"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."
AUTHORS: Plag, Ingo; Maria Braun; Sabine Lappe; and Mareile Schramm TITLE: Introduction to English Linguistics SERIES TITLE: Mouton Textbook PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter YEAR: 2009
Dinha T. Gorgis, Jadara University, Irbid, Jordan
SUMMARY
Introduction to English Linguistics, 2nd edition, is a book primarily intended to be used by beginning university students of English. Although this co-authored work is written within a German setting, it is undoubtedly accessible world-wide. For while it ''presupposes no prior knowledge of linguistics'' (p. xi), the book is written in such a lucid and enjoyable style that the reader barely finds any abrupt cut in the flow of information. And rather than adopting one particular theoretical framework, the book draws on insights from various traditions. In addition to being written in user-friendly English, the book is error-free. It comprises a two-page introduction, seven chapters, each ending with a section on recommended readings and a few exercises for both basic and advanced levels, a glossary of terms used throughout the book, a list of references and a subject index.
Unlike other introductory books on English linguistics, e.g. Meyer (2009) or Bieswanger and Becker (2008), the first chapter (pp. 1-28) starts right away with phonetics, rather than telling the newcomer what linguistics as a field of enquiry might be. However, the authors take British Standard English as the object of their account with frequent references to General American English (GAE). For that matter, Received Pronunciation (RP), an accent whose sounds are described and words transcribed using IPA notations, is occasionally contrasted with German and GAE. Like many pedagogically-oriented textbooks, the authors focus on articulatory phonetics owing to its practical purposes in second/foreign language teaching settings as compared to acoustic and auditory phonetics. The chapter briefly notes the difference between spelling and pronunciation and proceeds with the description of consonants as produced by our speech apparatus and their classification in terms of the labels given to place and manner of articulation as well as voicing. This is followed by a similar description and classification of pure vowels and diphthongs. For the purpose of illustration, some conventional figures are offered, which depict the movements made by our speech organs. Overall, nothing is really new or unusual about the chapter; it is simple and straightforward.
The second chapter (pp. 29-69) examines phonology as ''the study of the abstract categories that organize the sound system of a language'' (p. 29). In order to establish the phoneme as an abstract category, a number of spectrographic images for the r-sound occurring in different words are presented. That spectrograms are introduced in the phonology rather than the usual phonetics chapter is significant for a number of reasons: (1) misconceptions about the nature of individual speech sounds are removed; (2) each r-sound occurrence, for example, is a phone with different physical properties because it is determined by the phonetic context in which it occurs; and (3) all such physical occurrences are reduced into an abstract distinctive entity which we have come to call a phoneme. So unlike phones, which are physical alternant realisations of a speech sound, we talk about a limited set of phonemes which Edward Sapir claimed to have psychological reality in the early 20th century. The key word used for establishing the phonemes of any language is distribution. Phones are said to be in complementary distribution, i.e. where one phone occurs, a similar one does not. Even if you try to replace one for another, as is the case with phones that are in free variation, meaning does not change. But when all the phones pertaining to one single speech sound are grouped together into a single family, we get an abstract distinctive unit, i.e. a unit that signals a difference in meaning, that we call a phoneme whose members in phonology are named allophones. The technique normally followed in establishing such distinctive units is called the minimal pair technique. This technique requires the availability of language data from which a researcher can select pairs of words differing in one sound only, provided that the two sounds fill a corresponding position. For example, both [s] and [f] in the pair /si:t/ and /fi:t/ fill a word-initial position. But this procedure should not be taken as an act of faith; for although we are familiar with ''once a phoneme, always a phoneme,'' it is possible that two phonemes can be neutralized as is the case with the voicing contrast in German /t/ and /d/ (see pp. 41-42).
The second important issue in this chapter is the syllable whose structure is made up of three optional and obligatory constituents, viz. onset, nucleus and coda. The onset and coda slots are optionally filled by consonants, but while the nucleus slot is normally filled by a vowel or diphthong it can equally be filled by a syllabic consonant, namely /l/, /m/, /n/ or /r/. This means that syllables have a constituent structure and that ''every syllable must have a nucleus'' (p. 59). Syllabification, on the other hand, is ''predictable on the basis of two principles, the Maximal Onset Principle and Sonority Sequencing Principle'' (p. 63). With reference to the category of the syllable, such principles enable us to formulate phonological rules which govern the distribution of allophones, e.g. the so-called clear and dark (or velarised) /l/. Unfortunately, there is no mention of rhyme, as in Plag (2003), or syllable weight and its relevance to stress assignment, which one may find in, e.g. Yavaş (2006).
Chapter 3 (pp. 70-110) takes the reader to a higher level of linguistic analysis: morphology, which is ''the study of the internal structure of words, the rules that govern it, as well as the ways of creating new words'' (p. 70). While the phoneme is designated as a meaningless abstract unit which can signal a difference in meaning between a pair of words, the morpheme is the smallest, indivisible, recurrent and meaningful unit which may be free or bound. If it recurs freely, e.g. 'book', then it must be a simplex word, i.e. a monomorphemic word, whereas if bound, e.g. {s} in 'books', then it is part of complex word. But identifying morphemes is not always straightforward. For example, while {cran-} in cranberry is a unique morpheme because ''it occurs in only one English word'' (p. 73), the plural morphemes in 'teeth' and 'sheep' are traditionally accounted for in terms of vowel alternation and zero value, respectively. Generally, however, English morphology is characterized by two systems, viz. closed vs. open. The former represents inflectional morphology, whereas the latter derivational morphology. Inflectional morphemes, which are said to be exclusively suffixes, are restricted in number and do not change the grammatical category (or word-class, or part of speech, if you like) when attached to words and/or involve vowel alternation, e.g. 'speak, speaks, speaking, spoken'. Derivational morphemes, on the other hand, can be both suffixes and prefixes and are able to change the grammatical category, e.g. 'child, childish, childhood'. As such, they constitute an open system which enriches the vocabulary of English. Like allophones, members of the phoneme, morphemes also have members, called allomorphs. An allomorph is a variant which the authors claim to be lexically, phonologically and morphologically conditioned, e.g. the allomorphs of the plural or verb tense morphemes (but see our comment below). The chapter concludes with other word-formation processes that have become quite fashionable in English, if not in all languages of the world. These include compounding, conversion, shortening (subsuming truncation, clipping and blending) and, above all, abbreviation, which includes both initialism and acronyms.
At the outset of chapter 4, syntax, the authors make it clear that the prescriptive rules one finds in grammar books are neither necessarily true of language as a system nor complete. Rather, they serve as ''an approximation of the vast knowledge that speakers actually have'' (p. 112). Grammar for them, as for many linguists, is the speaker's tacit knowledge of their language system. So syntax, the traditional core of grammar, may make reference to any aspect of that knowledge while exploring the internal structure of sentences. To account for sentential structure, however, the authors make appeal to the notion of constituent once more. In order for the building blocks, viz. words and phrases, to count as constituents of well-formed sentences, these blocks must pass several structural tests, most notable of which are pronominalisation, movement, coordination, passivisation, omission (cf. ellipsis), gapping and sentence-fragment. For didactic purposes, the authors seem to have felt that that the classical phrase structure rules and tree diagrams are quite helpful tools which demonstrably show learners how to test constituency, generate sentences and resolve structural ambiguity. Equally revealing in this chapter is the authors' successful attempt in showing how form is related to function. The mappings of form and function that can be found in English sentences are elegantly schematized on p. 136, but admittedly the schema does not show all possible mappings. Their conclusion, however, is that ''each sentential function can be realized by a number of different formal categories and that a given formal category may perform different functions in a sentence'' (p. 137).
Chapter 5 (pp. 140-175) introduces the beginning student of linguistics to semantics, a sub-discipline that deals with the meaning of words and sentences. Rather than accepting the definition of meaning as ''the relation between a linguistic expression and the entity for which it can be used'' (p. 142), the authors correctly define it as ''the relation between a linguistic expression (i.e. an arbitrary form, e.g. word) and a mental category that is used to classify objects, i.e. a concept'' (p. 145). Such conception of meaning derives its strength from research evidence on the basis of speakers' categorization of the objects around. Semanticists ''call the object for which a speaker uses a particular linguistic expression the referent of that linguistic expression. The relation between linguistic expressions and objects in the in the outside world is termed reference'' (p. 146). So instead of approaching meaning by simply relating words to objects directly, we should account for it as exhibiting a conceptual structure that manifests ''a triangular relationship between word, concept, and referent'' (p. 148), e.g. the schema one finds on p. 149. Although sentence meaning is not given attention, the authors could draw a distinction between semantic meaning and pragmatic meaning by providing a couple of sentences. The main body of the chapter, however, is devoted to the mental lexicon and conventional areas of lexical semantics, particularly the organization of lexemes into lexical fields ''whose members are linked through sense relations such as hyponymy and oppositeness'' (p. 171).
Pragmatic meaning is the subject matter of chapter 6 (pp. 176-209). As opposed to semantic (or grammatical) meaning, pragmatics explores communicative intentions through language in use. Speech Act Theory, first expounded by John L. Austin (1962) and developed later by John Searle (1969; 1979), in particular, is perhaps the earliest ''fully fledged theory'' (p. 178) that takes care of our communicative intentions. A speech act has traditionally been characterized as having three sub-acts: a locutionary act (the act of speaking or writing), an illocutionary act (the act of imparting meaning), and a perlocutionary act (the effect of the illocutionary force on the hearer). In our daily-life encounters, we produce a great many speech acts which may be reduced into some five classes for theoretical purposes. These categories include what have come to be called: declaratives, representatives, directives, commissives, and expressives. Because these categories may overlap, they have been further classified into directives and non-directives. Indirect speech acts are often associated with a higher degree of politeness than the direct ones. In order for speakers to perform speech acts successfully, and for hearers to go about discovering inferences, certain conditions must be met. These include Searle's felicity conditions, background knowledge and, above all, observing Grice's (1975) Cooperative Principle which subsumes several maxims.
In addition to answering a host of questions pertinent to the six areas of linguistic investigation so far introduced in the previous chapters, the authors in their final chapter, chapter 7 (pp. 210-230), feel that beginning students of linguistics may still wish to raise further questions, most important of which are those related to language genesis and change, acquisition and social significance. To satisfy their curiosity, answers within three more linguistic fields are provided. These fields, which include historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics, are briefly introduced.
EVALUATION
Let me start first with a very minor remark. Although each of the four authors is said to have been ''chiefly responsible for one or two chapters'' (p. v), single authors, particularly Sabine Lappe in chapter two, are advised not to use 'I' and 'we' interchangeably. And rather than appealing to ''my intuitions'' (p. 59), reference to the co-authors' intuitions could have strengthened the argument therein as long as the book is the fruit of joint effort.
What looks to me a methodological problem relates to stress, tone and syllable. Since stress is undoubtedly an important aspect of English phonology, which is referred to in a few pages (pp. 46; 47; 82; 83; 88; 98; 100; 106), I find it undesirable to invite the newcomers to a linguistics course ''to consider the account in Spencer's (1996: 206-210) phonology textbook'' (p. 46), to pay ''particular attention to the stress patterns of the base words'' (p. 98), or to ''[c]onsider the difference in the stress pattern'' (p. 100) between compounds. Would a statement such as ''a specific stress configuration'' (p. 47) or ''most truncated names retain either the first or the main stressed syllable'' (p. 106) mean anything to beginning students in English phonology without telling them what stress is in the first place? Similarly, ''a rising tone on the vowel'' (p. 48) would mean very little unless tone languages are introduced in a few lines at least. Stress and tone are absent from the glossary. A third methodological problem relates to consistency. Despite the fact that the authors make it clear from the beginning that they are not committed to any specific theoretical model, terms must be kept in harmony. A mismatch between terms is in place as they choose to identify some diphthongs as centring, simply because they end with a schwa, a central vowel, whereas some others as closing because they end with a high short vowel. There is nothing wrong with the values assigned, but it would be preferable to follow a British standard, e.g. Roach (2000), in calling the high vowels close to maintain conformity. Endnotes could have been provided throughout the whole book for cases that require further notes such as the high=close or the differences between the vowels [ɒ], [ɔ] and [ɑ] that are left unexplained, for example.
Confusion of terms extends to aspiration vs. release. In their own words, ''English voiceless stops as they appear in RP have three major types of allophones: an unreleased, an aspirated (released) and a non-aspirated (released) allophone'' (p. 50). What I am aware of is that we have two distinct pairs, viz. aspirated vs. non-aspirated and released vs. unreleased, where the presence or absence of aspiration is obligatory, i.e. phonologically conditioned and is captured by redundancy rules, whereas release is entirely optional. To say that ''word-finally we have free variation between aspirated, non-aspirated, and unreleased variants'' (p. 50) is misleading. Therefore, instructors need to make it clear to their students that voiceless stops occurring in word-final position are either released or unreleased and hence the common use of a different diacritic. A similar argument is true of voicing, which earlier is correctly said to be a contrastive (distinctive) feature, i.e. the sound is either voiced or voiceless. While admitting that English is characterized by ''final devoicing'' (p. 69), there is no need to identify /r/ and /l/ as having ''voiceless allophones'' (p. 50). Rather, it would be more convenient to call them devoiced; for the prefix {de-} implies that /r/ and /l/ lose a considerable amount of their voicing as a result of co-articulation, but are not in a binary opposition, i.e. voiced vs. voiceless.
Simplification is necessary in a textbook like this, but an instructor, like me, might be embarrassed if some smart student raises questions such as the following:
1. Since the book teaches us that /r/ is realized ''as [ə] word-finally after [ɪ], [e], and [ʊ] (i.e. in centring diphthongs)'' (p. 54), why don't we simply transcribe hearing, for example, as [hɪrɪŋ] (cf. [hɪə] ) rather than [hi:rɪŋ]?
2. Does the linking [r] have anything to do with lengthening [ɪ], or is it only an attempt to approximate GAE pronunciation, viz. [hirɪŋ]?
3. Isn't the diphthong just a single complex sound that involves ''a change in auditory quality within a single syllable'' (p. 234)?
4. Don't you think that the authors are trying to tell us that the verb hear in RP has basically a CV structure, but a CVC when suffixed by {-ing}?
5. Wouldn't you agree that the authors are segmenting the diphthong as if it were a cluster of two pure (simple) vowels?
6. After all, why suggest that RP speakers simplify, rather than maintain, their centring diphthongs in words such as 'enduring'? Would they really pronounce 'caring' as [kerɪŋ] in a similar fashion to, e.g. 'erring'?
I think such questions might equally be asked by some experienced instructors who would, additionally, wonder why some relevant topics, e.g. assimilation and intonation, are not covered. Readers, however, might also be curious to ask questions relevant to allomorphy and conditioning. The indefinite article is a case in point. The authors claim that the indefinite article is a morpheme with three phonologically conditioned allomorphs (cf. pp. 82-84), viz. [ə], [ən] and [eɪ] (unexpectedly excluding [æn]), the selection of which is determined by the sound that follows each of them (see p. 85). Suppose we accept their phonological conditioning. Such a statement would be valid in the selection of all realizations but the third; for what is phonologically peculiar about the following consonant in, e.g. 'a cup', to trigger a stressed [eɪ]? Its selection is simply determined by discourse as their contextualized example shows. In addition to phonological and morphological conditioning, related queries may extend to their third so-called lexical conditioning as regard the plural allomorph of 'sheep' (p. 87). This should mean that we need to admit that there are two separate entries for 'sheep', one for the singular and another for the plural. As such, we need to posit two entries for any morph associated with a zero allomorph, e.g. the verbs 'cut', 'put', etc. in the mental lexicon. In my view, there can be five types of conditioning: (1) phonological; (2) morphological; (3) morphophonological (or morphophonemic); morphosyntactical; and (5) discoursal. Representative examples for each type can respectively be: (1) polite vs. impolite, where assimilation is clearly noticed; (2) interested vs. uninterested or disinterested, where only the addition of prefixes is involved without any phonological change in the base; (3) 'include' vs. 'inclusive' or 'inclusion', where a suffix brings about a phonological change in the base; (4) 'sheep' (sg) vs. 'sheep' (pl), as determined by the syntax of English; and (5) all weak vs. strong forms, such as the indefinite articles 'a' and 'an', as determined by discourse. Overall, the chapter on morphology is undoubtedly rich, but as long as the purpose of the book is didactic one still wants to find out why some words attract {-able} but some others {-ible}, not to mention the nominalising suffixes {-ance} and {-ence}.
There is not really much to be said about the remaining chapters except for the following remarks to which I would like to draw the attention of the authors:
1. In chapter 4, syntax, which is not as rich as other chapters, I noticed there is a violation of binarity principle (see, especially p. 127).
2. One would have liked to see a contrast between finite and non-finite clauses (p. 136).
3. I think the suffix {-er} in chapter 5, semantics, requires more attention.
4. Since ''presupposes'' (p. 189) is mentioned in chapter 6, pragmatics, it would have been fruitful to draw a distinction between presupposition and entailment in chapter 5.
5. Adding ''propositional content'' (p. 190) as an additional condition to the already obtained general condition for the interpretation of any speech act is redundant, simply because the general condition is taken to enable the interlocutor to understand a locution linguistically unless the authors show their readers the difference between semantic and pragmatic proposition.
Last, but not least, one would have liked to see a section or so about some of the pioneering linguists and outstanding figures who contributed to the development of the field. That said, and despite the rather lengthy comments I have made above, the book is indeed enjoyable. University students all over the globe will, undoubtedly, find it stimulating and inspiring.
REFERENCES
Austin, John L. 1962. How to do things with words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bieswanger, Markus and Annette Becker. 2008. Introduction to English linguistics. 2nd edn. Tübingen: Narr. Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. In: Cole, Peter and Jerry Morgan. Syntax and semantics, Vol. 3: Speech acts, pp. 41- 58. New York: Academic Press. Meyer, Charles F. 2009. Introducing English linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plag, Ingo. 2003. Word-formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roach, Peter. 2000. English phonetics and phonology: A practical course, 3rd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John. 1979. Expression and meaning. Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John. 1969. Speech acts. An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spencer, Andrew.1996. Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell. Yavaş, Mehmet. 2006. Applied English phonology. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
Dinha T. Gorgis has been teaching several linguistic modules, including
English grammar, discourse, pragmatics and translation, at a number of Arab
universities since 1975, and is currently professor of linguistics at
Jadara University in Jordan. He is chief editor of STJ, member on the
editorial boards of Linguistik, TLJ, and has recently been nominated as a
peer-reviewer on the editorial board of Glossa. His latest publications
include: 'The translation of Arabic collocations into English:
Dictionary-based vs. dictionary-free measured knowledge' (Linguistik, 2009,
Vol. 37) and a review of Mira Ariel (2008). Pragmatics and Grammar.
Cambridge: CUP, which appeared on The LINGUIST List (24 June 2009), Vol.
20.2280.
