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The aim of this series is to provide discussions of the main topics in general or theoretical linguistics through books of moderate size covering single topics. The level of treatment is uniform, and suitable for undergraduate students taking linguistics as part of an introductory course and the editors will oversee the entire series to ensure that the treatments are integrated and the overlap between works is minimal. It will be possible for a complete course to be developed around the texts and it is likely that universities will do so.Topics singled out for treatment are morphology, syntax, phonetics, phonology, sociolinguistics, language acquisition and semantics as well as aspects of historical linguistics.

  • General Editors: Umberto Ansaldo, Peter Austin, Bernard Comrie, Roger Lass, David Lightfoot, Keren Rice, Ian Roberts, Suzanne Romaine, Michelle Sheehan, Ianthi Tsimpli

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79 results in Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics

Page 4 of 4

Number
  • Greville G. Corbett
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    07 December 2000
  • Number is the most underestimated of the grammatical categories. It is deceptively simple yet the number system which philosophers, logicians and many linguists take as the norm - namely the distinction between singular and plural (as in cat versus cats) - is only one of a wide range of possibilities to be found in languages around the world. Some languages, for instance, make more distinctions than English, having three, four or even five different values. Adopting a wide-ranging perspective, Greville Corbett draws on examples from many languages to analyse the possible systems of number. He reveals that the means for signalling number are remarkably varied and are put to a surprising range of special additional uses. By surveying some of the riches of the world's linguistic resources this book, first published in 2000, makes a major contribution to the typology of categories and demonstrates that languages are much more varied than is generally recognised.

Historical Linguistics
  • Theodora Bynon
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 September 1977
  • Historical Linguistics is concerned with the process of language change through time. It investigates how and why the language of individuals, a social group or a whole 'speech community' develops in respect of its pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Dr Bynon regards language as essentially a dynamic phenomenon, whose character can be at best only partly understood by a static, and necessarily idealized, synchronic approach. In Part I she establishes the theoretical framework by providing a systematic survey of the three main models of language development - the neogrammarian, structuralist, and transformational generative. Examples drawn substantially from English and German, but also from classical languages, French, Welsh and a variety of others, are used to explain and compare these approaches. In Part II she turns to sociolinguistics and shows how changes within a language over a period of time, and changes brought about by contact between languages, are both indicators and agents of more general cultural developments. Accounts of bilingualism and of pidgin and Creole languages are included as well as wider-ranging examples of different kinds of borrowing such as loan words, loan translations and extensions of meaning. The student is provided with a practical and critical guide both to what has been done and what can be done to discover and verify these linguistic relationships. Designed primarily as a textbook for linguistics and philology students, this book will also be of interest to those studying English language, classics and modern languages.

Intonation
  • 2nd edition
  • Alan Cruttenden
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    13 October 1997
  • When originally published in 1986, this book was the first to survey intonation in all its aspects, both in English and universally. In this updated edition, while the basic descriptive facts of the form and use of intonation are presented in the British nuclear tone tradition, there is nevertheless extensive comparison with other theoretical frameworks, in particular with the ToBI framework, which has become widespread in the United States. In this new edition Alan Cruttenden has expanded the sections on historical background, different theoretical approaches and sociolinguistic variation. After introductory chapters on the physiology and acoustics of pitch, he describes in detail the forms and functions of intonation in English and discusses the sociolinguistic and dialectal variations in intonation. The concluding chapter provides an overview of the state of the art in intonational studies.

The Physics of Speech
  • D. B. Fry
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    08 March 1979
  • The mechanism of speech is a very complex one and in order to undertake any analysis of language it is important to understand the processes that go to make up the message that a speaker transmits and a listener receives. Professor Fry therefore first takes the reader through the various stages of the speech chain: from language units to nerve impulses to muscle movements to sound waves, and vice versa as the message is received and decoded. He then explains the basic physical principles involved in the generation and propagation of sound energy and in the phenomenon of resonance. These principles are then applied to the speech mechanism itself and to the particular kinds of sound which constitute speech. There is a fully illustrated account of the use of the sound spectrograph in acoustic analysis and chapters dealing with the acoustic features of English sounds and with the way we recognise speech sounds by the acoustic cues inherent in a particular language. Professor Fry gave courses on the physics of speech to students of applied as well as theoretical linguistics and to speech therapists, and his clear account will therefore provide a basic textbook for such courses as well as being of interest to people working in departments of speech and in communications generally.

First and Second Language Acquisition
  • Parallels and Differences
  • Jürgen M. Meisel
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    07 July 2011
  • Infants and very young children develop almost miraculously the ability of speech, without apparent effort, without even being taught - as opposed to the teenager or the adult struggling without, it seems, ever being able to reach the same level of proficiency as five year olds in their first language. This useful textbook serves as a guide to different types of language acquisition: monolingual and bilingual first language development and child and adult second language acquisition. Unlike other books, it systematically compares first and second language acquisition, drawing on data from several languages. Research questions and findings from various subfields are helpfully summarized to show students how they are related and how they often complement each other. The essential guide to studying first and second language acquisition, it will be used on courses in linguistics, modern languages and developmental psychology.

Child Language
  • Acquisition and Growth
  • Barbara C. Lust
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    21 September 2006
  • The remarkable way in which young children acquire language has long fascinated linguists and developmental psychologists alike. Language is a skill that we have essentially mastered by the age of three, and with incredible ease and speed, despite the complexity of the task. This accessible textbook introduces the field of child language acquisition, exploring language development from birth. Setting out the key theoretical debates, it considers questions such as what characteristics of the human mind make it possible to acquire language; how far acquisition is biologically programmed and how far it is influenced by our environment; what makes second language learning (in adulthood) different from first language acquisition; and whether the specific stages in language development are universal across languages. Clear and comprehensive, it is set to become a key text for all courses in child language acquisition, within linguistics, developmental psychology and cognitive science.

Second Language Acquisition
  • Wolfgang Klein
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    23 January 1986
  • This 1986 textbook presents an account of the main concerns, problems and theoretical and practical issues raised by second language acquisition research. Research in this field had been mainly pedagogically oriented, but since the 1970s linguists and psychologists have become increasingly interested in the principles that underlie second language acquisition for the light these throw on how human language processing functions in general. Moreover, it is only through an understanding of these principles that foreign language teaching can become maximally effective. In the first part of his book, Wolfgang Klein provides a critical assessment of the state of the art at the time. The second part, 'from the learner's point of view', is devoted to four central problems which anyone learning a second language (either through everyday communication or in the classroom) is faced with, and whose solution constitutes the acquisition process. This accessible introduction provides students of linguistics and applied linguistics and anyone concerned with foreign language teaching with a real understanding of the fundamental issues in the field.

Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar
  • Lydia White
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 March 2003
  • This authoritative 2003 textbook provides an overview and analysis of current second language acquisition research conducted within the generative linguistic framework. Lydia White argues that second language acquisition is constrained by principles and parameters of Universal Grammar. The book focuses on characterizing and explaining the underlying linguistic competence of second language learners in terms of these contraints. Theories as to the role of Universal Grammar and the extent of mother tongue influence are presented and discussed, with particular consideration given to the nature of the interlanguage grammar at different points in development, from the initial state to ultimate attainment. Throughout the book, hypotheses maintaining that second language grammars are constrained by universal principles are contrasted with claims that Universal Grammar is not implicated; relevant empirical research is presented from both sides of the debate. This textbook is essential reading for those studying second language acquisition from a linguistic perspective.

An Introduction to Word Grammar
  • Richard Hudson
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    29 July 2010
  • Word grammar is a theory of language structure and is based on the assumption that language, and indeed the whole of knowledge, is a network, and that virtually all of knowledge is learned. It combines the psychological insights of cognitive linguistics with the rigour of more formal theories. This textbook spans a broad range of topics from prototypes, activation and default inheritance to the details of syntactic, morphological and semantic structure. It introduces elementary ideas from cognitive science and uses them to explain the structure of language including a survey of English grammar.

Lexical Meaning
  • M. Lynne Murphy
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    28 October 2010
  • The ideal introduction for students of semantics, Lexical Meaning fills the gap left by more general semantics textbooks, providing the teacher and the student with insights into word meaning beyond the traditional overviews of lexical relations. The book explores the relationship between word meanings and syntax and semantics more generally. It provides a balanced overview of the main theoretical approaches, along with a lucid explanation of their relative strengths and weaknesses. After covering the main topics in lexical meaning, such as polysemy and sense relations, the textbook surveys the types of meanings represented by different word classes. It explains abstract concepts in clear language, using a wide range of examples, and includes linguistic puzzles in each chapter to encourage the student to practise using the concepts. 'Adopt-a-Word' exercises give students the chance to research a particular word, building a portfolio of specialist work on a single word.

Dialectology
  • 2nd edition
  • J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    10 December 1998
  • When first published in 1980, Dialectology broke new ground by integrating urban dialectology (sociolinguistics), dialect geography and spatial variation into a cohesive discipline. In this second edition, the authors take account of the renaissance of dialect research in the last twenty years. They offer new sections on dialectometry and mapping variability, a revised section on dialect geography as well as updates of other recent developments. A reliable textbook for over seventeen years, this new edition will continue to serve the needs of undergraduates and individual scholars with its comprehensive coverage of methods, models and findings in the study of language variation and change.

Gender
  • Greville G. Corbett
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    26 April 1991
  • Gender is a fascinating category, central and pervasive in some languages and totally absent in others. In this new, comprehensive account of gender systems, over 200 languages are discussed, from English and Russian to Archi and Chichewa. Detailed analysis of individual languages provides clear illustrations of specific types of system. Gender distinction is often based on sex; sometimes this is only one criterion and the gender of nouns depends on other factors (thus 'house' is masculine in Russian, feminine in French and neuter in Tamil). Some languages have comparable distinctions such as human/non-human, animate/inanimate, where sex is irrelevant. No other textbook surveys gender across this range of languages. Gender will be invaluable both for class use and as a reference resource for students and researchers in linguistics.

Statistics in Language Studies
  • Anthony Woods, Paul Fletcher, Arthur Hughes
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    14 August 1986
  • This book demonstrates the contribution that statistics can and should make to linguistic studies. The range of work to which statistical analysis is applicable is vast: including, for example, language acquisition, language variation and many aspects of applied linguistics. The authors give a wide variety of linguistic examples to demonstrate the use of statistics in summarising data in the most appropriate way, and then making helpful inferences from the processed information. The range of techniques introduced by the book will help the reader both to evaluate and make use of literature which employs statistical analysis, and to apply statistics in their own research. Each chapter gives step-by-step explanations of particular techniques using examples from a number of fields, and is followed by extensive exercises. The early part of the book provides a thorough grounding in probability and statistical inference, and then progresses through methods such as chi-squared and analysis of variance, to multivariate methods such as cluster analysis, principal components analysis and factor analysis. None of these techniques requires the reader to have a grasp of mathematics more complex than simple algebra. Students and researchers in many fields of linguistics will find this book an invaluable introduction to the use of statistics, and a practical text for the development of skills in the application of statistics.

Grammatical Roles and Relations
  • Frank Robert Palmer
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    25 February 1994
  • Frank Palmer's new book is a typological survey of grammatical roles, such as Agent, Patient, Beneficiary, and grammatical relations, such as Subject, Direct Object and Indirect Object, which are familiar concepts in traditional grammars. It describes the devices, such as the Passive, that alter or switch the identities between such roles and relations. A great wealth of examples is used to show that the grammatical systems of the familiar European languages are far from typical of many of the world's languages, for which we need to use such terms as 'Ergative' and 'Antipassive'. Professor Palmer provides an elegant and consistent framework within which grammatical roles and relations may be discussed, combining a great clarity of discussion with evidence from an enormous number of the world's languages.

Phonology
  • Analysis and Theory
  • Edmund Gussmann
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    03 January 2002
  • Clear and concise, this textbook is an introduction to phonology for students which assumes no prior knowledge of this area of linguistics and provides an overall view of the field which can be covered within one year. The book does not confine itself to any specific theoretical approach and can therefore be used for study within any framework and also to prepare students for work in more specialised frameworks such as Optimality Theory, Government, Dependency, and Declarative Phonology. Each chapter focuses on a particular set of theoretical issues including segments, syllables, feet, and phonological processing. Gussmann explores these areas using data drawn from a variety of languages including English, Icelandic, Russian, Irish, Finnish, Turkish, and others. Suggestions for further reading and summaries at the end of each chapter enable students to find their way to more advanced phonological work.

The Phonological Structure of Words
  • An Introduction
  • Colin J. Ewen, Harry van der Hulst
  • Published online:
    11 May 2010
    Print publication:
    21 December 2000
  • This book is designed to provide students of phonology with an accessible introduction to the phonological architecture of words. It offers a thorough discussion of the basic building blocks of phonology - in particular features, sounds, syllables and feet - and deals with a range of different theories about these units. Colin Ewen and Harry van der Hulst present their study within a non-linear framework, discussing the contributions of autosegmental phonology, dependency phonology, government phonology and metrical phonology, among others. Their coherent, integrated approach reveals that the differences between these models are not as great as is sometimes believed. The book provides a more detailed analysis of this subject than previously available in introductory textbooks and is an invaluable and indispensable first step towards understanding the major theoretical issues in modern phonology at the word level.

Neurolinguistics
  • An Introduction to Spoken Language Processing and its Disorders
  • John C. L. Ingram
  • Published online:
    26 January 2010
    Print publication:
    18 October 2007
  • What biological factors make human communication possible? How do we process and understand language? How does brain damage affect these mechanisms, and what can this tell us about how language is organized in the brain? The field of neurolinguistics seeks to answer these questions, which are crucial to linguistics, psychology and speech pathology alike. This textbook, first published in 2007, introduces the central topics in neurolinguistics: speech recognition, word and sentence structure, meaning, and discourse - in both 'normal' speakers and those with language disorders. It moves on to provide a balanced discussion of key areas of debate such as modularity and the 'language areas' of the brain, 'connectionist' versus 'symbolic' modelling of language processing, and the nature of linguistic and mental representations. Making accessible over half a century of scientific and linguistic research, and containing extensive study questions, it will be welcomed by all those interested in the relationship between language and the brain.

Foundations of French Syntax
  • Michael Allan Jones
  • Published online:
    14 January 2010
    Print publication:
    12 September 1996
  • Designed for students, this detailed analysis of the principal areas of French grammar combines the insights of modern linguistic theory with those of more traditional grammarians. Theory is placed firmly in the service of description and analysis, and students are guided to an understanding of the French language which will complement the information offered by traditional reference grammars. The book includes discussion of verbs and verb phrases, voice, tense and mood, the noun phrase and pronouns, prepositions and variations in sentence-structure. The author pays special attention to those areas of French grammar which pose difficulties for an English-speaking reader. Each chapter is followed by a set of problems and exercises, and by a useful guide to further reading. Foundations of French Syntax assumes no prior knowledge of linguistics, and will appeal to students and teachers of linguistics, French and other Romance languages.

Definiteness
  • Christopher Lyons
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    13 March 1999
  • This 1999 textbook investigates definiteness both from a comparative and a theoretical point of view, showing how languages express definiteness and what definiteness is. It surveys a large number of languages to discover the range of variation in relation to definiteness and related grammatical phenomena, such as demonstratives, possessives and personal pronouns. It outlines work done on the nature of definiteness in semantics, pragmatics and syntax, and develops an account on which definiteness is a grammatical category represented in syntax as a functional head (the widely discussed D). Consideration is also given to the origins and evolution of definite articles in the light of the comparative and theoretical findings. Among the claims advanced are that definiteness does not occur in all languages, though the pragmatic concept which it grammaticalizes probably does.

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