linguistics,. as. indicated. in. Fig.. 1.5.. Additionally,. the.interest.in.historical.linguistics.has.been.on.the.rise.since.the. early. 1990s.. Historical. linguistics. now. incorporates. findings. and. methods. developed. in. different. branches. of. synchronic. linguistics,.making.use. of.language. corpora. and.forming.new. subfields. such. as.historical. semantics,.historical. pragmatics. and.historical. sociolinguistics. Generative Linguistics Structuralism, functionalism and formalism (adapted from Kortmann 2020: 20) Fig. 1.5 | structuralism functionalism formalism 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 9 B I B L I o g r a P h y Bibliography Allan, Keith, ed. 2016. The Routledge Handbook of Linguistics. Abingdon: Routledge. (A comprehensive overview of linguistics and its subdisciplines) Aronoff, Mark & Janie Rees-Miller. 2017. The Handbook of Linguistics. 2nd edition. Malden: Blackwell. (An overview of linguistics and its subdisciplines) Bauer, Laurie. 2021. The Linguistics Student‘s Handbook. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (An ideal supplement to introductory textbooks) Brown, Keith, ed. 2006. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. 2nd edition. Oxford: Elsevier. (The most comprehensive reference work in the field of linguistics) Brown, Keith & Jim Miller. 2013. The Cambridge Dictionary of Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Comprehensive, concise and clear) Bühler, Karl. 1990 (1934). Theory of Language: The Representational Function of Language. Translation by Donald Fraser Goodwin. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (A classic work in the field of functionalism) Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. (The foundation of generative linguistics) Crystal, David. 2008. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 6th edition. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. (Alphabetic dictionary of linguistic terms) Crystal, David. 2010. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (An accessible guide to a wide range of language-related issues) Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University, eds. 2016. Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics. 12th edition. Ohio: The Ohio State University Press. (A hands-on introduction to general linguistics with many useful exercises) Finch, Geoffrey. 2005. Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics. 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (An intro- | 1.4 duction to the terminology of the core areas of linguistics) Fromkin, Victoria A., Robert Rodman & Nina Hyams. 2017. An Introduction to Language. 11th edition. Boston: Wadsworth. (A fairly comprehensive introduction to linguistics) Harris, Roy. 2003. Saussure and His Interpreters. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (A reassessment of Saussure’s ideas) Kortmann, Bernd. 2020. English Linguistics: Essentials. 2nd edition. Berlin: Metzler. (Rich in information, based on a class for advanced undergraduates) Mair, Christian. 2015. English Linguistics: An Introduction. 3rd edition. Tübingen: Narr. (A compact introduction to the linguistics of English) Matthews, Peter H. 2014. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A concise dictionary of linguistics) Meyer, Paul Georg et al. 2005. Synchronic English Linguistics. 3rd edition. Tübingen: Narr. (A detailed introduction to the linguistics of contemporary English) O’Grady, William, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff & Janie Rees-Miller. 2017. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. 7th edition. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s. (Another fairly comprehensive introduction to linguistics) Robins, Robert H. 1997. A Short History of Linguistics. 4th edition. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman. (Covers thousands of years of language study in different parts of the world) Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1983 (1916). Course in General Linguistics. Originally published as Cours de linguistique générale. Translation by Roy Harris, edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. London: Duckworth. (The basis of structural linguistics) 11 A Brief History of English | 2 2.1 The Linguistic History of English 12 2.1.1 Old English (c450-c1150) 13 2.1.2 Middle English (c1150-c1500) 20 2.1.3 Early Modern English (c1500-c1700) 24 2.1.4 Modern English (c1700-present) 28 2.2 English Around the World 30 2.3 English in the 21st Century 34 2.4 Exercises 36 2.5 Bibliography 37 Contents This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of the English language from its very beginnings to the present day. We will travel through the different periods of the English language and take a look at the status of the English language around the world today. Abstract 12 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h The Linguistic History of English Why include the history of the English language in an introductory work on English linguistics? Why should we bother to deal with the state of the English language many centuries ago, as if modern English was not complicated enough already? The answer is that the history of the English language can provide explanations for many features and irregularities of contemporary English, e.g. the origins of the common plural marker -s or many of the irregular verbs in contemporary English. Taking a look at the history of English also reminds us that English has only been around for a comparatively short time and is historically related to a number of other languages. We have seen in the previous chapter that, following Saussure, linguistics is now commonly divided into synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics . Diachronic linguistics, or historical linguistics, is the study of language change . It is concerned with both the description and explanation of such change. Linguists generally agree that all living languages are constantly changing as the needs of the people who use them change as well. The mechanisms and motivations of linguistic change are still under discussion and by no means completely understood. Traditionally, historical linguistics distinguishes between two main types of change: change due to internal factors , which refers to language change that occurs in isolation, and change that results from external factors , which is largely caused by contact with other languages and, among other things, can result in the borrowing of linguistic features, e.g. in the adoption of foreign vocabulary. Language change affects all linguistic levels of a language. Reflecting the changes the English language has undergone during its roughly 1500 years of existence, the history of English is commonly divided into four main periods , namely Old English ( OE ), also referred to as Anglo-Saxon , Middle English ( ME ), Early Modern English ( EModE ) and Modern English ( ModE ), which includes so-called Present Day English ( PDE ). The periods are distinguished on the basis of historical events as well as characteristic linguistic developments. The dividing lines, however, are somewhat fuzzy as languages change rather gradually than abruptly. Why Study the History of English? Language Change “ Time changes all things: there is no reason why language should escape this universal law.” (Ferdinand de Saussure) Periods 2.1 | 13 o L d e n g L I s h ( C 4 5 0 - C 1 1 5 0 ) Old English (c450-c1150) Archaeological evidence shows that humans had lived in what we now refer to as the British Isles long before the Germanic tribes that later became the English people arrived. Unfortunately, we do not know much about the languages spoken in England before English. This is mainly due to the lack of written records. The only groups about whose languages we have some definite knowledge are the Celts and the Romans. Pre-English | 2.1.1 The periods of the English language | Fig. 2.1 period historical landmarks key linguistic features Pre-English Celts  Celtic language spoken (before c450 AD)  some Celtic traces, esp. in place names Romans (43-410)  Latin becomes the official language  a few Latin traces from this period through Celtic transmission Old English Germanic tribes arrive (Angles,  mostly Germanic word-stock (c450-c1150) Saxons, Jutes and Frisians) from  fully inflected the middle of the fifth century  inflections begin to be levelled Middle English Norman Conquest in 1066  enormous influx of French vocabulary (c1150-c1500)  levelled inflections  Great Vowel Shift starts Early Modern English introduction of printing into  Great Vowel Shift (c1500-c1700) England by William Caxton  standardisation and regularisation in 1476  large-scale borrowing from Latin, Greek, French and other European languages spread of English around the world starts (colonisation) Modern English  almost no inflections (c1700-present) Present Day English English as a global language  borrowing from many languages world-wide (c1900-present) 14 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h The spread of the Celts across the British Isles and thus the spread of Celtic customs and the languages they spoke took place several centuries BC. These customs and languages survived Roman rule in Britain from 43-410 AD at least partly, probably owing to a certain degree of social as well as geographical separation from the Romans. The Celtic influence on the English language, however, is very small, as the Celts were defeated and / or pushed back into the northern and western parts of Great Britain when the Germanic tribes invaded England in the fifth century AD (cf. 2.1.2). Traces of Celtic influence due to language contact with English survive almost exclusively in place names. Such place names are more common in the North and the West than in the East and Southeast. Some names of settlements such as London and Leeds most likely go back to Celtic designations, but the majority of place names that can be traced back to Celtic origins are names connected with hills and rivers. Celtic words referring to hills can be found in place names like Bredon in Worcestershire (cf. Welsh bre ‘hill’) or Pendle in Lancashire (cf. Welsh pen ‘top’). The name Thames goes back to a Celtic river name, and one of the various Celtic words for ‘water’ survives in the name of the river Usk (cf. Scottish Gaelic uisge and Irish uisce ‘water’ as in uisge / uisce beatha ‘water of life’, i.e. the first element uisge / uisce is the origin of ModE whisk(e)y). The Romans first arrived in Britain in 55 BC under Julius Caesar, but permanent settlement did not take place until nearly a hundred years later. The full-scale Roman invasion of the island started in 43 AD and resulted in Roman occupation. Latin became the official language during the time of Roman rule but was not used extensively by the native population and did not replace the Celtic language in Britain. Roman occupation of Britain ended with the withdrawal of the last of the Roman legions in the year 410 AD, quite some time before the Germanic tribes arrived on the island, i.e. there was no direct contact at this time. Latin influence on English from this period is thus very slight as it had to be transmitted through Celtic and was limited by the same factors as Celtic influence itself. One of the few Latin elements that have come into English in this way is OE ceaster, which represents Latin castra ‘camp’ and is a common designation in Old English for a settlement. The English town of Chester thus owes its name to Roman influence. There were, however, two periods of more extensive influence of Latin on Old English: firstly, the transmission of elements from The Romans The Celts 15 o L d e n g L I s h ( C 4 5 0 - C 1 1 5 0 ) Latin into the Germanic dialects before the Germanic tribes left the Continent for Britain, and secondly, an enormous influence due to the systematic Christianisation of Britain by Roman missionaries starting in the year 597. The history of English started in the area now called England in the middle of the fifth century, when a number of Germanic tribes, namely the Jutes, Saxons, Angles and at least a part of the Frisians, invaded Britain, settled in the South and the East and brought their Germanic dialects with them. They gradually expanded their settlement, and by doing so the English-speaking territory, until by about 800 they occupied all but the Scottish highlands in the north, the Welsh highlands in the west and the western tip of Cornwall, which all remained Celtic-speaking. The Venerable Bede (c672-735), priest and scholar, describes the events in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’, written in Latin and completed in 731) as follows: In the year of our Lord 449 [ … ] the nation of the Angles, or Saxons, being invited by the aforesaid king [ Vortigern ] arrived in Britain with three long ships [ … ] they engaged with the enemy, who were come from the north to give battle, and obtained the victory; [ … ] a more considerable fleet was quickly sent over, bringing a still greater number of men, which, being added to the former, made up an invincible army [ … ] Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany - Saxons, Angles and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West-Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight. From the Saxons [ … ] came the East-Saxons, the South-Saxons, and the West Saxons. From the Angles [ … ] are descended the East-Angles, the Midland-Angles, Mercians, all the race of the Northumbrians, that is, of those nations that dwell on the north side of the river Humber, and the other nations of English. Excerpt from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (shortened from Crystal 2002: 164) Resulting from the dialect divisions of the invading tribes and the different languages they came in contact with, there was linguistic variation in English right from the very beginning. Three main dialect areas can thus be distinguished for Old English: West Saxon (southern and southwestern England), Kentish(southeastern England) and Anglian, which is commonly subdivided into Mercian Origins of English Dialects of Old English 16 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h (central England south of the river Humber) and Northumbrian (England north of the river Humber and southeastern Scotland). The Old English texts which have survived come from all of the above dialect areas. However, most of the preserved Old English material is written in the West Saxon dialect, reflecting the rise of the West Saxon kingdom and the resulting position of the dialect as a kind of literary standard after 900. The Germanic invaders called the Celtic inhabitants wealas ‘foreigners’, from which the name Welsh is derived. In turn the Celts referred to their Germanic conquerors as Saxons, a practice followed by the early Latin writers calling them Saxones and Saxonia. Soon, however, Angli (for the people) and Anglia (for the country) were also in use to refer to the West Germanic tribes generally. OE Engle ‘Angles’ derives from this usage and the Old English writers called their language Englisc (the spelling <sc> represents the sound / ʃ / , represented by <sh> in ModE English) from the beginning. The name Engla lond ‘land of the Angles’ (Engla is genitive plural of Engle) for the country does not appear until around 1000 AD. The origins and distribution of the main dialects of Old English (Crystal 2002: 174) Fig. 2.2 | The Names English and England 17 o L d e n g L I s h ( C 4 5 0 - C 1 1 5 0 ) Genetically, English is thus a Germanic language that is a member of the Indo-European family of languages and related to other Germanic languages on the Continent. Close relatives are other members of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic languages, e.g. Frisian, Dutch and German, as we can see in the traditional branch diagram (or tree diagram): The first attestations of Old English, written in alphabetic script using the letters of the Roman alphabet, date from around the year 700. Some older Old English runic inscriptions were written in the futhorc (or futharc) alphabet, named after the first elements of the names of its first six letters. The classical Latin alphabet was not designed to represent certain sounds used in Old English and had to be supplemented by a number of runes from the futhorc, namely the runes thorn < þ > and wynn < ƿ >, and the additional letters ash < æ >, eth < ð > and yogh < ʒ >, which were not present in classical Latin. It is due to these characters and other major changes the language has undergone in the course of its history that an Old English text is not immediately accessible to speakers of Modern English without additional knowledge. English, a Germanic Language The Indo-European language family (adapted from Fennell 2001: 22) | Fig. 2.3 First Written Records 18 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h There is a considerable though not abundant corpus of Old English literature in both verse and prose that has been preserved. The most important single work of poetry is Beowulf, a heroic poem of about 3,000 lines, but Old English poetry is also represented by a number of shorter pieces, such as TheSeafarer, the war poem The Battle ofMaldon and Christian poetry written by Cædmon and Cynewulf to name but a few. In addition to verse, Old English developed a tradition of prose literature rather early, mostly on behalf of the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred the Great (871-899). He is responsible for the translation of a number of books into Old English from Latin, including Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, and initiated the compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (or Anglo-Saxon Chronicles), a record of the most important events of English history that was continued for more than two centuries after his death. Other rather well-preserved examples of Old English prose are texts written in the context of the Benedictine Reform, particularly the works of an abbot called Aelfric (c955-c1010). Despite the dialect distinctions of Old English mentioned above, there are a number of characteristic linguistic features shared by all major varieties of Old English. From a modern perspective, one of the most striking features of Old English is the very limited number of words derived from Latin and the absence of borrowings from French, the latter of which make up a large part of the vocabulary of Modern English. The vocabulary of Old English is almost exclusively of West Germanic origin - with the exception of a few borrowings from Celtic and Latin, and some Scandinavian influence on vocabulary and place names from 787 AD onwards - but more than 80 per cent of those words have since disappeared from the language. The surviving West Germanic words, however, form the core of the Modern Some Linguistic Characteristics of Old English Vocabulary The futhorc runic alphabet (Moessner 2003: 4) Fig. 2.4 | Old English Literature 19 o L d e n g L I s h ( C 4 5 0 - C 1 1 5 0 ) English vocabulary and occur frequently in everyday speech. They express basic concepts, such as child (OE cild) or to drink (OE drincan), and constitute a large part of Modern English function words, i.e. auxiliaries, conjunctions, determiners, prepositions, pronouns and the like (cf. 4.1). Old English was an inflected language like Latin or Modern German, which means that the grammatical function of words in a sentence was indicated largely by means of inflection , most commonly in the form of endings. As a result, the word order in Old English is rather free. Fully inflected languages like this are called synthetic , as opposed to analytic languages (cf. 2.1.2). Nouns in Old English not only employed inflection to indicate number (singular / plural) but also case and gender . As in Modern German, four cases are distinguished: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative . According to the regular pattern of endings used to indicate these distinctions, the Old English nouns can be grouped together in declensions , which can be traced back to an earlier form of Germanic. Over one-third of the Old English nouns belonged to the declension of masculine a-stems while about a quarter each were feminine o-stems and neuter a-stems (cf. table below). Old English distinguishes masculine, feminine and neuter and has so called grammatical gender , which means that the gender of Old English nouns does not correspond to biological sex. For example, inanimate objects can thus be feminine (e.g. OE giefu ‘gift’) and masculine (e.g. OE sta ¯n ‘stone’, the so called macron above the a indicating a long vowel), whereas the designations for female persons can be neuter (e.g. OE w¯ıf ‘wife’ and mægden ‘girl’). This system can still be found in contemporary German, where dasMädchen ‘girl’ is neuter and der Stein ‘stone’ is masculine. Morphology and Syntax Examples illustrating selected Old English nominal declensions | Fig. 2.5 Old English masc. a stem stˉan ‘stone’, neut. a stem scip ‘ship’ and fem. o stem giefu ‘gift’ Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Nominative st¯ an st¯ an as scip scip u gief u gief a Genitive st¯ an es st¯ an a scip es scip a gief e gief a Dative st¯ an e st¯ an um scip e scip um gief e gief um Accusative st¯ an st¯ an as scip scip u gief e gief a 20 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h The Old English adjective had even more distinctions than the noun, partly preserving a fifth case (instrumental) and distinguishing two separate types of declension referred to as weak and strong. The Old English personal pronoun and the demonstrative pronoun , among other things the precursor of the definite article the, were fully inflected as well. The Old English verbal system formally distinguished only two simple tenses, the present and the preterite (or past). The system was divided into strong and weak verbs , on the basis of the formation of the preterite. Strong verbs were characterized by alterations of their root vowel, known as ablaut (or apophony, or (vowel) gradation, or vowel alternation). They are divided into seven classes, for the most part according to the typical sequence of root vowels that appear in the infinitive, the first and third person preterite singular, the preterite plural and the past participle: e.g. dr¯ıfan ‘to drive’, dr¯ af, drifon, (ge)drifen (strong verbs class I). Many Modern English “irregular” verbs still show an alternation of their root vowel, e.g. drive, drove, driven. Weak verbs are subdivided into three different classes but all have in common that they form their preterite and past participle by adding an ending called a dental suffix (cf. 3.1.2), e.g. h¯ıeran ‘to hear’ has a preterite h¯ıerde and a past participle (ge)h¯ıered (weak verbs class 1). The dental suffix is the origin of the Modern English “regular” past tense marker -ed. The consonants of Old English were similar to the consonants of Modern English as the consonant system has not undergone any major structural changes in the history of English. As far as vowels are concerned, the situation is completely different. Particularly the long vowels have undergone considerable change from Old English to Modern English, e.g. OE m¯ ona > ModE moon and OE st¯ an > ModE stone (cf. Fig. 2.11). Middle English (c1150-c1500) In the year 1066 , the troops of William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invaded Britain. This invasion is known as the Norman Conquest . King Harold and almost the entire British nobility were killed at the Battle of Hastings, and William was crowned King of England in the same year. His reign not only brought about fundamental changes in society, religion and politics, it also had the greatest effect on the English language of all events in the course Pronunciation 2.1.2 | The Norman Conquest 21 M I d d L e e n g L I s h ( C 1 1 5 0 - C 1 5 0 0 ) of its history. The Normans became the ruling class in England. Accordingly, French, strictly speaking the Norman French dialect, became the preferred language of the upper class and at the so-called Anglo-Norman Court. More and more speakers of English descent gradually acquired at least some knowledge of French resulting in a strong influence of French on the English language , despite the fact that the everyday language of the masses remained English at all times. These influences were clearly visible by about 1150, which is why this date is often given as the approximate dividing line between Old English and Middle English. Written sources from the early Middle English period are scarce, as English had low prestige and most administrative and religious material was written in French or Latin. On the whole, however, a relatively large corpus of Middle English literature from a variety of different dialects survives, especially from after 1250. A large proportion of the surviving literature was composed in verse. The most important single author of the period was Geoffrey Chaucer (c1342-1400), poet and composer of a collection of 24 stories called the Canterbury Tales, probably the most influential and most widely read Middle English text. Middle English Literature The Canterbury Tales | Fig. 2.6 22 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h French influence and other developments towards the end of the Old English period led to some marked differences between Old English and Middle English. One of the most striking features of Middle English is the easily observable immense influence of French on the English vocabulary . Several centuries of intimate language contact led to the transference of an enormous number of words of French origin to English until the end of the Middle English period. Many thousands of words from all spheres of life were adopted, including government, religion, art, justice, fashion, army, navy, literature and poet. Estimates claim that between 30 and 40 per cent of the Modern English vocabulary is of French origin. But whatever the exact figure, there can be no doubt that the majority of these words entered the English language during Middle English times, replacing many inherited Germanic words. The above table shows designations for some animals in Modern English that are continuations of the inherited Old English terms, whereas the names for the corresponding types of meat are all of French origin. This reflects the structure of the English society in Middle English times, during which the English-speaking lower classes were responsible for hunting and taking care of domesticated animals as opposed to the French-speaking upper classes that were able to afford and thus consume the produced meat. The names of a number of more affordable commodities accessible to the lower classes, such as milk or cheese, again continue the Old English terms. The extensive changes of the Middle English period, however, show not only in the vocabulary but also the grammar of English. A widespread loss of inflections took place and changed English into a more analytic language (cf. 2.1.1 and 2.1.4). This means that the English language increasingly depended on a relatively Morphology and Syntax Vocabulary Fig. 2.7 | Comparison of Modern English terms for animals and the corresponding types of meat (source: OED) Some Characteristic Linguistic Features of Middle English animal cow, ox sheep deer swine, sow meat beef mutton venison pork 23 M I d d L e e n g L I s h ( C 1 1 5 0 - C 1 5 0 0 ) fixed word order to express the relation of words in a sentence. Middle English is thus traditionally called the period of levelled inflections . The decay of inflections already started towards the end of the Old English period and was probably largely due to the fact that the inherited Germanic words had the stress on the first syllable, which means that the vowels in the unstressed endings tended to lose their full quality. Inflectional endings of the noun and the adjective were so much reduced that they could no longer express all the distinctions of case, number and gender. The adjective lost all distinctions between weak and strong declensions and finally all traces of inflectional markers altogether. In the nominal system, the originally distinctive endings -a, -u, -e, -an, -um were first reduced to -e, pronounced as the so-called indeterminatevowel schwa [ ə ] (cf. 3.1.2), and finally lost. Different case forms fell together in only one form, a process known as syncretism . Only one form remained for the plural and the only inflectional relic in the singular was the genitive in -(e)s; this means that the nominal inflection had already essentially reached its modern state. The reduction of endings of nouns and adjectives, and the establishment of the invariable article the were among the causes responsible for the loss of grammatical gender in Middle English. Natural gender , sometimes also referred to as logical gender, recognises the sex of animate beings, while all inanimate objects are generally neuter. There are only very few exceptions such as countries and ships. The verb also exhibited the general tendency towards weakening of endings and levelling of inflections, but showed lesser degrees of structural change. The main changes of the verbal system during the Middle English period were the loss of many strong verbs and the gradual process of conversion from the strong to the weak conjugation found in a number of formerly Forms of ME ston(e) and ModE stone | Fig. 2.8 general singular genitive singular general plural ME ston(e) ston es ston es ModE stone stone’s stones 24 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h strong verbs. The weak class of verbs was further strengthened by the adoption of many verbs from foreign languages , particularly from French at the time, which were for the most part included into the weak system. These processes contributed to the reduction of the number of so-called irregular verbs in Modern English. We have already mentioned above that the consonants of English have not changed much since Old English times and thus only a few rather minor changes took place from Old English to Middle English, such as the loss of initial hbefore l, n and r in words like OE hring > ME ring. The vowel system , on the other hand, underwent some fundamental changes, such as some instances of lengthening and shortening in certain environments and the reduction of / a / , / e / , / o / and / u / to / ə / in unstressed position, which is at least to a large extent responsible for the loss of inflections in English (see above). Early Modern English (c1500-c1700) The beginning of the Early Modern English period is connected with the effects brought about by the introduction of printing into England in the second half of the fifteenth century. Printing from moveable type was invented in Germany in the middle of the fifteenth century and brought to England by William Caxton (c1422-1491), who set up his printing press in Westminster in 1476 . Books no longer had to be copied by hand and for the first time in the history of English a great number of identical books could be produced. Printing gave written works a much wider circulation , contributed to the standardisation of the English language and fostered norms of spelling and punctuation . Mainly as a result of the efficiency of printing, more people from different layers of society got access to then more affordable written material. Over 20,000 titles in English had appeared in England by 1640 and an enormous corpus of Early Modern English texts has survived until today. Among the most important influences on the development of the English language in the Early Modern English period were the works of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and the King James Bible of 1611 , also referred to as the Authorised Version. The Introduction of Printing 2.1.3 | Early Modern English Literature Pronunciation “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.” (William Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet II, ii, 1-2) 25 e a r L y M o d e r n e n g L I s h ( C 1 5 0 0 - C 1 7 0 0 ) Early Modern English was a period of considerable variation, which contributed to an increasing wish for standardisation. Apart from the extensive regularisation of spelling conventions by A page from Shakespeare’s First Folio (published 1623) | Fig. 2.9 Some Characteristic Linguistic Features of Early Modern English 26 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h the middle of the seventeenth century - resulting from the arrival of printing and the first English-language dictionaries - Early Modern English is mainly characterised by fundamental changes in the vocabulary and the vowel system. The Early Modern English period saw another major expansion of the English vocabulary and a huge influx of words from other languages. The exploration of far-away places and the ensuing contact with foreign cultures and unfamiliar environments was one of the reasons for the need of new words. The spread of new concepts and inventions from the Continent and renewed interest in the classical languages during the Renaissance (1500-1650) also led to numerous borrowings from Latin, Greek, French and other languages. The following list contains just a small fraction of the words that were borrowed during the Early Modern English period: Vocabulary Some Early Modern English borrowings (shortened from Crystal 2003b: 60) Fig. 2.10 | From Latin and Greek anonymous, appropriate, atmosphere, catastrophe, chaos, crisis, criterion, emphasis, encyclopedia, enthusiasm, exact, exaggerate, excursion, exist, expensive, explain, habitual, immaturity, impersonal, lexicon, lunar, monopoly, necessitate, obstruction, parasite, parenthesis, pathetic, pneumonia, relaxation, relevant, scheme, soda, species, system, tactics, temperature, thermometer, transcribe, utopian, vacuum, virus From or via French alloy, anatomy, bayonet, bigot, bizarre, chocolate, colonel, comrade, detail, entrance, equip, explore, grotesque, invite, moustache, muscle, naturalise, passport, pioneer, progress, shock, ticket, tomato, vase, vogue, volunteer From or via Italian balcony, ballot, carnival, concerto, design, giraffe, grotto, lottery, macaroni, opera, piazza, rocket, solo, sonata, soprano, stanza, trill, violin, volcano From or via Spanish and Portuguese alligator, anchovy, apricot, armada, banana, barricade, cannibal, canoe, cockroach, corral, desperado, embargo, guitar, hurricane, maize, mosquito, negro, potato, port (wine), sombrero, tank, tobacco From other languages Algonquian: racoon, skunk; Arabian: harem; Dutch: keelhaul, knapsack, landscape, yacht; Hindi: guru; Irish Gaelic: trousers; Malay: bamboo, ketchup; Norwegian: troll; Russian: rouble; Persian: bazaar, caravan, turban; Tamil: curry; Turkish: coffee, kiosk, yogurt; Welsh: flannel 27 e a r L y M o d e r n e n g L I s h ( C 1 5 0 0 - C 1 7 0 0 ) Some viewed the influx of new vocabulary as enrichment, others objected strongly to the extensive borrowing of words from foreign languages. The latter claimed that the language should remain “pure” and “unmixed”, not obscured by so-called inkhorn terms that are not understood by a large part of the population. The borrowing of so many foreign words led to the compilation of dictionaries containing hard words , such as the probably first-ever monolingual English dictionary published by Robert Cawdrey in 1604. The major structural changes in English grammar were completed before the Early Modern English period started and thus the syntax and morphology at the time are already very similar to Modern English. The inflectional system of the noun was essentially the same as in Present Day English, with only two cases (common and possessive) and the plural marker -s. Shakespeare still occasionally employs the plural ending -en in words like eyen ‘eyes’. The verbal system is characterised by the continuation of the tendency of strong verbs to become weak and the rare occurrence of the progressive form. The word order pattern subject-verb-object (SVO) had already established itself before the Early Modern English period, but deviations from this general rule were still more frequent than in Modern English. One of these common deviations was the inversion of the subject and the verb after a sentence-initial adverbial as in “and then shalt thou see clearly” (King James Bible, Matthew 7.5) instead of “and then you will see clearly” (The Revised English Bible 1989). The consonant system of Early Modern English is for the most part identical with Modern English. A few minor changes took place during the Early Modern English period, such as the loss of initial / k- / and / g- / before / n / , as in knee, know and gnome, or the loss of word-internal / l / in certain environments, as in folk and palm. The vowel system , however, underwent a fundamental change commonly called the Great Vowel Shift ( GVS ). The GVS started in the fourteenth century, took several centuries to complete and affected all long vowels of Middle English . The long vowels of Middle English were either raised or diphthongised , i.e. they were changed into a combination of two vowel sounds pronounced “Inkhorn” Terms Morphology and Syntax Pronunciation “Among all other lessons this should first be learned, that wee never affect any straunge ynkehorne termes, but to speake as is commonly received.” (Thomas Wilson. Arte of Rhetorique (1553), quoted in Baugh & Cable 2013: 216) The Great Vowel Shift 28 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h together (cf. 3.1.2). For example, the long / o / in ME fode‘food’ was raised to long / u / and the long / i / in ME child and lyf ‘life’ was diphthongised to / aɪ / . The change seems to have happened as a kind of chain reaction . It is, however, controversial whether the vowels at the bottom of the vowel chart (cf. 3.1.2) were raised first and “pushed” the others up, called a push-chain, or whether the ones at the top were diphthongised first and “pulled” the lower ones up by leaving an open space, called a pull-chain. Some linguists even suggest a mixture of both. One of the most important changes affecting the short vowels of Middle English was the unrounding and centralising of the high back rounded vowel / ʊ / in the southern part of England (cf. Fig. 8.3). As a result, / ʊ / became / ʌ / , as in ModEbut and cup(see inside cover for a vowel chart). Modern English (c1700-present) There is no historical landmark such as the Norman Conquest or the introduction of printing to mark the beginning of the Modern English period. The year 1700 is usually set as the beginning of the Modern English period, because the English language had by then reached its present state in most respects. It was increasingly codified and standardised in the early decades of the Modern English period. This was thanks to important works like Samuel Johnson’s influential DictionaryoftheEnglishLanguage published in two volumes in 1755 and several highly popular grammar books published in the eighteenth century. (For the geographical expansion of English that started late in the Early Modern English period and reached its peak in Modern English see the following section 2.2). Other Changes 2.1.4 | The Great Vowel Shift (adapted from Jucker 2016: 54) [a] [i ] [u ] [aυ] [o ] [ɔ ] [oυ] [e ] [ε ] [e] [a ] Fig. 2.11 | 29 M o d e r n e n g L I s h ( C 1 7 0 0 - P r e s e n t ) Modern English is the result of over 1000 years of continuous changes. The lexicon of Modern English combines words from different origins which can be assigned to three different groups . Firstly, the continuations of inherited Germanic words that have survived since Old English. Secondly, the vocabulary that has been adopted from Latin, Greek, French and other European languages throughout the course of the history of English. And thirdly, words that have been borrowed or made up as a result of the geographical expansion of English (cf. 2.2) as well as the social, cultural and scientific developments that have taken place since the early nineteenth century. Most recently the rapid progress in computer and communications technology has been responsible for a large number of new and frequently used words in the English language, such as software or download. The English-language domination of these technologies and other fields has led to the “export” of a large number of lexical items to many languages around the world. As far as morphology is concerned, Modern English can be called the period of lost inflections . Only a very small number of regular inflectional endings has been preserved in Modern English (cf. also Fig. 2.8 in section 2.1.2): The only traces of the Old English case system are now the possessive marker -s and some oblique forms of the pronoun, such as him, her and them in opposition to nominative he, she and they. The pronominal system was reduced from Early Modern English to Modern English as the opposition between the second person sin- Some Characteristic Linguistic Features of Modern English Vocabulary Modern English inflections | Fig. 2.12 Morphology and Syntax the plural -s hand ~ hands, cat ~ cats, bus ~ buses the possessive - ’s lady ~ lady’s, Peter ~ Peter’s, George ~ George’s 3rd person singular present indicative -s they bring ~ she brings, they drop ~ he drops, we fish ~ she fishes preterite -ed play ~ played, work ~ worked, head ~ headed past participle -ed play ~ played, work ~ worked, head ~ headed the -ing-form read ~ reading comparative -er small ~ smaller, big ~ bigger superlative -est small ~ smallest, big ~ biggest 30 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h gular thou / thee and second person plural you was given up in favour of a generalised form you. Due to the loss of inflections, English has become a highly analytic language , i.e. the relation of words in a sentence is now indicated by a relatively fixed word order that does not allow for many deviations from the basic pattern and, for example, the usage of prepositions. The Great Vowel Shift (cf. above) was for the most part completed by 1700 and, among other things, its end marks the beginning of the Modern English period. It is mostly the result of the Great Vowel Shift that pronunciation and spelling differ so much in Modern English. The explanation is clear: orthography was largely fixed in the wake of the introduction of printing in the late fifteenth century; right at that time and during the following centuries the English vowel system underwent the most fundamental change in its history. The early twentieth century saw the rise of the prestige accent RP (Received Pronunciation) in England (cf. 3.1.3). RP is still widely used as a reference in foreign language teaching around the world and until recently was the exclusive accent used in British broadcasting. English Around the World Up to the end of the twelfth century, the English language was geographically limited to the British Isles, excluding the Celtic-speaking parts of Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and Ireland (cf. Pre-English and Old English), but then two phases of expansion led to the global distribution of English. The first phase was the spread of English in the British Isles , which originated from England and started roughly in the twelfth century. The second phase of expansion, connected with the so called colonisation , began during the early seventeenth century, originated in all parts of the British Isles and led to the spread of English beyond the British Isles and its distribution in many territories overseas. Pronunciation 2.2 | “... our tung is of small reatch, it stretcheth no further than this Iland of ours, naie not there over all ....” (Richard Mulcaster. 1582) 31 e n g L I s h a r o u n d t h e W o r L d The first phase of the spread of the English language that led to its distribution in the British Isles is often forgotten and rarely mentioned when talking about English around the world. It is, however, important to bear in mind that the early developments in the British Isles are largely responsible for the emergence of the subvarieties of British English (BrE), e.g. English English, Irish English, Northern Irish English, Welsh English, Scottish English, and Scots as a separate language, and also played a major role in the development of distinct overseas varieties due to the emigration of speakers of these different subvarieties. The second main phase of the spread of English that led to its distribution beyond the British Isles is closely connected with what is usually referred to as colonisation . Up to the end of the sixteenth century the English language was limited to the British Isles, as Richard Mulcaster, a London schoolmaster, observed in 1582 when he wrote that “our tung is of small reatch, it stretcheth no further than this Iland of ours, naie not there over all”. England entered the race for colonial territory comparatively late in the early seventeenth century with the establishment of settlements in North America. Subsequently, a large number of territories throughout the world were influenced by English colonisation and the expansion of the British Empire. As a result, today, English is the native language (ENL, L1) of the majority of the population in a number of countries and territories including the United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. English is also used as an important second language (ESL, L2), i.e. English is an official or semi-official language or is used for a special purpose in over 60 countries and territories including India, Nigeria and South Africa. The following table shows the estimated numbers of English speakers by territory: Spread of English in the British Isles Spread of English beyond the British Isles 32 Fig. 2.13 | a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h Territory Population L1 Speakers L2 Speakers Total (L1+L2) American Samoa 67,000 2,000 65,000 67,000 Antigua & Barbuda (c) 68,000 66,000 2,000 68,000 Aruba 70,000 9,000 35,000 44,000 Australia 18,972,000 14,987,000 3,500,000 18,487,000 Bahamas (c) 298,000 260,000 28,000 288,000 Bangladesh 131,270,000 - 3,500,000 3,500,000 Barbados (c) 275,000 262,000 13,000 275,000 Belize (c) 256,000 190,000 56,000 246,000 Bermuda 63,000 63,000 - 63,000 Botswana 1,586,000 - 630,000 630,000 British Virgin Islands (c) 20,800 20,000 - 20,000 Brunei 344,000 10,000 134,000 144,000 Cameroon (c) 15,900,000 - 7,700,000 7,700,000 Canada 31,600,000 20,000,000 7,000,000 27,000,000 Cayman Islands (c) 36,000 36,000 - 36,000 Cook Islands 21,000 1,000 3,000 4,000 Dominica (c) 70,000 3,000 60,000 63,000 Fiji 850,000 6,000 170,000 176,000 Gambia (c) 1,411,000 - 40,000 40,000 Ghana (c) 19,894,000 - 1,400,000 1,400,000 Gibraltar 31,000 28,000 2,000 30,000 Grenada (c) 100,000 100,000 - 100,000 Guam 160,000 58,000 100,000 158,000 Guyana (c) 700,000 650,000 30,000 680,000 Hong Kong 7,210,000 150,000 2,200,000 2,350,000 India 1,029,991,000 350,000 200,000,000 200,350,000 Ireland 3,850,000 3,750,000 100,000 3,850,000 Jamaica (c) 2,665,000 2,600,000 50,000 2,650,000 Kenya 30,766,000 - 2,700,000 2,700,000 Kiribati 94,000 - 23,000 23,000 Lesotho 2,177,000 - 500,000 500,000 Liberia (c) 3,226,000 600,000 2,500,000 3,100,000 Malawi 10,548,000 - 540,000 540,000 Malaysia 22,230,000 380,000 7,000,000 7,380,000 Malta 395,000 13,000 95,000 108,000 Marshall Islands 70,000 - 60,000 60,000 Mauritius 1,190,000 2,000 200,000 202,000 Micronesia 135,000 4,000 60,000 64,000 33 e n g L I s h a r o u n d t h e W o r L d Montserrat (c) 4,000 4,000 - 4,000 Namibia 1,800,000 14,000 300,000 314,000 Nauru 12,000 900 10,700 11,600 Nepal 25,300,000 - 7,000,000 7,000,000 New Zealand 3,864,000 3,700,000 150,000 3,850,000 Nigeria (c) 126,636,000 - 60,000,000 60,000,000 Northern Marianas (c) 75,000 5,000 65,000 70,000 Pakistan 145,000,000 - 17,000,000 17,000,000 Palau 19,000 500 18,000 18,500 Papua New Guinea (c) 5,000,000 150,000 3,000,000 3,150,000 Philippines 83,000,000 20,000 40,000,000 40,020,000 Puerto Rico 3,937,000 100,000 1,840,000 1,940,000 Rwanda 7,313,000 - 20,000 20,000 St Kitts & Nevis (c) 43,000 43,000 - 43,000 St Lucia (c) 158,000 31,000 40,000 71,000 St Vincent & Grenadines (c) 116,000 114,000 - 114,000 Samoa 180,000 1,000 93,000 94,000 Seychelles 80,000 3,000 30,000 33,000 Sierra Leone (c) 5,427,000 500,000 4,400,000 4,900,000 Singapore 4,300,000 350,000 2,000,000 2,350,000 Solomon Islands (c) 480,000 10,000 165,000 175,000 South Africa 43,586,000 3,700,000 11,000,000 14,700,000 Sri Lanka 19,400,000 10,000 1,900,000 1,910,000 Suriname (c) 434,000 260,000 150,000 410,000 Swaziland 1,104,000 - 50,000 50,000 Tanzania 36,232,000 - 4,000,000 4,000,000 Tonga 104,000 - 30,000 30,000 Trinidad & Tobago (c) 1,170,000 1,145,000 - 1,145,000 Tuvalu 11,000 - 800 800 Uganda 23,986,000 - 2,500,000 2,500,000 United Kingdom* 59,648,000 58,190,000 1,500,000 59,690,000 UK Islands (Channel Is, Man) 228,000 227,000 - 227,000 United States 278,059,000 215,424,000 25,600,000 241,024,000 US Virgin Islands (c) 122,000 98,000 15,000 113,000 Vanuatu (c) 193,000 60,000 120,000 180,000 Zambia 9,770,000 110,000 1,800,000 1,910,000 Zimbabwe 11,365,000 250,000 5,300,000 5,550,000 Other dependencies 35,000 20,000 15,000 35,000 Total 2,236,800,800 329,140,400 430,608,500 759,748,900 Estimated ENL and ESL speakers in the world; (c) indicates an English-based creole (from Crystal 2003: 62-65) * Crystal’s numbers for the United Kingdom do not add up. 34 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h English in the 21st Century Many predictions concerning the future of the English language have been wrong, but the second president of the United States, John Adams (1735-1826) made a prophecy about the future role of English in the world on September 23, 1780, that should eventually prove true. Adams said that “English will be the most respectable language in the world and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, if not before the close of this one” and went on that it was “destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age”. The emergence of an international or global language is always closely linked with political, cultural and economic power and so historically the status of English in the world today is due to two main reasons: first, as we have seen above, English spread across the world with the expansion of British colonial power , which reached its peak at the end of the nineteenth century. Second, the maintained international status and increasing spread of English in the twentieth century is the result of the establishment of the United States as the leading economic and military power . It is important to note that there is general agreement, at least among linguists, that such a development is not related to any special intrinsic linguistic qualities of the language, as has occasionally been claimed. The present global status of English is based in part on the impressive number of English speakers and users in the world (see above), with an increasing importance being attributed to the non-native speakers of the language. Unfortunately, the terms speaker and user are not clearly defined and quantitative estimates, especially of non-native speakers, thus vary considerably. The number of native speakers seems to pose the least difficulties and is widely accepted to be somewhere between 300 and 400 million. Accurate numbers of speakers for whom English is not the mother tongue are much more difficult to establish and depend largely on the definition of the minimum level of proficiency that can be counted as “English-speaking, -using or -knowing”. Estimates of non-native users of English range from several hundred million to over two billion, but whatever the exact total, English today is without doubt the most widely used language in the world. Users 2.3 | English as a Global Language 35 e n g L I s h I n t h e 2 1 s t C e n t u r y of English even outnumber the speakers of Chinese dialects. The vast majority of users of English today are thus non-native speakers of the language and their proportion is increasing constantly. Kachru tries to account for the different functions of English in different territories by introducing the three circles of English : Inseparably linked with the enormous number of speakers is another important factor that justifies the international status of English, namely its position as the global lingua franca , i.e. as a language that is used for communication by people who do not share a common native language. India is perhaps the most striking example for the use of English as a lingua franca in intra-national communication, where it is - together with Hindi - an essential tool for intra-Indian interaction. Internationally and cross-culturally , there are a number of activities and subjects that are carried out predominantly in English across the world. To name but a few of these domains , English today is the dominant global language in international relations, it is used as a lingua franca in most international organisations and companies and at nearly all international gatherings. English dominates the media and especially academic publication and communication, plays an important role in international travel and transport, including the means of controlling international transport on | Fig. 2.14 The three circles of English (after Kachru, from Crystal 2003: 61) “... no other language has ever before been put to so many uses so massively by so many people in so many places.” (McArthur 1998: 30) Expanding circle Outer circle Inner circle e.g. USA, UK 320-380 million e.g. India, Singapore 300-500 million e.g. China, Russia 500-1,000 million 36 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h water (Seaspeak) and air traffic control (Airspeak or Aviation English), is currently used for most conventional as well as electronic communication and is the main lingua franca of the internet. English is no longer only the language of some native English-speaking countries, it has become an international language , which is somewhat independent from the originally English-speaking territories. We can conclude from the large number of English-speakers all over the world and the myriad uses in which the language is employed today that the spread of English is unique, both in its geographical reach as well as in its range of functions, and allows us for the first time in history to speak of a truly global language . McArthur (1998: 30) sums up the unprecedented position of English succinctly when he says that “no other language has ever before been put to so many uses so massively by so many people in so many places.” The spread and the diversification of English, of course, invite a multiplicity of influences from a wide range of sources and permit different changes to happen in the individual varieties of the language (cf. 8.2.1). It should be noted as well that the global dominance of the English language is also frequently perceived as a threat, particularly to small (or lesser-used) languages. Exercises 1. What is the main aim of diachronic linguistics? 2. Which of the following designations refer to a major dialect area of Old English: Kentish, Anglo-Saxon, West Saxon, Anglian, Cockney 3. Decide whether the following statements are true or false. a) The noun system of Old English has more cases than in Modern English. T / F b) The Great Vowel Shift affected all short vowels of Middle English. T / F c) The arriving Germanic tribes ended the Roman occupation of England. T / F d) Modern English is an analytic language. T / F e) English belongs to the North Germanic branch of languages. T / F 2.4 | 37 B I B L I o g r a P h y 4. Why are the vowels / u / and / aɪ / in ModE moon and I represented by the spellings <oo> and <I> respectively? Keep in mind that / / indicates a long vowel. 5. As far as English is concerned, India is considered a country of the so-called outer circle (cf. Fig. 2.14). Examine and explain the function of English in India. 6. Compare the corresponding Modern English and Modern German forms in the following pairs of historically related words (cf. Fig. 2.3): ModE pepper and ModG Pfeffer, ModE post and ModG Pfosten, ModE pound and ModG Pfund, ModE path and ModG Pfad, ModE pipeand ModG Pfeife. Describe the obviously regular change that has happened. Bibliography | 2.5 Bailey, Richard. 1991. Images of English: A Cultural History of English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. (Focus on the cultural history of English-speaking peoples) Bammesberger, Alfred. 1989. English Linguistics. Heidelberg: Winter (Introduction to English linguistics from a primarily historical perspective) Barber, Charles et al. 2009. The English Language: A Historical Introduction. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Chronological approach; from Indo-European to Present Day English) Baugh, Albert C. & Thomas Cable. 2013. A History of the English Language. 6th edition. Abingdon: Routledge. (One of the standard works on the history of English) Bragg, Melvyn. 2003. The Adventure of English: 500 AD to 2000 - The Biography of a Language. London: Hodder & Stoughton. (Entertaining overview) Brinton, Laurel J. & Leslie K. Arnovick. 2017. The English Language: A Linguistic History. 3rd edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Burnley, David. 2000. A History of the English Language: A Source Book. 2nd edition. Harlow: Longman. (An annotated collection of texts from all periods of English) Crystal, David. 2002. The English Language: A Guided Tour of the Language. 2nd edition. London: Penguin. (A brief survey of the many roles the English language plays today) Crystal, David. 2003. English as a Global Language. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Focus on the role of English around the world today) Crystal, David. 2018. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Highly recommended overview with many illustrations) Crystal, David. 2005. The Stories of English. London: Penguin. (A history of both Standard English as well as other varieties) Fennell, Barbara. 2001. A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell. (Systematic approach with focus sections on sociolinguistic topics) 38 a B r I e f h I s t o r y o f e n g L I s h Fischer, Roswitha. 2010. Tracing the History of English: A Textbook for Students. 2nd edition. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. (Very brief but well-structured sketch of the history of English) Gelderen, Elly van. 2014. A History of the English Language. 2nd edition. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Görlach, Manfred. 2002. Einführung in die englische Sprachgeschichte. 5th edition. Heidelberg: Winter. (Also in English translation: The Linguistic History of English: An Introduction, Basingstoke: Macmillan) Hickey, Raymond, ed. 2004. Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in Transported Dialects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Overview of colonially induced varieties of English in the world) Hogg , Richard M., ed. 1992-2001. The Cambridge History of the English Language. 6 volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (The standard comprehensive history of English) Jucker, Andreas H. 2016. History of English and Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Stuttgart: Klett. (Short overview with text samples) Knowles, Gerry. 1979. A Cultural History of the English Language. London: Arnold. (Short history of the English language as a product of cultural developments) Leith, Dick. 1997. A Social History of English. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. (Highly readable, written from a sociolinguistic perspective) McArthur, Tom. 1998. The English Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moessner, Lilo. 2003. Diachronic English Linguistics: An Introduction. Tübingen: Narr. (Overview of the methods of historical linguistics) Smith, Jeremy J. 2005. Essentials of Early English. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. (Introduction to Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English with many illustrative texts) Viereck, Wolfgang et al. 2002. dtv-Atlas Englische Sprache. München: dtv. (Well-illustrated survey of many aspects of English, including the history of the language) 39 Phonetics and Phonology | 3 3.1 Phonetics: The Study of Speech Sounds 40 3.1.1 Speech Sound Production 41 3.1.2 Description and Classification of Consonants and Vowels 43 3.1.3 Phonetic Transcription 50 3.2 Phonology: The Function and Patterning of Sounds 58 3.2.1 Segmental Phonology 59 3.2.2 Suprasegmental Phonology 64 3.2.3 Connected Speech 68 3.3 Exercises 70 3.4 Bibliography 73 Contents Phonetics and phonology are two separate but nevertheless intimately interconnected subdisciplines of linguistics that deal with the sounds of language. Phonetics is the scientific study of human speech sounds independent of specific languages, whereas phonology is concerned with the sound systems of individual languages and the function and patterning of certain sounds in these systems. Abstract Phonetics vs. Phonology 40 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y Phonetics: The Study of Speech Sounds Phonetics is concerned with the wide variety of sounds used by speakers of human languages. There is a huge number of possible speech sounds , also called phones or segments , of which each individual language uses only a small portion. It is, however, important to note that any human, child or adult, can learn how to pronounce all of these sounds, even the ones that do not usually occur in their native languages. There are three types of phonetics that reflect three different ways to approach speech sounds: These three main phases of the speech chain can also be depicted in diagram form, as shown in Fig. 3.2, keeping in mind that the brain of the speaker controls the production of speech sounds and the brain of the listener has to analyze the sounds received by the ear. This chapter focuses on articulatory phonetics, which has the longest history of the three subbranches of phonetics and a wide range of applications in the learning and teaching of pronunciation. 3.1 | Phonetics is “ [ t ] he science which studies the characteristics of human sound-making, especially those sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription.” (Crystal 2008: 363) 9 type field of study 1) articulatory phonetics The study of the production of speech sounds. It describes how the organs of speech, also called articulators, are used to produce, i.e. articulate, the individual speech sounds and classifies them according to the involved mechanism of production. 2) acoustic phonetics The study of the transmission and the physical properties of speech sounds. It is an objective approach to describing sounds, concerned with measuring and analysing the physical properties (such as duration, frequency and intensity) of the sound waves we produce when we speak. 3) auditory phonetics The study of the perception of speech sounds. It studies how sounds are perceived and processed by the listener. criterion possibilities 1) height of the tongue high (close), mid-high (close-mid), mid-low (open-mid) and (or: closeness) low (open) 2) part of the tongue front, central and back 3) position of the lips rounded or unrounded 3.1 3.5 3.5 Fig. 3.1 | The three types of phonetics 41 s P e e C h s o u n d P r o d u C t I o n Speech Sound Production In order to be able to discuss the articulation of sounds, we need a basic knowledge of the sound-producing system . Three basic components are involved in the production of speech sounds: first the lungs , second the larynx (or voice box) containing the vocal folds (= folds of muscle popularly known as vocal cords) and the glottis (= the space between the vocal folds), and third the vocal tract above the larynx, including the oral and nasal cavities. | 3.1.1 The speech chain | Fig. 3.2 articulatory acoustic auditory phonology phonetics phonetics phonetics phonology The sound-producing system (adapted from O’Grady et al. 2017: 21, cf. Bibliography of Chapter 1) | Fig. 3.3 nasal cavity oral cavity pharynx larynx lungs   42 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y The majority of sounds used in the world’s languages are produced by an airstream that is pushed up from the lungs (= pulmonic) and leaves the body through the mouth or the nose, or sometimes both (= egressive ‘outwards’). This is called an egressive pulmonic airstream mechanism . All English speech sounds are produced in this way. Other airstream mechanisms are possible, e.g. mechanisms making use of ingressive airstream (= ingressive ‘inwards’), but will not be discussed here. The airstream from the lungs is modified by the so called organs of speech (or articulators ) to produce a variety of different sounds. The description and classification of sounds for the most part depends on how and where the airstream is modified by these articulators. We distinguish movable (or mobile) active articulators that can be voluntarily controlled, such as the lips or the tongue, and immovable (or non-mobile) passive articulators that cannot be voluntarily controlled, such as the alveolar ridge or the hard palate. Despite the name “organs of speech”, however, it must be pointed out that biological functions, in particular eating and breathing rather than speech, are the primary purpose of these organs. Organs of Speech Airstream Mechanism The organs of speech (adapted from O’Grady et al. 2017: 26, cf. Bibliography of Chapter 1) Fig. 3.4 | nasal cavity tongue bodyback root palate velum uvula pharynx oesophagus alveolar ridge teeth lips trachea glottis tip of the tongue blade of the tongue 43 Description and Classification of Consonants and Vowels All speech sounds used by the world’s many languages fall into two natural classes, namely consonants and vowels . The fundamental phonetic difference between these two types is that consonantal sounds are articulated with a narrow or complete closure in the vocal tract, whereas vowels are produced without any obstruction of the airstream. As we have seen above, all English speech sounds are produced with a pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. When we articulate a consonant, the airstream is partially or fully obstructed by some of the articulators in the vocal tract. The description and classification of consonants includes three different criteria : The air for the production of pulmonic sounds passes from the lungs through the glottis , which is the opening between the vocal folds in the larynx. When the glottis is narrow and the vocal folds are held close together, the air causes the vocal folds to vibrate; the resulting sounds are said to be voiced . When the glottis is open and the vocal folds are pulled apart, the airstream passes through the vocal folds without causing them to vibrate; the resulting sounds in this case are referred to as voiceless . Consonants States of the Glottis | 3.1.2 The description and classification of consonants speech sounds. It is an objective approach to describing sounds, concerned with measuring and analysing the physical properties (such as duration, frequency and intensity) of the sound waves we produce when we speak. 3) auditory phonetics The study of the perception of speech sounds. It studies how sounds are perceived and processed by the listener. criterion possibilities 1) height of the tongue high (close), mid-high (close-mid), mid-low (open-mid) and (or: closeness) low (open) 2) part of the tongue front, central and back 3) position of the lips rounded or unrounded criterion possibilities 1) state of the glottis voiceless or voiced (cf. fortis and lenis below) 2) place of articulation bilabial, labiodental, (inter-)dental, alveolar, postalveolar, retroflex, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, glottal 3) manner of articulation plosive (or stop), nasal, trill, tap or flap, fricative, affricate, lateral fricative, approximant, lateral approximant 3.5 3.5 | Fig. 3.5 States of the glottis: voiced vs. voiceless (O’Grady et al. 2017: 23) | Fig. 3.6 voiceless voiced d e s C r I P t I o n a n d C L a s s I f I C a t I o n o f C o n s o n a n t s a n d V o W e L s 44 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y Place of Articulation There is a simple test to find out whether a sound is voiced or voiceless: touch a finger to the larynx or close your ears with your fingers while you produce a sound. You should be able to sense the difference in vibration concerning the first sounds of the words zeal and seal or fan and van respectively. The contrast between voiceless and voiced sounds is usually accompanied by a difference in the force with which the airstream is pushed up from the lungs. Voiceless sounds are made with strong breath force and are thus called fortis (Latin ‘hard’). Voiced sounds, on the other hand, are usually made with comparatively weak force and are referred to as lenis (Latin ‘soft’) sounds. Some linguists use the fortis versus lenis contrast instead of the voiceless versus voiced contrast for the description of consonants. We will employ the more commonly used distinction between voiceless and voiced consonants here, keeping in mind that there is in most cases a symmetrical relationship between voiceless versus voiced and fortis versus lenis. In describing and classifying a consonant, it is also important to state the exact place where the airstream is obstructed . The place of articulation is usually labelled using the names of the articulators that approach each other or make contact while producing a consonant (cf. Fig. 3.4); we start at the front of the vocal tract and move backwards: Fig. 3.7 | place of articulation production examples bilabial produced by bringing both lips together [p], [b], [m] labiodental made with the lower lip against the upper front teeth [f ], [v] dental produced with the tip of the tongue placed against or near the upper teeth, or between the front teeth (then also interdental) [θ], [ð] alveolar articulated with the tip of the tongue at or near the small ridge behind the upper front teeth called the alveolar ridge [t], [d], [s], [z], [n], [l] postalveolar made with the tongue approaching or touching the rear of the alveolar ridge or the area just behind it [ ʃ ], [ ʒ ] retroflex articulated with the tip of the tongue curled back to come near or make contact with the hard palate [ɽ ] 45 d e s C r I P t I o n a n d C L a s s I f I C a t I o n o f C o n s o n a n t s a n d V o W e L s Different sounds that share the same place of articulation are called homorganic . [ p ] and [ b ] are both bilabial sounds and are thus referred to as homorganic. The third criterion used to provide unique and unambiguous descriptions of consonants is the so-called manner of articulation . We do not only have to state where the airflow is obstructed but also have to describe the type or degree of closure of the organs of speech involved, i.e. how the airstream is modified in the vocal tract to produce a certain consonant. Manner of Articulation Place of articulation | Fig. 3.8 11 3.8 manner of articulation production examples plosive (or stop) the speaker blocks (or stops) the airstream by forming [ p ], [ b ], [ t ], a complete closure with the articulators, builds up air [ d ], [ k ], [ � ], pressure and finally releases the air suddenly or [ ʔ ] “explosively” through the mouth fricative a continuous airstream forces its way through a very [ f ], [ v ], [ θ ], narrow opening between the articulators and thereby [ ð ], [ s ], [ z ], produces audible friction [ ʃ ], [ � ], [ h ] affricate a single sound that is a combination of a plosive and a [ tʃ ], [ d� ] fricative; affricates begin with a complete closure and continue by slightly releasing the articulators, causing the air to escape relatively slowly through a narrow passage nasal the velum is lowered so that the airstream partially or [ m ], [ n ], [ ŋ ] completely passes through the nose flap or tap produced by striking the tongue quickly against the roof [ ɾ ] of the mouth, interrupting the flow of air very briefly trill an articulator, such as the tongue-tip or the uvula, [ r ], [ r ] vibrates in the airstream lateral fricative the air escapes around the sides of a partial closure of [ � ] the organs of speech through a narrow passage approximant articulators approach but do not touch each other, leaving [ ɹ ], [ j ], [ w ] a wider opening than in the production of fricatives lateral approximant made with air that escapes around the sides of a partial [ l ] palatal made with the front of the tongue near or at the hard palate [ç], [ j] velar produced by raising the back of the tongue to the velum (or softpalate) [k], [ɡ], [ ŋ ], [x] uvular made by moving the back or root of the tongue to the uvula [ʀ] pharyngeal produced by retracting the root of the tongue into the pharynx [ħ] glottal articulated by the vocal folds in the larynx [h], [ʔ 11 3.8 manner of articulation production examples plosive (or stop) the speaker blocks (or stops) the airstream by forming [ p ], [ b ], [ t ], a complete closure with the articulators, builds up air [ d ], [ k ], [ � ], pressure and finally releases the air suddenly or [ ʔ ] “explosively” through the mouth fricative a continuous airstream forces its way through a very [ f ], [ v ], [ θ ], narrow opening between the articulators and thereby [ ð ], [ s ], [ z ], produces audible friction [ ʃ ], [ � ], [ h ] affricate a single sound that is a combination of a plosive and a [ tʃ ], [ d� ] fricative; affricates begin with a complete closure and continue by slightly releasing the articulators, causing the air to escape relatively slowly through a narrow passage nasal the velum is lowered so that the airstream partially or [ m ], [ n ], [ ŋ ] completely passes through the nose flap or tap produced by striking the tongue quickly against the roof [ ɾ ] of the mouth, interrupting the flow of air very briefly trill an articulator, such as the tongue-tip or the uvula, [ r ], [ r ] vibrates in the airstream lateral fricative the air escapes around the sides of a partial closure of [ � ] the organs of speech through a narrow passage approximant articulators approach but do not touch each other, leaving [ ɹ ], [ j ], [ w ] a wider opening than in the production of fricatives lateral approximant made with air that escapes around the sides of a partial [ l ] closure (like lateral fricatives), but no friction is produced as the opening is too wide (like approximants) 46 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y Some phoneticians assign consonants to two different groups, according to the degree of constriction in the vocal tract. Plosives, fricatives and affricates are said to be obstruents , as the airstream is either strongly or completely obstructed when they are articulated. The other types of consonants belong to the so-called sonorants , because they are produced with a relatively free airflow. Making use of these three major aspects of consonant description, we usually provide a three-part articulatory description in order to define a consonant precisely so that it cannot be confused with any other consonant. The state of the glottis (1) is mentioned first, followed by the place of articulation (2) and then the manner of articulation (3). Let us take the first sound in van, transcribed phonetically as [ v ] , as an example: (1) When we touch our throat while we are producing this sound, we can feel our vocal cords vibrate, i.e. the sound is voiced. (2) The lower lip is placed against the upper front teeth, i.e. the place of articulation is labiodental. (3) The air forces its way through the very narrow opening between the lower lip and the upper front teeth producing audible friction, i.e. concerning the manner of articulation the sound is without doubt a fricative. The unique three-part articulatory description of [ v ] is thus: a voiced labiodental fricative. Example Manners of articulation Three-Part Articulatory Description produces audible friction [ ʃ ], [ � ], [ h ] affricate a single sound that is a combination of a plosive and a [ tʃ ], [ d� ] fricative; affricates begin with a complete closure and continue by slightly releasing the articulators, causing the air to escape relatively slowly through a narrow passage nasal the velum is lowered so that the airstream partially or [ m ], [ n ], [ ŋ ] completely passes through the nose flap or tap produced by striking the tongue quickly against the roof [ ɾ ] of the mouth, interrupting the flow of air very briefly trill an articulator, such as the tongue-tip or the uvula, [ r ], [ r ] vibrates in the airstream lateral fricative the air escapes around the sides of a partial closure of [ � ] the organs of speech through a narrow passage approximant articulators approach but do not touch each other, leaving [ ɹ ], [ j ], [ w ] a wider opening than in the production of fricatives lateral approximant made with air that escapes around the sides of a partial [ l ] closure (like lateral fricatives), but no friction is produced as the opening is too wide (like approximants) 47 d e s C r I P t I o n a n d C L a s s I f I C a t I o n o f C o n s o n a n t s a n d V o W e L s In contrast to consonants, vowels are articulated without any obstruction of the airstream in the vocal tract. Vowels are essentially always voiced and more sonorous than consonants , i.e. they have a fuller tone than consonants and are perceived as louder and longer lasting. So how do we distinguish between different vowels? We need a completely different set of characteristics from the one we used for the description and classification of consonants. Vowels differ in quantity : they can be short or long (in the terminology of some phoneticians short vowels are referred to as lax and long vowels are referred to as tense vowels). Vowels also differ in quality , depending for the most part on the movements of the tongue: different parts of the tongue may be raised or lowered to modify the airstream in the vocal tract and the lips may be rounded or unrounded in order to produce different vowel qualities. The description and classification of vowels consists of the following three criteria : Some descriptions distinguish a fourth parameter, namely the position of the velum, i.e. the difference between oral vowels , produced with the velum raised and air escaping only through the mouth, and nasal vowels , produced with the velum lowered and some of the air passing through the nasal cavity. We will not employ this distinction here, as all English vowels are usually orals. Vowels are also differentiated into monophthongs (or simple vowels or pure vowels) and diphthongs (or gliding vowels, because they exhibit a change in quality as they glide from one articulation to another during the production of the vowel). Vowels The description and classification of vowels 9 type field of study 1) articulatory phonetics The study of the production of speech sounds. It describes how the organs of speech, also called articulators, are used to produce, i.e. articulate, the individual speech sounds and classifies them according to the involved mechanism of production. 2) acoustic phonetics The study of the transmission and the physical properties of speech sounds. It is an objective approach to describing sounds, concerned with measuring and analysing the physical properties (such as duration, frequency and intensity) of the sound waves we produce when we speak. 3) auditory phonetics The study of the perception of speech sounds. It studies how sounds are perceived and processed by the listener. criterion possibilities 1) height of the tongue high (close), mid-high (close-mid), mid-low (open-mid) and (or: closeness) low (open) 2) part of the tongue front, central and back 3) position of the lips rounded or unrounded 3.1 criterion possibilities 1) state of the glottis voiceless or voiced (cf. fortis and lenis below) 2) place of articulation bilabial, labiodental, (inter-)dental, alveolar, postalveolar, retroflex, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, glottal 3) manner of articulation plosive (or stop), nasal, trill, tap, flap, fricative, lateral fricative, approximant, lateral approximant 3.5 3.5 | Fig. 3.9 48 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y When phoneticians describe vowels they first look at the height of the tongue (or closeness ). This parameter is used to describe how high the tongue is raised in the oral cavity (or how close the tongue is placed with reference to the roof of the mouth ) to produce a certain vowel. We distinguish high , mid-high , mid-low and low or use the corresponding terms close , close-mid , open-mid and open . The two systems of terms are frequently used interchangeably, with high corresponding to close, mid-high to close-mid, mid-low to open-mid, and low to open. Both systems are presented as alternatives in the vowel charts in Fig. 3.15. The second element of a vowel description is the part of the tongue involved in the articulation. This parameter refers to the horizontal axis and tells us which part of the tongue is raised most to produce a certain vowel. On the horizontal axis three parts of the tongue are relevant for the articulation of vowels: the front , central and back areas. Height of tongue and part of tongue are of course only relative terms. In order to describe and classify any vowel of any given language, we need a system with fixed points of reference against which the parameters of tongue height and tongue part can be measured. For this purpose, the English phonetician Daniel Jones (1881-1967) established a system of 18 numbered reference vowels, the so called cardinal vowels. These artificial vowels mark the extreme positions of vowel articulation possible in the oral cavity and serve as reference points for all naturally occurring vowels. They are arranged in a vowel chart that reflects the space in the oral cavity where vowels are produced, as shown in Fig. 3.10. For example, cardinal number one [ i ] is the highest possible front vowel, with the front of the tongue raised as close to the roof of the mouth as possible without obstructing the airstream. Cardinal number five [ ɑ ] , on the other hand, is the lowest possible back vowel. The cardinal vowels appear in pairs, with the symbol on the right representing a rounded vowel and the symbol on the left representing an unrounded vowel. Height of the Tongue Part of the Tongue 49 d e s C r I P t I o n a n d C L a s s I f I C a t I o n o f C o n s o n a n t s a n d V o W e L s Vowel quality also depends on the position of the lips . Vowels are said to be unrounded when they are articulated with the lips in a neutral position, whereas vowels are referred to as rounded when they are produced with the lips pursed. When describing vowels, we usually provide a three-part articulatory description . The height of the tongue (1) is mentioned first, followed by the part of the tongue (2) and then the position of the lips (3). Position of the Lips Three-Part Articulatory Description The cardinal vowel chart (drawing from Davis 2007: 35) | Fig. 3.10 close (1) i (9) y (16) ɯ (8) u (17) ɨ (18) ʉ (15) ɤ (7) o (14) ʌ (6) ɔ (5) ɑ (13) ɒ front central back close-mid (2) e (10) ø open-mid (3) ε (11) œ open (4) a (12) ɶ N 50 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y Phonetic Transcription Most languages do not have a one-to-one correspondence between pronunciation and spelling (or orthography ). In the above quotation, George Bernard Shaw complains about the particularly wide discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation in English, which is also impressively illustrated by the following poem: The English Tongue When the English tongue we speak , Why is break not rhymed with freak? Will you tell me why it’s true ; We say sew but likewise few ; And the maker of a verse ; Cannot rhyme his horse with worse ? Beard sounds not the same as heard ; Cord is different from the word ; Cow is cow, but low is low ; Shoe is never rhymed with foe . Think of hose and dose and lose ; And of goose and also choose ; Let us take the vowel in the word feel, transcribed phonetically as [ i  ] , as an example: (1) When we produce this vowel, we raise our tongue almost as high as possible without causing friction or turbulence, i.e. the vowel is high or close. (2) We raise the front part of the tongue; compare the articulation of fool. (3) The lips are in a neutral position and thus unrounded; also compare the position of the lips when saying fool. The three-part articulatory description of [i  ] is thus: a high / close front unrounded vowel. Example 3.1.3 | “The English have no respect for their language, [ ... ] . They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. [ ... ] German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen.” (George Bernard Shaw. 1916. Pygmalion. New York: Brentano. Preface) 51 P h o n e t I C t r a n s C r I P t I o n The poem shows that we cannot rely on the traditional alphabetical spelling system when it comes to pronunciation in Present Day English. This means that we need a separate transcription system to represent speech sounds in writing, for example in dictionaries or textbooks for language learners. In such a system each sound must always be represented by the same symbol and there must be a separate symbol for each sound. Phonetic transcription provides such a system of one-to-one correspondence between sounds and symbols, the so-called phonetic symbols . Phonetic symbols are always enclosed in square brackets [ ] to distinguish them from letters, which are enclosed in angled brackets < > . A whole set of phonetic symbols forms a phonetic alphabet . The best-known system that provides phonetic symbols for the sounds of any language is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) (you will find a complete IPA chart on the inside of the front cover of this book). Most symbols of the IPA are similar to letters from the Roman alphabet, but the IPA also includes symbols from a variety of other sources. The IPA is used, with minor modifications, in most English-language dictionaries and other reference works. In many American publications, however, different transcription systems are used. The IPA is for the most part based on articulatory phonetics, i.e. the phonetic transcription of consonants and vowels depends on the way they are produced. Phonetic Transcription Think of tomb and bomb and comb ; Doll and roll and some and home . And since pay is rhymed with say , Why not paid with said , I pray ? We have blood and food and good ; Mould is not pronounced like could ; Wherefore done but gone and lone ? Is there any reason known ? I shall wonder ever after ; Why slaughter doesn’t rhyme with laughter ; Thus in short, it seems to me , Sounds and letters disagree. 52 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y The IPA consonant chart reflects the three-part articulatory description of consonants. Places of articulation are arranged on the horizontal axis and manners of articulation are placed along the vertical axis. Within the grid squares, voiceless consonants are positioned on the left and voiced sounds on the right: Like all other languages, English does not make use of all consonants in the IPA chart. The following chart shows the most important consonants used in either Received Pronunciation ( RP ), long considered to be the most prestigious accent of British English, or in General American ( GenAm ), an idealization over a group of accents in the United States excluding Eastern and Southern accents, or in both. The consonants are grouped according to their manner of articulation. The four fricatives [ s ] , [ z ] , [ ʃ ] and [ ʒ ] form a subclass called sibilants . Consonant Transcription Consonants of English The IPA consonant chart (adapted from International Phonetic Association 1999: ix) Symbols printed in blue indicate consonants used in RP or GenAm. Areas shaded in grey denote articulations judged impossible. Manner of Articulation Place of Articulation Bilabial Labio- Dental Alveolar Post- Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal dental alveolar Plosive p b t d q  ʔ Nasal m n ŋ  Trill  r  Tap or Flap ɾ Fricative φ β h Lateral Fricative Approximant Lateral l Approximant Fig. 3.11 53 P h o n e t I C t r a n s C r I P t I o n Three other consonants of English that are not part of the IPA consonant chart but can nevertheless be accounted for by IPA symbols have to be mentioned. The consonants in question are represented by the symbols [ w ] , [ t ʃ ] and [ dʒ ] . [w] as in water is described as a voiced labial-velar approximant . It is special in that it has two places of articulation and does thus not fit into any of the squares of the IPA consonant chart. [ w ] and [ j ] both belong to the class of approximants and share some vowel-like qualities, as the air passes rather freely through the vocal tract when they are articulated. In fact, from a purely phonetic point of view these sounds are rather vowels than consonants. So why do we include them with the consonants? We will see below that [ w ] and [ j ] function like consonants in English and thus take an intermediate position between vowels and consonants (cf. 3.2.2). This is why they are frequently referred to as semi-vowels or glides . Consonants of English | Fig. 3.12 plosives [p] s p ort, su pp er, cu p [t] s t ick, mos t ly, fi t [k] s k in, sti ck , uni que [b] b ite, bu bb le, glo b e [d] d own, la dd er, love d [ɡ] g et, bi gg er, e gg nasals [m] m ind, su mm er, su m [n] n ow, wi n d, su n [ŋ] si ng er, su ng trill [r] r ight, t r ue (not in RP, but used in Scottish English in words such as r at and t r ue) tap or flap [ɾ] bu tt er, ri d er (not in RP, common in GenAm) fricatives [f ] f un, o ff ice, ph otogra ph [θ] th ick, e th er, tee th [s] s it, de sc ent, ki ss [v] v an, o v en, pro v e [ð] th ese, ei th er, tee th e [z] z ero, bu s y, ja zz [ ʃ ] sh ip, na ti on, fi sh [ʒ] g enre, vi s ion, rou g e [h] h at, wh o, be h ind approximants [ɹ] r ight, t r ue (common) [ɻ ] r ight, t r ue (GenAm) [ j] y es, v i ew, f e w lateral approximants [l] l ight, si ll y 54 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y [ t ʃ ] and [ dʒ ] are so-called affricates , i.e. each of them is a single sound consisting of a combination of a plosive and a fricative (cf. 3.1.2). [ t ʃ ] occurs in words like church, feature and rich. The voiced counterpart [ d ʒ ] occurs in words such as judge, magic and George. - North American consonant descriptions differ from IPA mostly with respect to these affricates and the involved fricatives: [ ʃ ] , [ ʒ ] , [ t ʃ ] and [ dʒ ] are usually transcribed as [ s ] , [ z ] , [ c ] and [ j ] respectively. Some other important symbols from the IPA chart will be explained in the following table: Just like the IPA consonant system, the IPA vowel chart is based on articulatory description and thus on the cardinal vowel chart discussed above. It reflects the three-part articulatory description of vowels: the height of the tongue or closeness is arranged on the vertical axis and the part of the tongue involved in the articulation is shown on the horizontal axis. Lip rounding is indicated for the sounds that appear in pairs; the symbol to the right always represents a rounded vowel. Vowel Transcription Some other important consonant symbols 13 3.12 plosives [ ʔ ] • this sound is referred to as glottal stop • frequent in some accents of English, e.g. in Cockney: bottle, what • in Standard German this sound is always used at word boundaries when the following word starts with a vowel fricatives [ ç] • not used in English • the final sound in the High German pronunciation of the word ich ‘I’ [ x] • not used in RP or GenAm • found in the Scottish English pronunciation of words like loch • the final sound in the German pronunciation of the word ach ‘alas’ [ ʁ] • not used in English • the first sound in the German pronunciation of the word Rad ‘wheel’ • the first sound in French riz ‘rice’ Closing Diphthongs rising to [  ] [ e ] say, plate [ a ] fly, pie, rye [ ɔ ] boy, toy Closing Diphthongs rising to [ υ ] [ aυ ] how, loud [ əυ ] bone, load (RP only! ) [ oυ ] bone, load (GenAm only! ) Centring Diphthongs ending in [ ə ] (RP only! ) [ ə ] here, beer [ εə ] hair, swear [ υə ] tour 3.18 Fig. 3.13 | [ ç ] [ x ] [ ʁ ] 55 P h o n e t I C t r a n s C r I P t I o n Of the numerous vowels included in the IPA vowel chart only a limited number are used in English. We will first look at the monophthongs of English before we turn our attention to the numerous diphthongs . The monophthongs of English can be distinguished into short and long vowels. These types, however, are not only distinguished by vowel length, but also by vowel quality, i.e. the positions of the tongue are different. Long vowels are usually followed by a length mark that consists of two vertical dots, although the length marks are not necessarily required in the IPA system because of the qualitative difference between, for example, [ i ] and [ ɪ ] . The monophthongs of RP and GenAm are thus as follows: Vowels of English The IPA vowel chart (International Phonetic Association 1999: ix) | Fig. 3.14 close close-mid open-mid open front central back | Fig. 3.15 front central back close close-mid open-mid open high mid-high mid-low low i u ɪ ʊ ɜ ε ə ɔ ɒ æ ɑ ʌ RP and GenAm vowels (adapted from Meyer 2005: 96-97, cf. Bibliography of Chapter 1) RP vowels 56 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y We can see in the above charts that vowel qualities are only approximate indications and the same symbol may represent slightly different vowel qualities in different languages or varieties of the same language. According to these vowel charts we can identify the following short and long vowels for RP and GenAm. front central back close close-mid open-mid open high mid-high mid-low low i u ʊ ɜ ε ə æ ɑ ʌ Fig. 3.16 | ɪ ɔ GenAm vowels Short and long vowels of English IPA three-part articulatory description RP GenAm Short Vowels of English [ ɪ ] mid-high high front unrounded bit, sin, income [ ε ]* mid front unrounded let, guest [ æ ] mid-low low front unrounded bat, van dance [ ə ] mid central unrounded (always unstressed) teacher about, bottom [  ] or [ ər ] teacher [ ʌ ] mid-low central unrounded but, son [ ʊ ] mid-high high back rounded put, book [ ɒ ]** mid-low low back rounded pot, what - Long Vowels of English [ i ] high front unrounded fee, tea, cream [ ɜ ] mid-high central unrounded bird, firm [  ] or [ ɜ  r ] bird, firm [ u ] high back rounded f oo d, t wo [ ɔ ] mid-low back rounded north, war, thought [  ] or [ɔr] north, war [ ɑ ] low back unrounded car, dance father pot, [  ] or [ ɑ  r ] car * some phoneticians use [ e ] instead (e.g. in Jones 2011) ** RP only 57 P h o n e t I C t r a n s C r I P t I o n In all of the above vowels, the so-called monophthongs, the vowel quality remains more or less constant throughout the production of the vowel, because the articulators stay in the same position. Diphthongs (or gliding vowels ), on the other hand, are vowels that change their quality during their articulation. The articulators move or glide from one vowel position to another, changing the height of tongue, sometimes the part of tongue and sometimes lip rounding. This is why the transcription of diphthongs consists of a combination of two vowel symbols. For example, the vowel sound in boy is transcribed as [ ɔɪ ] , i.e. first the back of the tongue is raised to a mid-low position and the lips are rounded, before the front of the tongue moves to a mid-high high position and the lips are unrounded. There are two different types of diphthongs in English : (1) Closing diphthongs , which end in an [ ɪ ] -like or [ ʊ ] -like quality. This means that they rise to a rather close (or high) position towards the end of their articulation. (2) Centring diphthongs , which end in an [ ə ] -like quality that results from the loss of [ ɹ ] before consonants and silence (also called non-prevocalic r ) in the historical development of RP in words like fierce and beer. These diphthongs are all absent from GenAm, which is rhotic , i.e. non-prevocalic r is generally realized. The following charts illustrate the articulatory movement during the pronunciation of the English diphthongs: The diphthongs depicted in these charts can be summarised and exemplified as follows: English diphthongs | Fig. 3.17 Closing Diphthongs Centring Diphthongs (RP only! ) 58 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y So far we have encountered the IPA symbols for consonants and vowels. Occasionally, our phonetic transcription has to be more precise or we need to represent sounds slightly different from what we find in the IPA charts. In these cases we can modify the IPA symbols by the addition of little extra symbols, so-called diacritics . Diacritics are usually placed above, below or behind an IPA symbol. For example, we can show the extra puff of air immediately following the first sound in pit by adding a diacritic symbol: [ pʰɪt ] ; we say that the initial [ p ] is aspirated. When a speaker does not release the closure at the end of the same word, another diacritic may be added to indicate the lack of plosion: [ pʰɪt ] . In section 3.2.1 we will encounter a velarised variant [ ɫ ] of the lateral approximant, as in fool; the diacritic [ ˜ ] is added to [ l ] to transcribe the velarised quality of the sound. For a full list of diacritics please consult the IPA chart inside the front cover of the book. Phonology: The Function and Patterning of Sounds Phonology is concerned with the speakers’ knowledge of the sound system of one specific language . It is the branch of linguistics that studies the sounds used by a given language, the so-called sound inventory , and investigates the function and (mental) organisation of these sounds in the specific language in question. RP and GenAm diphthongs Fig. 3.18 | Diacritics 3.2 | Phonology is “[a] branch of linguistics which studies the sound systems of languages. Out of the very wide range of sounds the human vocal apparatus can produce, and which are studied by phonetics, only a relatively small number are used distinctively in any one language.” (Crystal 2008: 365) Closing Diphthongs rising to [ ɪ ] [ eɪ ] say, plate [ aɪ ] fly, pie, rye [ ɔɪ ] boy, toy Closing Diphthongs rising to [ʊ] [ aʊ ] how, loud [ əʊ ] bone, load (RP only! ) [ oʊ ] bone, load (GenAm only! ) Centring Diphthongs ending in [ə] (RP only! ) [ ɪə ] here, beer [ εə ]* hair, swear [ ʊə ] tour * some phoneticians use [ eə ] instead (e.g. in Jones 2011) 59 s e g M e n t a L P h o n o L o g y There are two branches of phonology : Segmental Phonology When we split up our utterances into the individual sounds they are made up of, we identify the segments , hence the name segmental phonology . Unlike phonetics, segmental phonology is not concerned with the exact properties of speech sounds but with the function of these individual sounds in a certain language. The speakers of a language know, consciously or unconsciously, which segments of their language distinguish meaning . For example, the words light and bite are distinguished only by their first sound (note that spelling is not important here! ). The initial sounds in [ l aɪt ] and [ baɪt ] are thus said to contrast (or to be distinctive, or to be in opposition ). Contrasting units like this are called phonemes and form the basis of phonology. Phonemes are defined as the smallest meaning-distinguishing units in language. In order to identify the phonemes used by a particular language, as we have seen above, we have to find pairs of words that differ in only one sound and are different in meaning. These pairs are referred to as minimal pairs , the method is called the minimal pair test . We can identify both consonant and vowel phonemes with the help of this test. Other minimal pairs are for example: fun and sun, sun and sum or sung, fish and fit, fee and tea, bit and but or bat, and sin and son. All these contrasting sounds identified by the minimal pair test form the phoneme inventory of a language. Two branches of phonology 14 branch field of study 1) segmental phonology Segmental phonology examines the function of individual sounds in a language, the so-called segments. 2) suprasegmental Suprasegmental phonology is concerned with those features of phonology pronunciation that extend over more than one segment. Fig.3.19 level unit phonemic (phonological) / l / phoneme allophonic (phonetic) [ l ] [ � ] allophone phoneme allophones complementary free distribution variation Fig.3.22 Fig.3.24 | Fig. 3.19 | 3.2.1 Phonemes and Allophones 60 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y However, not all sounds that are phonetically different distinguish meaning in English and appear in minimal pairs. For example, most learners of English as a second or foreign language are taught at some point that there are two different “kinds of l” in many accents of English, namely the clear l and the dark l. The clear l is phonetically transcribed as [ l ] and occurs before a vowel or [ j ] , e.g. in the words lift and failure. The dark l, on the other hand, is a velarised variant of the alveolar lateral approximant phonetically transcribed as [ ɫ ] . It is pronounced with an additional raising of the back of the tongue towards the velum, hence the name velarised, and occurs before a consonant or before silence, e.g. in words like silk and feel. The phoneme inventory of English Fig. 3.20 | Articulation of clear l vs. dark l Fig. 3.21 | clear [ l ] dark [ ɫ ] Consonant phonemes of RP/ GenAm / p, b, t, d, k, ɡ, f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ, h, m, n, ŋ, l, r, j, w/ Monophthong phonemes of RP / i, ɑ, u, ɔ, ɜ, ɪ, ε, æ, ʊ, ʌ, ə, ɒ/ GenAm / i, ɑ, u, ɔ, ɜ, ɪ, ε, æ, ʊ, ʌ, ə/ Diphthong phonemes of RP / eɪ, aɪ, ɔɪ, aʊ, əʊ, ɪə, εə*, ʊə/ GenAm / eɪ, aɪ, ɔɪ, aʊ, oʊ/ * some phoneticians use [ eə ] instead (e.g. in Jones 2011) 61 s e g M e n t a L P h o n o L o g y In English, [ l ] obviously cannot occur where [ ɫ ] occurs and vice versa. This means that there cannot be any minimal pairs concerning [ l ] and [ ɫ ] and that they do not distinguish meaning in English. Native speakers will usually not be aware that there is a phonetic difference between the two sounds at all, to their mind they are the same sound. We can conclude that different phones that (1) do not distinguish meaning (or are non-contrastive ), are (2) regarded as “the same” sound and are (3) phonetically similar are said to be allophones of the same phoneme. Allophones are thus different phonetic realisations (or phonetic variants) of what speakers of a language automatically and unconsciously group together into an abstract phonological unit called the phoneme. It is a convention that phonemic symbols are enclosed by slashes / / , whereas allophones are phonetic realisations and are as such enclosed by square brackets. We can conclude that [ l ] and [ ɫ ] are allophones of the phoneme / l/ in English: We have seen above that there are at least two allophones of / l/ in English and that the clear l [ l ] cannot occur where the velarised dark l [ ɫ ] occurs and vice versa. In cases like this, the occurrence (or distribution ) of the different allophones is determined by the place within a word they can occur in and by the surrounding sounds, the so-called phonetic context (or environment ). Since one of the allophones cannot occur where the other one does, we can say that their distribution is predictable . The two variants complement each other and are said to be in complementary distribution. Distribution of Allophones Allophones of the phoneme / l / 14 branch field of study 1) segmental phonology Segmental phonology examines the function of individual sounds in a language, the so-called segments. 2) suprasegmental Suprasegmental phonology is concerned with those features of phonology pronunciation that extend over more than one segment. Fig.3.19 level unit phonemic (phonological) / l / phoneme allophonic (phonetic) [ l ] [ � ] allophone phoneme allophones complementary free distribution variation Fig.3.22 Fig.3.24 | Fig. 3.22 The distribution of clear l vs. dark l 7 Consonant phonemes of RP/ GenAm / p , b , t , d , k , � , f , v , θ , ð , s , z , ʃ , � , tʃ , d� , h , m , n , ŋ , l , r , j , w / Monophthong phonemes of RP / i� , ɑ� , u� , ɔ� , �� ,  , ε , � , υ , � , ə, ɒ / GenAm / i� , ɑ� , u� , ɔ� , �� ,  , ε , � , υ , � , ə / Diphthong phonemes of RP / e , a , ɔ , aυ , əυ , ə , εə , υə / GenAm / e , a , ɔ , aυ , oυ / distribution / l / before vowels and [ j ] before consonants before silence [ l ] yes no no [ � ] no yes yes b d � MS 22 Fig.3.23 Fig.3.20 | Fig. 3.23 62 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y However, allophones do not always have to be in complementary distribution. The word-final voiceless bilabial plosive in words such as ship or leap may be realised in at least three different ways: (1) as [ p ] , as in [ ʃɪp ] and [ l i  p ] , (2) with aspiration, transcribed as [ pʰ ] , as in [ ʃɪpʰ ] and [ l i  pʰ ] , and (3) without release of the closure, transcribed as [ p ] , i.e. [ ʃɪp ] and [ l i  p ] (cf. 3.1.3: diacritics). The use of either of the three variants does not constitute a change of meaning. Generally speaking, we frequently have the choice between two or more different sounds that - like [ p ] , [ pʰ ] and [ p ] - occur in the same environment and are not separate phonemes as they do not distinguish meaning , are regarded as “the same” sound and are phonetically similar. These allophones are said to be in free variation . [ p ] , [ pʰ ] and [ p ] are thus free variants of the phoneme / p / . Some authors prefer another system that has a different two-way distinction: (1) allophones, which are by definition in complementary distribution, are opposed to (2) free variants. We will, however, not employ this system in this book. Allophonic variation occurs in all languages, but it is important to note that the patterning of phonemes and allophones is language-specific, i.e. two sounds may be allophones of the same phoneme in one language and realizations of two separate phonemes in another. The distribution of allophones 2) suprasegmental Suprasegmental phonology is concerned with those features of phonology pronunciation that extend over more than one segment. level unit phonemic (phonological) / l / phoneme allophonic (phonetic) [ l ] [ � ] allophone phoneme allophones complementary free distribution variation Fig.3.22 Fig.3.24 Fig. 3.24 | The voiced alveolar flap, transcribed as [ɾ] , is a very common pronunciation variant of the phoneme / t/ in American English in words such as city, whereas / t / is realised as [ t ] in words like team. [ t ] and [ɾ] are thus allophones of the phoneme / t/ in English. Example 63 s e g M e n t a L P h o n o L o g y We have seen that there are two different ways to transcribe spoken language: (1) phonemic (or broad) transcription , which focuses on the language system, ignores some detail and for which we use slashes and (2) phonetic (or narrow) transcription , which represents the actual pronunciation with a great deal of detail and for which we use square brackets. For example, the phonemic transcription of the English word lull / l ʌ l / does not indicate the opposition of the initial clear l and the final dark l, whereas the phonetic transcription [ l ʌ ɫ ] clearly marks the difference. Similarly, the three different variants [p] , [pʰ] and [p] in the word ship are not contrastive and are thus ignored by the phonemic transcription / ʃɪp / . Depending on the amount of detail we need for a certain linguistic discussion, we choose a broad or a narrow description, with which we can represent as much detail as needed by using diacritics. As shown above, (allo)phones and phonemes belong to different levels of language structure. Speakers store abstract phonemic forms in their minds and apply phonological rules to them to translate these mental entities into actual speech sounds: To describe the distribution of the allophones of / l / , the following phonological rule can be stated, trying to be as general as possible: [ ɫ ] occurs before consonants other than [ j] and at the end of words; [ l ] occurs elsewhere. When we look at minimal pairs such as zeal [zi ɫ ] and seal [si ɫ ] or bid [bɪd] and bit [bɪt] , the only difference between the phoneme pairs / z/ and / s/ , or / d/ and / t/ , is a difference in voicing. With the place and manner of articulation being identical, voicing alone distinguishes the phonemes from each other. We are thus interested Phonetic and Phonemic Transcription Phonological Rules Distinctive Features Phonological rules | Fig. 3.25 phonemic form (abstract mental entity)  phonological rule(s)  phonetic form (actual speech sound) examples: / l ʌ l/ and / bɪld/  In English, the voiced alveolar lateral approximant becomes velarised when it occurs before a consonant or silence.  [l ʌ ɫ] and [bɪɫd] 64 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y in the presence, marked by plus (+), or absence, marked by (-), of the single feature of voicing. / z/ and / d/ are [ +voiced ] and / s/ and / t/ are [ -voiced ] . Features that distinguish one phoneme from another are called distinctive features . Individual sounds can be characterised by bundles of distinctive features, for example the voiced plosives in English: Each of the above phonemes differs from all the other phonemes in the chart by at least one distinctive feature. For example, / b/ and / d/ are both [ +plosive, +voiced, and -velar ] , but / d/ is [ -labial ] and [ +alveolar ] , whereas / b/ is [ +labial ] and [ -alveolar ] . Sounds that share at least one feature are said to belong to the same natural class . All of the phonemes in the above chart belong to the class of plosives, but only / d/ belongs to the class of alveolars. When we look at the English nasals, we encounter a somewhat different situation. From a phonological point of view it would not be necessary to state that / m/ , / n/ and / ŋ/ are [ +voiced ] , because all English nasals are voiced. We can express this by a so-called redundancy rule : phonemes that are [ +nasal ] are also [ +voiced ] . Suprasegmental Phonology Phonology does not only deal with the individual segments speech is made up of. It also studies those phonological properties that extend over more than one segment, hence the name suprasegmental phonology . Suprasegmental phonology involves two different aspects: First, this type of phonology is concerned with the combination of segments into larger units such as syllables . Second, it studies the phonological properties of longer stretches of speech such as stress , rhythm, tone and intonation , often collectively referred to as prosody . Distinctive features distribution / l / before vowels and [ j ] before consonants before silence [ l ] yes no no [ � ] no yes yes b d � Plosive + + + Voiced (Lenis) + + + Labial + - - Alveolar - + - Velar - - + MS 22 Fig.3.23 Fig. 3.26 | 3.2.2 | 65 s u P r a s e g M e n t a L P h o n o L o g y Syllables are phonological units above the phoneme level that can be vaguely defined as the smallest rhythmic unit of speech. Most people can intuitively count syllables in words without having an exact knowledge of what a syllable is. Words can consist of one syllable, i.e. they are monosyllabic , or two or more syllables, i.e. they are polysyllabic . The structure of a syllable is shown in the following figure with the monosyllabic word stretch: In English, all syllables contain a nucleus (or peak , core or centre ) that is normally made up of a vowel. This vowel may be followed by a coda that consists of up to four consonants and is said to form the rhyme together with the nucleus. The nucleus may also be preceded by up to three consonants that form the onset of the syllable. Syllables that have an empty coda are referred to as open syllables , as opposed to the so-called closed syllables , which are “closed” by one or more consonants following the vowel. Knowing about syllable structure now, we can add phonological aspects to our definition of vowels and consonants. Vowels are thus not only sounds that are produced without any obstruction of the airstream but can also form the nucleus of a syllable . In opposition to vowels, consonants cannot form the nucleus of a syllable . Occasionally, sonorant consonants can form a syllable by themselves in words such as button [bʌtn̩ ] ; these consonants are called syllabic and indicated by the diacritic [ ̩ ] . Semivowels are special in that they are, on the one hand, vowel-like in pronunciation but, on the other hand, they can never form the nucleus of a syllable (cf. 3.1.3). Suprasegmental phonology is also concerned with rules and restrictions regarding the combination of segments to form larger Syllable structure occurs before a consonant or silence phonetic form [ l�� ] and [ b�d ] (actual speech sound) syllable onset rhyme nucleus coda / str ε tʃ / 3.27 | Fig. 3.27 Phonotactics Syllables 66 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y units such as syllables. The study of the possible combinations of phonemes in a language is referred to as phonotactics . All languages have such sets of constraints concerning the combination of phonemes, but the actual rules are language-specific and differ extensively between individual languages. English, for example, is fairly restrictive when it comes to the combination of consonants (or consonant clusters ) at the beginning or at the end of syllables or words: / ps - / and / kn - / are not permissible onsets in English, whereas the same consonant clusters are perfectly acceptable at the beginning of a syllable in German, for example in Psychologie and Knie. Differences in phonotactic restrictions between their native language and other languages cause a great deal of difficulty for learners of foreign languages. Phonological phenomena such as stress , rhythm, tone and intonation can be subsumed under the term prosody of an utterance. The degree of force used in producing a syllable is called stress (or accent ). We distinguish stressed syllables, which are more prominent, and unstressed syllables , which are less prominent and often contain reduced vowels, such as / ə/ (schwa) and / ɪ/ . The prominence of a syllable is achieved by increased loudness, frequently combined with increased length and higher pitch. Different types of stress play a role in English, most importantly word stress and sentence stress . In transcription, stress is marked by a raised vertical line [ ̍ ] preceding the stress-bearing syllable. In many languages, including English, the syllables of polysyllabic words are not pronounced with equal intensity. In longer polysyllabic words we can also distinguish primary stress [ ̍ ] and secondary stress [ ̩ ]. Some languages have predictable stress placement, for example, stress is almost always placed on the first syllable of a word in Czech, on the next to last (or penultimate) syllable in Welsh and on the last syllable in French. The placement of word stress in English , however, is generally not predictable . This is mainly due to the fact that English has borrowed a large number of words from a multitude of languages in the course of its history (cf. 2.1). Word stress can even be distinctive in English , i.e. there are a number of minimal pairs that differ by stress placement only: for example, the word import is a noun when the stress is on the first syllable (RP: / ̍ ɪmpɔ  t / ) but a verb when the stress is on the second syllable (RP: / ɪm ̍ pɔ  t/ ). Prosody Stress and Rhythm 67 s u P r a s e g M e n t a L P h o n o L o g y Sentence stress depends to a large part on the rhythm , i.e. on the distribution of stressed syllables in a sentence or an utterance. In many languages, stressed syllables occur in a sentence at fairly regular intervals of time. It does not matter how many unstressed syllables are between them. Languages such as English or German that have this kind of rhythm are said to be stress-timed . The opposite are languages like French or Italian, in which syllables are claimed to occur at rather regular intervals of time. The timing of these languages does not depend on whether the syllables are stressed or not. These languages are called syllable-timed . In English, many function words (such as determiners, auxiliaries, prepositions, pronouns and conjunctions) may carry no stress at all and become weakened (cf. 3.2.3). Sentence stress may also distinguish degrees of emphasis or contrast, as in I would like some strawberry ice-cream. When we speak, our vocal folds can vibrate with different frequencies: the faster they vibrate, the higher the so-called pitch . All voiced speech sounds, particularly vowels, can thus be produced with different pitches. The role of pitch varies from language to language. In English, it does not make a big difference whether you say the word beer with a low pitch or a high pitch; it will still mean ‘an alcoholic drink made from malt and flavoured with hops’. In many other languages, the meaning of a word can differ according to the pitch at which the syllables in the word are pronounced and the pitch movement within the word, the so-called pitch contour. These languages are called tone languages and include many African and Native American languages as well as many Asian languages such as Vietnamese, Thai or Chinese. In Mandarin Chinese / ma / can mean, among other things, ‘horse’ and ‘mother’, depending on the tone. It can obviously have some very embarrassing consequences for foreign learners to get the tone wrong and there is even a tongue twister in Mandarin Chinese starting with Mother is riding a horse. We will see that pitch does play a role in English, however, when we take a look at the phrase or sentence level. The pattern of rises and falls in pitch across a stretch of speech is called intonation . Languages that attach function to the pitch contour of a phrase or sentence are called intonation languages . In English, for example, intonation helps to mark the functions and boundaries of a syntactic unit and vaguely corresponds to punctuation in writ- Tone and Intonation 68 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y ing. Statements such as She’s gone usually show a falling pattern towards the end of the phrase, whereas yes-no-questions such as She’s gone? are characterised by a final rise. Intonation is also used to stress new information in an utterance or to express emotions and attitudes, for example interest, irony or sarcasm. It should be noted that there are not only differences in intonation between different languages but frequently also within the same language. The intonation patterns of RP and GenAm are markedly different in a number of respects. Connected Speech So far, we have discussed the phenomena of phonetics and phonology mainly with the help of individual phones, phonemes, syllables and words. Except for sentence stress and intonation, we have not yet considered any of the processes and adjustments occurring in longer stretches of speech. We have looked at the forms of words the way they are pronounced in isolation, their so-called citation form , which is also the form we usually find in dictionaries. However, sounds and words undergo considerable changes when they occur in connected speech . We will now discuss the most important of these processes, namely strong and weak forms , assimilation , and liaison . We already know from the section on stress above (cf. 3.2.2) that some words, especially function words, may carry no stress at all in an English sentence. The stressed (or accented) realizations of these words are termed strong forms , whereas the unstressed (or unaccented) versions are called weak forms . Weak forms are characterised by a weakening (or reduction) of the vowel to / ə / , / ɪ / or / ʊ / (recent studies suggest that the quality is often [i] rather than [ɪ] and [u] rather than [ʊ] ) , or an elision (or omission) of one or more sounds, or both. The weak form [ əd ] of had / hæd / is the result of both the reduction of the vowel to [ ə ] and the elision of initial [ h ] . These changes are usually not reflected in spelling, with the exception of the contracted forms, for example ’m or ’ve, and fixed phrases such as rock ’n’ roll. The following table is merely a selection of some of the most frequent weak forms: 3.2.3 | Strong and Weak Forms 69 C o n n e C t e d s P e e C h The examples show that the realisation of different words can even become identical as a result of weakening and elision, for example an and and can both become / n / , and the and they can both be realised as / ðə / . In connected speech, sounds often influence each other so that they become more like a neighbouring sound in terms of one or all of its articulatory features. This process is called assimilation . One of the main motivations for assimilation seems to be our wish to increase the ease of articulation (or minimise the effort) as we speak. When we pronounce, for example, the sequence ten bats, the usually alveolar nasal / n / at the end of ten is realised as a bilabial nasal [ m ] because of the immediately following bilabial plosive / b / in bats, i.e. the places of articulation become more alike. In cases like these, the assimilation moves backwards to the preceding segment, which is known as regressive assimilation (or anticipatory assimilation ), because during the production of the preceding sound the organs of speech already anticipate the articulation of the following sound). Occasionally, but much rarer in English, one or more articulatory features of a preceding sound can influence the following sound. In phrases such as Church Street, the / s/ in Street can become identical with the / ʃ/ at the end of Church. This type of articulation is called progressive assimilation, because the assimilation moves forward to the following element. Assimilation by which sounds become more similar with each other are called Assimilation Selected weak forms 8 strong form weak form(s) strong form weak form(s) a [ e ] [ ə ] have [ h�v ] [( h ) əv , ə , v ] am [ �m ] [( ə ) m ] he [ hi� ] [( h )  , hi, i� ] an [ �n ] [( ə ) n ] her [ h�� ( r )] [( h ) ə ( r ), �� ( r )] and [ �nd ] [( ə ) n ( d )] me [ mi� ] [ m, mi ] are [ ɑ� ( r )] [ ər , ə , r ] of [ ɒv ] [ əv , ə , v ] be [ bi� ] [ b, bi ] she [ ʃi� ] [ ʃ, ʃi ] but [ b�t ] [ bət ] the [ ði� ] [ ðə , ð, ði ] can [ k�n ] [ k ( ə ) n ] they [ ðe ] [ ðə ] do [ du� ] [ də , dυ , du, d ] were [ w�� ( r )] [ wə ( r )] had [ h�d ] [( h ) əd , d ] will [ wl ] [( ə ) l ] has [ h�z ] [( h ) əz , z , s ] you [ ju� ] [ jυ, ju ] Fig. 3.28 | Fig. 3.28 70 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y partial assimilation . When the assimilated sounds become identical we speak of total assimilation . Another process that frequently occurs to increase the ease of articulation and improve fluidity is the insertion of a linking sound termed liaison . There are two well-known examples of liaison in English, particularly in RP and other so-called non-rhotic accents that do not normally articulate word-final r suggested by the spelling in words like more and far. A linking r is inserted only when the following word begins with a vowel, e.g. in phrases such as far away [fɑ  r əweɪ] . Similarly, speakers of these accents often insert a so-called intrusive r between certain words, even when there is no <r> in the spelling, e.g. in phrases like law and order [ l ɔ  rəndɔ  də]. Exercises 1. Identify all the IPA symbols below which represent ... a) plosives b) fricatives c) voiced sounds [ b] [s] [ʊ] [w] [ ʃ ] [x] [k] [ l ] [ɪ] [θ] [ŋ] [d] 2. The following six drawings of the vocal tract depict the articulation of consonants of English. Identify the place and manner of articulation for each of the drawings. Then give the phonetic symbols of all English consonants which are produced in this way. Liaison 3.3 | a) b) c) d) e) f) 71 e x e r C I s e s 3. Which of the consonants in Exercise 2 are homorganic? Explain! 4. For each group of phones (not phonemes! ), state the articulatory feature or features they all share: Example: [f ] , [s] and [x] are all fricatives and voiceless. 5. After each of the following articulatory descriptions, write the corresponding phonetic symbol: a) voiced alveolar fricative [ ] b) open-mid front unrounded vowel [ ] c) high back rounded vowel [ ] d) voiceless glottal plosive [ ] e) mid-high high front unrounded vowel [ ] f) voiceless postalveolar fricative [ ] 6. Provide the articulatory description for the following phonetic symbols: a) [ə] b) [n] c) [æ] d) [t] e) [ʊ] f) [ɹ] 7. Give the conventional spelling or spellings for the following English words and phrases provided in broad transcription: a) / tʃi  t/ e) / ə ̩ sɪmɪ ̍ l eɪʃən/ b) / sʌn/ f) / l ɪŋ ̍ ɡwɪstɪks ɪz fʌn/ c) / baɪt/ g) / fəʊ ̍ netɪks tu  / d) / oʊ l d ̍ ɪŋɡ l ɪʃ/ h) / ɪ ̍ nʌf/ 8. There are four main types of discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation in contemporary English, namely … (1) the same spelling representing different sounds (2) different spellings for the same sound (3) the occurrence of so called “silent letters” that are not pro- nounced at all (4) the pronunciation of “phantom” letters not present in writing phones feature(s) phones feature(s) a) [m], [ŋ], [n] _____________ d) [f ], [θ], [s], [ ʃ ] ______________ b) [k], [ɡ], [ŋ], [x] _____________ e) [u], [i] ______________ c) [i], [e], [ε], [æ] _____________ f) [d], [n], [r], [ l ] ______________ 72 P h o n e t I C s a n d P h o n o L o g y All four types can be found in the poem The English Tongue on page 50-51. Please identify 2 examples each for types (1) through (3) and one example for type (4). (Spelling is always put in angled brackets < >, whereas square brackets [ ] are placed around phonetic transcription.) 9. Find at least one further example for each of the four types of discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation mentioned in 8. Please do not take your example words from the poem! 10. The claim that ghoti could be an alternative spelling of fish is popularly attributed to George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and spelling-reform advocate. Think along the lines of Exercises 8 and 9 and explain how <ghoti> could theoretically represent [ fɪʃ ] . 11. Find minimal pairs for the following pairs of English phonemes (Keep in mind that spelling is not important): phonemes minimal pair a) / p / - / b / _____________________________ b) / i / - / u / _____________________________ c) / b / - / m / _____________________________ d) / n / - / s / _____________________________ e) / t / - / d / _____________________________ f) / ɪ / - / æ / _____________________________ 12. In Old English, [ f ] and [ v ] were in complementary distribution. Unlike Modern English, this means that [ f ] and [ v ] were allophones of the phoneme / f / and that there were no minimal pairs involving these phones. Analyse the following data from the Lord’s Prayer by looking at the phonetic environments and the position in which the allophones occur. Define the phonetic environments in which the two allophones of / f / occur in Old English and try to state the resulting phonological rule, generalising as much as possible: [ ̍ fæder ] f æ der ‘father’ [ ̍ heovon ] heofon ‘heaven’ [ h l a  f ] hlaf ‘loaf (of bread)’ [ ̍ yve l e ] yfele ‘evilly, badly’ 73 B I B L I o g r a P h y Bibliography Ashby, Patricia. 2005. Speech Sounds. 2nd edition. London. Routledge. (A very manageable introduction to the description and classification of speech sounds) Carr, Philip. 2019. English Phonetics and Phonology: An Introduction. 3rd edition. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. (A concise but highly recommendable introduction to English phonetics and phonology) Clark, John & Colin Yallop. 2006. An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology. 3rd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. (A rather comprehensive introduction to phonetics and phonology) Cruttenden, Alan. 2014. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. 8th edition. Abingdon: Routledge. (A comprehensive and systematic treatment of the pronunciation of English) Crystal, David. 2008. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 6th edition. Oxford: Blackwell. (A comprehensive collection of linguistic and phonetic terminology) Davis, John F. 2007. Phonetics and Phonology. 7th edition. Stuttgart: Klett. (A basic but very useful introduction to phonetics and phonology) Eckert, Hartwig & William Barry. 2005. The Phonetics and Phonology of English Pronunciation. 2nd edition. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. (A self-study textbook for native speakers of German - with a CD-ROM) Giegerich, Heinz J. 1992. English Phonology: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Rather comprehensive overview of English phonology) International Phonetic Association. 1999. Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (The comprehensive guide to the International Phonetic Alphabet) Jones, Daniel. 2011. English Pronouncing Dictionary. 18th edition. Edited by Peter Roach, Jane Setter & John Esling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the pronunciation of English) McMahon, April. 2020. An Introduction to English Phonology. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (A concise overview of English phonology) Pullum, Geoffrey K. & William A. Laduslaw. 1996. Phonetic Symbol Guide. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (A comprehensive treatment of all phonetic symbols) Roach, Peter. 2001. Phonetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A very short introduction to phonetics) Roca, Iggy & Wyn Johnson. 1999a. A Course in Phonology. Malden: Blackwell. (A comprehensive textbook on phonology) Roca, Iggy & Wyn Johnson. 1999b. A Workbook in Phonology. Malden: Blackwell. (A workbook accompanying the textbook) Rogers, Henry. 2000. The Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics. Harlow: Pearson. (A good overview of English phonetics and phonology) Skandera, Paul & Peter Burleigh. 2011. A Manual of English Phonetics and Phonology: Twelve Lessons with an Integrated Course in Phonetic Transcription. 2nd edition. Tübingen: Narr. (A very approachable and hands-on introduction to English phonetics and phonology - with a CD-ROM) Upton, Clive, William Kretschmar & Rafal Konopka. 2003. The Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Paperback edition of this current and comprehensive record of the pronunciation of both British and American English) Wells, John C. 2008. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. 3rd edition. Harlow: Pearson Longman. (An up-to-date guide to the pronunciation of English) Interesting Links Speech Accent Archive <http: / / accent.gmu.edu> International Dialects of English Archive <http: / / web.ku.edu/ ~idea/ > | 3.4 75 Morphology | 4 4.1 Morphology and Grammar 76 4.2 Morphemes and Allomorphs 85 4.3 Morphological Processes 86 4.3.1 Inflection 86 4.3.2 Word Formation 88 4.4 Exercises 95 4.5 Bibliography 97 Contents Morphology examines how words are created, structured and changed. When Johann Wolfgang von Goethe coined the word morphology (meaning ‘the study of the form or shape’) for a new science concerned with the anatomies of animals and plants at the end of the 18th century, he could not possibly predict that linguists would later adopt his term for the study of the “anatomy” of words. In this chapter, we will look at the forms and functions of the smallest meaning-bearing units of language known as morphemes and at the most relevant morphological processes. Abstract 76 M o r P h o L o g y Morphology and Grammar Talking about morphology means talking about words and their “anatomy”. Morphology studies the internal structure of words. But what is a word? Consider the following sentence: The students borrowed the books from the library. How many words are there in this sentence? And how can we decide what to count? A first suggestion would be to consider the physical properties of the items in question, namely their spelling and their pronunciation. In written language, most orthographic words are preceded by a space and followed by a space or a punctuation mark. However, English words compounded of two or more elements may separate their elements either by hyphens or, confusingly, by spaces as well. You may try and replace books with the compound morphology books in the above example: From a linguistic point of view, the new sentence The students borrowed the morphology books from the university library contains just as many words as the first sentence, although there are more items between spaces. In spoken language, so-called phonological words are even less easy to recognise because speakers of English usually do not leave pauses between their words. Another suggestion for the identification of words would be to interpret them as linguistic signs , that is, as arbitrary combinations of a sound image such as / bʊk / and a concept such as . This works more smoothly with content words like student, borrow, book and library than with function words like the and from that can less easily be imagined. Additionally, according to a very general definition, words can be defined as grammatical units that function according to grammatical rules. Therefore, morphology is also called the grammar of words . As you will have noticed, students, books and borrowed differ from student, book and borrow in that they contain the elements -s or -ed. These elements are not words but alter the meaning of student, book and borrow by adding grammatical information such as [ +plural ] or [ +past ] , provided that they are attached at the appropriate place: Constructions such as *stu-s-dent, *s-book or *ed-borrow are not acceptable in English. If we consult a dictionary of English to check the words in the sentence The students borrowed the books from the library, we will discover that the only items with entries of their own are the, from and library. We will neither find students nor books, nor will we find borrowed. Instead, we will find student, book and borrow. Most What Is a Word? What’s in a Word? Words and the Lexicon 4.1 | 77 M o r P h o L o g y a n d g r a M M a r dictionaries will also inform us that student and book are nouns and that borrow is a verb. If we are native speakers or proficient non-native speakers of English, however, we do not need to consult any dictionary to understand the above sentence. We will simply use what linguists call our mental dictionary , or mental lexicon . Just as any written dictionary, our mental dictionary contains information about the meaning of words, combined with information about their grammatical properties. How many words are there in the sentence The students borrowed the books from the library? Most speakers of English would probably opt for six, because they would count the function word the only once, although it occurs three times. However, journalists and other people who regularly have to produce texts with a maximum or minimum length, expressed in a fixed number of words, might rather opt for eight. The first interpretation corresponds to what linguists define as word types , i.e. ‘particular words’, whereas the second interpretation corresponds to what linguists define as word tokens , i.e. ‘occurrences of words’. Imagine a political newspaper article containing twenty different nouns, such as parliament, government, debate and opposition. The type frequency of nouns in this newspaper article is exactly twenty, because these nouns represent twenty different word types. However, their token frequency will probably be much higher than twenty, because some of these nouns are likely to occur more than once, so that the token frequency of nouns in the whole article might be e.g. thirty-five nouns in various grammatical forms. Accordingly, our example sentence The students borrowed the books from the library contains only six word types, namely various grammatical forms of the four content words student, borrow, book and library and the two function words the and from, but eight word tokens, because the function word the appears three times. Words are distinct from units of sound such as phonemes and syllables in that they carry meaning. They are also distinct from sentences in that they are stored in our mental lexicon as lexical entries, or lexemes . Other than sentences, words are usually not made up on demand. They may be grammatically modified for the production of grammatically correct sentences, but their lexicon entries will remain unchanged. However, speakers of English and other languages may create new words easily. In doing so they follow rules most of which they have never been taught. These rules Words, Sounds and Sentences Word Types and Word Tokens 78 are part of the speakers’ linguistic competence. Linguists differ in their views as to whether the rules are stored together with individual lexemes or separately. Because we know these rules, no matter where exactly they are stored, we are able to understand spoken and written language even if there are obvious mistakes. Consider the following sign from a beach in North Tenerife: A more appropriate and idiomatic translation of the Spanish warning Playa peligrosa, fuertes corrientes would be Dangerous beach, strong currents. The translator coined the expression danger beach, using the noun danger like an adjective, or like the first part of a compound noun composed of two nouns, such as danger area, danger list or danger money. Although danger beach is not a common English expression, other than the three compound nouns danger area, danger list or danger money, we are able to interpret this compound noun because we know and recognise the grammatical rules for combining words even if they are applied in an unusual way. What else do we know about grammar? When we hear a word that is familiar to us, we know whether it is a noun, a verb, an adjective or a member of other word classes, and how it may be used to build larger constructions. We also know how we can modify a word if we want it to carry some particular grammatical information. For instance, we know that the regular plural of English nouns is formed by adding the ending -s. Therefore, Grammatical Rules Playa peligrosa Dangerous beach Fig. 4.1 | M o r P h o L o g y 79 we will form the plural of e-mail accordingly (even though the noun mail is chiefly used in the singular), for instance if we want to complain to a friend that somebody is currently flooding us with e-mails. We also know that the verb e-mail is related to the verb mail. From our knowledge about the grammatical properties of verbs we will conclude that the verb e-mail may also occur in several tenses, in active and passive constructions, as well as in a simple and a progressive form. This is useful if we want to inform our friend that the person with the unpleasant writing urge has, after all, stopped flooding us with e-mails, in other words, stopped e-mailing us. But does our knowledge also work with unfamiliar or invented words? Take a look at the following familiar verbs: Although you have probably never heard the invented verbs e-nail or e-sail before and only have some vague idea of what they might mean, you can easily build grammatically correct forms such as e-nailed and e-nailing, or e-sail and e-sailing. Obviously, speakers’ knowledge about the grammatical properties of words exists independently of their knowledge of single words. This knowledge can be applied to familiar and unfamiliar words alike. However, our ability to create new words has its limits. Not all word classes accept new members. There are open classes that frequently adopt new members, and closed classes that usually do not adopt new members. This corresponds to an important distinction between two groups of word classes. The first group contains word classes such as nouns (e.g. student), verbs (e.g. borrow), adjectives (e.g. new) and adverbs (e.g. quickly). These word classes are called content words . They are also known as lexical classes . Lexical classes are usually open, because they regularly adopt new members. The second group contains word classes such as determiners (e.g. the), prepositions (e.g. from), and conjunctions (e.g. and). These word classes are called function words . They are also known as grammatical classes . Grammatical Some English verbs and their grammatical forms | Fig. 4.2 mail nail sail mailed nailed sailed mailing nailing sailing Open and Closed Word Classes M o r P h o L o g y a n d g r a M M a r 80 M o r P h o L o g y classes are usually closed, as they rarely adopt new members. You may test this with a little experiment: Find out how many new content words and how many new function words you can invent in five minutes, and discuss the result with a friend. To understand more about the making and modifying of words, we need to take a closer look at their internal structure. Morphologists assume that words are not only physically made up of sounds, but also of smallest meaning-bearing units . The linguistic term for any smallest meaning-bearing unit of language is morpheme . Morphemes may carry lexical information but also grammatical information. Take an English word that consists of a single morpheme, such as the noun book. If we want to say that a particular book is a very small book, we may turn it into a minibook, or minibook (the spelling is irrelevant here), by adding miniat the beginning of book. If we want to talk about more than one book, or mini-book, we may add the plural marker -s at the end of these nouns, so that we can talk about books, or mini-books. Book, miniand -s are all individual morphemes. The morpheme miniis used to create a new word from an existing word by adding lexical information, whereas the morpheme -s is used to add the grammatical information [ +plural ] . How many morphemes may occur in a word? The minimum number of morphemes in a word is exactly one, as in book. As to the maximum number of morphemes, there is no limit, at least not theoretically. For instance, Modern German is a language that frequently combines a comparatively high number of morphemes in one word. This has often been ridiculed by speakers of other languages, for instance by the American author Mark Twain (1835-1910). In “The Awful German Language”, Twain does his best to deride “the ponderous and dismal German system of piling Morphemes Word classes 2 Word Classes CLOSED Function Words Grammatical Classes the, every, from, and OPEN Content Words Lexical Classes student, borrow, new, quickly N V Af sing -er 4,S7 4, S6 Morphemes FREE Morphemes = words BOUND Morphemes = affixes OPEN Content Words Lexical Classes student, borrow, new, quickly CLOSED Function Words Grammatical Classes the, every, from, and Lexical or derivational affixes un-, mini-, -ion, -ment Grammatical or inflectional affixes -s, -ing-, -est 4,S8 Fig. 4.3 | Morphemes and Words 81 M o r P h o L o g y a n d g r a M M a r jumbled compounds together”, as he calls it. “The Awful German Language” contains numerous examples from Twain’s collection of German compound nouns, such as Freundschaftsbezeigungen (‘declarations of friendship’), Unabhängigkeitserklärungen (‘declarations of independence’) and Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen (Twain’s satirical translation: ‘General-statesrepresentativesmeetings’). Had Twain lived until the end of the 20th century, he might have been delighted by Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. This German compound noun was coined by the authorities of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as the name of a new law for the inspection of beef and shortlisted for “Word of the Year” by the German Language Society in 1999. But there are famous long words in English, too. One much-quoted example is antidisestablishmentarianism. Especially in English media language, even whole phrases are turned into words by creatively using hyphens, as in ex-madam-now-action-movie-transsexual, one of the many journalistic neologisms in the online database of the Research and Development Unit for English Studies (RDUES) at Birmingham City University. A little warning: This collection is great but also includes non-serious material and puns such as the entry on ebloody: ebloody If ebooks have ejackets then I can perhaps add an ewarning about ebloody estrong elanguage. As we have seen above, some morphemes are identical with words, such as mail. They can combine with other morphemes or stand alone. Therefore, these morphemes are called free morphemes . Others, such as plural endings, or the morpheme unin words such as unkind only appear in combination with free morphemes and never on their own. Therefore, they are called bound morphemes . Bound morphemes are usually affixes , i.e. morphemes that are attached to other morphemes. Affixes play an important role in various morphological processes. On the one hand, we use affixes to express grammatical information such as [ +plural ] , as in book ~ books. On the other hand, we use affixes to build new words. For instance, the noun reader is derived from the verb read by adding the affix -er. The relationship between the morphemes in a word can be represented in a tree diagram. N means noun, V means verb, and Af stands for affix: Free and Bound Morphemes Affixes 82 M o r P h o L o g y The same relationship can also be represented in square brackets: Another common option is the representation of morphemes in braces: {sing}, {-er}. An even more simplified and frequently found form of representation is sing-er. As indicated above, there are different types of affixes with different functions. Lexical or derivational affixes are used in word formation processes , i.e. for the creation of new words, whereas grammatical or inflectional affixes are used in inflectional processes , i.e. processes that add grammatical information. In contemporary English, affix classes tend to be closed. Of course, no one knows how English will form its plural or its past tense 500 years from now, or which new derivational affixes will then be productive , i.e. able to form new words, in word formation processes, but generally languages are more likely to create new content words than new function words or new affixes. Some bound morphemes appear only in particular words. For instance, cranand huckleappear only in cranberry and huckleberry. Such morphemes are called unique morphemes . One may wonder why berries seem to attract unique morphemes, because they do so in languages other than English, too. For instance, the German nouns Himbeere (‘raspberry’) and Brombeere (‘blackberry’) contain the unique morphemes Himand Brom-. In Modern German, there is a superficial similarity to Brom, the German expression for the chemical element bromine, but this noun has nothing to do with the Brombeere and is pronounced differently. Many unique morphemes have developed diachronically from free morphemes we no longer recognise today. Types of Affixes Unique Morphemes Morpheme representation in a tree diagram Grammatical Classes the, every, from, and Lexical Classes student, borrow, new, quickly N V Af sing -er 4,S7 Morphemes FREE Morphemes = words BOUND Morphemes = affixes OPEN Content Words Lexical Classes student, borrow, new, quickly CLOSED Function Words Grammatical Classes the, every, from, and Lexical or derivational affixes un-, mini-, -ion, -ment Grammatical or inflectional affixes -s, -ing-, -est 4,S8 Fig. 4.4 | Fig. 4.5 | Morpheme representation in square brackets [ N [ V sing][ Af er]] 83 M o r P h o L o g y a n d g r a M M a r Not only do linguists have names for the items that are attached to words, they also have special terms for the particular elements of words that they are attached to. Unfortunately, this terminology is not always used consistently. Most linguists call any form to which an affix is attached a base . If a word is stripped of all its affixes, both derivational and inflectional, the remaining part is called the root . Roots are always single morphemes that cannot be morphologically analysed any further. In this common terminology, the word speakers is analysed into an inflectional suffix -s and its base speaker, which itself consists of the derivational suffix -er and its base speak. Speak, however, is not only the base of -er but also the root of the word speaker at the same time, as it cannot be morphologically analysed any further. Base, Root and Stem Types of morphemes | Fig. 4.6 Root and base(s) 3 N N inflectional suffix base for -s (or stem) base for -er, and root V derivational suffix speak -er -s Environment Examples Allomorph • bases that end in a voiceless consonant that is not texts [s ] 4,S11 4.7 | Fig. 4.7 84 M o r P h o L o g y Frequently, the bases that remain when only the inflectional affixes (e.g. plural markers such as -s, or tense markers such as -ed) are taken away are also called stems . Speaker would thus be the stem of speakers as well as the base for the suffix -s. As indicated above, affixes may either carry grammatical information or contribute to the formation of new words. There are different kinds of affixes, depending on where they are attached to a base. Prefixes are affixes that are attached to the beginning of a base, such as antiin the noun antihero (anti-hero), disin the verb disarm (dis-arm), or unin the adjective unfair (un-fair). Suffixes are attached to the end of a base, such as -ness in sadness (sad-ness), -ing in weeping (weep-ing), or -est in deepest (deep-est). Most affixes of English are prefixes and suffixes. Infixes are inserted into a base. One of the few known occurrences of infixation in English is Eliza Doolittle’s absobloominglutely (absolutely+blooming, inserted in the middle) in her famous Cockney song “Wouldn’t it be loverly” in My Fair Lady, the musical based on Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. In English, the only linguistic items that are used for infixation are swear words such as blooming, bloody or fucking. Other than “real” affixes, these infixes are not bound morphemes, but free morphemes or morpheme combinations. Circumfixes are attached both to the beginning and to the end of a base. Consequently, some linguists prefer to interpret circumfixes as a combination of a prefix and a suffix. A typical example is the German past participle. Many German verbs build this verb form by attaching both the prefix geand the suffix -(e)t or -(e)n to the root of the verb, such as sagen (‘say’) ~ gesagt (ge-sag-t) (‘said’), fragen (‘ask’) ~ gefragt (ge-frag-t) (‘asked’) and geben ~ gegeben (ge-geb-en) (‘given’). There are no circumfixes in English. However, this type of affix may occur when English words are borrowed into another language. German-speaking users of electronic media, for instance, have grown so accustomed to English verbs such as download and upgrade that they treat them like German verbs. The results are mixed forms such as gedownloadet (ge-download-et) (‘downloaded’) and upgegradet (up-ge-grade-t) (‘upgraded’). These processes may also be interpreted as combinations of prefixation and suffixation (ge-download-et) or even as combinations of infixation and suffixation (up-ge-grade-t). Infixes and Circumfixes Prefixes and Suffixes 85 M o r P h e M e s a n d a L L o M o r P h s Morphemes and Allomorphs In Chapter 3 “Phonetics and Phonology” we discussed the distinction between phonemes and their allophones. Just as phonemes are realised as different allophones, morphemes are realised as different allomorphs . Allomorphs are variants of morphemes. Consider our example e-mails from section 4.1. Would you pronounce the plural ending e-mail [ s ] or e-mail [ z ] ? If you are a native speaker or a proficient non-native speaker of English, you would probably instinctively pronounce it e-mail [ z ] . In doing so, you would have applied one of the best-known morphophonological rules of English. Morphophonological rules are responsible for the actual realisation of morphemes depending on the phonological context. The morphophonological rule you intuitively applied determines how the English plural morpheme -s for the regular plural is pronounced in different phonological environments. Compare the plural forms texts, e-mails and faxes and the different pronunciations of the plural marker as [ s ] in texts, [ z ] in e-mails and [ ɪz ] in faxes: You will notice that voiceless [ s ] occurs after a voiceless sound such as [ t ] in text, voiced [ z ] occurs after a voiced sound such as [ l ] in e-mail, and [ ɪz ] occurs after the sibilant [ s ] in faxes. Note that [ z ] and [ s ] denote sounds associated with different phonemes, namely / z / and / s / , not allophones of the same phoneme. These particular rules do not apply within morphemes, only at morpheme boundaries. If [ l ] and [ s ] occur within the same morpheme, as in else [ e l s ] , their combination is perfectly legitimate. Generally, the complementary distribution of the three phonologically conditioned allomorphs of the English plural morpheme is as follows: Phonemes and Morphemes | 4.2 Phonologically conditioned allomorphs of the English plural marker N N inflectional suffix base for -s (or stem) base for er, and root V derivational suffix speak -er -s 4,S11 4.7 morphological processes inflectional processes tie-s word formation processes 4.9 • bases that end in a voiceless consonant that is not a sibilant • bases that end in a vowel or in a voiced consonant that is not a sibilant • bases that end in a voiced or voiceless sibilant, i.e. [s], [z], [ʃ] , [ ], [tʃ] or [ ] texts [-s] e-mails [-z] faxes [- ] Environment Examples Allomorph | Fig. 4.8 86 M o r P h o L o g y However, allomorphs are not always affixes and may involve internal sound changes, as in the English plural forms women or men. Occasionally, there is no physical allomorph at all, as in the plural of sheep or aircraft. In such cases, some linguists say that the plural is realised by a so-called zero-allomorph . Morphological Processes As we have seen in the previous sections, morphology describes the processes that create or change words. There are two major groups of morphological processes. Inflectional processes are the morphological processes that add grammatical information to existing words. Some linguists use the term morphology only for such processes. Morphological processes that create new words are called word formation processes . In English, as indicated above, the most important word formation processes are derivation and compounding . Inflection Modern English has only relatively few inflectional affixes, other than languages such as German, Russian or Japanese, which have significantly more. All inflectional affixes of English are suffixes: Inflection and Word Formation 4.3 | Morphological processes N N inflectional suffix base for -s (or stem) base for -er, and root V derivational suffix speak -er -s Environment Examples Allomorph • bases that end in a voiceless consonant that is not a sibilant • bases that end in a vowel or in a voiced consonant that is not a sibilant • bases that end in a voiced or voiceless sibilant, i.e. [ s ], [ z ], [ ʃ ] or [ � ] texts [s ] e-mails [z ] faxes [- �z ] 4,S11 4.7 morphological processes inflectional processes tie-s word formation processes compounding tie rack derivation un-tie 4.9 Fig. 4.9 | Inflection 4.3.1 | 87 I n f L e C t I o n However, English shows many inflectional irregularities. Consider the following poem: Many of the plural forms in this poem mark the changes in number internally (goose ~ geese, foot ~ feet). This kind of internal change reflects traces of other types of plural formations that were productive in earlier periods of English. When a morpheme is replaced with an entirely different morpheme to mark a grammatical con- Inflectional suffixes of Modern English nouns, verbs and adjectives | Fig. 4.10 For a laugh, or a smile We’ll begin with a box , and the plural is boxes ; but the plural of ox is oxen not oxes . One fowl is a goose , but two are called geese , yet the plural of moose should never be meese . You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice ; yet the plural of house is houses , not hice . If the plural of man is always called men, why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen ? If I spoke of my foot and showed you my feet , and I gave you a boot , would a pair be called beet ? If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth , why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth ? Then one may be that , and three would be those , yet hat in the plural would never be hose , and the plural of cat is cats , not cose . We speak of a brother and also of brethren , but though we say mother , we never say methren . Nouns Plural -s the text s Possessive -’s the teacher ’ s text Verbs 3rd person singular present indicative -s she write s well -ing-form she is study ing Past tense -ed he e-mail ed Past participle -ed they have call ed Adjectives Comparative -er the long er one Superlative -est the long est one 88 M o r P h o L o g y trast, this is called suppletion , as in go ~ went. Occasionally, it is hard to determine from a purely synchronic point of view whether a form originates from suppletion or from internal changes. This is the case with verbs like bring ~ brought or find ~ found. The formation of their past tense is sometimes called partial suppletion . Word Formation Unlike inflectional processes, word formation processes may make words change their lexical class (or part of speech). Usually, the right-hand morpheme in a complex English word determines its lexical class. This determining morpheme is often called the head . In English, the most productive word formation processes are derivation and compounding . When a new lexeme is formed by adding an affix to an existing word, this morphological process is called derivation . The English language uses mainly prefixes and suffixes for its derivational processes. Derivational prefixes modify the meaning of English words and, with very few exceptions such as enin enable, do not change their lexical class. Many English prefixes are of Latin or Greek origin. The following survey lists a selection of some types of information that prefixes may add to English words. Many bases of these words are of Latin or Greek origin as well: 4.3.2 | Derivation Prefixes Heads Derivational prefixes Fig. 4.11 | In English, prefixes may inform about, e.g. quantity mono- ‘one’ monograph, monosyllabic poly- ‘many’ polysyllabic, polygraph the kind of involvement co- ‘together, jointly’ coexistence, cooperate contra- ‘against, opposite’ contradiction, contraindication evaluations mis- ‘badly, wrongly’ miscalculate, mislead pseudo- ‘false, deceptive resemblance’ pseudoartist, pseudoprophet place or direction ad- ‘toward’ adjoin, admeasure sub- ‘under, below’ subdivision, subtitle 89 W o r d f o r M a t I o n Derivational suffixes often make English words change their lexical class. For instance, the derivational suffix -ly turns most adjectives into adverbs (e.g. quick-ly, beautiful-ly). Additionally, derivational suffixes may produce new words with different meanings. For instance, the suffixes -er and -ee may combine with the verb interview to create two different nouns, one for the person who does the interviewing, and one for the person who is being interviewed: An interviewer (interview-er) is somebody who interviews an interviewee (interview-ee). Suffixes measurement hyper- ‘over, to excess’ hyperactive, hypersensitive hypo- ‘under, slightly’ hypotactic, hypotoxic negation and opposite dis- ‘apart, reversal, lacking’ disorder, dislike un- ‘not’ unbearable, uneven time and duration post- ‘after, behind’ postdate, postcolonial re- ‘anew, again, back’ regenerate, restore Derivational suffixes | Fig. 4.12 In English, derivational suffixes may form, e.g. agentive nouns from verbs -er ‘agent’ singer, teacher -ist ‘one connected with, or agent’ cyclist, typist abstract nouns from verbs -al ‘act of ’ renewal, revival -ness ‘state, condition, quality of ’ bitterness, fairness verbs from adjectives and nouns -en ‘to become’ darken, deafen -ify ‘to cause to (be)’ purify, beautify adjectives from verbs or nouns -able ‘fit for doing, fit for being done’ agreeable, understandable -less ‘without, free from’ faultless, fearless adjectives from names -(i)(a)n ‘belonging to’ Shakespearean, Victorian -ist ‘supporting’ Marxist, Bushist 90 M o r P h o L o g y As derivational processes may be repeated or combined, we distinguish simple and complex derivations, depending on the degree of complexity involved. Sometimes it is not easy to decide which process occurred first. Consider the noun unkindness: Is the adjective unkind the base to which the nominalisation suffix -ness is attached, or is the negative prefix unattached to the noun kindness? At first sight, both interpretations may be possible. However, the English prefix untends to combine with adjectives, not with nouns. Therefore, the first interpretation to the left is more appropriate. Conversion occurs when a word comes to belong to a new word class without the addition of a physical affix. Therefore, this process is sometimes also called zero-derivation . For instance, many English words exist both as nouns and as verbs, such as smell, taste, hit, walk, bottle, interview, or, more recently, text, the latter nowadays referring to the sending of electronic text messages via mobile phones. It is sometimes hard to determine which grammatical category they belonged to first. Proper names may be converted, too. Prominent examples are Boycott (N) ~ boycott (V), or Bogart (N) ~ bogart (V), as the following slightly modified extract from the Oxford English Dictionary Online shows: bogart , v. Slang. [ < the name of Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957), U.S. film actor. In sense 1, with allusion to the series of strong, tough characters played by Bogart. In sense 2, Conversion Prefixation and suffixation Fig. 4.13 | N N Adj Suffix Prefix N Prefix Adj Adj Suffix un- kind -ness unkind -ness 91 W o r d f o r M a t I o n with allusion to Bogart’s frequent on-screen smoking, esp. to the long drags he took on cigarettes. Cf.: 1951 Western Folklore 10 172 To pull a Bogart, to act tough. ] 1. trans. U.S. (esp. in African-American usage): To force, coerce; to bully, intimidate. [ … ] 2. trans. orig. and chiefly U.S. To appropriate (a marijuana cigarette) greedily or selfishly. Hence more generally: to take or use most of; to steal. Also occas. intr. Popularized by the 1969 U.S. Film Easy Rider, the soundtrack of which featured the song Don’t Bogart Me by Fraternity of Man. (Draft Entry June 2010) Compounding is another major word formation process. This process combines at least two existing words to form a new word. Many English tongue-twisters make use of compounds, such as: She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are surely seashells . So if she sells shells on the seashore , I’m sure she sells seashore shells . In English, most compound words are nouns, verbs or adjectives. There are only a few compounds in other lexical classes, such as the preposition compounds into and onto. Usually, the head of a compound, i.e. the element furthest to the right, determines its lexical class. English compounds may be written either as one word, with or without a hyphen, or as two words. Consider the following noun compounds, verb compounds and adjective compounds: Compounding | Fig. 4.14 Noun compounds N N N N N N V N Adj N Prep N university library call center quick sand after noon broom closet jump suit black bird in laws Verb compounds V V V V N V V V Adj V Prep V 92 M o r P h o L o g y Occasionally, it is hard to determine the compound type, especially with neologisms. In such cases, we may try to identify the lexical class by considering the grammatical properties of the head. For instance, the word whack, which functions as the head of the compound googlewhack, can be a verb as well as a noun. In the RDUES database of neologisms in journalistic text, googlewhack is listed with an example sentence in which it appears as a noun: googlewhack Take two obscure and unrelated words, type them into the google search bar and if the result is a solitary web page you have found a googlewhack . In this example, googlewhack obviously functions as a noun and is preceded by the determiner a. As the media started to comment on this new online sport, however, the word soon also appeared as an inflected verb, as in have you googlewhacked? It is also often not easy to distinguish compounds from syntactic groups and phraseologisms, which are conventionalized expressions. As a result, morphologists have suggested a number of tests such as the following conjunction test: In non-compound combinations, e.g. red neck as in He has a red neck, you may insert another Types of English compounds N N N N N N V N Adj N Prep N university library call center quick sand after noon broom closet jump suit black bird in laws Verb compounds V V V V N V V V Adj V Prep V frog march sleep walk deep fry up end spoon feed drop kick dry clean over look Adjective compounds Adj Adj Adj N Adj Adj Adj Prep Adj sky blue white hot over loud nation wide deep green under ripe 93 W o r d f o r M a t I o n adjective with the help of a conjunction to build phrases such as a red and scarred neck. This is not possible with compounds. In many, but by no means all, cases, the consideration of stress placement can be of help as well. In spoken English, many compounds such as rédneck and dáncing girl have only one main stress on their first constituent, whereas the individual elements of the non-compound combinations réd néck and dáncing gírl carry level stress, i.e. main stresses on each of the elements. If the meaning of a compound can be guessed by combining the meanings of its components, it is called an endocentric compound . Often, the head of the compound is specified by the elements to the left. These compounds are also refered to as determinative compounds . For instance, a morphology book is a special kind of book, garlic sauce is a special kind of sauce, and winter holiday is a special kind of holiday. Most examples in Fig. 4.14 are endocentric compounds. Exocentric compounds such as paperback or redneck have meanings that cannot be guessed by combining the meaning of their components. A paperback is not a special kind of back but a kind of book and a redneck is not a kind of neck but a kind of person belonging to a certain social group in the U.S.A. Other types of word formation processes include blending, clipping and back-formation. Blends combine non-morphemic parts of words into a new word, as in brunch (breakfast+lunch), motel (motor+hotel) or chunnel (channel+tunnel). There are borderline cases between compounding and blending in which at least one of the words remains intact: Users of electronic media will be familiar with blends such as emoticon and netiquette, which gained popularity during the last decade of the 20th century, as the Oxford English Dictionary Online documents (Draft Entry June 2001): emoticon, n. Computing. [ Blend of EMOTION n. and ICON n. ] A representation of a facial expression formed by a short sequence of keyboard characters (usually to be viewed sideways) and used in electronic mail, etc., to convey the sender’s feelings or intended tone. Examples are the sequences : -) and : - ( representing a smile and a frown respectively. 1990 N.Y. Times 28 Jan. I. 39/ 4 Emoticon typographical device used to indicate tone or emotion in a posting. 1994 Observer 13 Feb. (Life Suppl.) 8/ 3 Hence the development of ‘netiquette’, essentially on-line codes of behaviour, and ‘emoticons’ or ‘smileys’, little text ideograms which are used to signal sense (e.g. : - ) Endocentric and Exocentric Compounds Blends, Clippings and Back-Formations 94 M o r P h o L o g y to show good intentions, ; - ) a wink to indicate irony). 1997 Vancouver Sun 29 Jan. D13/ 3 Mitchell and Murphy ask their clients to convey their emotions within square brackets rather than using the normal e-mail emoticons. 2001 Guardian (Electronic ed.) 24 Feb., Imagine the horrors of being poised over your mobile phone and suddenly forgetting the necessary emoticon. Clipping is a word formation process that creates new words by shortening existing words, as in prof from professor, ad from advertisement, plane from aeroplane, flu from influenza or (in British English) pram from perambulator. Back-formations are special types of clipping where a supposed or real affix is removed and the result looks as if the longer word had been derived from the shorter word. For instance, edit is a back-formation of editor, and baby-sit is a back-formation of baby-sitter. Another type of shortening process results in so-called initialisms , which can be subdivided into alphabetisms and acronyms . Initialisms usually consist of the first letters of the words that make up the name of something. Whereas alphabetisms such as U.S.A., EU, BBC, CNN or SMS are spoken as individual letters, acronyms such as UNESCO, NATO, AIDS, radar or laser are pronounced as single words. Mixed cases such as CD-ROM are also possible. Word formation is also possible across languages. English often adopts morphemes from Latin or classical Greek, for example in medical terminology. Many of these morphemes are neither free morphemes nor affixes and referred to as combining forms: cardi(o) - The heart. [ Greek kardia, heart. ] The medical study of the heart is cardiology , practised by a cardiologist ; an electrocardiogram (Greek graphein, write), or ECG, is a record or display of a person’s heartbeat, created by an electrocardiograph . Several adjectives relate to the heart as part of the wider body system; these include cardiovascular (Latin vasculum, a little vessel) for the heart and its blood vessels, cardiopulmonary (Latin pulmo, pulmon-, lung) for the heart and lungs, and cardiothoracic (Greek thorax, chest) for the heart and chest. Outside medicine the most common compound is cardioid for a heart-shaped curve in mathematics. (based on Quinion 2002: 37) New words may also be formed with morphemes from living languages such as German (sitz bath, sitz mark), and occasionally even from names: Initialisms, Alphabetisms and Acronyms Word Formation Across Languages 95 e x e r C I s e s franken - Genetically modified. [ The first element of the name of Baron Victor Frankenstein, from Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus of 1818. ] Activists sometimes describe genetically modified foods as Frankenstein foods, evoking Baron Frankenstein’s creation of a living being, in popular understanding a terrifying monster who turns on his creator and destroys him. The first element of his name appears in various invented words - such as frankenfood , frankencrop , and frankenfruit - with the technology known generically as frankenscience (all are often written with initial capital letter). They are all deeply pejorative. (Quinion 2002: 87-88) Word manufacture or coinage is used, for example, to create product names such as Weetabix, Sellotape, or Marmite. It is also used by writers of fiction for characters or items that exist only within their texts, for example hobbit in John R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. And last but not least, there are special coinages that do not mean anything at all but occasionally are famous nevertheless, such as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from the Walt Disney film Mary Poppins, or the amazing inventions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, such as the word that symbolises Tim Finnegan’s great fall from his ladder: Bothallchoractorschumminaroundgansumuminarumdrumstrumtruminahumptadumpwaultopoofoolooderamaunsturnup! Exercises 1. How many word types and word tokens are there in the sentence The birds sang and the bells rang? How many of these can you find in a dictionary? 2. The following words are made up of two morphemes. Isolate them and decide for each one whether it is free or bound. Where applicable, decide what kind of affix is involved and whether it is inflectional or derivational. a) cats e) signpost b) unhappy f) rejoin c) milder g) greedy d) bicycle h) hateful Inventing New Words | 4.4 96 M o r P h o L o g y 3. Divide the words below into their component morphemes and describe the morphemes as you did in Exercise 2. - Note: words may consist of one, two, or more than two morphemes. a) comfortable d) rationalisation b) reconditioned e) environmental c) senseless f) thickeners 4. In each group of words that follows, identify the lexical categories of the bases and the lexical categories of the whole words. a) government, speaker, contemplation b) fictional, childish, colourful c) calmest, lovelier, sillier 5. Identify the bound affixes in the following groups of words and name the lexical category of their bases. Then say whether the affix changes their lexical category, and if so, say to what. a) spiteful, healthful, truthful b) unsure, untrue, unimportant c) retake, review, relive 6. Bontoc is a language spoken in the Philippines. Which morphological process is used to produce the following verb forms? Describe it in detail, using the appropriate terminology. a) [ fikas ] ‘strong’ e) [ fumikas ] ‘he is becoming strong’ b) [ ki l ad ] ‘red’ f) [ kumi l ad ] ‘he is becoming red’ c) [ bato ] ‘stone’ g) [ bumiato ] ‘he is becoming stone’ d) [ fusu l ] ‘enemy’ h) [ fumiusu l ] ‘he is becoming an enemy’ (adapted from Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University 2016: 185, cf. Bibliography of Chapter 1) 7. There are many euphemisms for dismissing employees. Analyse the following examples regarding the word formation processes that created them. a) career change opportunity b) decruitment c) outplacement 97 B I B L I o g r a P h y 8. Compare with the help of a dictionary: catfish, shellfish, selfish, swordfish. Are these words endocentric or exocentric compounds (or maybe something completely different)? 9. Identify the morphological processes involved in the creation of the following neologisms (adapted from Urban Dictionary): a) Airplane Talker May 24, 2010 Urban Word of the Day noun 1) A person who stands within the confines of your personal space bubble (causing extreme discomfort) to hold an ordinary conversation, like someone sitting next to you on an airplane would. Your friend, over there, is a total airplane talker. 2) A person who speaks louder than the current conversation calls for, as if they are trying to talk over a plane’s engines. b) fat finger May 7, 2010 Urban Word of the Day verb The act of performing a typo. Often used when referring to password typos. I thought the server was down, but I just fat fingered my password. You didn’t get my email? I must have fat fingered the address. c) ash hole April 18, 2010 Urban Word of the Day noun 1) The small opening in the volcanic ash clouds that allows airliners to fly through without any chance of danger. We were stranded at Heathrow Airport for hours until the airline found some ash hole to fly through. 2) The opening at the top of a volcano from which forth spews volcanic ash. Bibliography | 4.5 Aronoff, Mark & Kirsten Fudeman. 2011. What is Morphology? 2nd edition. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. (A beginner-friendly introduction with many valuable examples and exercises) Bauer, Laurie. 1983. English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A standard reference book) Bauer, Laurie. 2003. Introducing Linguistic Morphology. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: 98 M o r P h o L o g y the most important reference grammars) Spencer, Andrew & Arnold Zwicky, eds. 2001. The Handbook of Morphology. Oxford: Blackwell. (Expert articles on central issues in morphology including the relationships between morphology and other linguistic disciplines) Stockwell, Robert & Donka Minkova. 2009. English Words: History and Structure. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Combines language history and the study of word formation for beginners) The Oxford Dictionary of Abbreviations . 2nd edition. 1998. (The most comprehensive dictionary of abbreviations available) Further References Birmingham City University, Research and Development Unit for English Studies. (RDUES). 2011-2020. Neologisms in Journalistic Text. < https: / / www.bcu. ac.uk/ english/ research/ english-linguistics/ rdues/ neologisms-in-journalistic-text> (Another temptation) Burridge, Kate. 2004. Blooming English: Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Brilliant scientainment) Quinion, Michael. 1996-2017. World Wide Words. < http: / / www.worldwidewords. org> (A website that should deny access to anybody with deadlines to meet) Twain, Mark. 1880. “The Awful German Language.” In: Twain, Mark. A Tramp Abroad. Appendix D. Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company, 601-619. (Unflattering but to the point) Urban Dictionary. (1996-2021). < http: / / www.urbandictionary.com> (A user-created online dictionary) Edinburgh University Press. (Updated version of a standard introductory textbook) Bauer, Laurie. 2004. A Glossary of Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (An excellent overview of current terminology) Booij, Geert. 2012. The Grammar of Words: An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Ambitious and comprehensive) Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew. 2018. An Introduction to English Morphology: Words and their Structure. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (Accessible and thorough) Coates, Richard. 1999. Word Structure. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. (Very beginner-friendly and basic) Haspelmath, Martin & Andrea D. Sims. 2012. Understanding Morphology. 2nd edition. London: Arnold. (Extensive treatment of languages other than English) Katamba, Francis. 2004. English Words. Structure, History, Usage. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. (Profound and highly readable) Katamba, Francis & John Stonham. 2006. Morphology. 2nd edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (Updated version of a standard reference book) Lieber, Rochelle. 2015. Introducing Morphology. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A lively and motivating introduction to morphology) Oxford English Dictionary Online. < www.oed.com> (The most comprehensive dictionary of the English language) Plag, Ingo. 2018. Word-Formation in English. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Critical and user-friendly) Quinion, Michael. 2002. Ologies and Isms: Word Beginnings and Endings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A collection of 1.250 productive English affixes) Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. (Still one of 99 Syntax | 5 5.1 Syntactic Categories 100 5.2 Sentence Types 103 5.3 Building Sentences 104 5.4 Characteristic Phrase Structures and Clause Structures of English 113 5.5 Grammatical Rules and Grammaticality 120 5.6 Exercises 123 5.7 Bibliography 124 Contents Syntax examines how words are combined to form larger grammatical units such as phrases, clauses and sentences. This chapter outlines the basic rules and principles that enable speakers to recognise and produce syntactical structures. Abstract 100 s y n t a x 5.1 | Syntactic Categories The term grammar is commonly used to refer to the characteristics of morphology and syntax of a language. The previous chapter on morphology was devoted to the structure of words. Syntax is concerned with the combination of words into phrases, clauses and sentences . Sentences are structured hierarchically . This means that the “building blocks” of sentences are arranged on several levels, with systematic relationships between them: Words are combined into phrases , phrases are combined into clauses , and clauses may either constitute sentences by themselves or be combined to build more complex sentences (cf. 5.3 below). The following figure illustrates the hierarchical relationships within sentences: Syntax classifies words into different syntactic categories (or word classes , or parts of speech ). This classification goes back to the description of Greek and Latin in antiquity. From the chapter on morphology in this book, we are already familiar with most of these categories, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions. We also have an idea about their meaning and know the inflectional properties of the categories that are inflected. But these are only two of the three criteria that linguists traditionally use to determine the syntactic category of a word. The three criteria are meaning , inflection and distribution . Meaning is a notional criterion, whereas inflection and distribution are formal criteria. Meaning refers to the semantic description of the word classes, for example stating that all words which name persons, objects and places are nouns. Inflection refers to the morphological properties of a Words, phrases, clauses and sentences Fig. 5.1 | sentences are combined into \ [ are analysed into clauses are combined into \ [ are analysed into phrases are combined into \ [ are analysed into words Determining Syntactic Categories 101 s y n t a C t I C C a t e g o r I e s word, such as the plural and possessive forms of a noun. The distribution of a word depends on its syntactic properties, including its potential positions and functions within a phrase, clause or sentence. We may try to determine the category of the word teacher by first applying the meaning criterion. A teacher is a person and we know that words naming persons, objects and places are generally nouns. According to its meaning, the word teacher is thus a noun. Secondly, we could check which inflections may occur with the word teacher. Teacher may occur in the plural form teachers, as in Mary loves all her teachers, and the possessive form teacher’s, as in the teacher’s book. Words that have a plural and a possessive form are generally nouns (cf. Fig. 4.10), i.e. the second test confirms that teacher is most likely a noun. Thirdly, we may check the distribution of teacher in sentences. This works most conveniently by finding words in a given sentence for which we can substitute teacher. In the sentence The student went quickly to the new pub, we can substitute both student and pub by teacher, as in The student went quickly to the new teacher or The teacher went quickly to the new pub. Teacher occurs with both a determiner in the teacher and an adjective in the new teacher, which are typical distributions for English nouns. We can now safely say that teacher is a noun. As has been shown by the example above, the identification of a word’s category may be fairly straightforward and simple. The noun teacher fulfils each of the three criteria, so that their combination may occasionally seem redundant. However, combining the criteria is advisable, since all syntactic categories contain words which may cause problems with single tests. Consider the noun intelligence. From the point of view of meaning, nouns are traditionally defined as words referring to persons, objects or places (see above). Intelligence, however, is an abstract entity, i.e. the criterion of meaning only works if the definition is expanded to include abstract entities as well. This is why some linguists prefer not to employ the criterion of meaning at all. In the case of abstract nouns such as intelligence, inflection is not a very helpful criterion either, because many abstract nouns do not appear in the plural or in the possessive. Inflection is generally a somewhat problematic criterion in Modern English, because the English language has lost most of its inflections in Applying Criteria Comparing Criteria 102 s y n t a x the course of its history (cf. Fig. 2.12). Additionally, some words belong to several different word classes and may thus show inflectional properties of more than one syntactic category. Abstract nouns such as intelligence can be best identified by checking their distribution, i.e. whether they can appear in contexts that are characteristic for nouns. The abstract noun intelligence can occur both after a determiner such as the and after an adjective such as immense. We can easily imagine contexts like the intelligence of mice or thanks to their immense intelligence. In this case, the distribution test yields convincing results for the identification of intelligence as a noun. Unfortunately, distribution alone does not always help to safely determine the category of a word either. For instance, most English nouns may occur with determiners (a frog, the pond), except for so called proper nouns naming persons or places: *the London is impossible except in sentences like What I saw was different from the London I remembered. All in all, the safest method for identifying the category of an English word is usually a combination of all three tests. Highly simplified, the meaning, inflection and distribution of the major syntactic categories of English can be summarised as follows: Major Syntactic Categories of English Fig. 5.2 | syntactic category meaning inflection distribution ˘ noun (N) ˘ person, object, ˘ plural ˘ subject or object of a sentence place, abstract ˘ possessive ˘ may follow a determiner entity ˘ may be modified by an adjective ˘ The students went quickly to the new pub ˘ verb (V) ˘ act, event, state, ˘ 3rd person singular ˘ predicate of a sentence emotion present indicative ˘ usually follows the subject, may precede ˘ -ing-form an object ˘ past tense ˘ combines with auxiliaries ˘ past participle ˘ may be modified by an adverb ˘ The students went quickly to the new pub ˘ adjective ˘ quality, attribute ˘ comparative ˘ modifies nouns (Adj) ˘ superlative ˘ occurs before a noun, may be preceded by a determiner ˘ The students went quickly to the new pub ˘ adverb ˘ quality, attribute ˘ ∅ ˘ modifies verbs, adjectives, adverbs and (Adv) prepositions ˘ The students went quickly to the new pub ˘ preposition ˘ location, direction, ˘ ∅ ˘ occurs before a noun or a determiner (Prep) relation ˘ The students went quickly to the new pub 103 s e n t e n C e t y P e s Other syntactic categories are, for instance, pronouns (Pro) such as she or they, determiners (Det) such as a, the, and some, and conjunctions (Con) such as and and or. It is important to note that many words can belong to more than one syntactic category, e.g. the word text, which can be both a noun and a verb (cf. 4.3.2). Sentence Types Words from different syntactic categories are combined to form sentences with different structures and functions. Compare the following four sentences: (1) Anna is singing. (2) Is Anna singing? (3) Sing! (4) How beautifully Anna is singing! When we utter one of these sentences, we do so with a particular communicative purpose. Those intentions are (1) to inform someone of something (2) to get information about something (3) to get someone to do something (4) to express our attitude about something These four intentions correspond to the four major functional sentence types: (1) declarative sentence (2) interrogative sentence ˘ adverb ˘ quality, attribute ˘ ∅ ˘ modifies verbs, adjectives, adverbs and (Adv) prepositions ˘ The students went quickly to the new pub ˘ preposition ˘ location, direction, ˘ ∅ ˘ occurs before a noun or a determiner (Prep) relation ˘ The students went quickly to the new pub Main syntactic categories of English | 5.2 Communicative Intentions Major Functional Sentence Types 104 s y n t a x (3) imperative sentence (4) exclamatory sentence English sentences have characteristic word orders for each of these sentence types. In our examples, we can observe the following word order patterns: (1) noun - auxiliary verb - verb in ing-form (2) auxiliary verb - noun - verb in ing-form (3) verb by itself (4) wh-expression - adverb - noun - auxiliary - verb in ing-form Such a linear representation does not reveal much about the relationships between the individual words that make up the sentences. In the following section, we will take a closer look at some of these relationships and different ways of representing the syntactic make-up of declarative sentences. Building Sentences As previously stated, sentences are made up of words, phrases and clauses. At the word level, the sentence Anna sang a song yesterday can be analysed as follows: Our intuition, however, tells us that certain words in a sentence belong more closely together than others. For instance, we would intuitively say that the words in the group a song are more closely related than the words in the sequences sang a or song yesterday. Groups of words that belong together and function as a single unit in a sentence are called constituents . Constituents can be identified by a number of different constituency tests . Constituents may be identified as units in a sentence by the substitution test . A word or a group of words form a constituent, 5.3 | Constituents and Constituency Tests Substitution Analysis of a sentence at the word level Fig. 5.3 | [ N Anna] [ V sang] [ Det a] [ N song] [ Adv yesterday] 105 if they can be replaced by a pronoun such as she, he, it, they, her, him etc. In the sentence Anna sang a song yesterday, Anna can be replaced by the pronoun she, and a song can be replaced by the pronoun it. The word Anna and the group a song thus must be constituents of this sentence. Another test for constituency is the coordination test. A word or a group of words are a constituent of a sentence, if we can use a conjunction such as and or or to join them to another word or group of words. For instance, Anna could be coordinated with Jack, and a song could be joined to an aria, i.e. Anna and a song must be constituents of our example sentence. Sequences of words which do not belong to a single unit, such as song yesterday, fail this test. Optional constituents may be identified by applying the deletion test . If a word or group of words can be deleted from a sentence, it must be an optional constituent. In our example sentence yesterday can be deleted, hence yesterday must be a constituent of this sentence: A fourth test for constituency is the movement test . Words or groups of words which can be moved to a different position within the sentence are constituents of this sentence. For instance, yesterday can be moved to the beginning of our example sentence and thus must be a constituent. B u I L d I n g s e n t e n C e s Substitution test Anna sang a song yesterday She it | Fig. 5.4 { } { } Coordination Deletion Deletion test Anna sang a song yesterday Anna sang a song yesterday | Fig. 5.6 Movement Coordination test Anna sang a song yesterday Anna and Jack a song and an aria | Fig. 5.5 { } { } 106 s y n t a x A fifth test for constituency is the question test (or stand-alone test ). If a word or a group of words can be used to answer a question and stand alone, they form a constituent. In our example sentence, the group a song can be identified as a constituent by asking the following question: There is no question that has song yesterday as its answer, except questions such as What did you just say? or Which example are we supposed to discuss? to which the answer could indeed be song yesterday. These latter questions are known as metalinguistic (or metadiscursive ) questions because they refer to the language itself. Such questions are not useful in constituency tests, because they can be applied to anything said or written in a particular context. As a result, we can say that our example sentence has the following major constituents (the traditional terminology describing their functions in the sentence is supplied in brackets, cf. Fig. 5.9 below): Anna (the subject), sang (the predicate), a song (an object), as well as the optional constituent yesterday (an adverbial). We have already used the terms for some of the traditional syntactic elements such as subject, predicate, object and adverbial above, assuming that most of us are familiar with them. In addition to the obligatory elements subject and predicate , English sentences can also contain objects , complements and adverbials . Fig. 5.9 provides simplified definitions for each of the main elements of sentences, which are probably similar to the definitions many of us learned in school: Movement test Fig. 5.7 | Anna sang a song yesterday Yesterday, Anna sang a song Questions Question test Fig. 5.8 | Question: What did Anna sing yesterday? Answer: A song Syntactic Elements and their Functions 107 B u I L d I n g s e n t e n C e s The syntactic elements described in Fig. 5.9 are used to build clauses and sentences. A sentence can be loosely defined as an independent syntactic unit which usually begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop / period, question mark or exclamation mark / exclamation point in writing. Up to this point, there has been no need to be more specific or distinguish between clauses and sentences, as our example Anna sang a song yesterday contains a subject as well as a predicate and is both a clause as well as a sentence. A clause is a constituent with one subject-predicate structure and may either constitute a sentence Syntactic elements and their functions subject (S) A syntactic element which is traditionally seen as representing someone or something of which something is said, e.g. John in John came, John helped me, John was freed, John is my friend, or the car in The car is red, The car was scratched, and so on. Subjects can also be constructions with the ing-form of verbs, e.g. knowing him in Knowing him helped me, or clauses, e.g. that he is worried in That he is worried is obvious. predicate (P) Some linguists use the term predicate to refer to that part of a clause or sentence which represents what is said of (or predicated of) the subject, e.g. bought a coat in London in My friend bought a coat in London . Other linguists use the term predicate to refer to the verb only, e.g. bought in My friend bought a coat in London. We will follow the latter convention in this book. (Please note: Some well-known grammars, including Quirk et al.’s (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), refer to this syntactic element as verb) object (O) An element which characteristically represents someone or something, other than the person or thing represented by the subject, that is involved in actions, processes and similar activities. There are direct objects , such as him in I met him , and indirect objects , such as her in I’ll give her a flower. Direct objects, such as him in the first example and a flower in the second example, are immediately involved in a subject’s activities, whereas indirect objects, such as her in the second example, benefit from or receive the direct objects involved in these activities. complement (C) A syntactic element seen as ‘completing’ the construction of another element, frequently the subject and the object. A subject complement thus completes the subject, e.g. happy in He seems happy , whereas an object complement completes the object, e.g. happy in That will make him happy . adverbial (A) A syntactic element usually providing information about the time, place or manner of the action or state referred to in a sentence. Represented by adverbs such as tomorrow, adverbial phrases such as on Monday, or adverbial clauses such as when I’m ready. Cf. I’ll do it tomorrow / on Monday / when I’m ready . (adapted from Matthews 2014) | Fig. 5.9 Clauses and Sentences 108 s y n t a x by itself or be combined with other clauses to form a sentence. Clauses thus contain a subject and a predicate, e.g. Anna (S) sang (P), and may contain other optional syntactic elements, e.g. the object a song in Anna (S) sang (P) a song (O). Sentences which consist of one clause only, i.e. which contain only one subject-predicate structure, are called simple sentences . A clause which makes up a simple sentence must be capable of standing on its own and is thus called a main clause (or independent clause ). Sentences, however, can consist of more than one clause. To form such non-simple sentences, the obligatory main clause may either be combined with one or several main clauses to form a compound sentence , or with at least one subordinate clause (or dependent clause ), which cannot stand on its own, to form a complex sentence . Coordinating conjunctions such as and, but and or are commonly used to join two or more main clauses to form a compound sentence. In contrast, complex sentences often contain a subordinating conjunction such as although, because and when, or a relative pronoun such as who and which. Simple and non-simple sentences Fig. 5.10 | sentence simple sentence non-simple sentence (= one main clause only) compound sentence complex sentence (= main clause + one or (main clause + one or several main clauses) several subordinate clauses) Compound and complex sentences Fig. 5.11 | compound sentence Anna sang a song and/ but her brother played the guitar. main clause coordinating conjunction main clause complex sentences Anna sang a song, although she was ill. main clause subordinate clause containing a subordinating conjunction The police questioned the woman who had witnessed the accident. main clause subordinate clause containing a relative pronoun 109 B u I L d I n g s e n t e n C e s According to the verb form used in the predicate of a clause, clauses can be divided into finite clauses and non-finite clauses . Finite clauses contain a verb element that is marked for tense, such as sang in Anna sang a song yesterday, as well as person and number, such as sings in Anna sings a song every day. Finite clauses can serve as main clauses and subordinate clauses, e.g. although she was ill in the sentence Anna sang a song, although she was ill (cf. Fig. 5.11). In contrast, the verb element in non-finite clauses lacks markers for tense, number and person. The infinitive with to, the present participle and the past participle are non-finite verb forms. Non-finite clauses can only occur in subordinate function, such as the subordinate clauses you to stay in I want you to stay, leaving the country in Leaving the country, they waved their fans goodbye, and defeated by the Spanish team in Defeated by the Spanish team, the German team f lew home on an Airbus A380. After having taken a close look at words and clauses, we can now turn to the phrase level , i.e. the level between the word level and the clause level (cf. Fig. 5.1). Phrases are different from words in that they may consist of more than one word, and different from clauses in that they do not have a subject-predicate structure. Let us consider a simple sentence first. Anna sang is a sentence that consists of only one main clause. The noun Anna is the subject and the verb sang is the predicate. To indicate that both the noun Anna and the verb sang are not only words belonging to different syntactic categories but also phrases (very simple phrases, in this case, but we will encounter more complex phrases soon), we may switch from a functional to Finite and Non-Finite Clauses The Phrase Level | Fig. 5.12 A simple sentence 110 a formal point of view and say that the sentence Anna sang consists of the noun phrase Anna and the verb phrase sang. We may use the term subject noun phrase to distinguish this function of noun phrases from other functions, such as an object noun phrase . Consider the sentence Anna sang a song. The first noun phrase consisting of the noun Anna is the subject, the verb phrase made up of the verb sang is the predicate and the second noun phrase consisting of the determiner a and the noun song is the object of the sentence. s y n t a x A simple sentence revisited Fig. 5.13 | Fig. 5.14 | A sentence with a subject and an object sentence level sentence phrase level subject noun phrase verb phrase object noun phrase word level noun verb determiner noun Anna sang a song sentence level sentence phrase level noun phrase verb phrase word level noun verb Anna sang 111 B u I L d I n g s e n t e n C e s Most linguists prefer to use only abbreviations in tree diagrams, such as S for sentence, NP for noun phrase, VP for verb phrase, N for noun, V for verb, and Det for determiner (cf. Fig. 5.2). According to these conventions, our example sentence from Fig. 5.14 is usually represented as follows: Tree diagrams, as illustrated in Fig. 5.15, and similar representations of sentences are widely used today. Alternatively, the elements of a sentence may also be represented in a linear fashion by enclosing them in labelled square brackets: Phrases are also used to realise other functional syntactic elements. For instance, adverbials can be realized by prepositional phrases, which are abbreviated as PrepP (Fig. 5.17). | Fig. 5.15 A sentence with a subject and an object (phrase structure representation) | Fig. 5.16 A sentence with a subject and an object (representation in labelled square brackets) [ NP [ N Anna]][ VP [ V sang]][ NP [ Det a][ N song]] S NP VP NP N V Det N Anna sang a song 112 s y n t a x To simplify tree diagrams, linguists sometimes leave out the internal structure of selected phrases. These phrases are then represented with so called “clothes hangers”: Phrases can be divided into simple phrases , i.e. phrases consisting of one word only, and complex phrases , i.e. phrases consisting of two and more words. The subject noun phrase Anna A sentence with a subject, a predicate, an object and an adverbial Fig. 5.17 | Simplifications Some sentences with a subject and an object (simplified representation) Fig. 5.18 | Phrases and Heads S syntactic function subject: predicate: object: adverbial: syntactic form NP VP NP PrepP NP N V N Prep N Anna bought books in London S NP VP NP N V Anna sang a song Bob visited his old friend Chris likes big mountains with snow on top 113 C h a r a C t e r I s t I C P h r a s e s t r u C t u r e s a n d C L a u s e s t r u C t u r e s in the sentence Anna sang a song is thus a simple phrase. In the similarly structured sentence The talented soprano sang a song, the subject noun phrase the talented soprano is a complex phrase (cf. also 5.4). The name of a phrase is determined by its head around which it is built, i.e. a phrase built around a noun or a pronoun is a noun phrase (NP), a phrase built around a verb is a verb phrase (VP), and a phrase built around an adjective is an adjective phrase (AdjP) etc. As we know from the section on compounding in the chapter on morphology, the head of a complex word determines the word’s syntactic class and, accordingly, its grammatical properties. Similarly, the heads of syntactic phrases determine the grammatical properties of the phrase. For instance, since nouns and pronouns can function as subjects and objects in clauses, noun phrases headed by nouns and pronouns can also function as subjects and objects. Along the same lines, verb phrases are headed by verbs and can function as the predicate of sentences, adjective phrases are headed by adjectives and can modify nouns, and so on. The relationship between all types of phrases and their heads is summed up in the following blueprint: Characteristic Phrase Structures and Clause Structures of English Each language has its characteristic phrase structures and clause structures. In the acquisition of their first language, children master these characteristic structures at a very early age. For instance, during the two-word stage, which begins around eighteen months, children start to use their native language’s characteristic order of subject noun phrase and verb phrase: Phrases and their heads An XP is a phrasal constituent headed by an X. | Fig. 5.19 | 5.4 Some Examples for Language-Specific Structures 114 s y n t a x However, before we can take a closer look at the characteristic clause structures of English, we need to discuss some of the typical phrase structures. We will now take a look at the internal structure of some simple and complex phrases. In English, a simple noun phrase consists of the head only, i.e. of a single proper noun (e.g. Anna, Bob, or Chris), or a single plural noun without a determiner (e.g. boats, cars, or bikes) or a single pronoun (e.g. he, she, or they). In contrast, a complex noun phrase contains at least one additional constituent. Possible constituents are determinative and premodifier before the head, and postmodifier after the head. The determinative is typically realized by determiners, the premodifier frequently consists of adjectives or adjective phrases, and items such as prepositional phrases, finite clauses and relative clauses are used as postmodifier. Fig. 5.21 shows that adjective phrases (AdjP) may contain more than one adjective (e.g. red and green), and prepositional phrases (PrepP) may not only contain more than one preposition (e.g. on and under), but are also often complemented by complex noun phrases (e.g. the table). As the following example shows, elements of the same category are sometimes linked with a coordinating conjunction such as or or and: Word order at the two-word stage in first language acquisition (adapted from Peccei 2006) Fig. 5.20 | English German Finnish Samoan Bambi go Puppe komm Seppo putoo Pa’u pepe ‘doll come’ ‘Seppo fall’ ‘fall doll’ subject NP + VP subject NP + VP subject NP + VP VP + subject NP Noun Phrases Adjective Phrases and Prepositional Phrases Constituents of complex noun phrases Fig. 5.21 | determinative premodifier head (noun or pronoun) postmodifier every long holiday that we plan (all) the red (and green) candle(s) on (and under) the table those who care a small one 115 As we have just seen, most constituents of phrases may occur more than once. Accordingly, we may produce phrases of nearly infinite complexity. Repeatable rules that can be applied over and over again are called recursive . We may, for example, integrate several prepositional phrases into a noun phrase. When we add the prepositional phrase with the hat to the noun phrase the lady, the result is the complex noun phrase the lady with the hat: We may repeat this procedure and add the prepositional phrase with the feather to the noun phrases the hat in the prepositional phrase with the hat, thus expanding the noun phrase the lady with the hat to the lady with the hat with the feather: C h a r a C t e r I s t I C P h r a s e s t r u C t u r e s a n d C L a u s e s t r u C t u r e s Further complex phrases | Fig. 5.22 Recursivity A complex noun phrase with one prepositional phrase | Fig. 5.23 Recursivity | Fig. 5.24 116 s y n t a x After this, we may add the prepositional phrase on the brim to the noun phrase the feather, creating the complex noun phrase the lady with the hat with the feather on the brim: Complex phrases may also be represented in labelled square brackets: Depending on the obligatory constituents that have to follow a verb, verbs are often divided into different transitivity types. Intransitive verbs do not need any further obligatory constituents, e.g. the verb sleep in the sentence She was sleeping. In contrast, transitive (or monotransitive) verbs require an object noun phrase. In the sentence I love books, the subject I is followed by the transitive verb love, which requires an object, in this case books. Recursivity continued Fig. 5.25 | Recursivity continued (representation in labelled square brackets) Fig. 5.26 | [ NP the lady [ PrepP with [ NP the hat [ PrepP with [ NP the feather [ PrepP on [ NP the brim]]]]]]] Verbs and Transitivity Types 117 C h a r a C t e r I s t I C P h r a s e s t r u C t u r e s a n d C L a u s e s t r u C t u r e s Ditransitive verbs need two object noun phrases, a direct object and an indirect object (cf. Fig. 5.9). In the sentence We sent them a parcel, the subject we is followed by the ditransitive verb send, which requires a direct object such as a parcel and an indirect object such as them. The most widely-known verb transitivity types are illustrated in Fig 5.27. It is important to note that many verbs belong to several different transitivity types. For instance, the verb sing can be used intransitively (e.g. Anna sang), monotransitively (e.g. Anna sang a song) and ditransitively (e.g. Anna sang him a song). Corresponding to the types of verbs illustrated in Fig. 5.27, there are a limited number of characteristic clause patterns found in declarative sentences in English. In Fig. 5.28, we will represent some of these basic patterns, using S for subject, P for predicate, and O for object (cf. Fig. 5.9). The patterns illustrated in Fig. 5.28 are characteristic of English declarative clauses and the reason for the classification of English as a so called SPO language (or SVO-language ). Some verb transitivity types | Fig. 5.27 verb type required other example example constituents verbs clause intransitive none sleep, swim, sing She was sleeping transitive one object NP love, hate, sing I love books (or monotransitive) ditransitive two object NPs send, give, offer, We sent them sing a parcel Some basic clause patterns | Fig. 5.28 verb type example clause clause pattern intransitive She was sleeping SP transitive I read a book SPO (or monotransitive) ditransitive We sent them a parcel SPOO Some Basic English Clause Patterns 118 s y n t a x In another research tradition, the syntactic structure of verb phrases is described with the help of an analogy from chemistry. Just as chemical elements may form bonds with a certain number of other chemical elements, predicates may combine with a certain number of so called syntactic arguments . This relationship is known as valency . Within this research tradition, the subject noun phrase is seen as one syntactic argument among others. This means that predicates with intransitive verbs, which do not require any arguments other than a subject noun phrase, are interpreted as monovalent , predicates with transitive (or monotransitive) verbs, which require the two arguments subject and object, as divalent , and predicates with ditransitive verbs, which require the three arguments subject, direct object and indirect object, as trivalent: Additionally, there is a group of English verbs such as rain or snow which form predicates that do not require a subject in the sense of ‘someone or something of which something is said’ (cf. Fig. 5.9). These verbs regularly trigger the use of the so called “dummy it”, as in It is raining, to fill the subject slot of a sentence. Verbs from this group do not require a syntactic argument and are thus interpreted as avalent, because the “dummy it” is not considered a “real” argument. In addition to the basic types of verbs and corresponding clause patterns outlined above, there are further verb types and clause patterns which are relevant for English. Copular verbs (or “linking verbs”) such as be and become are followed either by a subject complement such as the President of the United States in He became the President of the United States or by an adverbial such as too early in We were too early. Complex transitive verbs such as find or put form clause patterns with a combination of an object such as clause patterns and a complement such as fascinating in the clause We find clause patterns fascinating, or an object such as the Further Types of English Verbs Valency Valency: Some types of predicates and their arguments Fig. 5.29 | predicate type examples arguments monovalent She was sleeping she divalent I read a book I, a book trivalent We sent them a parcel we, a parcel, them 119 C h a r a C t e r I s t I C P h r a s e s t r u C t u r e s a n d C L a u s e s t r u C t u r e s book and an adverbial such as on the shelf in I put the book on the shelf: Corresponding to the types of verbs illustrated in Fig. 5.30, there are further characteristic clause patterns shown in Fig. 5.31, containing complements (C) and adverbials (A) as additional syntactic elements (cf. Fig. 5.9). In terms of valency, copular verbs form divalent predicates, i.e. they require two arguments, whereas complex transitive verbs form trivalent predicates, i.e. they require three arguments. The following figure gives an overview of the seven characteristic clause patterns of English, including the corresponding verb types and their valency: Further types of verbs | Fig. 5.30 verb type required other constituents example verbs example clauses copular one complement become, be He became the President of the United States or an adverbial We were too early complex one object NP and find, put We find clause transitive one complement patterns fascinating or one object NP and I put the book on an adverbial the shelf Further English Clause Patterns Further clause patterns of English | Fig. 5.31 verb type example clause clause pattern copular He became the President SPC of the United States We were too early SPA complex transitive We find clause patterns fascinating SPOC I put the book on the shelf SPOA 120 s y n t a x The clause patterns shown in Fig. 5.32 correspond to what is frequently referred to as the characteristic word order of English. Word order, or more precisely the order of constituents of a sentence and the word order within these constituents, is particularly important in analytic languages such as Modern English (cf. 2.1.4). As English has lost most of its inflections in the course of its history, word order is now essential for the expression of grammatical relations within sentences. A change in the order of constituents almost invariably leads to a change in meaning: John loves Shirley does not mean the same as Shirley loves John. Changes in word order can also result in a violation of the sentence structure rules of a particular language: *Loves Shirley John is considered impossible in English and thus marked with an asterisk. Strings of words which do not conform to the syntactic rules of a particular language are called ungrammatical. We will look at grammaticality in the following section. Grammatical Rules and Grammaticality Human memory is limited and speakers cannot store all possible words and sentences of a language in their brains. In the traditional view, they store words and grammatical rules, which enable them to produce, understand and make judgements about an unlimited number of sentences based on a limited The seven basic clause patterns of English Fig. 5.32 | verb type example clause valency clause pattern intransitive She was working monovalent SP transitive- I read a book divalent SPO (or-monotransitive) ditransitive We sent them a parcel trivalent SPOO copular He became the President divalent SPC of the United States We were too early divalent SPA complex transitive We find clause patterns trivalent SPOC fascinating I put the book on the shelf trivalent SPOA 5.5 | Grammaticality 121 g r a M M a t I C a L r u L e s a n d g r a M M a t I C a L I t y set of means. The more recently introduced approach referred to as construction grammar argues for a less clear-cut division of vocabulary and syntax, and claims that the mental grammar of speakers consists of a network of constructions (i.e. symbolic form-meaning pairings), ranging in size from individual morphemes to abstract phrasal patterns. Whatever the approach, speakers are believed to acquire this largely subconscious knowledge when they acquire a language. Without necessarily being able to explain why, native speakers and proficient non-native speakers can usually intuitively tell the difference between a grammatical sentence , i.e. a sentence that obeys the grammatical rules of the language in question, and an ungrammatical string of words , i.e. a string of words that violates the grammatical rules of this language. Consider a famous example coined by Noam Chomsky more than half a century ago: Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. *Furiously sleep ideas green colourless. Native speakers as well as proficient non-native speakers of English will identify the first sentence as grammatical, although it does not make much sense, whereas they will judge the structure of the second example ungrammatical in English. Some linguists also use the terms well-formed for grammatical sentences and ill-formed for ungrammatical sequences of words. We will avoid these terms here because descriptive linguistics generally avoids value judgements (cf. 1.3). The unconscious knowledge native speakers have of the grammatical rules of the language they grow up with is called competence . On the basis of their competence, they are able to state that the sentence Colourless green ideas sleep furiously conforms to the grammatical rules of English, while *Furiously sleep ideas green colourless does not. Competence, however, is not the same as actual language behaviour. What humans actually produce in their spoken or written utterances may or may not reflect their competence. Particularly in spoken discourse, humans often do not strictly follow the syntactic rules of a language although they are familiar with them. This happens either unintentionally, due to impairing factors such as distractions, or deliberately, for the sake of certain effects. Actual language behaviour is called performance . Competence and Performance 122 s y n t a x Crystal (2003: 191) observes that “native speakers of English quite often say that they ‘don’t know’ any grammar, or that foreigners speak English better than they do”. Such statements are not merely a matter of being polite to non-native speakers. In fact, native speakers are often unable to explain the grammatical rules of their language because, as stated above, their linguistic knowledge is largely subconscious. They “ know their grammar ” but do not necessarily know much about it , i.e. they are often not able to formulate the rules governing their linguistic choices. Non-native speakers, on the other hand, often learn these rules consciously, as most of us know from personal experience. The fairly recent generative approaches to syntax pay particular attention to the subconscious rules that constitute our competence and allow us to generate an unlimited number of sentences. Generative approaches originated with Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. One of these approaches, the so called principles-and-parameters framework , which was initiated by Chomsky at the end of the 1970s, assumes that there are general (or universal) principles that are common to all languages, and individual parameters which differ from language to language. For example, one general principle says that declarative sentences must contain a subject. The subject of a sentence in English is usually explicitly expressed by means of a noun phrase, whereas it may appear either explicitly or implicitly in other languages: For instance, the Italian sentence Parla francese (‘she speaks French’) is perfectly grammatical without an explicit subject, whereas most speakers of English would consider the literal equivalent *Speaks French to be ungrammatical. Languages such as Italian are known as null-subject languages, whereas languages such as English are considered non-null-subject languages. The corresponding parameter is known as the Null Subject Parameter, which states whether the subject has to be expressed explicitly. The position of syntactic elements within sentences, such as the position of the predicate, is another parameter which differs between languages (cf. Fig. 5.20). Generative Approaches to Syntax Syntax, Grammar and Meaning “ Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.” (Mark Twain. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. 1889) Knowing Grammar and Knowing About Grammar 123 e x e r C I s e s As we have seen in this chapter, it is our conscious or subconscious knowledge of grammatical rules that allows us to not only judge whether a sentence is grammatical, but also helps us to interpret its meaning. We will take a closer look at the meaning and meanings of words, phrases and sentences in the next chapter. | 5.6 | 5.7 Exercises 1. Determine the syntactic categories of the words in the following sentences. Represent your results as in Fig. 5.3. a) Bob called a friend. b) She called him a genius. c) The baby cried. d) The students sent the teacher some very interesting suggestions. 2. Why is call a verb? Apply all three relevant criteria and give reasons. 3. Determine the sentence types. a) Twinkle, twinkle, little star! b) How I wonder what you are! c) Is the little star twinkling? d) The little star is twinkling. 4. Determine whether a book is a constituent in the sentence John read a book last night by applying constituency tests. 5. Identify all simple and complex phrases in the following sentences. a) April is a cruel month. b) Midnight shakes the memory. c) I met a traveller from an antique land. 6. Represent the sentence John read a book a) with the help of a tree diagram. b) using labelled square brackets. 124 Aarts, Bas. 2017. English Syntax and Argumentation. 5th edition. London: Red Globe Press. (Thorough but accessible) Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman. (A widley used corpus-based reference grammar) Biber, Douglas, Susan Conrad & Geoffrey Leech. 2002. Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman. (A student-friendly version of Biber et al. 1999, accompanied by a workbook) Börjars, Kersti & Kate Burridge. 2010. Introducing English Grammar. 2nd edition. London: Hodder Education. (Beginner-friendly and lively) Burton-Roberts, Noel. 2016. Analysing Sentences: An Introduction to English Syntax. 4th edition. Abingdon: Routledge. (Comprehensive and clear) s y n t a x 7. Represent the complex noun phrase the husband of the lady with the cat a) with the help of a tree diagram. b) using labelled square brackets. 8. Analyse the example sentences of exercise 1 and in each identify a) the verb type. b) the clause pattern. c) the valency of the verb. 9. Which of the following examples based on poems by T. S. Eliot are grammatical sentences? Give reasons. a) Houses rise fall and b) Houses live and die c) We are the hollow men d) The we are hollow men Bibliography Chomsky, Noam. 2015. The Minimalist Program. 20th Anniversary Edition. Cambridge: MIT Press. (A milestone in generative grammar) Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures. Berlin: de Gruyter. (The vantage point of generative grammar) Crystal, David. 2018. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Very illustrative and appealing) Fabb, Nigel. 2005. Sentence Structure. 2nd edition. Abingdon: Routledge. (Contains a wealth of useful exercises) Fenn, Peter & Götz Schwab. 2018. Introducing English Syntax: A Basic Guide for Students of English. Abingdon: Routledge. (An accessible introduction with exercises) Gelderen, Elly van. 2010. An Introduction to the Grammar of English. Revised edition. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (Excellent for beginners) 125 B I B L I o g r a P h y Haegeman, Liliane & Jacqueline Guéron. 1999. English Grammar: A Generative Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell. (Substantial and clear) Hoffmann, Thomas & Graeme Trousdale (eds.). 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A comprehensive overview of constructionist approaches) Huddleston, Rodney. 1984. Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Traditional but strongly aware of theoretical discussions) Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (An advanced comprehensive reference grammar) Matthews, Peter H. 2014. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Very helpful as a first orientation) Miller, Jim. 2008. An Introduction to English Syntax. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (Basic and accessible) Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (CGEL). London: Longman. (Still one of the most comprehensive traditional reference grammars) Radford, Andrew. 2004a. Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Very thorough, with extensive workbook sections and practical hints) Radford, Andrew. 2004b. English Syntax: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Abridged version of Minimalist Syntax, suitable for ambitious beginners) Tallerman, Maggie. 2020. Understanding Syntax. 5th edition. Abingdon: Routledge. (Very accessible and beginner-friendly) Verspoor, Marjolijn & Kim Sauter. 2000. English Sentence Analysis. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (Great for absolute beginners) Further References Eliot, T. S. 1963. Collected Poems 1909-1962. New York: Harcourt Brace. (Thought-provoking and rich in linguistic challenges) Peccei, Jean. 2006. Child Language. <http: / / childlanguage.homestead.com> (A beginner-friendly site with many useful links) Twain, Mark. 1889. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Webster. 127 Semantics | 6 6.1 The Study of Meaning 128 6.2 Lexical Semantics 128 6.2.1 Meaning Relations Among Words 129 6.2.2 Word Meaning 135 6.2.3 Conceptualisation and Categorisation 138 6.3 Sentence Meaning 141 6.3.1 Meaning Relations Among Sentences 141 6.3.2 Sentence Interpretations 144 6.4 Exercises 148 6.5 Bibliography 149 Contents Semantics is the systematic study of meaning in human language. It is concerned with the linguistic meaning of words, phrases and sentences. Other than pragmatics (cf. Chapter 7), semantics deals mainly with context-independent meaning. Abstract 128 s e M a n t I C s The Study of Meaning What do linguists mean when they say that they study meaning? Linguists working in the field of semantics are interested in meaning in human language (or linguistic meaning ). For thousands of years, philosophers have been concerned with more general questions of meaning and the nature of meaning, but we will only address linguistic meaning here. We have seen in Section 1.3 that there is an arbitrary but systematic relationship between the form and the meaning of each word in a certain language. According to Saussure, each linguistic sign (or word) consists of two inseparably connected parts, namely a sound sequence (or signifier) and a concept (or signified). The speakers of a certain language or language variety are aware of the generally agreed upon meaning(s) of words. As we know, with only a few exceptions such as onomatopoeic words, these meanings are only a matter of convention. In order to be able to communicate with others in a particular language, we must learn and adhere to the agreed-upon meanings of words, and the ways in which words are combined to form larger meaningful units such as phrases and sentences (cf. Chapter 5). Accordingly, semantics can be split up into two major branches: lexical semantics is concerned with the meaning of words and the meaning relationships among words, whereas sentential semantics (or phrasal semantics ) deals with the meaning of syntactic units larger than words, i.e. phrases, clauses and sentences, and semantic relationships between them. Lexical Semantics In Chapter 4 on morphology, we have seen that words are made up of one or more so-called morphemes, defined as the smallest meaning-carrying units in language. In lexical semantics we will discuss the meaning of words, keeping in mind that words may consist of several morphemes. “Language without meaning is meaningless.” (Roman Jakobson) Branches of Semantics 6.1 | 6.2 | 129 M e a n I n g r e L a t I o n s a M o n g W o r d s Meaning Relations Among Words The words of a certain language or variety can be semantically related to one another in a number of different ways. We will now take a look at the most important of these meaning relations (or sense relations ). Imagine you have to write an essay describing the process of buying your first house. What can you do to avoid using the word buy over and over again? One strategy would be to choose other verbs with the same or nearly the same meaning, such as purchase or acquire. Buy, purchase and acquire are said to be synonyms , the semantic relation between them is termed synonymy . Synonyms are traditionally defined as words with the same meaning. It is, however, rare for words to have exactly the same meaning (or perfect synonymy). Many linguists claim that it would be uneconomical for one language to have two or more words with exactly the same meaning and thus prefer to define synonymy as extensive semantic similarity . For example, synonyms may differ with regard to stylistic level (buy ~ purchase, cf. the example sentences in Style in Section 8.2), or social or regional variety (e.g. BrE lift ~ AmE elevator). Lists of synonyms can be looked up in a thesaurus . Thesauruses are dictionaries in which words with similar meanings are grouped together. The most famous thesaurus of the English language is Roget’s Thesaurus. It does not only provide lists of synonyms, but can also help us to find the opposite of synonyms, namely antonyms. Word pairs that are opposite in meaning are called antonyms . The semantic relationship between them is referred to as antonymy . Antonyms are opposites with respect to at least one component of their meaning, but share all other aspects of their meaning. For example, the verbs come and go are opposites with respect to direction but both involve the notion of movement. To Synonymy Some pairs of synonyms in English car ~ automobile begin ~ commence worker ~ employee informal ~ casual house ~ domicile eat ~ consume | Fig. 6.1 Antonymy | 6.2.1 130 s e M a n t I C s specify the “kind of oppositeness”, linguists distinguish several major types of antonyms. Word pairs like present ~ absent or dead ~ alive are referred to as complementary pairs . Complementary antonymy is characterised by an either-or relationship between the two members of such a pair, and by the fact that the negative of one of the words is synonymous with the other. For example, a person can be either present or absent and either dead or alive. Furthermore, not present is synonymous with absent and not absent is synonymous with present, just as not dead is synonymous with alive and not alive is synonymous with dead. Antonym pairs such as hot ~ freezing or small ~ large belong to a different type of antonymy. Pairs like these are referred to as gradable pairs , while the type of antynomy is accordingly called gradable antonymy . In these cases, the opposite of one of the words is not necessarily synonymous with the other. We all know from our favourite fast food place that drinks do not only come in small and large, but that there is at least a medium in between. So not large is not necessarily synonymous with small, just as not hot is not necessarily synonymous with freezing. Gradable antonymy is sometimes also referred to as polarity , because gradable pairs are often opposite poles of a continuum of expressions, with one or more intermediate stages between them: The example shows that there is obviously not an either-or relationship between gradable antonyms. In gradable pairs, more of one is less of the other. More smallness is less largeness and hotter is less freezing. Most gradable pairs are pairs of adjectives that do not by themselves provide an absolute scale but are always related to the expression they modify. For example, even a large bee is still much smaller in absolute size than a small horse. Some pairs of gradable antonyms show an asymmetry with respect to their usage conditions. This means that one of the words can appear in more contexts than the other. When we Gradable antonymy small medium large Fig. 6.2 | hot warm tepid cool cold freezing 131 M e a n I n g r e L a t I o n s a M o n g W o r d s ask questions like How old are you? and How high is the skyscraper? , we automatically use old not young and high not low. The expressions with the wider range of uses, here old and high, are called unmarked , whereas the expressions with the more limited range of uses, here young and low, are referred to as marked . We say that these gradable antonyms differ with respect to markedness . Another type of antonymy can be illustrated by pairs like teacher ~ pupil and buy ~ sell. The words in these pairs are called relational opposites , as they describe the same situation from opposite perspectives. If X is Y’s pupil, then Y is X’s teacher, and if X buys something from Y, then Y sells something to X. For example, nouns derived from verbs by adding the bound derivational suffixes -er and -ee respectively are usually relational opposites. If X is Y’s employee, than Y is X’s employer. Or think about the pair interviewer ~ interviewee we have discussed in the section on word formation (cf. 4.3.2). The fourth and last type of antonymy we would like to address here shows in pairs such as come ~ go and rise ~ fall. We have said above that come ~ go are opposites with respect to the direction of a movement. The same holds true for the pair rise ~ fall. Pairs like these that describe the opposite directions of a movement are thus called directional opposites . From the point of view of word formation, there are a number of different ways to form antonyms: We have seen above that we can add -er ~ -ee to some verbs to produce opposite nouns, as in interviewer ~ interviewee. Other morphological ways to form antonyms include the addition of the prefixes un-, in-, non-, disand mis-, as in Types of antonyms - an overview | Fig. 6.3 antonyms complementary pairs ˘ either-or relationship ˘ not X = Y gradable pairs ˘ opposite poles of a continuum ˘ more of X is less of Y relational opposites ˘ describe the same situation from opposite perspectives directional opposites ˘ describe opposite directions of a movement 132 s e M a n t I C s able ~ unable, sane ~ insane, sexist ~ non-sexist, honest ~ dishonest and behave ~ misbehave. Knowing a word involves both knowing the pronunciation and the meaning of the word. This corresponds to Saussure’s model of the linguistic sign, which always consists of a sound sequence (= form) as well as a concept (= meaning). However, there are sound sequences that have two or more different meanings. When the individual meanings of a sound sequence are historically and / or semantically related, we speak of one polysemous word that has a range of different meanings. When the individual meanings of a sound sequence are unrelated, we speak of separate words that are homophones . According to the above distinction, homophony occurs where one form has two or more completely distinct meanings, as in / raɪt / representing both right and write. Homophones are thus different words with the same pronunciation. In dictionaries, homophones are usually represented by separate entries. Spelling is completely irrelevant. Write and right are homophones just like bank ‘the side of a river’ and bank ‘a financial institution’, because each of the two pairs consists of different words with an identical pronunciation. On the other hand, as we have said above, polysemy occurs where one lexeme has a range of different but related meanings. Polysemy is an extremely widespread phenomenon, as it is very common for words to have more than one meaning. Take a look at any page of a dictionary and you will most likely find a number of words with more than one definition. The entry for the verb buy in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD) can serve as an illustration for a polysemous word: buy / baɪ / verb WITH MONEY 1 ~ sb sth| ~ sth (for sb) to obtain sth by paying money for it: [ vnn, vn ] He bought me a new coat. He bought a new coat for me. [ vn ] Where did you buy that dress? I bought it from a friend for £10. [ v ] If you’re thinking of getting a new car, now is a good time to buy. [ vn-adj ] I bought my car second-hand. OPP sell 2 [ vn ] (of money) to be enough to pay for sth: He gave his children the best education that money can buy. Five pounds doesn’t buy much nowadays. 3 [ vn ] to persuade sb to do sth dishonest in return for money SYN bribe: He can’t be bought (= he’s too honest to accept money in this way). Homophony, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity 133 M e a n I n g r e L a t I o n s a M o n g W o r d s OBTAIN 4 [ vn ] [ usually passive ] to obtain sth by losing sth else of great value: Her fame was bought at the expense of her marriage. BELIEVE 5 [ vn ] (informal) to believe that sth is true, especially sth that is not very likely: You could say you were ill but I don’t think they’d buy it (= accept the explanation). Both polysemy and homophony refer to a single form that has two or more meanings. Such words with more than one meaning are called ambiguous , and accordingly polysemy and homophony are said to create lexical ambiguity . The sentence She has bought it could mean either that she has obtained something by paying money for it or, metaphorically, that she believes something she has heard to be true (cf. the definitions 1 and 5 in the above entry for buy from the OALD). In this case, we cannot tell which of the two possible meanings of buy the speaker or writer of the sentence intended. The sentence is ambiguous. Many puns and jokes are based on ambiguity. Consider the following example: Is life worth living? It depends on the liver . In our example, liver is used as an ambiguous noun that either means ‘a large organ in our body’ or ‘a person who lives’. In the second rather exceptional meaning, liver is interpreted as a noun that is derived from the verb live by adding the derivational suffix -er. In our explanation of the ambiguity in this example, we have just used the lexically ambiguous term organ that can either refer to a body part or a musical instrument. In this case, however, it becomes immediately clear from the context that organ refers to a body part, as it would be very unlikely for a musical instrument the size of an organ to be “in our body”. This shows that the surrounding words and the wider context usually make the intended meaning clear. Thus, we can say that on the one hand lexical ambiguity is extremely widespread, but on the other hand it rarely causes real comprehension problems in everyday speech. Homophony and polysemy have so many things in common that it is in many cases difficult if not impossible to distinguish between these two types, especially from a purely synchronic point of view. It is not always clear where to draw the line and 134 s e M a n t I C s decide whether two meanings are related or unrelated. Etymological information, i.e. information about the history of individual words, can provide some clues, but there is no general agreement on how far back in time we should go in our research and how similar the meanings have to be in order to be called “related”. Words that are spelled the same but have different meanings are referred to as homographs , such as bank ‘a financial institution’ and bank ‘the side of a river’, or dove / dʌv / the bird and dove / doʊv / , the past tense of the verb dive in American English. This relationship is called homography . Homographs that are not pronounced identically, such as dove / dʌv / and dove / doʊv / are also called heteronyms . This means that all heteronyms are homographs, but not all homographs are also necessarily heteronyms. All homographs that are not heteronyms are pronounced the same and thus homophones, such as bank ‘a financial institution’ and bank ‘the side of a river’. The following table should help to clarify the distinctions between the somewhat overlapping semantic terms we have looked at so far: Unfortunately, not all linguists use these semantic labels in exactly the same way. In addition to the terms outlined in Fig. 6.4, some linguists use the term homonymy , which is employed in one of two ways. It is either used synonymously with homophony or employed in a narrow sense to refer only to those words that have both identical pronunciations and spellings. Employing the latter definition, some linguists would systematically distinguish the homophones right and write from the homonyms bank ‘a financial institution’ and bank ‘the side of a river’. Homography, Heteronymy and Homonymy Some semantic relations among words Fig. 6.4 | Synonymy Antonymy Polysemy Homophony Homography Heteronymy same/ similar meaning yes no no no no no pronounced identically no no yes yes irrelevant no same spelling no no yes irrelevant yes yes historically related irrelevant irrelevant yes no irrelevant irrelevant 135 W o r d M e a n I n g The last semantic relation we want to look at here involves hierarchies in the vocabulary. When the meaning of one word is included in the meaning of another, we speak of hyponymy . For example, words like peach, orange and mango are hyponyms of the more general expression fruit. This means that peach, orange and mango are subordinate to the term fruit. The term fruit itself, on the other hand, is called a hyperonym , because it is superordinate to the more specific terms peach, orange and mango. A different kind of hierarchical relationship is involved in part-whole relations . A pit (or stone) is a part of a peach just as the trunk and the branches are parts of a tree. Pit is thus a so-called meronym of peach, and trunk and branch are meronyms of tree. Some linguists refer to the opposite of meronymy as holonymy , i.e. peach and tree would be holonyms in our examples. Meronymy is different from hyponymy in that it refers to terms for parts of real objects, whereas hyponymy refers to a hierarchy between sets of words. This means that a peach is not a part of an actual fruit but that the word peach is an element in the semantic class of fruit. Word Meaning In the previous section, we have seen that linguists have developed a relatively precise system to describe meaning relations among words. We have also said earlier that humans have been | 6.2.2 Hyponymy, Hyperonymy and Meronymy Hyponymy and hyperonymy | Fig. 6.5 Hyperonym (superordinate) Hyponym (subordinate) fruit peach Meronymy | Fig. 6.6 peach tree trunk branches stone/ pit [ —Y [ [ [ } 136 s e M a n t I C s interested in meaning for thousands of years. However, we still do not know much about the nature of meaning and how meaning is represented in the human mind. Let us now take a look at some well-known proposals concerning the meaning of expressions, keeping in mind that many questions regarding meaning are still unanswered and that the terminology is not yet standardised and still under discussion. Three pairs of terms play an important role in semantic analysis: connotation ~ denotation , sense ~ reference and intension ~ extension . Generally speaking, the first term in each pair relates to the language-internal (or intra-linguistic) side of meaning, whereas the second terms relate to language-external (or extra-linguistic) reality. When we hear a word, usually a number of associations come to our mind. For example, for most people who live in the southern part of Germany near the Alps, the word winter evokes associations of snow, ice, freezing cold, slippery roads, skiing, and the like, which are also called the connotation of the expression. In this case, winter is defined within the network of words that we think of when we hear the term winter. In contrast with connotation, denotation refers to the relationship between a linguistic expression and the concrete language-external entities to which it refers. The denotation of winter is found in its dictionary definition of ‘the season between autumn and spring’. The sense of an expression is the meaning it has within a language. It is essentially defined by its relations with other expressions, i.e. within its network of synonyms, antonyms etc. (cf. 6.2.1). The reference of a word, on the other hand, is defined as its direct relation to the extra-linguistic world. Reference is the relationship between an expression and the persons, objects, entities or Connotation and Denotation Connotation and denotation Fig. 6.7 | Word Connotation (selected) Denotation labrador friend, companion etc. one breed of ‘canine quadrupeds’, i.e. four-legged animals belonging to the dog family winter snow, ice, freezing cold, the season between autumn slippery roads etc. and spring Sense and Reference 137 W o r d M e a n I n g states of affairs in the real world to which it refers. The sense of the term cow is ‘a large four-legged animal kept on farms to produce milk or beef’, whereas the reference are all the cows out there in the world, no matter what colour or size they are. The pair sense ~ reference can also be explained by using an analogy with money, because money is also a symbolic system. When you point to all the things you can buy with 50 cents, you are indicating what would be called the referents of 50 cents in language. To describe 50 cents by indicating its position in the monetary scale would be its sense: five times a dime (10 cents), twice a quarter (25 cents) or half a dollar. The distinction of sense and reference, however, has its limitations. There are some words that clearly have a sense, but no obvious referents in the real world, such as unicorns and dragons. There may also be more than one expression to talk about the same referent, just think of the phrases the leader of the Democratic Party and the President of the United States. The expressions differ in sense but may well refer to the same referent, e.g. currently to Joe Biden. This example also indicates that an expression with one particular sense may be used to refer to different entities in the real world and that these referents may change over time (cf. Fig. 6.8). The sense of the President of the United States remains constant, whereas in this case the referents have to change periodically, as it is required by law that no president can serve more than two terms: The intension of an expression is the set of semantic properties which define it. For example, the term bird evokes language-internal definitions like ‘animate’ and ‘not human’ that are part of its intension. The notion of intension is thus very similar to the notion of sense. Linguists now frequently specify the sense / intension of an expression by indicating its so-called semantic features (or semantic properties ). Bird could be characterised by Sense and referents over time Sense ‘the elected political leader of the United States of America’ | Fig. 6.8 Referents in 1789: George Washington in 2000: Bill Clinton in 2021: Joe Biden in the future: ? Intension and Extension 138 s e M a n t I C s the semantic features [ +animate ] , [ -human ] , [ +wings ] and [ +feathers ] , whereas the intension of child can be described as [ +animate ] , [ +human ] and [ +young ] . In this approach, a word’s intension is broken down into semantic components, which is why this approach is called componential analysis . The componential analysis of words allows us to group entities into natural classes. For example, all animals are part of a class that is defined by the semantic features [ +animate, -human ] , while child, baby, girl and boy can be placed in a class characterised by the features [ +animate, +human, +young ] . Intensions are often said to correspond to mental images. Extension , on the other hand, refers to the class of entities to which an expression can be applied. The extension of the term bird would be a list of entities including robin, dove, parrot, duck, ostrich etc., but also the mythical bird phoenix. The extension of an expression can be defined as the class of its potential referents. Of course, the extension of an expression can change over time as well, as indicated in the following figure: To sum up, we can say that the corresponding pairs connotation ~ denotation, sense ~ reference and intension ~ extension are parts of an attempt to explain the organisation of our mental lexicon, i.e. how words and meaning are represented and processed in our mind. Conceptualisation and Categorisation So far, we have looked at the definition and analysis of meaning from a predominantly language-internal perspective. This kind Extension and intension Fig. 6.9 | Word/ Phrase Extension Intension bird robin, dove, parrot, all animals that fit the defining duck, ostrich etc., but properties of birds, i.e. [+animate], also phoenix [-human], [+wings], [+feathers] capital of Boston city which is the seat of state Massachusetts government pope Francis (since 2013) leader of the Roman Catholic Church President of the Joe Biden (2021) the elected political leader of the United States United States of America 6.2.3 | 139 C o n C e P t u a L I s a t I o n a n d C a t e g o r I s a t I o n of semantic analysis is called structural semantics , as it is essentially based on the assumption that every linguistic element is integrated into the structure of the language system through a network of relations. Current lexical semantics is still to a large extent committed to these structuralist assumptions and the view that language is a system of related and interdependent elements. In the 1930s, structuralist assumptions of the relation of words were applied to a then new approach called the semantic field theory . This theory holds that words do not exist in isolation but form a so-called semantic field (or lexical field ) with other semantically related words. Colour terms are often cited as an example of a semantic field. According to this theory, for example, the English terms red and blue are related in that they are both colours, i.e. they are hyponyms of the term colour. The more recently established approach of cognitive semantics, however, sees language as part of our cognitive ability through which we organise and classify all aspects of our experience. This view is based on the assumption that meaning is linked to the way we group all kinds of perceptions and phenomena into conceptual categories . Categorisation and conceptualisation are based on the comparison of new things with ones we already know and the resulting cognitive construction of similarities between different entities. Concepts differ with respect to the question of how clear-cut the boundary of the concept is. The concept referred to by the expression the President of the United States is rather clear-cut: only one person can be the elected leader of the United States of America. Other concepts are not so straightforward, just imagine words like tall or strong. How tall does a person have to be to be called tall, or how much weight does a person have to be able to lift to be called strong. Some people clearly fall into the category strong and others clearly do not, but there are also a lot of borderline cases for which we are unable to decide definitively whether or not they count as strong. The notion of “strength” obviously does not have a clear-cut boundary and is thus called a fuzzy concept . Fuzziness of this kind is characteristic of the human conceptual system. Many concepts do not only have fuzzy boundaries, their members can also be graded according to their typicality . For example, even assuming that we all think along the lines of the dictionary definitions and imagine birds as ‘creatures that are covered Fuzzy Concepts Prototypes 140 s e M a n t I C s with feathers, have two wings and two legs, and the majority of which can fly’, we still have a feeling that some of these animals are more birdlike than others. Our intuition tells us that robins and sparrows are more typical and thus better examples of birds than are penguins or ostriches. This intuitive grading of the members of the concept bird reflects the fact that many concepts have an internal structure. In this case, robins are felt to be one of the most prototypical members of the concept bird, whereas ostriches and penguins are considered less typical and thus more peripheral examples. Prototypes , such as robins for the concept bird, are cognitive reference points. Due to the important role prototypes play in cognitive semantics, the term prototype semantics is sometimes used as an alternative. Another important notion of cognitive semantics is the assumption that the concepts expressed by language are interconnected and make up a huge network. In many cases, one concept can be understood in terms of the other. This type of interconnection is called metaphor . We are all familiar with the term metaphor as referring to literary devices. In the linguistic sense, however, Birdiness rankings (Aitchison 2012: 69) Fig. 6.10 | Metaphor 141 s e n t e n C e M e a n I n g metaphors are a part of the conceptual system that is shared by all human beings. The use of metaphors is so common that most of them are frequently not even noticed by many speakers. For example, at least in Western languages, the notion of time is often treated in everyday language as if it were a concrete valuable commodity. This is illustrated in the following examples from English: (1) Home cleaning tips and tricks to save time (2) Ideas on how to spend time with your kids (3) Invest your time profitably and study linguistics (4) Time is money Sentence Meaning So far, we have essentially concentrated on the meaning of words. Most of the time, however, we communicate in larger units such as phrases and sentences. The meaning of phrases and sentences is studied in sentential semantics (or phrasal semantics ). The analysis of phrase and sentence meaning is based on the so called Principle of Compositionality: Meaning Relations Among Sentences Similar to words, sentences have meanings that can be analysed in terms of their relation to the meaning of other sentences. We will now look at three important types of semantic relations among sentences. Two sentences that have the same meaning are said to be paraphrases of each other. Common ways to produce paraphrases are, for instance, to replace one word with a synonymous expression, as in the example sentences (5a) and (5b), or to rephrase an active sentence in the passive voice or vice versa, as in the pair of sentences (6a) and (6b). The Principle of Compositionality The meaning of a phrase or a sentence is determined by the meaning of its component parts and the way they are combined structurally. | Fig. 6.11 Paraphrase | 6.3 | 6.3.1 142 s e M a n t I C s Sentences (a) and (b) in the above examples are very similar in meaning and one cannot be true without the other sentence also being true. Pairs of sentences that are true under the same circumstances are said to have the same truth conditions . The type of semantics that approaches meaning by employing the notion of truth is called formal semantics . The part of the meaning of a sentence that can be said to be either true or false is called the proposition (or propositional content ). At the sentence level, paraphrases are the equivalent of synonyms at the lexical level. As with synonyms, many linguists hesitate to speak about sentences with identical meanings, as there is a minor stylistic difference between (5a) and (5b) and a subtle difference of emphasis between (6a) and (6b) (for buy ~ purchase cf. 6.2.1 and 8.2). These linguists claim that paraphrases, like synonyms, are never perfect and that we are actually concerned with sentences that have very similar meanings. There are also cases in which the truth of one sentence entails (or implies) the truth of another sentence. The relation between such sentences is accordingly referred to as entailment . In each of the following pairs of sentences, the meaning of sentence (a) entails the meaning of sentence (b): Paraphrases, as in (5a) and (5b), and (6a) and (6b), have the same truth conditions and always entail each other. The entailment involved is symmetrical. The entailment in the pairs (7a) and (7b), and (8a) and (8b) is of a different kind: it is asymmetrical. (7a) Pairs of paraphrases (5a) We have just bought a fairly expensive house (5b) We have just purchased a fairly expensive house (6a) The dog chased the cat (6b) The cat was chased by the dog Fig. 6.12 | paraphrases paraphrases Entailment (7a) The cat killed the mouse (7b) The mouse is dead (8a) Anna likes every single kind of fruit (8b) Anna likes oranges Fig. 6.13 | entails entails Entailment 143 M e a n I n g r e L a t I o n s a M o n g s e n t e n C e s entails that (7b) is true and (8a) entails that (8b) is true but the reverse does not follow. We cannot conclude from our knowledge that the mouse is dead that it was necessarily a cat which killed it. Similarly, Anna could like oranges but hate peaches. The entailment in the pair (8a) and (8b) is the result of the lexical meaning relation between the terms fruit and orange. Orange is a hyponym of fruit (cf. 6.2.1). So if it is true that she really likes all kinds of fruit, she must like oranges as well, as they are members of the class of fruit. There are many examples of entailment that are based on hyponymy between lexical items. For example, the sentence Cheeky is a dog entails the sentence Cheeky is an animal, as dog is a hyponym of animal. In contrast to paraphrases, there are pairs of sentences which contradict each other. This means that the truth of one sentence implies the falseness of the other, as illustrated in the pairs (9a) and (9b), and (10a) and (10b): If the sentence (9a) is true, i.e. if it is true that Cheeky is a dog, then it cannot be true that sentence (9b) is true as well, as it is impossible for one animal to be a dog and a cat at the same time. The sentences contradict each other, because if one of the sentences is true, the other is necessarily false. We say that there is a contradiction , which could also be called “negative entailment”. The pair of sentences (10a) and (10b) in Fig. 6.14 follows the same logic. It cannot be hot and freezing in the same room at the same time. In this case, the contradiction is based on the use of a pair of antonyms, namely hot and freezing (cf. 6.2.1). Antonymy can thus be one source for contradiction between sentences. Contradiction Contradiction (9a) Cheeky is a dog (9b) Cheeky is a cat (10a) It is freezing in here (10b) It is hot in here | Fig. 6.14 contradicts contradicts 144 s e M a n t I C s Sentence Interpretations After having looked at the most important meaning relations between sentences, we will now turn to some selected cases of sentence interpretation . The above-mentioned Principle of Compositionality states that the meaning of a sentence depends on the meaning of its components and the way these components are combined (cf. 6.3). This principle emphasises the importance of lexical semantics as well as syntax for the interpretation of sentence meaning. We are all familiar with the fact that the syntactic structure of a sentence is relevant to its meaning in a number of ways. Most fundamentally, the same words can be combined differently to form sentences with entirely different meaning. Consider the following pair of examples, involving two fictional characters from the animated comedy series South Park: Kenny McCormick, who routinely gets killed in each episode of the series, and Eric Cartman, one of his friends: (11) Eric kills Kenny (12) Kenny kills Eric Meaning relations among sentences - an overview Fig. 6.15 | Meaning relations among pairs of sentences paraphrase ˘ sentence A and sentence B have (nearly) the same meaning ˘ if sentence A is true, sentence B must be true as well and ˘ if sentence B is true, sentence A must be true as well entailment ˘ sentence A entails sentence B, but not the other way around ˘ if sentence A is true, sentence B must be true as well but ˘ if sentence B is true, we cannot conclude that sentence A is true as well contradiction ˘ sentence A and sentence B contradict each other ˘ if sentence A is true, sentence B must be false and ˘ if sentence B is true, sentence A must be false meaning relation truth conditions Sentence Meaning and Syntax 6.3.2 | 145 s e n t e n C e I n t e r P r e t a t I o n s Although sentences (11) and (12) are made up of exactly the same words and kills is inflected in exactly the same way in both sentences, it still requires no further explanation that the sentences mean something completely different. A mere change in word order, i.e. exchanging the subject and the object, creates semantically quite distinct sentences. As in most cases, the Principle of Compositionality proves to be valid in this example. Sometimes, however, even identical strings of words can have more than one possible meaning. The phrase rich women and men allows two different interpretations (or readings ). Rich can be interpreted as a property of both the women and the men in question, or of just the women alone. Figure 6.16 shows that the two readings of the phrase are due to a structural difference. Phrases and sentences that have more than one possible meaning are thus said to be structurally ambiguous . The structure of example (13a) in Fig. 6.16 indicates that both the women and the men are rich, whereas the structure in example (13b) represents the reading that the adjective rich only applies to the women. But structural ambiguity does not only occur in simple phrases, it can also be found in whole sentences. Consider the Structural Ambiguity An ambiguous phrase (simplified) | Fig. 6.16 (13a) (13b) NP NP NP NP NP Adj N Con N Adj N Con N rich women and men rich women and men 146 s e M a n t I C s sentence Anna saw tourists with binoculars. In one interpretation, the preposition phrase with binoculars modifies the noun tourists, i.e. Anna noticed tourists who had binoculars with them. In the other possible reading, the preposition phrase with binoculars modifies the verb, i.e. Anna saw the tourists by using a pair of binoculars. The tourists thus have the binoculars in example (14a) in Fig. 6.17, whereas it is Anna who uses binoculars to see the tourists in (14b): The Principle of Compositionality, however, does have its limits. When we say that Kenny from example (11) above passes away or bites the dust, it means nothing else than that he dies. We have no difficulty understanding the words pass, away, bite, the, and dust, but we can still not immediately infer the meaning of the whole phrases from this knowledge of the individual meanings of the words. Fixed phrases of this kind are called idioms (or idiomatic phrases ). As the meaning of idiomatic phrases cannot be predicted from the words they are made up of, they have to be learned just like individual words. The same holds true for exocentric compounds such as blackbird and redneck, which have meanings that A structurally ambiguous sentence (simplified) Fig. 6.17 | Limits of Compositionality (14a) (14b) S S NP VP NP NP VP NP PrepP PrepP N V N N V N Anna saw tourists with binoculars Anna saw tourists with binoculars 147 s e n t e n C e I n t e r P r e t a t I o n s cannot be inferred from the meaning of their components, as we have seen in the section on word formation (cf. 4.3.2). We have seen that our knowledge of word meanings and syntactic structures is important in interpreting sentences, but there are even more factors involved in sentence interpretation. When we utter a sentence, in many cases our attitudes and beliefs as well as the attitudes and beliefs of the addressee play an important role for the way the sentence is interpreted. The sentence The mayor of Boston is in town today implies the belief or assumption of the speaker that there is a mayor of Boston. Such an assumption is called a presupposition . The sentence The mayor of Boston is in town today is said to presuppose the sentence There is a mayor of Boston. Presuppositions are different from entailment, among other things, in that presuppositions also hold true when the presupposing sentence is negated (cf. 6.3.1). This is illustrated in the following examples: Presuppositions also hold true in questions. The question Is the mayor of Boston in town today? also presupposes the sentence There is a mayor of Boston. In the sentence She managed to open the door, the verb manage implies that she both tried and succeeded to open the door. The presupposed sentence would be She tried to open the door. There are a number of words like manage that are regularly associated with, i.e. they trigger, certain assumptions. Such words are called presupposition-triggers. As presuppositions play an important role in the interpretation of meaning in context, they are on the boundary between semantics and pragmatics, which will be discussed in the next chapter. Presuppositions Presuppositions | Fig. 6.18 The mayor of Boston is in town today presupposes There is a mayor of Boston The mayor of Boston is not in town today I do regret leaving Boston presupposes I left Boston I don’t regret leaving Boston } } 148 s e M a n t I C s Exercises 1. Identify the meaning relation of the words for each of the following pairs: a) leave ~ return b) door ~ house c) young ~ old d) bright ~ intelligent e) flower ~ rose f) examiner ~ examinee g) freedom ~ liberty 2. Explain the phenomenon called lexical ambiguity. 3. When discussing the nature of meaning, we distinguished between extension and intension. Give the extension and intension of each of these words / phrases. 4. Fuzziness a) Explain why the words rich and clean represent fuzzy concepts. b) Are all concepts fuzzy? 5. Which meaning relation can you identify for each of the following pairs of sentences? Provide the truth conditions for each pair. a) William is single ~ William is married b) Planes are very loud ~ Planes are very noisy Word/ Phrase Extension Intension Prime Minister of the United Kingdom capital of the United States Queen of the United Kingdom vegetable 6.4 | 149 B I B L I o g r a P h y c) James is Mary’s husband ~ Mary is married d) I am rather exhausted ~ I am pretty tired e) Christina and Mat are workaholics ~ Mat and Christina are lazy f) My car is red ~ My car is not white 6. Explain the structural ambiguity in the following sentences: a) The student hit the teacher with the book b) A lady watched an actor with opera glasses 7. Identify the presupposition in each of the following sentences: a) Some books written by Chomsky are not very expensive b) The present pope is Argentinian c) I am glad that my colleague sent me an e-mail d) They intend to close more libraries 8. One of the two sentences in each of the following pairs of sentences contains a presupposition. Decide for each pair which sentence contains the presupposition and identify the presupposition-trigger: 1a) Anna thought she was in debt 1b) Anna realised she was in debt 2a) Have you stopped running marathons? 2b) Have you tried running a marathon? Bibliography Aitchison, Jean. 2012. Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon. 4th edition. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. (A readable up-to-date introduction to mental lexicon issues) Cruse, Alan. 2011. Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Accessible and thorough, mostly devoted to semantics) Davidson, George. 2002. Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: 150th Anniversary Edition. London: Penguin. (A new edition of the most famous English thesaurus) Gregory, Howard. 2000. Semantics. London: Routledge. (Rich in useful exercises) Hitchings, Henry. 2005. Dr Johnson’s Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World. London: Murray. (An excellent portrait) Hüllen, Werner. 2004. A History of Roget’s Thesaurus: Origins, Development, and Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Another excellent portrait) Hurford, James R., Brendan Heasley & Michael B. Smith. 2007. Semantics: A Coursebook. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (An introductory coursebook with exercises) | 6.5 150 s e M a n t I C s Jackson, Howard & Etienne Zé Amvela. 2007. Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology. 2nd edition. London: Continuum. (A beginner-friendly survey) Jaszczolt, Katarzyna M. 2002. Semantics and Pragmatics: Meaning in Language and Discourse. London: Longman. (Broad in scope, highly recommended) Johnson, Samuel . 1765. A Dictionary of the English Language: in which the Words are Deduced from their Originals, and Illustrated in their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers, to which are Prefixed a History of the Language, and an English Grammar. 3rd edition. London: Strahan. (One of the most influential English dictionaries of all times) Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 2003 [1980]. Metaphors We Live by. Reprint with a new afterword. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (One of the most influential texts on the cognitive theory of metaphor) Löbner, Sebastian. 2013. Understanding Semantics: 2nd edition. Abingdon: Routledge. (Rich in useful exercises) Lyons, John. 1995. Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (One of the classic introductory texts) Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 2020. 10th edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oxford English Dictionary Online. <http: / / www.oed.com> (The most comprehensive dictionary of the English language) Portner, Paul. 2005. What is Meaning? Fundamentals of Formal Semantics. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. (Beginner-friendly) Saeed, John I. 2016. Semantics. 4th edition. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. (A comprehensive introduction) 151 Pragmatics |7 7.1 What Does Pragmatics Do? 152 7.2 Deixis 153 7.2.1 Person Deixis 154 7.2.2 Place Deixis 156 7.2.3 Time Deixis 157 7.3 The Cooperative Principle 158 7.4 Speech Acts 160 7.5 Conversation Analysis 164 7.6 Exercises 166 7.7 Bibliography 169 Contents Pragmatics examines how speakers understand and communicate more than the literal meaning of words or sentences. The type of meaning studied in pragmatics is known as utterance meaning, meaning in context, or meaning in interaction. In short, pragmatics is about getting from what is said to what is meant. Abstract 152 P r a g M a t I C s What Does Pragmatics Do? Pragmatics is the systematic study of how people understand and communicate more than the literal meaning of words or sentences when they speak, write or gesture, or, in more general terms, when they interpret and produce what linguists call utterances . Utterances are spoken, written or gestured contributions within a particular social context that derive their meaning partly from that context. Therefore, pragmatics is also called the study of utterance meaning , or meaning in context , or meaning in interaction . These terms take into account that contexts develop and redevelop dynamically, most markedly when we engage in live encounters with others. Our utterances are not only shaped by the contexts in which they occur but also create new contexts for what can follow. In other words, they are not only context shaped but also context renewing . Such relationships between speakers, texts and contexts are also explored within discourse analysis and text linguistics . This chapter focuses mainly on a selection of central pragmatic principles and processes that enable us to create and interpret meaning in context. Why do we very often not spell out explicitly what we mean? On the one hand, this has to do with saving effort by leaving many things unsaid. On the other hand, it has to do with social and cultural norms, which may vary strongly across cultures. Linguists approach these differences from various perspectives. Cross-cultural analysis compares linguistic practices across cultures, for example differences between interviewers’ questions in British and German television interviews. Recently, linguists have also started to explore pragmatic variation across varieties of the same language in the field of variational pragmatics (cf. also Chapter 8), for example comparing English English usage with other varieties such as American English or Irish English. Intercultural research analyses linguistic interaction between members of different cultures, for example misunderstandings between Australian and German students. In the age of globalisation, studies of this kind are rapidly gaining importance. Students of a foreign language will know from their own experience, for example as exchange students or from traveling, that the best theoretical knowledge of a language is not sufficient as soon as it comes to communicating with real people. As you know from the chapters on syntax and semantics, our general linguis- Pragmatics and Meaning Pragmatics and Culture Pragmatic Competence 7.1 | 153 d e I x I s tic competence provides us with rules that tell us how to judge whether a sentence is grammatical, and how to make sense of single words or single sentences. But as indicated above, this may not be sufficient when you try to communicate with other people. What you need to successfully communicate in face-to-face conversation, on the telephone, or when writing letters, or different kinds of electronic messages, is pragmatic competence . Pragmatic competence is the ability to use language appropriately within social contexts. The following sections will give you a brief overview of some core notions of pragmatics, starting with deixis . Deixis The term deixis corresponds to the Greek verb deiknynai meaning ‘to point’ or ‘to show’. Deixis refers to all linguistic means that have mainly to do with pointing at extralinguistic contexts. Imagine finding the room of your linguistics class empty with the following notice on the door: You will know how to interpret this notice, although you are not in the same physical context as its authors who are obviously not present. Instead, their absence tells you that the here refers to room Z because here is an expression which is normally used for locations close to a speaker. All linguistic expressions that are used to point at someone or something, such as me and you, or here and there, are called deictic expressions ( or deictics ). Occasionally, deictic expressions are also called indexicals , corresponding to the Latin verb indicare, which also means ‘to point’ or ‘to show’. We use deictic expressions to point at persons ( person deixis ), at places ( place deixis ), or at particular points of time ( time deixis ). Some authors also describe further dimensions of deixis, such as social relationships that are reflected in language ( social deixis ), e.g. in forms of address Deixis and Context Deixis and context Introduction to Linguistics We are here today: Guest Lecture Professor XY Room Z | Fig. 7.1 Deictic Expressions | 7.2 154 such as Your Majesty, or pointing activities within a text ( discourse deixis ), such as in the next paragraph or as outlined above. As indicated above, all dimensions of deixis have in common that they cannot be understood out of their context. Therefore, understanding deixis has a lot to do with finding out from which perspective something is being communicated. This perspective is called the deictic centre . The deictic centre is easiest to identify in face-to-face interactions in which all participants of a conversation are present. When speakers use deictic expressions in such a context, we usually take their perspective to be the deictic centre of their utterances. Additionally, they may accompany and support deictic expressions with nonverbal signals such as gestures or gaze. However, we may also shift the deictic centre and still be understood. For instance, in the example in Fig. 7.1, the deictic centre has been moved from the classroom to room Z, together with the authors of the notice. Whereas the deictic expressions we and today still refer to the same group and to the same time, the deictic expression here in the notice does not refer to the empty classroom where you are reading the notice. In this case, here refers to the room where the guest lecture is taking place. Such a shift is also called deictic projection . Identifying the deictic centre is relevant for all types of deixis. This will become more apparent as we take a closer look at the three main types of deixis. Person Deixis Person deixis is about pointing at persons . Consider the following extract from the British play Feelgood, a political satire by Alistair Beaton (2001). The beginning of Act One shows two men, one of them busy at a laptop, the other watching him. Paul is a young P r a g M a t I C s Deictic Projection Pointing at Persons 7.2.1 | Types of deixis Fig. 7.2 | types of deixis person deixis place deixis time deixis social deixis discourse deixis The Deictic Centre 155 P e r s o n d e I x I s professional speechwriter, and Eddie is the Press Secretary of the present government. Now try to list all expressions pointing at individuals in the opening dialogue of Feelgood. Whom are they referring to? Paul (reading from the laptop screen) ‘There will be other challenges facing us in the twenty-first century. But I can tell you now: the greatest challenge of all will be the challenge of change. And to those who -’ Eddie Ch. Ch. Paul Sorry? Eddie Ch. Ch. Paul Ch. Ch? Eddie Ch. Ch. Challenge of change. Don’t like it. Paul It’s alliteration. Eddie Yeah, bad alliteration. Challenge of change. Awful. It’ll make him sound like he needs dentures. (Beaton 2001: 1-2) If you do not know the play, you may think at first that Paul is the first person singular I in But I can tell you now. This is what person deixis via the first person singular personal pronoun would normally suggest, because we usually assume speakers to be the deictic centre of their utterances. Only Eddie’s utterance It’ll make him sound like he needs dentures reveals that Paul’s text is obviously not going to be read out by Paul but by another male person. We are told so by the masculine third person singular pronoun him. But who is that person? To create suspense, it is revealed only gradually in the course of Paul’s and Eddie’s conversation that he is the current British Prime Minister and that Paul and Eddie are spin doctors working on a speech for him. In the utterances There will be other challenges facing us in the twenty-first century and But I can tell you now, which Paul quotes from the Prime Minister’s future speech, it is not Paul who is going to be the deictic centre of these utterances but the Prime Minister. Another important aspect related to person deixis can be observed in the so-called T / V distinction, which derives its name from the initial letters of the distinct familiar and polite forms of personal pronouns in many Romance languages, as in French tu (singular) and vous (singular and plural). These forms ultimately go back to the Latin singular pronoun tu and the plural pronoun The T/ V Distinction 156 P r a g M a t I C s vos. The T / V distinction also plays an important role in the choice of forms of address such as first name, surname or title, or in different choices of style and register (cf. Chapter 8), especially in languages such as English that do not have distinct pronouns for representing familiarity or distance. The T/ V distinction is also a prime example of social deixis, because it reflects how we represent, establish and change social distance and, accordingly, social relationships. As the rules of social deixis are observed differently across cultures, they may cause considerable trouble for second language learners. Place Deixis Place deixis (or spatial deixis) is about pointing at the location of individuals or things. To give you an example: Imagine buying cheese at the market. What do you do if you do not know the name of a particular cheese you would like to try? Most people would simply point at the cheese in question and ask for a piece of it, saying: “Could I try a piece of this one, please? ” Usually, this straightforward practice of place deixis works quite well. But what if the person serving you picks out the wrong cheese? You would probably say: “No, not that one, this one! ” If this fails, too, you would either have to physically point at your desired cheese in an unmistakable manner, or, if you find that embarrassing or unhygienic, you would have to use further linguistic means, for example to precisely describe the location of the cheese relative to some prominent object, e.g. “next to the stuffed green peppers”. Generally, the English language distinguishes between referring to individuals or things close to the deictic centre, and referring to individuals or things away from the deictic centre. We use proximal terms like this or here to refer to individuals or objects relatively close to the speaker, and distal terms like that and there for relatively remote individuals or objects. This is even the case when the reference of these expressions changes. For instance, when one of your friends is travelling through the world and sends, posts or twitters you a message each time she comes across an interesting place, you might not know where exactly the here is which she praises so enthusiastically in her comments. The only thing you can say for sure is that it refers to the place where she is at the time of writing. This example shows that there is a temporal dimension Pointing at Locations Closeness and Distance 7.2.2 | 157 t I M e d e I x I s to place deixis, too. Interestingly, distal terms such as that are often also used to express psychological distance or even dislike (that boring book, that awful lesson). When such deictic terms are used to refer to humans (that silly cow, that stupid guy), this may also be interpreted as social deixis because they are used to indicate social distance. Time Deixis Like place deixis, time deixis (or temporal deixis) also distinguishes between close to the deictic centre and away from the deictic centre . This is reflected in expressions like now, today or this week for a time close to the moment of speaking (= proximal), and then, yesterday or next month for a time remote from the moment of speaking (= distal), i.e. either in the past or in the future. Expressions like soon, ten minutes later or two weeks ago also mark points or periods of time relative to a speaker’s current situation. Many literary texts make extensive use of time deixis. For instance, fairy tales usually begin with “Once upon a time, there was …”. As this fairy tale beginning also shows, another important device for establishing temporal reference is the choice of tense . Consider the following examples: (1) I live here now. (2) I lived there then. (3) I could swim (when I was a child). (Yule 1996: 15) The choice of tense depends on the options a language provides: “Whereas other languages have many different forms of the verb as different tenses, English has only two basic forms, the present and the past. [ … ] The present tense is the proximal form and the past tense is the distal form.” (Yule 1996: 14-15) Additionally, time deixis may serve to mark events as distant from the speaker’s current situation in a hypothetical sense, i.e. away from the reality of the present. This can be seen in the use of past verb forms for the subjunctive mood or in certain types of if-clauses, as in examples (4) and (5): (4) I could be in Hawaii (if I had a lot of money). (5) If I was rich … (Yule 1996: 15) Time and Distance | 7.2.3 158 P r a g M a t I C s All in all, we can say that deixis is a very efficient tool for saving communicative effort. However, this tool only works if the deictic centre is clear. The following sections will discuss further pragmatic aspects of face-to-face communication. The Cooperative Principle Human face-to-face communication is full of exchanges that may appear, at first sight, rather unrelated, such as the following three examples: (6) A Can you tell me the time? B Well, the milkman has come. (Levinson 1983: 83) (7) A I do think Mrs. Jenkins is an old windbag, don’t you? B Huh, lovely weather for March, isn’t it? (Levinson 1983: 111) (8) A Where’s Bill? B There’s a yellow VW outside Sue’s house. (Levinson 1983: 102) How can we interpret these exchanges? In his ground-breaking lecture “Logic and Conversation” (1975), H. Paul Grice presents a basic principle that governs human interaction, the so called Cooperative Principle (CP) : From this principle, four maxims are derived: Unrelated Utterances? The Cooperative Principle (CP) Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. (Grice 1975: 45) Fig. 7.3 | Grice’s Maxims Maxims of Conversation The Maxim of Quantity 1. Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange. 2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Fig. 7.4 | 7.3 | 159 t h e C o o P e r a t I V e P r I n C I P L e When one or more of these maxims are not being observed, as it is the case in examples (6) to (8) above, this gives rise to conversational implicatures . Conversational implicatures are not part of the conventional meaning of what is said. Their interpretation is context-dependent. If somebody violates (or even flouts ) one or more of the Maxims of Conversation, we are alerted to look for additional information that might help to make the utterance in question meaningful, provided that we have reason to believe that the person who is uttering it is acting rationally and intentionally. Finding such additional information is also known as inferring . For instance, in example (6), B violates the Maxim of Relation. Well, the milkman has come is, at first sight, not a relevant answer to the question Can you tell me the time? However, we are able to bridge the gap between what is said and what is meant by interpreting B’s answer as a cooperative attempt of giving A at least some helpful hint if not the exact time. Apparently, B does not know the exact time but knows that A knows the time at which the milkman usually comes and will interpret B’s utterance accordingly. This is what we can infer from B’s reply. Example (7) illustrates the deliberate flouting of the Maxim of Relation. B’s reply Huh, lovely weather for March, isn’t it? bears no obvious relevance to A’s remark I do think Mrs. Jenkins is an old windbag, don’t you? But it may implicate a warning for A, who is backbiting Mrs Jenkins and possibly about to go on with it. The Maxim of Quality Try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically: 1. Do not say anything that you believe to be false. 2. Do not say anything for which you lack adequate evidence. The Maxim of Relation (or The Maxim of Relevance ) Make your contribution relevant. The Maxim of Manner Be perspicuous (= be clear). More specifically: 1. Avoid obscurity. 2. Avoid ambiguity. 3. Be brief. 4. Be orderly. (adapted from Grice 1975: 45-46) Conversational Implicature 160 P r a g M a t I C s Alarmed by B’s irrelevant remark, A can infer that B’s utterance might mean something like Watch out, her nephew’s standing right behind you. Occasionally, more than one maxim is involved at the same time. This is the case in example (8). When B answers There’s a yellow VW outside Sue’s house to A’s question Where’s Bill? , he or she flouts both the Maxim of Quantity and the Maxim of Relation. But his or her answer is at the same time to the point and effort-saving. Obviously, B knows that A knows that Bill owns a yellow VW. If the yellow VW outside Sue’s house is his, Bill may well be in Sue’s house. But B avoids such a lengthy reply by simply producing an utterance that enables A to infer what B does not say explicitly. All in all, these examples show that finding out about speakers’ communicative intentions plays an important role for our interpretation of utterances. At the same time, human communication is also about making things happen in the real world. Such aspects of meaning in interaction are discussed in speech act theory . Speech Acts Take the simple utterance It’s cold in here. What does it mean? Who could say it to whom in what situation? At first sight, this is a statement about the temperature in a particular room. However, this is not always the communicative intention with which this declarative sentence is uttered. Most people who say It’s cold in here to another person will want this person to do something about the cold. In this case It’s cold in here may mean Could you please close the window? or Could you please turn on the heating? or Could you please lend me one of your famous hand-knitted sweaters? In short, the utterance may serve as a polite request for some appropriate action in order to make the speaker more comfortable. Depending on the relationship between the participants of the conversation, it could also be used as a command. As we have seen, utterances can be used to perform actions. Actions performed via utterances , such as requesting, threatening, or thanking, are based on speech acts . The systematic study of speech acts is based on speech act theory . Speech act theory has its roots in thoughts formulated by John L. Austin in How to Do Utterances as Actions Speech Acts and Speech Act Theory 7.4 | 161 s P e e C h a C t s Things with Words (1962) and John R. Searle in Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (1969). All actions performed by utterances can be divided into three related acts: the locutionary act , the illocutionary act , and the perlocutionary act . The locutionary act is the physical act of producing understandable language that may be regarded as meaningful within a given context. Consider the indirect request Do you know where I left my textbook? What we intend to do by producing an utterance is called the illocutionary act , i.e. in this case the intention of asking for information. The cognitive or emotional effect an illocutionary act may have on an addressee or addressees in reality is called the perlocutionary act (or perlocutionary effect ). Locutionary , Illocutionary, and Perlocutionary Acts Locutionary act | Fig. 7.5 Illocutionary act | Fig. 7.6 Perlocutionary effect | Fig. 7.7 162 P r a g M a t I C s As you can see in Fig. 7.5-7.7, the locutionary and the illocutionary act are within our control, whereas the perlocutionary act is not. In these examples, the first speaker’s illocutionary act of requesting succeeds because the speaker has managed to produce an utterance that is suitable to convey her communicative intention, even though the perlocutionary effect is negative. This communicative intention is often called the illocutionary force . Generally, linguists distinguish between several main types of speech acts, to describe what humans may do by performing these acts. We use representatives (or assertives ) to make statements about the world (Germany is a country in Europe); directives like requests or commands to get others to perform certain actions, e.g. to do us a favour, or to answer our questions (Please send me an e-mail); commissives like promises or threats to inform others about our future actions (I will write to you every day); expressives like greetings, thanks and congratulations to express our feelings (Hi! , Thank you! or Happy birthday! ); and declarations for actions that are performed by pronouncing the appropriate formula, e.g. marrying a couple or baptising somebody. There are certain preconditions that need to be fulfilled if a speech act is to succeed. These preconditions are called felicity conditions . Accordingly, speech acts can be felicitous or infelicitous . For instance, for a felicitous request, the following criteria must be fulfilled: Speech Act Types Speech act types - an overview Fig. 7.8 | 1 dialects • graphical and social dialects • geographical and social dialects accents • differ by pronunciation only • geographical and social accents Sociolects important socio-economic ethnic group gender age many others factors status membership types of varieties standard geographical varieties sociolects functional varieties (superposed variety) (regional dialects) (social dialects) (register and style) depending on the background depending on the t x e t n o c r e k a e p s e h t f o language varieties (neutral term) Speech Acts representatives directives commissives expressives declarations Felicity Conditions Illocutionary Force 163 s P e e C h a C t s The felicity conditions of commands are similar to those of requests. Additionally, commands have the preparatory condition that the speaker must be in a position of authority over the hearer. In this case, the preparatory condition of non-obviousness becomes less relevant. Declarations are only felicitous if the speaker is actually in a position that entitles her or him to perform the desired action, and that the formula used actually counts as performing the action within a particular culture. For instance, you cannot baptise or marry others unless you have the authority to do so because of your profession. Additionally, you have to utter the relevant formula for baptising or marrying. Jenny Thomas (1995: 43) cites a newspaper report about a Muslim actor in Pakistan who unintentionally divorced his wife while playing a movie character who divorced his movie wife by pronouncing the corresponding phrase Talaq (‘I divorce you’) three times, the ritual required for a divorce. As his real spouse played the movie wife and the religious authorities insisted that the actor’s words could not be withdrawn, even though they were uttered in a work of art, the divorce became valid. Linguists distinguish between direct speech acts and indirect speech acts . Direct speech acts are associated with corresponding basic sentence types (cf. section 5.2). For instance, declarative sentences are commonly used for representative (or assertive) speech acts. Interrogative sentences are commonly used for questions (which are often interpreted as subtypes of directive speech acts, because they can be seen as requests for information). Imperative sentences are associated with directive speech acts, and exclamative sentences are used for expressive speech acts: Felicity conditions for requests (based on Searle 1969: 66-67) Content Future act (A) to be performed by the hearer (H). Preparatory conditions H is able to do A. The speaker (S) believes that H is able to do A. It is not obvious to both S and H that H will do A in the normal course of events of her or his own accord. Sincerity condition S wants H to do A. Essential condition Counts as an attempt to get H to do A. | Fig. 7.9 Direct Speech Acts 164 P r a g M a t I C s Indirect speech acts are speech acts that depart from this pattern. For instance, declarative sentences may be used as indirect directives, either in order to avoid giving orders, as in the above-mentioned utterance It’s cold in here for Close the window, or, in some social contexts, to intensify the force of a command, as in the following example from Feelgood: As you have seen in Sections 7.1 to 7.4, pragmatics examines how we can interpret and produce utterances to identify and create meaning in social contexts. However, most of the examples used so far were made up by linguists or playwrights. If that makes you suspicious because you wonder whether people really talk and act this way, you may benefit from the methods of conversation analysis . Conversation Analysis At the end of the 1960s, a group of sociologists developed a growing interest in gathering and analyzing authentic language data. This led to a new discipline called Conversation Analysis ( CA ). CA concentrates on data from everyday life, such as face-to-face talk or telephone conversations, or from institutional back- Sentence types and direct speech acts Fig. 7.10 | Sentence Type Direct Speech Act (9) Anna is singing. declarative representative (or assertive) (10) Is Anna singing? interrogative question (= subtype of directive speech act) (11) Sing! imperative directive (12) How beautifully she is singing! exclamative expressive Indirect Speech Acts An indirect speech act Asha You don’t switch off your bleeper. Ever. All right? Paul (cowed) Okay okay. (Mutters.) Sorry. (Leans down, fumbles with the pager on his belt.) (Beaton 2001: 7-8) Fig. 7.11 | Working with Authentic Data 7.5 | 165 C o n V e r s a t I o n a n a L y s I s grounds, for example courtroom proceedings or news interviews. Data are recorded and closely transcribed, as in the following example taken from the transcription course on the homepage of Emanuel Schegloff, one of the founding fathers of CA: Close transcripts include features like hesitations, pauses, interruptions, and simultaneous speech. Nowadays, there is a lot of interdisciplinary exchange between conversation analysis and various subdisciplines of linguistics, such as pragmatics. One important area of research within CA is the analysis of turns , the smallest units from which conversations are built. Researchers observed that conversations usually consist of a more or less smooth sequence of turns. For instance, each of the utterances by Asha and Paul in Fig. 7.11 and by Ava and Bee in Fig. 7.12 is one turn. Accordingly, the systematic organisation of the way the participants of an interaction take turns at speaking is called turn-taking . Turns consist of so called turn constructional units ( TCUs ). Such units correspond closely to syntactic units such as sentences, clauses, or noun phrases. Additionally, speakers may employ prosodic or intonational means for signalling whether a turn-constructional unit is completed and another speaker may start talking. Ends of turn-constructional units are called transition relevance places ( TRPs ). The right to speak is called the floor . Utterances that usually appear in pairs in dialogue are called adjacency pairs . All first parts are associated with preferred or dispreferred second parts. The following table shows some typical adjacency pairs with preferred second parts: Adjacency pairs greeting - greeting self-identification - self-identification question - answer request - acceptance assessment - agreement | Fig. 7.13 A close transcript | Fig. 7.12 Ava I ‘av [a lotta t] ough cou : rses. Bee [Uh really? ] Turn-Taking Adjacency Pairs 166 P r a g M a t I C s Preference and dispreference are usually associated with characteristic verbal and nonverbal features. Whereas preferred second parts of adjacency pairs are usually delivered immediately, fluently and in a brief form, dispreferred second parts are often preceded by a pause and accompanied by so called dispreference markers , for example: For instance, imagine asking a colleague whether they would like to have a cup of coffee with you. A preferred second part to the request would be Yes, I’d love to! , uttered spontaneously, whereas a dispreferred second part would be some initial silence, followed by an utterance like Well … er … I’m awfully sorry, but … you know … I’ve got to finish this essay today …. Some linguists assume that there is a direct relationship between the amount of communicative effort employed and the relative weight of the dispreferred response within a particular social context. This is explored in theories on politeness , a topic we cannot even attempt to address in this introductory textbook because of its extremely wide scope. Many politeness theories combine insights from both pragmatics and sociolinguistics . Exercises 1. Identify the deictic expressions and devices in the following sentences and decide for each expression which type of deixis it represents: a) I like this shirt better than that one. b) I saw him there. c) I will meet her here. d) I will visit them then. Preference Structure Dispreference markers • silence, delays and hesitations such as pauses or er, em • prefaces like well or oh • token yes, often followed by but • expressing doubt or uncertainty • apologies, accounts, referring to obligations • appeals for understanding, generalisations Fig. 7.14 | 7.6 | 167 e x e r C I s e s 2. a) Identify the deictic expressions and devices in the following extract from a British political novel: Frank Rist was in the next room. Joseph could even hear that familiar voice, its staccato syllables drawn from deep in the larynx. (McSmith 2001: 80) b) Identify the deictic centre. c) What does this extract reveal about the relationship between the two men? Consider the deictic expressions and give reasons. 3. Which conversational maxims are violated or flouted by B in the following pairs of utterances? a) A Are we late for the lesson? B The teacher is still in the cafeteria. b) A I hate linguistics. B Oh, you must see the new Harry Potter Film! c) A Did you bring the coffee and the tea? B I brought the tea. 4. Imagine the following situation: A family is preparing dinner. The mother is directing the activities of father and daughter, while she is in charge of the roast. The following dialogue occurs: Daughter (cleaning Brussels sprouts) How many people will be eating Brussels sprouts? Mother (busy with the roast) We will clean all the sprouts. Daughter (sighing) O.K. a) Does the mother observe the Cooperative Principle? Give reasons. b) Does she violate or flout any Gricean maxims? If so, which one(s)? 5. Identify the direct speech acts performed by uttering the following sentences: a) Berlin is the capital of Germany. b) I hereby name this ship Mary Anne. 168 P r a g M a t I C s c) Pass the salt, please. d) I promise you to be on time. e) What a lovely morning! 6. This cartoon was published in the context of the Brexit negotiations between the British Government, represented by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and the European Union, represented by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. a) Which sentence type does Boris Johnson use in this cartoon? b) Which speech act does he perform? c) What are the felicity conditions for this speech act? Are they satisfied here? 7. Which types of speech acts are performed by the expressions in bold type in the following extract from the MediaGuardian? Guardian forces government u-turn on freedom of information The Guardian today won a landmark victory in its campaign for freedom of information after the government admitted it had been wrong to impose a blanket gagging order on the parliamentary ombudsman preventing disclosure of information requested by the paper. (…) The order, also signed by Douglas Alexander, the minister for the cabinet office, forbade the parliamentary ombudsman, Ann Abraham, from releasing information about potential conflicts of ministerial interest. (…) “For the last four years the Guardian has been campaigning for freedom of information and arguing that the government was being unnecessarily secretive,” said the Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger. “The attempt to gag the ombudsman was disgraceful, and we hope this landmark judgment will encourage the government to be more open in future, and allow the ombudsman to do her job.” (MediaGuardian, March 18, 2004) The Cartoon Movement. <https: / / cartoonmovement.com/ cartoon/ imwarning-you > (Dec 11, 2020) Fig. 7.15 | I’m warning you! 169 B I B L I o g r a P h y 8. Take a close look at the following sequence of turns: (1) Ava Hiya! (2) Bee Hi! How’s school going? (3) Ava Oh, same old stuff. I have a lot of tough courses. (4) Bee Oh, I can imagine! By the way, would you be interested in working as a babysitter for my sister’s three young kids? (5) Ava Well … you know … that’s really kind of you, but … oh, there’s my bus, I’ve got to rush! (adapted from Schegloff n.d.) a) List the adjacency pairs in this sequence. b) Does Ava’s final turn (5) in this extract resemble a preferred or a dispreferred response? Give reasons. Bibliography Allan, Keith & Kasia Jaszczolt, eds. 2015. The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A comprehensive overview of current issues in pragmatics) Archer, Dawn & Peter Grundy, eds. 2011. The Pragmatics Reader. London: Routledge. (A collection of key texts, with introductions and instructions for students) Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon. (Foundations for the development of speech act theory) Bublitz, Wolfram, Andreas H. Jucker & Klaus P. Schneider, eds. 2011-2020. Handbooks of Pragmatics. 13 Volumes. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (A series of handbooks covering a multitude of topics in both theoretical and applied pragmatics) Cutting, Joan & Kenneth Fordyce. 2021. Pragmatics: A Resource Book for Students. 4th edition. Abingdon: Routledge. (Beginner-friendly, with key readings and suggestions for activities) Fillmore, Charles. 1997 (1971). Lectures on Deixis. Stanford: CSLI Publications. (A collection of central observations on deixis) Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and conversation.” In: Cole, Peter & Jerry L. Morgan, eds., Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 41-58. (Groundbreaking text) Grundy, Peter. 2020. Doing Pragmatics. 4th edition. Abingdon: Routledge (Applied perspective, with lively examples and exercises) Horn, Lawrence & Gregory Ward, eds. 2004. The Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell. (Excellent survey over the core areas of pragmatics) Huang, Yan. 2014. Pragmatics. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press. (An advanced students‘ textbook focussing on theoretical issues in pragmatics, with exercises) Hutchby, Ian & Robin Wooffitt. 2008. Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis: A Comparative and Critical Introduction. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Polity Press. (Inspiring and accessible) Jaworski, Adam & Nikolas Coupland, eds. 2014. The Discourse Reader. 3rd edition. Abingdon: Routledge. (Contains a wealth of seminal texts) Kasper, Gabriele & Kenneth Rose. 2002. Pragmatic Development in a Second Language. Malden: Blackwell. (Examines the acquisition of pragmatics by second language learners) | 7.7 170 Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Still an important standard reference book) LoCastro, Virginia. 2003. An Introduction to Pragmatics: Social Action for Language Teachers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. (Accessible introduction with applied orientation) Mey, Jacob L. 2001. Pragmatics: An Introduction. 2nd edition. Malden: Blackwell. (Focuses on social aspects of pragmatics) Renkema, Jan & Christoph Schubert. 2018. Introduction to Discourse Studies. New edition. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (Comprehensive and accessible) Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation. Edited by Gail Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell. (A collection of central texts in Conversation Analysis) Schegloff, Emanuel (n.d.) Emanuel Schegloff’s Home Page. <http: / / www. sscnet.ucla.edu / soc/ faculty/ schegloff/ > (Extensive online material on conversation analysis) Schneider, Klaus P. & Anne Barron, eds. 2008. Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (One of the cornerstones of variational pragmatics) Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Important text for the development of speech act theory) Searle, John R. 1979. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Further central texts for the development of speech act theory) B I B L I o g r a P h y Thomas, Jenny. 1995. Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. London: Longman. (Brief but profound, with excellent examples) Verschueren, Jef. 1999. Understanding Pragmatics. London: Arnold. (Accessible introduction, focuses on pragmatics as a perspective) Verschueren, Jef, Jan - Ola Östman, Jan Blommaert & Chris Bulcaen, eds. 1995-2021. Handbook of Pragmatics: Manual and Installments. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (Excellent survey over pragmatics and adjoining fields of research, written by prominent scholars and expanded annually. Online edition at <https: / / benjamins.com/ online/ hop/ >) Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Brief and beginner-friendly, with well-chosen readings to incite discussion) Selected Journals Intercultural Pragmatics Journal of Pragmatics Pragmatics Further References Beaton, Alistair. 2001. Feelgood. London: Methuen. (A satirical political play) McSmith, Andy. 2001. Innocent in the House. London: Verso. (A satirical political novel) 171 Sociolinguistics |8 8.1 The Subject Matter 172 8.2 Language Variation 173 8.2.1 Geographical Differentiation of Language 178 8.2.2 Social Differentiation of Language 181 8.3 Language and Gender 185 8.4 Exercises 193 8.5 Bibliography 194 Contents Sociolinguistics is the scientific study of the relationship between language and society. The primary concern of sociolinguistic research is to investigate linguistic variation and the influence of social factors on language use and language structure. Sociolinguistics is a young and rapidly evolving discipline that is characterised by diverse research interests and increasing heterogeneity. Abstract 172 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s The Subject Matter There are no two individuals in the world who speak exactly alike. The language of the individual members of a speech community , i.e. of people who can communicate with each other, may be more or less similar. Each speaker’s language use shows its unique characteristics and is referred to as her or his idiolect . When we communicate, we consciously or unconsciously choose between different forms of language known as varieties (or speech varieties , or lects ). Sociolinguistics , as the scientific study of the relationship between language and society , investigates the effects of extralinguistic factors on the linguistic choices we make. These choices immediately convey information about the social and geographical background of a speaker. Speakers who make similar choices are said to speak the same variety . Similarity in linguistic choices is also one of the main elements constituting group identity . Listeners draw conclusions about the background of speakers on the basis of their language, for example about their education, socioeconomic status or occupation. As a result, speakers can even deliberately use language to signal that they are, or would like to be, members of a certain group. Sociolinguistics has only been around for about half a century. Since the first use of the term sociolinguistics in the 1950s, the field has become a recognised core branch of linguistics. The discipline in its contemporary definition does, however, include some older subbranches of linguistics, such as dialectology, which was already popular in the 19th century and is partly continued by so-called geographical sociolinguistics . But sociolinguistics is not the only discipline that studies the relationship between language and society. Many linguists distinguish between sociolinguistics in the narrow sense (or micro-sociolinguistics ) and the sociology of language (or macro-sociolinguistics ), which look at the subject matter from different perspectives. Sociolinguistics is concerned with the influence of social factors on language use and language structure, whereas the sociology of language investigates language with the aim of better understanding the structure and organisation of society. There are, however, neither sharp dividing lines between sociolinguistics and the sociology of language, nor between sociolinguistics and its neighbouring disciplines such as psycholinguis- What is Sociolinguistics? 8.1 | 173 L a n g u a g e V a r I a t I o n tics, social psychology, ethnology, anthropology or human geography, to name just a few. Sociolinguistics is thus a relatively young, multifaceted, and rapidly evolving discipline with diverse research interests. There is a considerable amount of overlap with many related fields. Contemporary sociolinguistics incorporates a number of other research areas that cannot be covered here in detail. This includes the enormous range of phenomena brought about by language change, multilingualism, language planning and all kinds of language contact situations. For example, pidgins and creoles , i.e. contact languages that developed for the most part in the context of colonialism, have been receiving considerable attention by sociolinguists in recent decades. Language Variation The observation, description and explanation of linguistic variation is one of the main concerns of sociolinguistics. Such variation shows in different language use at all levels of linguistic analysis , including pronunciation, vocabulary, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. For example, a speaker from America who takes the elevator to the second floor usually does exactly the same as an English person who takes the lift to the first floor. In this case, it is obviously lexical variation that could lead to a misunderstanding between these two speakers. At the same time, most Americans would articulate the word-final / r / suggested by the spelling in floor, thus pronouncing the word as / f l ɔ  r / , whereas most speakers from England would pronounce the word as / f l ɔ / . We say “most speakers”, because it is important to keep in mind that not all speakers of a certain variety use all linguistic features associated with this variety 100 per cent of the time and in all contexts. This means that although the pronunciation / f l ɔ / is very common in England, there are also speakers who sometimes or always do pronounce the / r / at the end of the word. When we speak about variation we are thus usually concerned with tendencies rather than exclusive differences. “Sociolinguists aim to describe sociolinguistic variation and, if possible, explain why it happens.” (Holmes 2013: 11) | 8.2 174 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s According to the extralinguistic factors that motivate the use of a variety, we distinguish three major types of varieties : geographical varieties (traditionally called regional dialects or simply dialects , cf. 8.2.1), sociolects (or social dialects , cf. 8.2.2) that are motivated by social factors such as socio-economic status, occupation, ethnic group, gender, age and religion, and functional varieties that depend on the particular communicative situation. Additionally, in most societies there is another variety, the so-called standard , which has a special position and does not fit into any of the other types of varieties. Unfortunately, the linguistic usage of the terms variety , dialect and accent is not identical with the popular usage of these designations. In linguistics, both dialect and accent do not have the negative undertone associated with them in everyday speech and are clearly distinguished from each other. The term dialect refers to differences between “kinds of language” in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, whereas accent applies exclusively to differences in pronunciation. Variety is usually employed as a neutral term to refer to any “kind of language” without being specific. To complicate the matter even further, the terms are not always used consistently in linguistics either. Dialect is either used for geographical varieties only, or in a broader sense in expressions such as social dialect or standard dialect. What seems to be clear is that all these terms refer to subdivisions of one language. Major types of language varieties Fig. 8.1 | dialects • differ at all linguistic levels • geographical and social dialects accents • differ by pronunciation only • geographical and social accents Sociolects important socioeconomic ethnic group gender age various others factors status membership types of varieties standard geographical varieties sociolects functional varieties (superposed variety) (regional dialects) (social dialects) (register and style) depending on the background of the speaker depending on the context 8.1 Variety, Dialect and Accent Types of Varieties 175 L a n g u a g e V a r I a t I o n We have so far assumed that dialects are subdivisions of a language. To non-linguists, the term language may seem to be a clear-cut concept, but at a second glance its linguistic definition and distinction from dialect cause some rather fundamental problems. Concerning the dialect situation in England, for example, we frequently speak of a “Norfolk dialect” and a “Suffolk dialect”. Studies have shown, however, that the rural dialects in the area change gradually from place to place and that there is no clear linguistic break between the two areas. The distinction between Norfolk dialect and Suffolk dialect is thus based on other, namely the county boundary as an administrative dividing line, rather than linguistic facts. From a purely linguistic point of view we are concerned with a so-called dialect continuum (or dialect chain ), in which greater geographical distance generally means greater linguistic differences as well. Some dialects in the southern part of Norfolk may in fact be linguistically closer to dialects in northern Suffolk, than to other “Norfolk dialects” in the north of the county. When we attempt to find a purely linguistic definition of language, we encounter the same problem. We usually feel that people who can communicate with each other speak the same language and thus consider mutual intelligibility the crucial defining factor. But why is it then that educated speakers of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish can communicate well with each other and we still consider their “The criterion of ‘mutual intelligibility’, and other purely linguistic criteria, are, therefore, of less importance in the use of the terms language and dialect, than are political and cultural factors, [ ... ] .” (Trudgill 2000: 4) The terms language, variety, dialect and accent | Fig. 8.2 1 dialects • differ at all linguistic levels • geographical and social dialects accents • differ by pronunciation only • geographical and social accents Sociolects important socio-economic ethnic group gender age various others factors status membership types of varieties standard geographical varieties sociolects functional varieties (superposed variety) (regional dialects) (social dialects) (register and style) depending on the background of the speaker depending on the context language varieties (neutral term) 8.1 Language vs. Dialect 176 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s speech to be different languages? Again non-linguistic, in this case political, historical and cultural factors are more important for our decision than linguistic criteria, as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are autonomous nation states. Another striking example for the predominant importance of non-linguistic criteria involves the relationship between German and Dutch. Along the German-Netherlands border there are some places in which the dialects spoken on either side of the border are very similar and to a large extent mutually intelligible. The speakers on the German side of the border will often find it much easier to communicate with neighbouring people on the Dutch side of the border than with speakers of other German dialects from distant parts of southern Germany, Austria or German-speaking Switzerland. Still we would not hesitate to say that people on one side of the border speak Dutch and those on the other side German, although there is no linguistic justification for our decision. This situation is the result of a West Germanic dialect continuum (cf. Fig. 2.3: The Indo-European language family) which links the dialects of Flemish, Dutch and German from Belgium through the Netherlands and Germany to Austria and Switzerland. The notion of standard deserves individual consideration, as it is special in a number of respects. Standard English is the variety of English that is usually used in print, broadcasting and administration, normally taught in schools and to non-native learners, and used by most educated speakers of English most of the time. On the basis of these functions it is imposed over all other dialects and can thus be called a superposed variety . It is important to note that Standard English is a dialect as well and, just like Standard German and other standard varieties, linguistically no better or worse than any other dialect. Dialects, in the linguistic sense of the term, are thus not deviations from the standard, or deficient in any respect. To be precise, from a diachronic point of view, it is absolutely impossible for dialects to be deviations from the standard, as the dialects of English existed long before Standard English ever came into existence (cf. 2.1.1). In fact, there are no languages or dialects that are inferior to any others as linguistic systems. The definition of the standard as well as its prestige and its important position in society depend solely on social and functional considerations. Along the same lines, all pronunciation varieties, even the most prestigious, are referred to Standard 177 L a n g u a g e V a r I a t I o n as accents and, from a linguistic point of view, no accent is superior to any other. The difference between Standard English and other dialects is that Standard English is only defined by grammar and vocabulary, whereas all other dialects differ at all levels of language including pronunciation. Standard English can for this reason be spoken with any accent, not just prestige accents such as RP or GenAm (cf. 3.1.3). For example, the sentence Linguistics is fun uses both mainstream grammar and vocabulary and is considered Standard English, no matter whether you say it with an RP, a GenAm, a Scottish, a working class or a French accent. Styles and registers are so called functional varieties , as they depend on the context of a communicative situation. Styles and registers are characterised by the function of language in a particular situation and the consideration of such factors as addressee, topic, location and interactional goal rather than the background of the speaker. The exact definition of style and register is difficult. Both terms are used in a number of different and often overlapping ways, even by linguists. A common distinction is that style refers to the level of formality of an utterance or a text, whereas register refers to the choice of vocabulary in a specific communicative situation. (1) A not as such inexpensive domicile has recently been purchased by our family. (2) We have just bought a pretty pricey house. Most people would agree that the above sentences mean more or less the same. The difference between the sentences is essentially a stylistic one: they differ by their level of formality. Sentence (1) is written in a formal style, whereas sentence (2) is relatively informal. Most speakers of English would agree that the sentence We have just bought a fairly expensive house fits stylistically somewhere in between sentence (1) and sentence (2). Styles are organised along a continuum that ranges from very informal to extremely formal. Among others, the pairs not inexpensive ~ pricey, domicile ~ house and purchase ~ buy in the example sentences indicate that styles in English are mainly characterised by vocabulary differences. Stylistic differences, however, can also show in the frequency of certain syntactic structures: in English, the passive voice, used in sentence (1), is more frequent in formal styles. Functional Varieties Styles 178 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s Registers, on the other hand, are usually characterised by a set of specialised vocabulary or specialised meaning of words that certain groups of people use in certain situations. Registers are often associated with occupational groups. For instance, lawyers use words such as felony, tort or vagrant, in their register also referred to as “legalese”. Pilots and aviation enthusiasts use the word fuselage whereas laypeople would more likely call the same “thing” the body of an aircraft. The sternum requires great force to fracture. As the above example sentence from a conversation between doctors shows, doctors and other medically trained people usually refer to the long, flat vertical bone in the centre of our chest as the sternum and normally use fracture instead of break when they talk among themselves. They would, however, probably use the word breastbone when they explain a diagnosis to a medically untrained patient. Other registers are associated with criminals, politicians, sports commentators and journalists (“journalese”), to name just a few. We have said above that speakers often signal that they belong to a certain group by making their language more similar to that of the other group members (cf. 8.1). Depending on the communicative situation we thus adapt our language, dialect, accent, style and / or register to that of our addressee or addressees. This process is called speech accommodation . Among the reasons for accommodation may be our desire to identify more closely with the addressee(s), to achieve social acceptance or simply to increase the efficiency of the communication. Accommodation theory also provides explanations for the opposite process, namely the deliberate distancing from another person or a group of people by making our speech less like theirs. Geographical Differentiation of Language In the traditional sociolinguistic view, language variation that is caused by the background of speakers develops when people are separated geographically or socially. Linguistic innovations such as new words or new pronunciations that occur in the language spoken in one geographical area or by one social group may not necessarily spread to the other areas or groups. Social and geographical distance slows down the spread to more distant Registers Accommodation 8.2.1 | 179 g e o g r a P h I C a L d I f f e r e n t I a t I o n o f L a n g u a g e varieties and barriers may even stop the spread of linguistic innovations altogether. This then is also known as communicative isolation . As a result, the boundaries of geographical dialect areas frequently coincide with geographical barriers like mountain ranges, oceans or rivers. Geographical variation is also referred to as horizontal variation . The study of geographical differentiation of language, which is now an integral part of sociolinguistics, is rooted in the field of traditional dialectology . Traditional dialectology has been popular since the middle of the 19th century and focuses on phonological and lexical variation in the speech of predominantly rural dialect speakers. The methodology of dialectology for data collection has usually included the transcription and analysis of aspects of speech by interviewers and the use of questionnaires. For several decades now, dialectologists have additionally employed tape-recorded interviews to lend greater accuracy to their work. This kind of investigation studies geographical differences concerning individual linguistic features. For example, linguists have studied the pronunciation of the vowel in words such as but in England. The North of England is characterised by the older pronunciation / bʊt / , whereas the newer pronunciation / bʌt / is the common form in the South of England. Dialectology indicates the boundary between the two usage areas on maps by means of a line, the so-called isogloss . The / ʊ / ~ / ʌ / isogloss in England runs roughly south of the East Midlands and West Midlands dialect areas (see Fig. 8.3). Isoglosses separating other features run through England roughly along the same line. Bundles of isoglosses form significant dialect boundaries , which are the basis of so-called dialect atlases. Geographical variation takes time to develop. In the English-speaking world, dialect diversity is greatest within Britain, where English has been spoken longest. America takes an intermediate position, while there is relatively little geographical variation in Australia and New Zealand, where English has been introduced more recently. There are, however, more or less considerable differences at all linguistic levels between these so-called national varieties of English, such as British English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English and New Zealand English (cf. 2.2). These differences are mainly due to a longstanding communicative isolation of the separate national varieties, particularly before the Traditional Dialectology National Varieties 180 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s Dialect areas in England and the / ʊ / ͂ / ʌ / isogloss (adapted from Trudgill 2000: 152) Fig. 8.3 | / ʊ / ͂ / ʌ / isogloss advent of international mass communication and affordable air travel. We have seen earlier in this section that speakers from America are more likely to pronounce the / r / in car than speakers from England. Like most speakers from England, the majority of Australians would not pronounce the / r / in this environment either. On the other hand, there are numerous jokes and stories based on the fact that the Australian pronunciation of the sentence I have come here today sounds like I have come here to die to 181 s o C I a L d I f f e r e n t I a t I o n o f L a n g u a g e most non-Australian ears. As far as vocabulary is concerned, most foreign learners of English are taught that the American subway is referred to as underground in Britain, but not many know that South African speakers of English use robot for the shared British and American term traffic light. Vocabulary differences can even cause embarrassment. Just think of the usage of the term pants meaning ‘a pair of trousers’ in America but ‘men’s underpants’ in Britain. Grammatical differences are usually less salient, but do also exist. American English allows the simple past tense in sentences such as I just came here while most speakers of British English would prefer I have just come here, i.e. the use of the present perfect. Although traditional dialectology, with its focus on predominantly rural dialects, has not ceased to exist, the field of modern dialectology is increasingly concerned with the study of urban dialects, frequently combining aspects of geographical and social variation (cf. 8.2.2). Modern dialectology still makes use of questionnaires and observations by interviewers but also employs statistical analysis of so called language corpora, i.e. large databases of speech samples. Social Differentiation of Language Similarly to the geographical differentiation of language, social variation depends on a speaker’s membership in various social groups and is at least to some extent due to social barriers and social distance (cf. 8.2.1). Socio-economic status, ethnic group membership, gender (cf. 8.3) and age are just some of the social factors that can act as linguistic barriers and may prevent innovations from spreading. More frequently, the social distance between groups such as young and old speakers or upper class and lower class speakers slows down the spread of innovations from one group to the other just as geographical distance does. Social variation is a very complex phenomenon, as speakers usually have only one main geographical background, but belong to a multitude of social groups. For example, a speaker can be upper class, African American, female and old at the same time. Language attitudes are another crucial factor that contributes to the development of social variation. Social differentiation of language is also referred to as vertical differentiation . Modern Dialectology | 8.2.2 182 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s One of the earliest and most striking discoveries of sociolinguistics was an observable pattern in the relationship between social and geographical variation. Studies found that the socio-economic status (or social class ) of a speaker influences her or his use of regional dialect forms. Socio-economic status is associated with a speaker’s education, occupation, income level and similar characteristics. According to these studies, British speakers of the highest socio-economic status usually speak the dialect called Standard British English (cf. 8.2), which does show some differences in different parts of the country but allows for comparatively little geographical variation. In contrast, regional variation was found to be far more extensive among speakers of the lowest social class, who use a wide variety of non-standard linguistic features. Fig. 8.5 illustrates the different range of regional variation in the speech of speakers from different socio-economic backgrounds. Factors causing social variation of language Fig. 8.4 | Socio-Economic Status Social and regional dialect variation (Trudgill 2000: 30) Fig. 8.5 | highest class: standard dialect lowest class: most localised non standard regional variation social variation sociolects socio-economic status ethnic group membership gender age various others important factors 183 s o C I a L d I f f e r e n t I a t I o n o f L a n g u a g e The analysis of the correlation of language and socio-economic status is inseparably connected with the American linguist William Labov (*1927), who pioneered the quantitative study of language variation in the early 1960s and is by many considered the founder of modern sociolinguistics. Labov conducted a number of studies concerning the social variation of individual linguistic features. For example, one of the studies looked into the realisation of non-prevocalic r in New York City, i.e. the frequency with which speakers with different socio-economic backgrounds articulate the r suggested by the spelling of words like cart and car before a consonant or silence. In this example, rhoticity is what Labov refers to as the linguistic variable , while he calls the possible realisations of this variable as [ ɹ ] and Ø (= zero) its linguistic variants . Like most accents of English in the North-East of the United States, the New York accent is traditionally non-rhotic (or r-less), whereas the prestige pronunciation referred to as GenAm is generally rhotic (cf. 3.1.3). Probably due to the prestige of GenAm, the New York accent has become increasingly rhotic for quite some time, particularly since World War II. Labov tested his hypothesis that non-prevocalic r usage would be correlated with socio-economic status in an experiment. He asked a number of shop assistants in a high, a medium and a low status New York City department store questions like Excuse me, where are the women’s shoes? that made them say fourth floor, which has two occurrences of the linguistic variable non-prevocalic r. 79 per cent of the shop assistants in the low-ranking store, 49 per cent in the medium-ranking store and only 38 per cent in the high-ranking store consistently used the less prestigious r-less variant. Labov showed that the lower the status of the store, the more likely it is that shop assistants use the less prestigious variant. At least equally important as the intriguing results of Labov’s early studies are the innovative sampling methods Labov has developed himself or introduced into linguistics from other fields, which is why he has been described as a “methodological genius” by other sociolinguists. For example, the shop assistants in New York did not know that they were being interviewed by a linguist. This is just one of the techniques Labov has employed to overcome what he called the observer’s paradox , i.e. the fact that people behave differently when they know that they are being systematically observed. Labov has developed a variety of other methods that elicit natural William Labov Example: The First Study 184 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s speech from informants despite the interview situation. He has shown, for instance, that interviewees tend to forget the unnaturalness of the situation when they are asked to talk about life-threatening situations they have been in. Additionally, Labov was among the first scholars to bring sociological methods like random sampling to linguistics, while most earlier studies were conducted among friends or personal contacts of the linguists involved. Random sampling ensures that though not every member of a linguistic group can be interviewed, each member has an equal chance of being selected for an interview. This way, the studies can claim to be truly representative of the linguistic group investigated. When we communicate, we often consciously or unconsciously signal our ethnic identity by the way we speak. Listeners, on the other hand, draw conclusions about the ethnic background of a speaker from the language she or he uses, particularly when there is no visual contact between the people taking part in a conversation. The linguistic choices we make are thus an important ethnic group marker. One of the most-researched ethnic varieties is so-called African American Vernacular English ( AAVE , formerly also called Black English), which is an important identifying characteristic of the group of African Americans in the United States. AAVE is heard especially in the northern cities of the United States and has a number of linguistic features that do not or only much less frequently occur in Standard American English (SAE). The grammatical properties of AAVE include the frequent use of multiple negation, as in I ain’t owe you nothing, and the omission of the 3rd person singular present indicative -s, as in she say or he kiss. Another important grammatical characteristic of AAVE is the absence of the copula verb be in linguistic contexts in which speakers of SAE would often use reduced forms: SAE she’s happy corresponds to AAVE she happy. To indicate habitual aspect, i.e. when an event is repeated and not continuous, AAVE employs the uninflected so-called invariant be. Together with the omission of the copula be, this results in a contrast between she tired ‘she is tired (now)’ and she be tired ‘she is (always) tired’, which can only be achieved by lexical means, i.e. the addition of now and always, in SAE. Ethnic Group Membership African American Vernacular English An ethnic group is a “ [ s ] ocial group or category of the population that, in a larger society, is set apart and bound together by common ties of language, nationality, or culture.” (Encyclopedia Britannica) 185 L a n g u a g e a n d g e n d e r The phonological characteristics of AAVE include the frequent deletion of / l/ at the end of words or before consonants, as in cool / ku / or help / hεp / , creating homophonic pairs such as toll and toe. AAVE is non-rhotic, i.e. AAVE speakers regularly do not realize < r > in non-prevocalic position before consonants and silence. Another phonological property is the simplification of so-called consonant clusters. Particularly at the end of words, the last consonant is frequently deleted, especially when one of the two consonants is an alveolar (cf. IPA chart inside the front cover). This process can create homophones, as both meant and mend are then frequently pronounced the same as men / mεn / . Talking about AAVE, it is, however, important to keep in mind that not all African Americans speak AAVE and that we are more likely to encounter non-standard AAVE features in the speech of speakers of lower socio-economic status. In fact, experiments have shown that African American children raised in SAE-speaking households will, of course, speak SAE, while white children who grow up in an AAVE-speaking environment will speak AAVE, because speakers always acquire the linguistic characteristics of those they live in close contact with. This shows that linguistic differences are entirely the result of learned behavior. Language and Gender The study of issues concerning language and gender is one of the most dynamic fields of current research and has led to two main areas of investigation. On the one hand, linguists have long studied linguistic features of women’s and men’s ways of communicating, i.e. so-called gender varieties (or genderlects ). On the other hand, feminist linguistics is primarily concerned with linguistic sexism , i.e. the linguistic discrimination of women, and the suggestion of non-discriminatory forms of language use. In the study of language and gender, most scholars view gender as a social category that is connected to the roles of women and men in society and distinguished from the biological concept of sex, although the two are to some extent interwoven. Gender as a social category refers to individuals and is differentiated from grammatical gender as a linguistic category (cf. section 2.1.1). There is no community that we know of in which women and men speak in exactly the same way. It has been suggested that | 8.3 Gender-Specific Language Use 186 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s gender-specific language use reflects the basic structure of societies. It has been claimed that, in some non-Western communities, women and men speak entirely different languages or one gender generally does not use specific linguistic forms that the other gender does. There are, however, no attested examples for this claim. Differences like that would be called gender-exclusive speech differences . In most societies, including all Western communities, women’s and men’s roles in society overlap to a certain extent and thus the speech forms used also overlap. As a result, women and men do not use entirely different linguistic forms, it is rather the frequency of usage of certain linguistic features that may differ. These differences in frequency and proportion are called gender-preferential speech features . We will now focus on one such example. Numerous studies investigating gender-preferential speech features in English have shown that there is a clear difference concerning the frequency of standard features used by women and men of the same social class. For example, the pronunciation of the variable -ng at the end of words like swimming and walking has been studied in several cities in the English-speaking world. For Norwich, Fig. 8.6 shows that men used the non-standard variant [ n ] instead of the standard variant [ ŋ ] more often than women in each of the five social classes under investigation: Gender-Preferential Speech Pronunciation of [-n] by sex and social class in Norwich (Holmes 2013: 164) Fig. 8.6 | 187 L a n g u a g e a n d g e n d e r The results from Norwich have been confirmed by other studies conducted in different places. In the speech data of all of the cities investigated, women have been found to use more standard pronunciations [ ŋ ] and fewer non-standard [ n ] pronunciations than their male counterparts of the same socio-economic status. The pattern that women use more standard forms than men also holds true for other variables at all linguistic levels, for example, the frequency of use of multiple negation in the speech of female and male African American speakers in Detroit. In fact, the correlation of gender and the usage of standard forms can be generalised to most Western speech communities. The sociolinguist Peter Trudgill (2000: 73) describes this pattern as “the single most consistent finding to emerge from sociolinguistic work around the world in the past thirty years”. We have seen that the pattern is clear and widespread in the languages investigated so far, but we do not know exactly why women use more standard forms than men. Linguists have suggested at least four possible explanations: Firstly, it has been claimed that societies seem to expect a higher level of adherence to social norms from women than from men. Secondly, it has been proposed that women are a subordinate group in society and thus have to speak more carefully and more politely in order to avoid offending men. Thirdly, linguists have suggested that women use more standard forms than men because they are more status-conscious than men and try to signal higher social status by the way they speak. A fourth approach inverts the question and asks why men do not use more standard forms than they do. The explanation seems to lie in the fact that numerous non-standard forms carry connotations of masculinity and toughness that are viewed positively by many men. While women more frequently choose standard forms, which are models of correctness and have obvious prestige which Labov calls overt prestige , it is probably because of these masculine connotations that men frequently use non-standard vernacular forms. The vernacular forms are said to carry a different type of “hidden” prestige which Labov calls covert prestige . Language choice can thus be said to be equally important for signalling one’s gender identity, as it is for indicating socio-economic status and ethnic group membership (cf. 8.2.2). Sentences like Doctors and their wives used to be frequently encountered on invitations. This shows that inequality and the asymmetrical roles of women and men in society do not only Linguistic Sexism 188 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s influence women’s and men’s ways of communicating, but also the way women and men are represented in language structure and language use. Linguistic discrimination by means of the asymmetrical representation of women and men in language is referred to as linguistic sexism , sexism in language or gender-biased language use . It is usually women who are excluded, trivialised or insulted by sexist language use . The awareness and documentation of sexist practices in language use has led to a lively discussion and the development of many guidelines for non-sexist usage in a variety of languages since the 1970s. There are a number of other terms referring to the same or similar concepts including gender-fair , non-discriminatory , gender-neutral and gender-inclusive language . We will now take a look at the most important mechanisms of linguistic discrimination of women, namely female invisibility , stereotyping and asymmetrical gender marking , and briefly discuss proposals for the elimination of sexist language. English has been accused of being a patriarchal (= ‘male dominated’) and sexist language, partly on the grounds that women are frequently invisible in language. So-called personal nouns (or human nouns) referring to individuals and pronouns play the central role in the debate. Traditionally, male-biased nouns like chairman and mankind are used in a so-called generic sense to refer to both female and male referents. Similarly, traditional prescription requires the use of the so-called “generic he” in contexts in which the gender of the referent is unspecified or unimportant, as in If a student works hard, he will be successful. In both cases, women are allegedly included but not visible. These usages of male-biased nouns and pronouns are called androcentric (= ‘male dominated’) and follow the traditional MAN (= ‘male as norm’) principle. Psycholinguistic studies have shown that he and man are associated with male images, even when they are employed generically. The result is that man cannot be used in a completely generic sense and that English does not have a truly gender-neutral third person singular pronoun, except the recent usage of they with a singular meaning. This is why the androcentric “generics” have also been called pseudo-generics or false generics . For the same reason, it has also proven totally unsuitable to add a footnote to a text explaining that all male pronouns used in the text are meant to include women as well. Female Invisibility 189 L a n g u a g e a n d g e n d e r The meaning of some personal nouns includes the notion of so-called lexical gender . For example, personal nouns such as mother and father are gender-specific as they are lexically specified as [ +female ] and [ +male ] respectively. However, most English personal nouns such as student or passenger are considered gender-neutral (or gender-indefinite). In contrast to German, where personal feminines are usually marked by means of the productive suffix -in as in Studentin ‘female student’, the majority of English personal nouns are not formally marked for lexical gender, with exceptions such as princess or widower. In English, gender thus shows mainly in the pronouns accompanying a personal noun. If the choice of an associated pronoun cannot be explained by grammatical gender or lexical gender, as in A pilot must love his plane, the noun has so-called social gender (or covert gender). Social gender depends on stereotypical assumptions about the “appropriate” roles for women and men in society. This is why personal nouns like nurse or typist are frequently pronominalised by she, whereas many high-status occupational terms like pilot, doctor or scientist will often be pronominalised by he in situations where the person’s gender is unknown or irrelevant. Linguistic stereotyping and asymmetrical gender marking are the result of these allegedly stereotypical roles of women and men in society. The initial example sentence Doctors and their wives shows so-called stereotyping based on an underlying gender-bias and an asymmetrical structure of society. Similarly, asymmetrical gender marking - as in the increasingly rare terms woman doctor, lady scientist or male nurse - refers to the combination of a lexically gender-neutral noun with a gender-specific element when the referent does not have the stereotypically assumed gender. Even morphologically symmetrical pairs of terms can be semantically highly asymmetrical, often with the female representing the lesser category. This process is called semantic derogation and can be encountered in pairs like governor ‘the official head of a state or region’ and governess ‘a woman who lives with a family, and takes care of and teaches the children’. Semantic derogation applies to many terms for women with originally positive or neutral associations, which have undergone a process of derogation. For example, mistress simply used to be the female equivalent of master and now refers to a woman who has a sexual relationship with a man married to another woman. Stereotyping and Asymmetrical Gender Marking 190 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s Another asymmetry shows in the terms of address for men and women. In English and German, women were traditionally identified in terms of their relationship to men as either being married or unmarried. The disappearance of Fräulein ‘Miss’ as a term of address for unmarried female adults in German has created a truly symmetrical pair of address terms (Frau / Herr). The strategy to introduce a new neutral term Ms [ mɪz ] in English has been less successful. Ms is on the increase but has not yet replaced Mrs and Miss completely and transports a number of unintended meanings such as ‘separated / divorced’ or ‘living in a de facto relationship’. Particularly since the 1970s, feminist linguistics has been making proposals how to avoid sexist language. Two major strategies of non-sexist language reform have been proposed: One approach claims that linguistic equality can be achieved by gender-neutralisation , i.e. the elimination of gender-specific forms in generic contexts. The replacement of generic he by the pronoun they in the singular, as in everyone should wash their hands now, is probably the most frequently used form of gender-neutralisation in English. Interestingly enough, this usage was widespread for most of the history of English, before eighteenth century grammarians created the rule which calls for the generic usage of the male pronouns. Generically used man can also be rendered in a gender-neutral way, for example by the use of chairperson or simply chair instead of chairman, and humankind instead of mankind. Similar proposals have been made concerning gender-neutral job titles, such as the introduction of flight attendant, firefighter or police officer. The second approach proposes to achieve linguistic equality by so-called gender-specification (or feminisation ), i.e. by making the woman / female visible through the explicit naming or inclusion of females and males. For example, it is now common to explicitly mention females and males in constructions like she or he or he or she, replacing traditional generic he. In writing the same effect can be achieved by the frequently encountered spelling s / he. Feminisation can also be applied to avoid generic -man through the use of so-called “ gender-splitting ”, as in chairwoman or chairman, in contexts in which we do not know the gender of the referent. Splitting is now also a frequently encountered strategy when addressing an unknown recipient in a letter as Dear Madam or Sir. Non-Sexist Language Reform 191 L a n g u a g e a n d g e n d e r These examples show that both strategies are in widespread use today. The preference for either gender-neutralisation or gender-specification is partly a matter of ideology and other non-linguistic parameters, and partly based on the structural properties of the languages in question. From a linguistic perspective, the feminisation strategy is more effective in languages such as German, which have grammatical gender and regularly mark gender morphologically, than in natural gender languages such as English, in which gender mainly shows in pronoun use. German has the productive feminine suffix -in that can be employed to explicitly mention females and males by gender-splitting in phrases such as jede Studentin und jeder Student ‘every female and male student’. In writing, German-speakers can refer to the generic notion of student by spellings like der / die Student / in ‘the student’ or die Student*innen ‘students’. Feminisation has thus been favoured by many German feminist linguistic activists, although there are some instances of neutralisation as well, such as the use of Studierende ‘students’ in the plural instead of Studentinnen ‘female students’ or the ambiguous term Studenten meaning ‘male students’ or traditionally also ‘male and female students’. In English, on the other hand, it has been more popular to neutralise gender differences by creating terms like chairperson or salesperson that are not marked for gender at all. The following table gives an overview of the most important guidelines on non-sexist usage in English: | Fig. 8.7 non sexist alternative(s) ˘ use singular they: Everyone should wash their hands now. ˘ use she or he or he or she: If a student works hard, she or he will be successful. ˘ use singular they: If a student works hard, they will be successful. ˘ use graphemic devices (in writing only): ... s/ he will be successful. ˘ use the plural: Students who work hard will be successful. traditional usage ˘ Everyone should wash his hands now. ˘ If a student works hard, he will be successful. guideline ˘ avoid pseudo-generic he/ his/ him 192 Selected guidelines on non-sexist language use in English s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s To sum up, we can say that today, at least officially, gender equality is one of the primary goals of social development. Many governments, international institutions and private organisations have adopted guidelines for the use of non-sexist language in public speech and documents as part of a gender mainstreaming policy. The objective of gender mainstreaming is the explicit consideration of both women and men as well as gender equality in all decision-making processes. From a linguistic point of view, gender mainstreaming is a matter of non-sexist language planning. The first results of such planning and the spread of non-sexist language in society are currently under investigation and evaluation. ˘ use humankind instead ˘ use gender-neutral forms: chair or chairperson and police officer ˘ use person instead: the best person for the task ˘ use a gender-neutral alternative: staff the ticket booth ˘ use a gender-neutral alternative: doctors and their spouses ˘ do not add gender-specific elements, use scientist instead ˘ use first names for all or none of the people mentioned: The reading list includes Joyce, Austen, Woolf and Faulkner (or: James Joyce, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner). ˘ use ancestors instead ˘ use Ms / mɪz / instead of both terms ˘ use first names or unmarked forms of address instead: Emma and James Smith or Mr and Ms Smith ˘ avoid -ess, use author, poet and flight attendant instead ˘ mankind or man (as in The history of man) ˘ chairman or policeman ˘ the best man for the task ˘ man the ticket booth ˘ doctors and their wives ˘ woman scientist ˘ lady scientist ˘ The reading list includes Joyce, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Faulkner. ˘ forefathers ˘ Miss (unmarried) ˘ Mrs (married) ˘ Mr and Mrs James Smith ˘ authoress, poetess, stewardess (on a plane) ˘ avoid pseudo-generic man ˘ avoid stereotyping and asymmetrical gender marking ˘ avoid forms of address that are marked for marital status ˘ avoid diminutive forms and semantic derogation 193 e x e r C I s e s Exercises 1. In 1945, the linguist Max Weinreich proposed the following distinction of the terms language and dialect: “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” If we ignore the fact that it is not languages but the corresponding countries that have an army, this definition works well for the linguistic situation in Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden and Norway), where we are concerned with three different languages that are to a large extent mutually intelligible. How can you relate the definition to the situation of British English, American English and Australian English? 2. What type of variety are we concerned with in the following sentence? Give reasons. Henry scored twice in the first half and once in the second half when he raced on to a pass from Reyes in the 68th minute. 3. Sentence a) is written in a rather formal style, sentence b) in a rather informal style. a) Please rewrite the sentence in a less formal style and explain your choices: Mother was somewhat fatigued after her lengthy journey. b) Please rewrite the utterance in a more formal style and explain your choices: I gotta head home and hit the hay. I’m pretty beat. 4. What would you have to change to make the following excerpts gender-neutral: a) We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (from the Declaration of Independence) b) The English have no respect for their language, [ ... ] . They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. [ ... ] German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen. (cf. 3.1.3) c) And the maker of a verse Cannot rhyme his horse with worse? (cf. 3.1.3) d) Miss Power has been named “fireman of the month”. | 8.4 194 s o C I o L I n g u I s t I C s e) The poetess Joanna Verse read from her new book on the radio last night. f) An Australian loves his vegemite sandwich. 5. When Neil Armstrong climbed out of the Lunar Module in 1969 and was the first person ever to set foot on the moon, he said the following sentence containing a small slip of the tongue: That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. a) What would be a non-sexist version of this utterance and why does Armstrong’s statement, strictly speaking, not make sense? b) Make an educated guess what he probably wanted to say and give a non-sexist version of his intended sentence. Bibliography 8.5 | Ammon, Ulrich, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier & Peter Trudgill, eds. 2004-2006. Sociolinguistics/ Soziolinguistik: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society/ Ein internationales Handbuch zur Wissenschaft von Sprache und Gesellschaft. 3 vols. 2nd edition. Berlin: de Gruyter. (The authoritative and comprehensive handbook on sociolinguistics) Chambers, J. K. 2003. Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Significance. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. (A rather comprehensive treatment of sociolinguistic theory) Chambers, J. K. & Nathalie Schilling, eds. 2013. The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. 2nd edition. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. (A collection of articles on issues concerning language variation) Coates, Jennifer. 2016. Women, Men and Language: A Sociolinguistic Account of Gender Differences in Language. 3rd edition. Abingdon: Routledge. (An updated introduction to gender differences in language. Reissued with a new preface) Coulmas, Florian. 1998. The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. (A collection of articles on core sociolinguistic topics) Coulmas, Florian. 2013. Sociolinguistics: The Study of Speakers’ Choices. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (An introductory textbook) Coupland, Nick & Adam Jaworski, eds. 2009. The New Sociolingustics Reader. 2nd edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (A collection of essays from leading sociolinguists) Eckert, Penelope & Sally McConnell-Ginet. 2013. Language and Gender. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (An overview of the relation between gender and language use) Ehrlich, Susan, Miriam Meyerhoff & Janet Holmes, eds. 2014. The Handbook of Language, Gender & Sexuality. 2nd edition. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. (A valuable collection of articles addressing issues concerning language and gender) Hellinger, Marlis & Ulrich Ammon, eds. 1996. Contrastive Sociolinguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (A contrastive approach to basic issues in sociolinguistics) 195 B I B L I o g r a P h y Hellinger, Marlis & Hadumod Bußmann, eds. 2001-2003. Gender Across Languages. 3 vols. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (A comprehensive and systematic description of gender issues concerning a variety of different languages) Holmes, Janet & Nick Wilson. 2017. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 5th edition. Abingdon: Routledge. (An up-to-date introductory textbook on sociolinguistics) Kiesling, Scott. 2019. Language, Gender, and Sexuality: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. (A good starting point for novices on the topic) Kortmann, Bernd & Edgar Schneider in collaboration with Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie & Clive Upton, eds. 2004. A Handbook of Varieties of English. 2 vols. + 1 CD-ROM. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (A comprehensive overview of varieties of English around the world) Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics. (The groundbreaking study for the field of sociolinguistics) Labov, William. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume 2: Social Factors. Malden: Blackwell. (A detailed account of the social origins and the social motivation of linguistic change) Lakoff, Robin Tolmach. 2004. Language and Woman’s Place. Revised edition by Mary Bucholtz. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Revised edition of one of the classic texts on language and gender with commentaries from a number of leading scholars of the field) Mesthrie, Rajend. 2001. Concise Encyclopedia of Sociolinguistics. Amsterdam: Elsevier. (A broad and comprehensive overview of sociolinguistics) Miller, Casey & Kate Swift. 1995. The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing for Writers, Editors and Speakers. 3rd edition. London: The Woman’s Press. (A pioneering guide to non-sexist language use) Romaine, Suzanne. 2000. Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (An introductory textbook to the field of sociolinguistics) Stockwell, Peter. 2008. Sociolinguistics: A Resource Book for Students. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. (A hands-on introductory textbook) Swann, Joan, Ana Deumert, Theresa Lillis & Rajend Mesthrie. 2004. A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. (A comprehensive dictionary of sociolinguistic terminology) Trudgill, Peter. 2000. Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. 4th edition. London: Penguin. (One of the standard introductory textbooks on sociolinguistics) Trudgill, Peter. 2003. A Glossary of Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (A collection of the most important terms used in sociolinguistic analysis) Wardhaugh, Ronald & Janet M. Fuller. 2015. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 7th edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. (A comparatively comprehensive introductory textbook) Wolfram, Walt & Natalie Shilling. 2016. American English: Dialects and Variation. 3rd edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. (An up-to-date description of language variation in American English) Selected Journals Journal of Sociolinguistics Language and Society Language Variation and Change English World-Wide 197 Answers Chapter 2: A Brief History of English 1. The main aim of historical linguistics is the description and explanation of language change over time. 2. Kentish, West Saxon and Anglian are the three main dialect areas of Old English. Anglo-Saxon is used as an alternative term for Old English, or to refer to an English person of the period before the Norman Conquest. The term Cockney refers to the type of English used by a part of the population of East London or a person who speaks Cockney. 3. a) T b) F c) F d) T e) F 4. The / u/ in ModE moon goes back to ME long / o/ . It is the result of raising during the Great Vowel Shift. The Modern English spelling does not reflect the sound change, as the spelling of English had largely been fixed before the change took place. - The Modern English pronunciation / a ɪ / of I goes back to ME long / i/ , which was diphthongised in the course of the Great Vowel Shift. Again, the spelling has not been adjusted to reflect the sound change. 5. In the countries of the so-called outer circle, such as India, Singapore, Nigeria and South Africa, English is not the native language of the majority of the population, but does have a number of important functions. In India, for example, English is widely used in education, the public administration and as a lingua franca, i.e. for communication between people or groups of people who do not have the same native language. Appendix |9 | 9.1 198 a P P e n d I x 6. The change that can be observed when looking at the data is part of the so-called High German Consonant Shift (or Second Germanic Consonant Shift). The entire sound change cannot be explained in detail here. What we can observe from the spelling of the words, however, is that ModE pcorresponds to ModG pfat the beginning of many historically related words. The change must have taken place after the West Germanic languages had split up into High and Low varieties. Chapter 3: Phonetics and Phonology 1. a) [ b ] , [ k ] and [ d ] represent plosives b) [ s ] , [ ʃ ] , [ x ] and [ θ ] represent fricatives c) [ b ] , [ w ] , [ l ] , [ ŋ ] and [ d ] represent voiced consonants; [ ʊ ] and [ ɪ ] are vowels, which are always voiced 2. Place of Manner of Examples articulation articulation from English a) bilabial plosive [ b ] , [ p ] b) dental fricative [ θ ] , [ ð ] c) velar nasal [ ŋ ] d) labiodental fricative [ f ] , [ v ] e) velar plosive [ k ] , [ g ] f) bilabial nasal [ m ] 3. Consonants are called homorganic when they share the same place of articulation. There are four groups of homorganic consonants in the data of Exercise 2: 1) [ b ] , [ p ] and [ m ] are all bilabials 2) [ k ] , [ g ] and [ ŋ ] are all velars 3) [ θ ] and [ ð ] are both dentals 4) [ f ] and [ v ] are both labiodentals 4. Shared articulatory features are: phones feature(s) a) [ m ] , [ ŋ ] , [ n ] voiced, nasal b) [ k ] , [ ɡ ] , [ ŋ ] , [ x ] velars c) [ i ] , [ e ] , [ ε ] , [ æ ] front vowels d) [ f ] , [ θ ] , [ s ] , [ ʃ ] voiceless, fricative e) [ u ] , [ i ] close (or : high) vowels f) [ d ] , [ n ] , [ r ] , [ l ] voiced, alveolar 199 a n s W e r s 5. The phonetic symbols corresponding to the articulatory descriptions are: a) [ z ] b) [ ε ] c) [ u ] d) [ ʔ ] e) [ ɪ ] f) [ ʃ ] 6. The following articulatory descriptions correspond to the phonetic symbols provided: a) mid central unrounded vowel b) voiced alveolar nasal c) mid-low low front unrounded vowel d) voiceless alveolar plosive e) mid-high high back rounded vowel f) voiced alveolar approximant 7. Conventional English spelling of the transcribed words and phrases: a) cheat d) Old English g) phonetics too / phonetics two b) son / sun e) assimilation h) enough c) bite / byte f) linguistics is fun 8. Examples from the poem for discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation: type 1) same spelling for different sounds: (examples from stanzas 1 and 2) <ea> represents [ eɪ ] in break, [ i  ] in freak, speak and beard, and [ ɜ  ] in heard <ew> represents [ əʊ ] in sew and [ ju  ] in few <o> represents [ ɔ  ] in horse and cord, and [ ɜ  ] in worse and word 2) different spellings for the same sound: (examples from stanzas 1 and 2) [ u  ] is represented by <ue> in true and <ew> in few [ ɜ  ] is represented by <e> in verse, <ea> in heard, and <o> in worse and word 3) silent letters: (examples from stanzas 4 and 5) tomb, bomb, comb, some, home, could, done, gone, lone, known 4) phantom letter: [ j ] in few 200 a P P e n d I x 9. Further examples for discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation: type examples: 1) <o> represents [ ɪ ] in women, [ u  ] in do, [ ɔ  ] in fort, [ ʊ ] in wolf, RP [ ɒ ] or GenAm [ ɑ  ] in sock, [ ʌ ] in son, RP [ əʊ ] or GenAm [ oʊ ] in phone, and [ ə ] in oblige (or similar answers) 2) [ i  ] is represented by <e> in we, <i> in ski, <ea> in meat, <ee> in meet, <eo> in people, <ei> in deceive, <ey> in key, <ae> in Caesar, <ay> quay, <ie> in field and <oe> in Phoenix (or similar answers) 3) debt, handkerchief, name, gnu, hour, knee, half, mnemonic, autumn, psyche, island, glisten, write, grand prix (or similar answers) 4) [ j ] in cute, abuse and futile; in RP also news, tube and deuce (or similar answers) 10. The explanation is based on the discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation in English. [ f ] is represented by <gh> in words like cough or laugh, [ ɪ ] is represented by <o> in women and [ ʃ ] is represented by <ti> in nation. We could theoretically argue that <gh,o,ti> can spell [ fɪʃ ] . - It should, however, be noted that <gh> does never represent [ f ] in word-initial position and <ti> does never represent [ ʃ ] in word-final position in English. 11. The following minimal pairs are suggestions only. There are, of course, many other correct examples of minimal pairs for the pairs of phonemes in question: phonemes minimal pair a) / p / ~ / b / pit ~ bit / pɪt / ~ / bɪt / b) / i / ~ / u / reef ~ roof / ri  f / ~ / ru  f / c) / b / ~ / m / beat ~ meet / bi  t / ~ / mi  t / d) / n / ~ / s / knee ~ sea / ni / ~ / si / e) / t / ~ / d / bat ~ bad / bæt / ~ / bæd / f) / ɪ / ~ / æ / sit ~ sat / sɪt / ~ / sæt / 201 a n s W e r s 12. The distribution of the allophones [ f ] and [ v ] of the phoneme / f / in Old English: Chapter 4: Morphology 1. Seven word tokens and six word types. Only two word types will be listed in a dictionary in the form in which they appear in this sentence, namely the and and. The nouns bird and bell will be listed as singular forms, and the verbs sing and ring as infinitives. 2. a) cat free -s bound inflectional suffix b) unbound derivational prefix happy free c) mild free -er bound inflectional suffix d) bibound derivational prefix cycle free e) sign free post free f) rebound derivational prefix join free g) greed free -y bound derivational suffix h) hate free -ful bound derivational suffix / f / [ v ] [ f ] phonetic environment(s) between vowels at the beginning of a word at the end of a word preliminary occurs between two vowels occurs elsewhere phonological rule (in fact it occurs between two voiced sounds) 202 a P P e n d I x 3. a) comfort free -able bound derivational suffix b) rebound derivational prefix condition free -ed bound inflectional suffix c) sense free -less bound derivational suffix d) ration free -al bound derivational suffix -is(e) bound derivational suffix -ation bound derivational suffix e) environ free -ment bound derivational suffix -al bound derivational suffix f) thick free -en bound derivational suffix -er bound derivational suffix -s bound inflectional suffix 4. a) base = verb, whole word = noun b) base = noun, whole word = adjective c) base = adjective, whole word = adjective 5. a) derivational suffix = -ful, base = noun, whole word = adjective b) derivational prefix = un-, base = adjective, whole word = adjective c) derivational prefix = re-, base = verb, whole word = verb 6. infixation: insertion of infix [ -umi- ] after initial consonant 7. a) compounding (noun career and noun change and noun opportunity) b) blending (verb decrease and noun recruitment, the latter formed by V N derivation: verb recruit + derivational suffix -ment) c) compounding (preposition out and noun placement, the latter formed by V N derivation: verb place and derivational suffix -ment) 8. Catfish and swordfish are endocentric compound nouns, whereas shellfish is an exocentric compound noun. The adjective selfish is the odd one out. It consists of the noun self and the bound derivational suffix -ish. 203 a n s W e r s 9. a) compounding (air + plane) and derivation (talk + -er); compounding (airplane + talker) b) compounding ( fat + finger); conversion (N → V) c) compounding (ash + hole) Chapter 5: Syntax 1. a) [ N Bob ] [ V called ] [ Det a ] [ N friend ] b) [ Pro she ] [ V called ] [ Pro him ] [ Det a ] [ N genius ] c) [ Det the ] [ N baby ] [ V cried ] d) [ Det the ] [ N students ] [ V sent ] [ Det the ] [ N teacher ] [ Det some ] [ Adv very ] [ Adj interesting ] [ N suggestions ] 2. Call is a verb because it fulfils the criteria for (1) meaning, (2) inflection and (3) distribution: (1) call expresses an action; (2) call takes verbal inflections (3rd person singular present indicative -s, the -ing-form, past tense -ed (cf. Exercise 1), and past participle -ed); (3) call may occur as the predicate, usually after the subject and before an object (e.g. Bob called a friend), and it may be combined with auxiliaries (is calling, has called) and modified by an adverb (e.g she called frequently). 3 . a) imperative b) exclamatory c) interrogative d) declarative 4. Yes, a book is a constituent, because it passes several constituency tests: the pronoun it can be substituted for a book in a sentence ( John read it last night); a book can be coordinated with a newspaper ( John read a book and a newspaper last night); a book may serve as the answer to a question (W hat did John read last night? A book). 5. a) Simple phrases: April (NP) and is (VP) Complex phrase: a cruel month (NP) b) Simple phrases: midnight (NP) and shakes (VP) Complex phrase: the memory (NP) 204 a P P e n d I x c) Simple phrases: I (NP) and met (VP) Complex phrases: a traveller from an antique land (NP), a traveller (NP), from an antique land (PrepP), an antique land (NP) 6. a) b) [ NP [ N John ]][ V P [ V read ]][ NP [ Det a ][ N book ]] 7. a) b) [ NP the husband [ PrepP of [ NP the lady [ PrepP with [ NP the cat ]]]]] S NP VP NP N V Det N John read a book 205 a n s W e r s 8. a) 1.a) monotransitive; 1.b) complex transitive; 1.c) intransitive; 1.d) ditransitive b) 1.a) SPO; 1.b) SPOC; 1.c) SP; 1.d) SPOO c) 1.a) divalent; 1.b) trivalent; 1.c) monovalent; 1.d) trivalent 9. Examples b) and c) are grammatical. Example b) follows the SP clause pattern, with a predicate that consists of two simple verb phrases linked by the conjunction and. Example c) follows the SPC clause pattern. In example a), the conjunction and appears after the two simple verb phrases rise and fall (instead of between them), and in example d) the word order could be interpreted as an insertion of the subject we and the predicate are into the complement the hollow men. In English (and in many other languages), such patterns are ungrammatical. Chapter 6: Semantics 1. Identify the meaning relations between the following pairs of words: a) leave ~ return antonymy (directional opposites) b) door ~ house meronymy c) young ~ old antonymy (gradable pair) d) bright ~ intelligent synonymy e) flower ~ rose hyponymy (rose is the hyponym, flower is the hyperonym) f) examiner ~ examinee antonyms (relational opposites) g) freedom ~ liberty synonymy 2. Lexical ambiguity occurs when the same sound sequence represents two (or more) different meanings . Lexical ambiguity is thus either created by the different meanings of one polysemous word , or by two (or more) homophones . 206 a P P e n d I x 3. 4. Fuzziness a) We say that rich and clean represent fuzzy concepts, because there is no clear-cut boundary between rich and not rich, or clean and not clean. b) No, there are some rather straightforward and clear-cut concepts, such as pope or senator. 5. a) contradiction: if William is single, he cannot be married b) paraphrase: if planes are loud, they are also noisy c) entailment: if James is Mary’s husband, Mary must be married d) paraphrase: if I am exhausted, I am also tired e) contradiction: if Christina and Mat are workaholics, they cannot be lazy f) entailment: if my car is red, it cannot be white 6. a) The student hits the teacher with the book Two interpretations are possible: a student has a book in her or his hands and hits the teacher with it, or a student hits a teacher who is carrying a book b) A lady watched an actor with opera glasses This sentence also allows two different readings : a lady watched an actor by using opera glasses, or a lady watched an actor who was using opera glasses herself or himself Word/ Phrase Extension Intension Prime Minister of Boris Johnson leader of the governing party the United Kingdom capital of the Washington, D.C. city which is the seat of the federal United States government of the United States of America Queen of the Queen Elizabeth II the head of state of the United United Kingdom Kingdom vegetable carrots, peas, onions, all words that have the following peppers, cabbage etc. semantic features: [+plant, +food, -fruit] 207 a n s W e r s 7. a) presupposition: Chomsky has written books b) presupposition: There is a pope c) presupposition: My colleague sent me an e-mail d) presupposition: They have closed at least one library already 8. 1b) contains the presupposition; realise implies that Anna was in debt, it is the trigger 2a) contains the presupposition; stop is the trigger, as it implies that the addressee has been running marathons Chapter 7: Pragmatics 1. a) I - person deixis, like - points to the present: time deixis (proximal), this - place deixis (proximal), that - place deixis (distal) b) I - person deixis, saw - points to the past: time deixis (distal), him - person deixis, there - place deixis (distal) c) I - person deixis, will meet - points to the future: time deixis (distal), her - person deixis, here - place deixis (proximal) d) I - person deixis, will visit - points to the future: time deixis (distal), them - person deixis, then - time deixis (distal) 2. a) Frank Rist was (time deixis, distal) in the next room (place deixis, distal). Joseph could (time deixis, distal) even hear that (place deixis, distal, and social deixis) familiar voice, its staccato syllables drawn (time deixis, distal) from deep in the larynx. He (person deixis) could (time deixis, distal) not make out the words. b) Joseph is the deictic centre. c) The expression that indicates distance and is used here to convey Joseph’s negative attitude towards Frank Rist and his voice. 3. a) The Maxim of Relation is flouted. b) The Maxim of Relation is violated. c) The Maxim of Quantity is flouted. 4. a) She does, because the daughter’s “O.K.” shows that she has obviously understood her communicative intention. b) Her answer violates the Maxim of Relation. 208 a P P e n d I x 5. a) representative b) declaration c) directive d) commissive e) expressive 6. a) declarative b) commissive c) Commissive speech acts refer to a future event or state. By uttering commissives, speakers may commit themselves to some future course of action. In the case of threats or warnings, the future speaker activity is usually unpleasant to the addressee. However, the speaker in the cartoon is warning the addressee of cutting the rope that protects him from falling off a cliff, i.e. an activity that is primarily harmful to himself. Therefore, the felicity conditions for a warning are not completely satisfied here. Note that some types of warnings may also function as indirect directives, as in “The bull is about to charge! ” 7. admitted representative requested directive forbade directive said representative 8. a) (1)-(2) greeting - greeting; (2)-(3) question - answer; (3)-(4) assessment - agreement; (4)-(5) question, request or offer - a reply which is open to interpretation and most likely a refusal b) It has features of a dispreferred response. This is indicated by dispreference markers such as well, pauses and hesitations, and a comparatively high amount of communicative effort. Chapter 8: Sociolinguistics 1. Weinreich’s definition of dialect and language does not hold true with reference to BrE, AmE and AusE. The United Kingdom, The United States of America and Australia each have 209 a n s W e r s their own army and navy, but the corresponding national varieties of English, namely BrE, AmE and AusE, are still said to be varieties of English and not independent languages. There have been proposals to call AmE “The American Language” and AusE “The Australian Language” but this terminology has never become mainstream and there is general agreement among contemporary linguists that we are not concerned with separate languages. 2. This excerpt is obviously written in the register of sports reporting, or to be more precise, the reporting of football. To score, first half, second half, pass and 68th minute clearly belong to this kind of register. Registers are functional varieties that depend on the communicative situation rather than on the background of the speaker. 3. a) Among other hints, fatigued, lengthy and journey suggest that the sentence is written in a rather formal style. A less formal alternative would be: Mum was pretty tired after her long trip. b) The contraction gotta, the adjective beat and the idiom hit the hay are among the expressions that show the utterance to be in a rather informal style. A suggestion for a more formal version would be: I think I have to go home and go to bed. I am pretty tired. 4. The following changes would have to be made: a) all men are created equal would have to be replaced by all human beings are created equal b) no man can teach himself would have to be replaced by nobody can teach themselves; Englishmen should be replaced by Englishpeople or the English c) maker should be changed into makers and his horse into their horse d) Miss should be replaced by Ms and fireman by the gender-neutral form firefighter e) poetess should be avoided and replaced by poet f) the pseudo-generic his should be avoided by rephrasing the sentence into Australians love their vegemite sandwiches 210 a P P e n d I x 5. a) A non-sexist version of Armstrong’s utterance would be: That’s one small step for humankind, [ but ] one giant leap for humankind. The sentence does not make sense, as the second part of the utterance contradicts the first part. b) He probably wanted to say That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind, which makes perfectly good sense. A non-sexist version of his intended sentence would be the following: That’s one small step for a person / human being, one giant leap for humankind. 211 3rd person singular present indicative.......... 29, 87, 102 ablaut.................................................................... 20 abstract noun .............................................89, 101f accent................................................. 174f, 177f, 183 accommodation.................................................178 accusative .............................................................19 acoustic phonetics..............................................40 acronym................................................................94 active .................................................................... 79 adjacency pair .................................................. 165f adjective (Adj) ........... 20, 23, 78f, 84, 87, 89-94, 100-103, 113f adjective phrase (AdjP).............................. 113-115 adverb................................... 79, 89, 100, 102-104 adverbial .................................... 27, 106f, 111f, 118f Aelfric.....................................................................18 affix ..................................... 81-84, 86, 88, 90, 94 affricate.........................................................45f, 54 African American Vernacular English (AAVE) ........................................................184f age ............................................................... 174, 181f agentive noun .....................................................89 Alfred the Great ...................................................18 allomorph ...........................................................85f allophone ................................................ 59, 61-63 alphabetism.........................................................94 alveolar.........................42-44, 52, 60, 62-64, 69 alveolar ridge................................................ 42, 44 ambiguity................................................... 132f, 145 ambiguous ................................................. 133, 145f analytic language ........................... 19, 22, 30, 120 androcentric ...................................................... 188 Angles ............................................................. 13, 15f Anglian................................................................... 15 Anglo-Saxon ................................................... 12, 18 anthropological linguistics ................................. 3 antonym...................................... 129-131, 136, 143 antonymy.....................................129-131, 134, 143 applied linguistics ................................................ 4 approximant............................43, 46f, 52f, 60, 63 arbitrariness .........................................................6f argument ...........................................................118f articulator ........................................ 40, 42-46, 57 articulatory phonetics ................................40f, 51 assertive ..................................................... 162-164 assimilation .................................................. 68-70 asymmetrical gender marking.............. 188f, 192 attitude ............................................................... 181 auditory phonetics........................................... 40f Austin, John L. ................................................... 160 avalent................................................................. 118 back ........................................................ 42f, 49, 55f back of the tongue .................................45, 57, 60 back-formation ..................................................93f base ...................................................83-85, 88, 90 Bede ................................................................. 15, 18 Beowulf..................................................................18 bilabial ....................................... 44f, 47, 52, 62, 69 biolinguistics ......................................................... 3 blade of the tongue............................................ 42 blend ..................................................................... 93 blending ............................................................... 93 body of the tongue............................................. 42 borrowing .............................................. 12f, 18, 26f bound morpheme ....................................... 81-84 branches of linguistics................................. 2, 3, 4 Bühler, Karl..............................................................7 cardinal vowel ............................................. 48f, 54 case................................................ 19, 20, 23, 27, 29 categorisation .................................................. 138f Caxton, William .............................................13, 24 Celtic ................................................... 13-16, 18, 30 Celts.................................................................13f, 16 central..................................................... 47-49, 55f centring diphthong ........................................... 57f Chomsky, Noam ............................................8, 121f circumfix...............................................................84 citation form .......................................................68 classification of consonants ....................... 43, 47 classification of vowels ............................... 43, 47 clause ........... 99-101, 104, 107-109, 113f, 117-120 clause level......................................................... 109 clause patterns (of English) ..................... 117-120 clear l.............................................................60f, 63 clinical linguistics.................................................. 3 clipping ................................................................93f Index | 9.2 212 a P P e n d I x a P P e n d I x closed class .......................................................... 79 closed syllable ..................................................... 65 closeness .......................................................47f, 54 closing diphthong.............................................. 57f coda ....................................................................... 65 cognitive semantics ........................................ 139f coinage ................................................................. 95 colonisation .................................................. 13, 30f commissive .........................................................162 communicative isolation .................................179 comparative .......................................... 29, 87, 102 competence ...................................................8, 121f complement ............................................106f, 118f complementary antonymy............................. 130 complementary distribution........................... 61f complementary pair ....................................... 130f complex noun phrase ............................... 114-116 complex sentence............................................. 108 complex transitive.....................................118-120 componential analysis......................................138 compound...................................76, 78, 81, 91-94 compounding ................................. 86, 88, 91, 93f computational linguistics ................................... 3 concept ..................................................................6f conceptualisation............................................ 138f conjunction (Con) ......... 79, 93, 103, 105, 108, 114 connected speech............................................. 68f connotation ................................................136, 138 consonant ......................20, 24, 27, 43-47, 51-54, 58-61, 63, 65f, 85 consonant chart................................................. 52f consonant cluster ...............................................66 constituency test..................................... 104-106 constituent ..................104-106, 111, 113-117, 119f construction grammar .................................... 107 content word...................................... 76f, 79f, 82f context renewing .............................................. 152 context shaped .................................................. 152 contradiction.................................................... 143f contrastive ........................................................... 63 conversation analysis .....................................164f conversational implicature..............................159 conversion........................................................... 90 Cooperative Principle........................................158 coordinating conjunction.........................108, 114 coordination test .............................................. 105 copular.........................................................118-120 core branches of linguistics ............................... 2f corpus linguistics .................................................. 4 covert prestige ...................................................187 creole ................................................................... 173 cross-cultural pragmatics ............................... 152 dark l .............................................................60f, 63 dative .....................................................................19 declaration........................................................ 162f declarative sentence.........................103f, 117, 122 declensions .....................................................19, 23 deictic centre ............................................. 154-158 deictic expression............................................ 153f deictic projection...............................................154 deixis ............................................................153-158 deletion test ...................................................... 105 demonstrative pronoun.................................... 20 denotation ..................................................136, 138 dental.............................................................43f, 52 derivation............................................... 86, 88, 90 derivational affix ...............................................82f derivational prefix..............................................88 derivational process....................................88, 90 derivational suffix ....................................... 83, 89 description of consonants ............. 43-47, 52, 54 description of vowels............... 43, 47-50, 54, 56 descriptive ............................................................. 5 determinative .................................................... 114 determinative compound................................. 92 determiner (Det)....................... 101-103, 110f, 114 determiner phrase (DetP) ................................ 114 diachronic.......................................................... 5, 12 diachrony ............................................................... 5 diacritic ................................................... 58, 62f, 65 dialect ................................. 15f, 18, 21, 35, 174-182 dialect area ....................................................... 179f dialect boundary ...............................................179 dialect chain ....................................................... 175 dialect continuum ............................................175f dialectology.........................................172, 179, 181 dictionary............................................................76f diphthong ........................................................... 57f diphthong phoneme......................................... 60 direct object .............................................. 107, 117f direct speech act.............................................. 163f directional opposites ........................................ 131 directive ..................................................... 162-164 discourse deixis................................................ 153f dispreference..................................................... 166 dispreference marker....................................... 166 dispreferred ...................................................... 165f distal .................................................................. 156f distal form........................................................... 157 distal term...........................................................156 distinctive feature .............................................63f 213 I n d e x distribution.................................. 61-63, 100-102 ditransitive................................................. 117f, 120 divalent .......................................................118-120 “dummy it” ......................................................... 118 Dutch................................................................ 17, 26 Early Modern English (EModE)............12f, 24-29 egressive..............................................................42f electronic communication................................ 36 elision.................................................................. 68f endocentric compound ....................................92f England............................... 13-16, 20f, 24, 28, 30f English as a global language.................13, 34-36 entailment ......................................... 142-144, 147 essential condition ............................................163 ethnic group .............................. 174, 181f, 184, 187 ethnic identity................................................... 184 ethnolinguistics .................................................... 3 exclamative sentence ..................................... 163f exclamatory sentence ..................................... 104 exocentric compound .......................................92f expressive .................................................. 162-164 extension ................................................... 136-138 face-to-face communication......... 153f, 158, 164 false generics..................................................... 188 felicitous............................................................ 162f felicity condition.............................................. 162f female invisibility ............................................. 188 feminine ................................................................19 feminisation .................................................... 190f finite.................................................................... 109 Finnish ................................................................. 114 flap .................................................... 43, 45, 52f, 62 floor......................................................................165 formal ......................................................... 100, 110 formal semantics...............................................142 formalism............................................................... 8 fortis.....................................................................43f free morpheme ............................................81f, 84 free variant .......................................................... 62 free variation....................................................... 62 French .............................. 13, 18, 21f, 24, 26, 29, 34 fricative ............................................ 43, 45f, 52-54 Frisians ..............................................................13, 15 front ........................................... 44f, 47-50, 55-57 function word .................................... 76f, 79f, 82f functional varieties ................................... 174, 177 functionalism ....................................................... 7f futhorc (futharc) .................................................17f fuzzy concept .....................................................139 gender............................. 19, 23, 174, 181f, 185-192 gender mainstreaming.....................................192 gender variety....................................................185 gender-biased ..................................................188f gender-exclusive............................................... 186 gender-fair ......................................................... 188 gender-inclusive ............................................... 188 genderlect...........................................................185 gender-neutral.......................................... 188-192 gender-neutralisation ................................... 190f gender-preferential ......................................... 186 gender-specific ................................ 185, 189f, 192 gender-specification...................................... 190f gender-splitting.............................................. 190f General American (GenAm).........52-58, 60, 68, 177, 183 generative........................................................... 122 generative linguistics .......................................... 8 genitive............................................................19, 23 geographical sociolinguistics .......................... 172 geographical variation ............................. 179, 182 geographical variety ......................................... 174 German..................................................... 17, 19, 114 Germanic ........................................... 13-19, 22f, 29 glide....................................................................... 53 gliding vowel ..................................................47, 57 global language ......................................13, 34-36 glottal ....................................................... 43, 45, 52 glottal stop .......................................................... 54 glottis....................................................... 41-43, 46 gradable antonymy......................................... 130f gradable pair .................................................... 130f grammar........................................76, 78, 100, 121f grammar of words.............................................. 76 grammatical ....................76-92, 99, 113, 120-122 grammatical affix..............................................82f grammatical class....................................... 79f, 83 grammatical gender .....................................19, 23 grammaticality ................................................. 120 grammatical properties ................................... 113 Great Vowel Shift (GVS) .............................27f, 30 Greek.................................................13, 26, 29, 100 Grice, Herbert P. ...............................................168f guidelines on non-sexist usage ............ 188, 191f hard word............................................................. 27 head ................................................88, 91f, 112-114 head noun ........................................................... 114 head verb .................................................... 116-119 height of the tongue ....................... 47-49, 54, 57 heteronym ..........................................................134 214 a P P e n d I x hierarchical structure .....................................106f historical landmark .......................................13, 28 historical linguistics ......................................... 5, 8 history of English .......................................... 11-36 holonymy ............................................................ 135 homograph .........................................................134 homography .......................................................134 homonym............................................................134 homonymy.........................................................133f homophone ................................................ 132, 134 homophony ................................................132-134 homorganic ......................................................... 45 horizontal variation ..........................................179 hyperonym ......................................................... 135 hyponym ..............................................135, 139, 143 hyponymy ................................................... 135, 143 identity ................................................ 172, 184, 187 idiolect................................................................. 172 idiomatic phrases ............................................. 146 idioms ................................................................. 146 if-clause ............................................................... 157 ill-formed ............................................................ 121 illocutionary act................................................161f illocutionary force ............................................161f imperative sentence .............................. 104, 164f independent clause.......................................... 108 indexical .............................................................. 153 indicative............................................................ 102 indirect object........................................... 107, 117f indirect speech act .......................................... 163f Indo-European ..................................................... 17 infelicitous ..........................................................162 inferring............................................................. 159f infix .......................................................................84 infixation..............................................................84 inflection............................... 13, 19, 22-24, 29, 30, 86, 100-102 inflectional affix ................................... 82-84, 86 inflectional process...............................82, 86, 88 inflectional suffix .........................................83, 87 -ing-form........................................29, 87, 102, 104 initialism...............................................................94 inkhorn term ....................................................... 27 intension .................................................... 136-138 intercultural pragmatics .................................. 152 interdisciplinary.................................................... 3 internal change ..................................................87f International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) 51-56, 58 interrogative sentence ........................... 103, 163f intonation ............................................. 64, 66-68 intonation language .......................................... 67 intransitive..................................116-120, 128, 130 intrusive r ............................................................. 70 IPA consonant chart .....................................52-54 IPA vowel chart ............................................ 54-56 isogloss .............................................................. 179f Jutes ..................................................................13, 15 Kentish................................................................... 15 knowing about grammar ................................ 121f knowing grammar............................................ 121f labiodental.................................................... 44, 46 Labov, William.......................................... 183f, 187 language.............................................................2-8 language and society....................................... 171f language change.................................................. 12 language system................................................... 6 language use .....................................................4, 6 langue ..................................................................... 6 larynx ........................................................41, 43-45 lateral approximant ................ 43, 46f, 53, 60, 63 lateral fricative............................................ 43, 46f Latin ................................13-19, 21, 26, 29, 34, 100 lax (vowel)............................................................ 47 length mark ......................................................... 55 lenis ............................................................... 43f, 64 lexeme .......................................................... 77f, 88 lexical affix .........................................................82f lexical ambiguity ............................................. 132f lexical class ................................... 79f, 83, 88f, 91f lexical field..........................................................139 lexical gender .................................................... 189 lexical semantics ...............................128, 139, 144 lexicology ............................................................128 liaison............................................................. 68, 70 lingua franca....................................................... 35f linguist................................................................ 2-5 linguistic sexism ....................................... 185, 188 linguistic sign............................................... 5-7, 76 linguistic variable ..............................................183 linguistic variants ................................................ 13 linguistic variation ..................................... 171, 173 linguistics ........................................................... 1-8 linking r................................................................. 70 lip ........................................ 42, 44, 46f, 49f, 54, 57 location............................................................... 103 locutionary act..................................................161f long vowel..................................................... 47, 55f loss of grammatical gender.............................. 23 215 I n d e x macro-sociolinguistics...................................... 172 main clause ...................................................... 108f manner of articulation ............ 43, 45f, 52, 63, 70 marked................................................................. 131 markedness ........................................................ 131 masculine ..............................................................19 Maxim of Manner..............................................159 Maxim of Quality...............................................159 Maxim of Quantity................................... 158, 160 Maxim of Relation ........................................... 159f Maxims of Conversation .........................158-160 meaning .......... 100, 100-102, 120f, 122, 127-129, 132-136, 138f, 141-147 meaning in context .......................................... 151f meaning in interaction............................151f, 160 meaning relations ................... 128f, 135, 141, 143f meaning-bearing unit..................................75, 80 media .....................................................................35 media linguistics … ............................................... 3 mental dictionary................................................77 mental lexicon .....................................................77 Mercian.................................................................. 15 meronym............................................................. 135 meronymy........................................................... 135 metadiscursive.................................................. 106 metalinguistic ................................................... 106 metaphor ......................................................... 140f micro-sociolinguistics....................................... 172 Middle English (ME) ...................... 12f, 20-24, 27f minimal pair .................................... 59-61, 63, 66 minimal pair test ................................................ 59 modern dialectology ........................................ 181 Modern English (ModE).................. 12-14, 16-20, 22-24, 27-30 monophthong ................................... 47, 55, 57, 60 monosyllabic ....................................................... 65 monotransitive .................................. 116-118, 120 monovalent ................................................ 118, 120 morpheme ...................................... 75, 80-85, 87f morphological process ................... 75, 81, 86, 88 morphology ............................................ 2f, 75f, 86 morphophonological rule................................. 85 movement test ................................................ 105f mutual intelligibility ......................................... 175 nasal ..................................... 43, 45, 47, 52f, 64, 69 nasal cavity ................................................... 41f, 47 nasal vowel .......................................................... 47 national varieties...............................................179 native language (ENL, L1)....................... 31, 35, 113 natural class.................................................. 43, 64 natural gender .................................................... 23 neuter ..............................................................19, 23 nominative............................................................19 non-contrastive ...................................................61 non-discriminatory .................................. 185, 188 non-finite ........................................................... 109 non-prevocalic r ...................................................57 non-rhotic ............................................ 70, 183, 185 non-sexist language reform ........................... 190 non-sexist usage........................................188, 191 non-simple sentence ....................................... 108 Norman Conquest .................................. 13, 20, 28 Northumbrian .....................................................15f notional ..............................................................100 noun (N)........... 19f, 23, 27, 77-82, 84, 87, 89-93, 101-104, 109-113 noun phrase (NP) ......................... 78, 110-118, 122 nucleus ................................................................. 65 number ............................................................19, 23 object (O).................. 100-102, 106-108, 110-113, 117-120 object noun phrase (object NP) ............ 110, 116f, 119 observer’s paradox............................................183 obstruent .............................................................46 oesophagus.......................................................... 42 Old English (OE)......................................12-24, 29f omission ...............................................................68 onomatopoeia........................................................7 onomatopoeic....................................................128 onset ....................................................................65f open class............................................................. 79 open syllable ....................................................... 65 oral cavity ...................................................... 41, 48 oral vowel ............................................................ 47 organon model ......................................................7 organs of speech..................... 40, 42, 44-46, 69 orthographic word ............................................. 76 orthography ........................................................50 overt prestige.....................................................187 palatal....................................................... 43, 45, 52 palate ............................................................ 42, 44f parameter ........................................................... 122 paraphrase..................................................141-144 parole...................................................................... 6 partial suppletion...............................................88 parts of speech..................................................100 part-whole relations......................................... 135 passive .................................................................. 79 216 a P P e n d I x past participle .......................... 20, 29, 84, 87, 102 past tense...............................................87, 88, 102 peak....................................................................... 65 performance................................................... 8, 121 periods of English ......................................... 12-30 perlocutionary act............................................161f perlocutionary effect ......................................161f person deixis ..............................................153-156 personal pronoun ............................................... 20 pharyngeal............................................... 43, 45, 52 pharynx ......................................................... 41f, 45 philosophical linguistics...................................... 3 phone.................................................................... 62 phoneme ................................................59-66, 68 phoneme inventory ..........................................59f phonemic form ................................................... 63 phonemic symbol................................................61 phonemic transcription..................................... 63 phonetic alphabet ............................................... 51 phonetic context .................................................61 phonetic environment...................................... 61f phonetic form ..................................................... 63 phonetic symbol .................................................. 51 phonetic transcription.........................50f, 58, 63 phonetics ............................. 2f, 39-41, 51, 58f, 68 phonological rule................................................ 63 phonological word ............................................. 76 phonology.............................................. 2f, 64f, 68 phonotactics.......................................................65f phrasal constituent........................................... 113 phrasal level ....................................................... 112 phrasal semantics...................................... 128, 141 phrase ................ 99-101, 104f, 109f, 111-118, 122, 127f, 137f, 141, 145f phraseologism .................................................... 93 pidgin ................................................................... 173 pitch .................................................................... 66f place deixis .............................................. 153f, 156f place of articulation ..............................43-46, 52 plosive......................43, 45-47, 52-54, 62, 64, 69 plural........................... 29, 78-81, 84-87, 101f, 114 plural marker ...............................................80, 84f polarity ............................................................... 130 polysemous ........................................................ 132 polysemy.....................................................132-134 polysyllabic .........................................................65f position of the lips...................................... 47, 49f possessive ................................................ 27, 29, 87 postalveolar........................................................43f postmodifier....................................................... 114 pragmatic competence .................................. 152f pragmatic variation .......................................... 152 pragmatics ............... 3, 137, 147, 151-153, 164-166 Prague School of functionalism..........................7 predicate .............. 102, 106-109, 113, 117-119, 122 predictable.....................................................61, 66 preference.......................................................... 166 preferred ........................................................... 165f prefix.......................................................84, 88-90 prefixation ....................................................84, 90 premodifier......................................................... 114 preparatory condition ......................................163 preposition (Prep).............. 91, 100, 102f, 114-116 prepositional phrase (PrepP)............ 112, 114-116 prescriptive........................................................... 5f Present Day English (PDE) .....................12f, 22, 27 presuppose .........................................................147 presupposition...................................................147 presupposition-trigger .....................................147 preterite -ed......................................................... 29 primary stress .....................................................66 principle............................................................... 122 Principle of Compositionality......... 141, 144-146 principles-and-parameters framework ........ 122 printing press ...................................................... 24 productive.................................................... 82, 87f progressive form................................................. 79 pronoun (Pro) .................... 19f, 103, 105, 108, 113f pronunciation........ 40, 50-52, 54, 57, 59, 62f, 65 proper noun................................................ 102, 114 proposition .........................................................142 propositional content.......................................142 prose ......................................................................18 prosody..........................................................64, 66 prototype .......................................................... 139f prototype semantics........................................ 140 prototypical ....................................................... 140 proximal ............................................................ 156f proximal form .................................................... 157 proximal term ....................................................156 pseudo-generics ............................................... 188 psycholinguistics ................................................. 3f pull-chain ............................................................. 28 pulmonic .............................................................42f push-chain ........................................................... 28 question ............................................................ 173f question test ..................................................... 106 Received Pronunciation (RP)........ 30, 52-58, 60, 66, 68, 70 recursivity .......................................................... 115f 217 I n d e x redundancy rule..................................................64 reference .................................................... 136-148 referent..............................................137f, 188-190 regional dialect .......................................... 174, 182 register ............................................... 156, 174, 177f regular plural................................................. 78, 85 relational opposites .......................................... 131 relative pronoun ............................................... 108 representative........................................... 162-164 retroflex ........................................................43f, 52 rhotic.............................................................. 57, 183 rhoticity...............................................................183 rhyme.................................................................... 65 rhythm...........................................................64-67 Romans ................................................................ 13f root.......................................................................83f root of the tongue ........................................ 42, 45 runic alphabet ......................................................18 Samoan................................................................ 114 Saussure, Ferdinand de .............. 4-7, 12, 128, 132 Saxons............................................................. 13, 15f Schegloff, Emanuel ...........................................165 Searle, John R. ............................................ 161, 163 second language (ESL, L2) ................................ 31f secondary stress .................................................66 segment ..........................................40, 59, 64f, 69 segmental phonology ....................................... 59 semantic derogation................................ 189, 192 semantic feature...............................................137f semantic field.....................................................139 semantic property............................................. 137 semantics .................. 3, 8, 127f, 139-142, 144, 147 semi-vowel .................................................... 53, 65 sense ........................................................... 136-138 sense relations ...................................................129 sentence .......................99-113, 116-118, 120-122, 127-129, 141-147 sentence interpretation .......................... 144-147 sentence stress............................................ 66-68 sentence type.................................. 103-104, 163f sentential semantics................................. 128, 141 sexist language .........................................188, 190 Shakespeare, William ................................. 24f, 27 short vowel.................................................... 47, 56 sibilant ............................................................ 52, 85 signifiant ................................................................ 6 signifié .................................................................... 6 signified.................................................................. 6 signifier................................................................... 6 simple form ......................................................... 79 simple noun phrase........................................... 114 simple sentence ................................................ 108 sincerity condition.............................................163 singular ..................................................................19 social barriers ..................................................... 181 social deixis.............................................. 153f, 156f social dialects ................................................... 174f social differentiation ........................................ 181 social distance .................................................... 181 social gender ..................................................... 189 social variation...........................................181-183 socio-economic status..............172, 174, 181-183, 185, 187 sociolects .................................................... 174, 182 sociolinguistics......................3, 4, 8, 166, 171-173, 182f, 189 sociology of language....................................... 172 sonorant........................................................ 46, 65 sound inventory.................................................. 58 sound pattern ......................................................6f sound sequence .................................................... 6 sound-producing system ...................................41 sounds of language ............................................ 39 speech accommodation ...................................178 speech act theory ............................................. 160 speech acts ............................................... 160-164 speech chain ........................................................40 speech community.................................... 172, 187 speech sound........................ 39-43, 51, 59, 63, 67 spelling ............................................ 50f, 59, 68, 70 standard ........................... 174, 176f, 182, 184, 186f standardisation............................................ 13, 24f state of the glottis............................................ 46f stem .....................................................................83f stereotyping ............................................. 188f, 192 stop............................................................43, 45, 54 stress ...................................................... 64, 66-68 stressed syllable ............................................... 66f stress-timed......................................................... 67 strong form........................................................ 68f strong verb............................................... 20, 23, 27 structural ambiguity.........................................145 structural semantics .........................................139 structuralism .....................................................6, 8 structurally ambiguous .................................. 145f style......................................................................156 styles.................................................................... 177 subject ..........................102, 106-113, 116-118, 122 subject noun phrase (subject NP)......... 110, 112f, 114, 118 subjunctive mood.............................................. 157 218 a P P e n d I x subordinate clause ......................................... 108f subordinating conjunction ............................. 108 substitution test ..............................................104f suffix ..................................................... 83f, 86-90 suffixation ....................................................84, 90 superlative ............................................. 29, 87, 102 superposed variety ................................... 174, 176 suppletion............................................................88 suprasegmental phonology ..................... 59, 64f syllable.......................................................... 64-68 syllable structure................................................ 65 syllable-timed ..................................................... 67 synchronic.....................................................5, 8, 12 synchrony............................................................... 5 syncretism............................................................ 23 synonyms ............................................ 129, 136, 142 synonymy..................................129f, 134, 136, 141f syntactic category .................................. 100, 102f syntactic element..................... 106-108, 119, 122 syntax ................................................. 3, 8, 99f, 122 synthetic language..............................................19 tap ............................................................43, 45, 52f teeth.........................................................42, 44, 46 tense...................................79, 82, 84, 88, 109, 157 tense (vowel) ....................................................... 47 thesaurus ............................................................129 three-part articulatory description .......46, 49f, 52, 54, 56 time deixis.................................................. 153f, 157 tip of the tongue....................................42, 44, 46 token frequency...................................................77 tone .........................................................47, 64, 66f tone language ..................................................... 67 tongue .......................................42-50, 54f, 57, 60 trachea.................................................................. 42 traditional dialectology ........................... 179, 181 transition relevance place (TRP) .....................165 transitive ............................................. 116-118, 120 tree diagram ...................................................... 111f trill ..........................................................43, 46f, 52f trivalent.......................................................118-120 truth conditions ........................................ 142, 144 turn.......................................................................165 turn constructional unit (TCU) ........................165 turn-taking..........................................................165 T/ V distinction ..................................................155f two-word stage ................................................. 113 type frequency.....................................................77 typicality .............................................................139 ungrammatical ......................................... 120-122 unique morpheme ............................................. 82 unmarked............................................................ 131 unstressed syllable........................................... 66f utterance.................. 152, 154f, 158-162, 164-166 utterance meaning........................................... 151f uvula .............................................................. 42, 46 uvular........................................................ 43, 45, 52 valency.........................................................118-120 variational pragmatics .................................... 152 variety.................................................. 172-176, 182 velar...................................................43, 45, 52f, 64 velarise .................................................. 58, 60f, 63 velum ................................................. 42, 45, 47, 60 verb (V) ............78f, 81, 84, 87-92, 100, 102-104, 107, 109-113, 116-118, 122 verb compound.................................................. 91f verb phrase (VP)..........................110-113, 116, 118, 123-125, 128 verb type ..................................................... 117-120 verbal system .......................................... 20, 23, 27 verse................................................................. 18, 21 vertical variation ............................................... 181 vocal cords ..................................................... 41, 46 vocal folds .......................................... 41, 43, 45, 67 vocal tract .......................................... 41, 43-47, 53 voice box ...............................................................41 voiced....................43f, 46f, 52-54, 62-64, 67, 85 voiceless ........................................... 43f, 52, 62, 85 voicing .................................................................63f vowel................ 13, 19f, 23f, 26-28, 30, 43, 47-51, 53-61, 65-68, 70, 85, 179 vowel chart ........................................... 48f, 54-56 weak form .......................................................... 68f weak verb............................................................. 20 weakening.......................................................... 68f well-formed........................................................ 121 West Saxon ..........................................................15f word ........................... 75-84, 86, 88-95, 127-141, 144-147 word class..................................... 78-80, 100, 102 word formation......................... 82, 86, 88, 91, 94 word level ...........................................104, 109, 112 word manufacture ............................................. 95 word meaning ............................................ 135, 147 word order ..................19, 22, 27, 30, 104, 114, 120 word stress ..........................................................66 word token............................................................77 word type..............................................................77 zero-derivation .................................................. 90 ,! 7ID8C5-cfggda! ISBN 978-3-8252-5663-0 Diese praxisorientierte Einführung in die Englische Sprachwissenschaft besticht durch leicht verständliche Erklärungen, zahlreiche Beispiele, Abbildungen und Übungen mit Lösungen. Dadurch eignet sie sich hervorragend als Grundlage für Einführungskurse sowie zu Selbststudium und Prüfungsvorbereitung. Für die fünfte Auflage wurden der Text, die Aufgaben und die Literaturhinweise überarbeitet und aktualisiert. Lehrbücher mit einem klaren Konzept: ▶ Abbildungen und Grafiken veranschaulichen den Lernstoff. ▶ Prüfungsfragen mit Lösungen fördern das Verständnis. ▶ Ideal für die Prüfungsvorbereitung im Haupt- und Nebenfach. basics Dies ist ein utb-Band aus dem Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. utb ist eine Kooperation von Verlagen mit einem gemeinsamen Ziel: Lehrbücher und Lernmedien für das erfolgreiche Studium zu veröffentlichen. utb-shop.de QR-Code für mehr Infos und Bewertungen zu diesem Titel Sprachwissenschaft | Anglistik