Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35-2400

Title: Linguistics: An Introduction
Publication Year: 2024

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL: https://www.bloomsbury.com/linguistics-an-introduction-9781350164253/

Author(s): William B McGregor

Reviewer: Christopher D. Sams

SUMMARY

Linguistics: An Introduction 3rd edition by William B. McGregor is a textbook aimed at presenting linguistics in a way to “stimulate [the reader’s] understanding of the subject, rather than encourage mere rote memorization of facts” (Preface). McGregor goes on in the preface to explain that he wrote the first edition to reflect his preferred “manner of presentation, pedagogic philosophy, [and] the range and type of information presented and theoretical stance”. At the beginning of the book, in a section entitled ‘Notes on the Text’ (xiii), he clarifies his purpose in more depth. In addition, an ‘Introduction’ and lists of ‘Figures’, ‘Maps’, and ‘Tables’ are included prior to Chapter 1.
Each chapter (including the introduction) begins with a brief synopsis of the material presented, the main goals of the chapter, and a box containing ‘Key terms’. At the end of the chapter, there are sections on ‘Summing up’, ‘Guide to further reading’, ‘Issues for further thought and exercises’, and ‘Research projects’.

There are 17 chapters in total divided into four parts.

Part I ‘Language: System and Structure’ is comprised of Chapter 2 ‘Sounds of Language: Phonetics and Phonology’, Chapter 3 ‘Structure of Words: Morphology’, Chapter 4 ‘Lexicon’, Chapter 5 ‘Structure of Sentences: Syntax’ and Chapter 6 ‘Meaning’.

Part II Language in Use includes Chapters 7 ‘Sociolinguistics: Language in Its Social Context’, Chapter 8 ‘Text and Discourse’, and Chapter 9 ‘Investigating Language in Use: Corpus Linguistics’.

Part III Language: A Human Phenomenon is comprised of Chapter 10 ‘Language in Its Biological Context’, Chapter 11 ‘Psycholinguistics: Language, the Mind and the Brain’, and Chapter 12 ‘Language Learning’.

Part IV Language: Uniformity and Diversity includes Chapters 13 ‘Sign Languages’, Chapter 14 ‘Writing’, Chapter 15 ‘Unity and Diversity in Language Structure’, Chapter 16 ‘Language Change’, and Chapter 17 ‘Languages of the World’.

The end of the book contains a glossary, notes, an extensive (21 pages) list of references, and language, name, and subject indices.

The textbook is organized with each topic within a chapter receiving its own clearly labeled section. The sections follow a logical order e.g., Chapter 2 builds from articulatory phonetics, to acoustic phonetics, to suprasegmental features, and finally to phonology. The textbook utilizes the standardized International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and follows the Leipzig glossing rules. Each chapter is quite comprehensive for use in an introductory linguistics course; it makes no assumptions regarding prior knowledge of linguistics in its treatment which makes it accessible to introductory students. From the perspective of a teacher using this textbook, students can access what they ‘need’ to know, but it is exceedingly comprehensive in that the student can keep digging deeper into each chapter through the reflection questions that are integrated into the text, ‘Guide to further reading’, ‘Issues for further thought and exercises’, and ‘Research projects’. The exercises use a typologically diverse selection of languages, the majority of which are non-Indo-European. All of the exercises tend to be at the same difficulty - there doesn’t appear to be a hierarchy of complexity. Compared to other introductory textbooks, there are fewer exercises in some chapters e.g., there are 20 words and five sentences for transcription practice and four phonology problems in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, there is a passage to break down words into morphemes (rather than the list of words “controlled” for complexity and discussion found in many introductory textbooks) and five morphological data sets. Chapter 5 contains tree diagrams, but there seems to be an imbalance in the quality and quantity in how formalism is treated. Terms such as ‘movability’ and ‘contractibility’’ are used rather than the more traditional ‘constituency’ and ‘replacement’. Chapter 5 covers a significant amount of material from clause and phrase structure to grammatical relations. At numerous points it raises concerns about formal syntax that may be intended to show students that there are theoretical issues but that also may at times confuse them, since it may not specifically refer to alternatives e.g., there are no references to Head-Driven Phrase Structure (HPSG) Grammar, Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG), or Role and Reference Grammar (RRG).

Parts II, II, and IV appear much more even in their treatment of various theories. Chapter 8 ‘Text and Discourse’ is particularly strong in its treatment of Conversation and Discourse Analysis; and Chapter 9 ‘Investigating Language in Use: Corpus Linguistics’ is notably comprehensive. Chapters 10 ‘Language in Its Biological Context’ and Chapter 11 ‘Psycholinguistics: Language, the Mind and the Brain’ both give a broad overview of human language vs animal communication, thought (as a philosophical construct), and the brain. However, Chapter 12 ‘Language Learning’ isn’t given as much attention as in other introductory textbooks - nine pages to address first language acquisition and three pages to address second language acquisition - a large gap in the textbook. Instructors using this textbook will likely need to bring in other materials to ensure a holistic treatment of first and second language learning. Chapters 13 ‘Sign Languages’ and Chapter 14 ‘Writing’ give ample treatment to sign language (not limited to American Sign Language) and Chapter 14 gives a sufficient overview of writing systems. Chapter 15 ‘Unity and Diversity in Language Structure’ gives a thorough treatment of linguistic typology covering phonological, morphological, and syntactic typology. Chapter 16 ‘Language Change’ is comprehensive in its coverage of historical linguistics.

EVALUATION

The textbook itself is extremely well organized and presented. It is quite easy to navigate and could be used by someone looking to learn more about linguistics, as well as by a student using it as a textbook for an introductory course in linguistics. In terms of presentation, I think the textbook would benefit from footnotes as opposed to endnotes (I know many students say they don’t take the time to flip or scroll to the end of the book to see the notes. However, I know endnotes are commonly required by style manuals and publishers.) I think the book would also benefit from moving the ‘Key Terms’ from the beginning of each chapter to the end. I quickly surveyed several textbooks in linguistics and this convention seems to be quite common. Having the terms at the beginning can prime the reader for what to watch out for, but at the same time it could intimidate them. Relocating the ‘Key Terms’ to the end of each chapter would allow the reader to look at each term and ensure comprehension. It is refreshing to see so many languages represented in the examples used in the textbook (the language index is five pages long and is typologically diverse). Many textbooks tend to focus only on Indo-European language data.

In terms of pedagogy, one of the main highlights is the textbook author’s aim to promote higher-order thinking skills and critical thinking. His aim is to have active readers and thinkers that go beyond surface-level thinking to the application of what they have learned to correlating and synthesizing the material. This goal is accomplished throughout the textbook by adding gray boxes where the author asks the reader to reflect, sections on ‘Issues for further thought,” exercises at the end of each chapter, and the suggested ‘Research project’. These sections would make the textbook quite easy for instructors to adapt.

In addition, there is a companion website that contains a phenomenal amount of information. from a brief explanation of the language of text messaging to the author’s advice on essay writing. There are also great exercises for the reader. The website is invaluable to both the reader and the instructor. There is a link for ‘Lecturer resources,’ and each chapter has a ‘Test your knowledge of this chapter’ quiz. In sum, this textbook can accommodate students with different levels of interest and will promote genuine intellectual curiosity. It also teaches the scientific method, admitting that sometimes linguists have hypotheses that are not supported by the data and that, in other instances, an explanation may be improved, e.g., by explaining more of the data or addressing exceptions.

The author is committed to revision and self-evaluation, stating that in past editions there were “…a few instances where I uncritically repeated widespread linguistic myths” (xvi). He also notes in ‘About the third edition’ that in Chapter 12, this edition uses the term language ‘learning’ rather than language ‘acquisition’, as these are two extremely different concepts in the field (p. xvi).

The author is mostly successful in his attempts to remain as theory neutral as possible, though I feel that there is an imbalance in that formalism isn’t given as much attention as other mainstream theories. William McGregor is the driving force behind ‘Semiotic Grammar,’ and he explicitly points out on page xiv that “While I have my own minority theoretical perspective [Semiotic Grammar], I do not attempt to present or argue it here; rather I stand back from it, and adopt a more general stance that includes many theories within the so-called functionalist, usage-based and cognitivist paradigms.” He exposes readers to both formal and functional approaches and presents both older and newer treatments, but at times the balance seems uneven since his aim is not to “adopt the dominant theoretical framework in linguistics, generative grammar” (xiv). On page 17 he devotes about a third of the page to generative grammar. In the chapter ‘Structure of Sentences: Syntax’, syntactic trees are addressed and there are example sentences for students to try their hand at drawing trees, but although the author mentions that Chomsky’s theories have evolved over the years, there is no explicit mention of Government and Binding, Principles and Parameters, or X-bar theory. Given its status in our field, generative grammar could have been given more attention.

Another weakness in the textbook is the sparse treatment of second language acquisition (SLA) in Chapter 12. As mentioned above, in this edition the author has adopted the term ‘learning’ to “align [himself] with a constructivist approach to language learning” (xvi). He acknowledges that ‘learning’ and ‘acquisition’ have distinct meanings in linguistics but devotes only three pages to SLA. Many students using this book are likely also lovers of language learning, and it would be useful if this were expanded significantly to include work from Ellis, Krashen, MacWhinney, and VanPatten – just to name a few. The textbook is quite comprehensive in covering what other textbooks miss, such as typology and universals and writing systems and texting. However, the textbook makes no mention of forensic linguistics despite its being included in more and more introductory textbooks on the market today. On page 21, there is a non-comprehensive list of branches of linguistics that aren’t covered in the book, and forensic linguistics isn’t even mentioned in passing there.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Chris Sams is a Professor of Linguistics at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. His research and teaching interests are second language acquisition, forensic linguistics, linguistic typology and universals, language description and documentation, Romance linguistics, and historical linguistics