Language: Its Structure and Use

Cover......Page 1
Half-Title Page......Page 5
Title Page......Page 7
Copyright......Page 8
Contents in Brief......Page 9
Contents......Page 11
Preface......Page 25
 What Do You Think?......Page 31
 How Many Languages Are There in the World?......Page 32
 Does the United States Have an Official Language?......Page 33
  Three Faces of a Language System......Page 35
 Signs: Arbitrary and Nonarbitrary......Page 36
  Representational Signs......Page 37
 Languages as Patterned Structures: Grammatical Competence......Page 38
  Displacement......Page 39
 Speech as Patterned Language Use: Communicative Competence......Page 40
  What Are Social Dialects?......Page 41
  Different Dialects or Different Languages?......Page 42
  What Is a Standard Variety?......Page 43
  Is There Right and Wrong in English Usage?......Page 45
  Writing......Page 47
  Signing......Page 48
 Do Humans Alone Have Language?......Page 50
 Can Chimpanzees Learn a Human Language?......Page 51
  Project Nim......Page 52
 The Origin of Human Languages: Babel to Babble......Page 53
 What Is Linguistics?......Page 55
  What Are the Branches of Linguistics?......Page 56
 Summary......Page 57
 What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 58
 Exercises......Page 59
  Especially for Educators and Future Teachers......Page 61
  Internet......Page 62
  Films and Videos......Page 63
  References......Page 64
Part One: Language Structures......Page 67
  What Do You Think?......Page 68
  What Does It Mean to Know a Word?......Page 69
  Lexical Categories (Parts of Speech)......Page 70
  Morphemes Are Word Parts That Carry Meaning......Page 76
  How Are Morphemes Organized Within Words?......Page 79
  How Does a Language Increase Its Vocabulary?......Page 82
  What Types of Morphological Systems Do Languages Have?......Page 90
  Variant Pronunciations of a Morpheme: Allomorphy......Page 95
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 98
  Exercises......Page 99
  Other Resources......Page 108
  What Do You Think?......Page 111
  Sounds and Spellings: Not the Same Thing......Page 112
  Phonetics: The Study of Sounds......Page 116
  Describing Consonant Sounds......Page 119
  Kinds of Consonant Sounds......Page 121
  Vowel Sounds......Page 126
  Summary......Page 132
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 133
  Exercises......Page 134
  Other Resources......Page 139
  What Do You Think?......Page 141
  Introduction: Sounds in the Mind......Page 142
  Phonological Rules and Their Structure......Page 149
  Syllables and Syllable Structure......Page 156
  Stress......Page 160
  Syllables and Stress in Phonological Processes......Page 161
  Morphology and Phonology Interaction: Allomorphy......Page 162
  Summary......Page 169
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 170
  Exercises......Page 171
  Other Resources......Page 178
  What Do You Think?......Page 181
  Introduction......Page 182
  Constituency......Page 183
  Major Constituents of Sentences: Noun Phrases and Verb Phrases......Page 185
  Phrase-Structure Expansions......Page 190
  Grammatical Relations: Subject, Direct Object, and Others......Page 193
  Surface Structures and Underlying Structures......Page 195
  Functions of Syntactic Operations......Page 203
  Recursion and Novel Sentences......Page 205
  Summary......Page 206
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 207
  Exercises......Page 208
  Other Resources......Page 215
  What Do You Think?......Page 217
  Introduction......Page 218
  Linguistic, Social, and Affective Meaning......Page 219
  Word, Sentence, and Utterance Meaning......Page 223
  Lexical Semantics......Page 225
  Function Words and Categories of Meaning......Page 237
  Semantic Roles and Sentence Meaning......Page 244
  Semantic Roles and Grammatical Relations......Page 247
  Summary......Page 251
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 252
  Exercises......Page 253
  Other Resources......Page 258
  What Do You Think?......Page 261
  Similarity and Diversity Across Languages......Page 262
  Phonological Universals......Page 268
  Syntactic and Morphological Universals......Page 272
  Types of Language Universals......Page 278
  Explanations for Language Universals......Page 279
  Language Universals, Universal Grammar, and Language Acquisition......Page 282
  Summary......Page 285
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 286
  Exercises......Page 287
  Other Resources......Page 294
Part Two: Language Use......Page 297
  What Do You Think?......Page 298
  Introduction: Encoding Information Structure......Page 299
  Categories of Information Structure......Page 300
  Information Structure: Intonation, Morphology, Syntax......Page 309
  The Relationship of Sentences to Discourse: Pragmatics......Page 318
  Summary......Page 320
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 321
  Exercises......Page 322
  Other Resources......Page 329
  What Do You Think?......Page 331
  Language in Use......Page 332
  Sentence Structure and the Function of Utterances......Page 333
  Speech Acts......Page 334
  The Cooperative Principle......Page 337
  Violations of the Cooperative Principle......Page 340
  Politeness......Page 342
  Speech Events......Page 343
  The Organization of Conversation......Page 344
  Cross-Cultural Communication......Page 355
  Summary......Page 356
  Exercises......Page 357
  Other Resources......Page 362
  What Do You Think?......Page 365
  Language Varies Within a Speech Community......Page 366
  Speech Situations......Page 368
  Registers in Monolingual Societies......Page 370
  Markers of Register......Page 371
  Similarities and Differences Between Spoken and Written Registers......Page 379
  Two Registers Compared......Page 381
  Summary......Page 387
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 388
  Exercises......Page 389
  Other Resources......Page 396
  What Do You Think?......Page 399
  Language or Dialect: Which Do You Speak?......Page 400
  How Do Languages Diverge and Merge?......Page 401
  National Varieties of English......Page 403
  Regional Varieties of American English......Page 406
  The Atlas of North American English......Page 414
  Ethnic Varieties of American English......Page 419
  Ethnic Varieties and Social Identification......Page 423
  Socioeconomic Status Varieties: English, French, and Spanish......Page 424
  The Language Varieties of Women and Men......Page 430
  Why Do Stigmatized Varieties Persist?......Page 432
  Summary......Page 434
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 435
  Exercises......Page 436
  Other Resources......Page 441
Part Three: Language Change, Language Development, and Language Acquisition......Page 447
  What Do You Think?......Page 448
  Do Living Languages Always Change?......Page 449
  Language Families and the Indo-European Family......Page 450
  How to Reconstruct the Linguistic Past......Page 452
  What Are the Language Families of the World?......Page 463
  Languages in Contact......Page 479
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 485
  Exercises......Page 486
  Other Resources......Page 490
  What Do You Think?......Page 493
  A Thousand Years of Change......Page 494
  Where Does English Come From?......Page 496
  Old English: 700–1100......Page 499
  Companions of Angels: A Narrative in Old English......Page 508
  Middle English: 1100–1500......Page 510
  Where Men and Women Go All Naked: A Middle English Travel Fable......Page 514
  Modern English: 1500–Present......Page 516
  What Do You Think? REVISITED......Page 523
  Exercises......Page 524
  Other Resources......Page 527
  What Do You Think?......Page 529
  Introduction......Page 530
  Acquiring a First Language......Page 531
  How Do Researchers Study Language Acquisition?......Page 545
  Acquiring a Second Language......Page 547
  Summary......Page 554
  Exercises......Page 555
  Other Resources......Page 558
Glossary......Page 561
Index......Page 575
 Index of Languages......Page 587
 Index of Internet Sites, Films and Videos......Page 591
Credits......Page 593