LINGUIST List 10.1953

Fri Dec 17 1999

Review: Radford et al.: Linguistics: An Introduction

Editor for this issue: Andrew Carnie <carnielinguistlist.org>



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  • Mayumi Masuko, Book review: Radford et al.

    Message 1: Book review: Radford et al.

     Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 10:09:43 +0900
    From: Mayumi Masuko <mayumimn.waseda.ac.jp>
    Subject: Book review: Radford et al.


    Radford, Andrew, Martin Atkinson, David Britain, Harald Clahsen, and Andrew Spencer (1999). Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 438+xvi pages.

    Mayumi Masuko, Waseda University

    A Synopsis

    A novel aspect of this textbook is its unique organisation and wide coverage. The book starts with an 'Introduction' that presents the main questions any linguist should ask, and briefly explains the competence-performance distinction and sub-branches of linguistics. It also introduces 'hyphenated' disciplines which merit only a cursory mention in introductory textbooks, i.e. developmental linguistics (or language acquisition), psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and sociolinguistics. They are introduced because data and/or research in these disciplines are used later to supplement those of theoretical linguistics. The main part is divided into three parts: Sounds (Chapters 1-7), Words (Chapters 8-16) and Sentences (Chapters 17-26). Each chapter ends with an Exercise and each of the three parts provides 'Further reading and references'.

    In the first part called 'Sounds', Chapter 1 forms the 'Introduction' and Chapter 2, titled 'Sounds and suprasegmentals', introduces the very basics of phonetics as the title implies. Chapter 3, 'Sound variation', focuses on sociological variables influencing linguistic variables. Chapter 4, 'Sound change', explicates dialectal variation and changes within particular dialects (e.g. spirantisation in Liverpudlian accent), and NOT the usually expected Great Vowel Shift. Chapter 5 titled 'Phonemes, syllables and phonological processes', starts with a discussion of allophonic variation, phonotactic constraints and syllabification, followed by a fairly formal explanation of features. It even succinctly explains the concepts of underspecification and default in relation to sound variation. Chapter 6, 'Child Phonology', covers basic phonological processes such as assimilation and harmony to account for children's production. Chapter 7, 'Processing sounds', discusses psycholinguistic experiments, and identification and discrimination, to account for human speech perception. A model of speech production called the 'scan-copier model' (p.128f) is used to account for spoonerisms and other speech errors. The chapter ends with an illustration of segments ordinary human beings are or are not aware of; an example of the former being rhyme and the latter, phonemes.

    Part 2, 'Words', also starts with an 'Introduction' (Chapter 8). Chapter 9, 'Word classes', explicates parts of speech, or as they call them, "lexical categories". The distinction between functional categories and content words is introduced, and followed by a slightly more detailed explanation about verbs. Chapter 10, 'Building words', is mainly concerned with morphology. Morphemes, morphs and smaller units (e.g. bound morpheme and suffix) are presented. Derivation and inflection are given as exemplifying morphological processes. Chapter 11, 'Morphology across languages', compares three different types of morphological systems: isolating, agglutinating and inflectional languages. Different types of morphological operations, such as concatenative and non-concatenative, are also explained. Chapter 12, 'Word meaning', covers lexical relations: entailment, hyponymy, meronymy, antonymy and complementarity. An account of semantic features is followed by problems with lexical decomposition, and prototypes are put forward as a better lexical semantic representation. Chapter 13, 'Children and words', discusses acquisition order; it shows that at least one of the lexical relations introduced in the previous chapter, i.e. hyponymy, is utilised by children in their taxonomy. Chapter 14, 'Lexical processing and the mental lexicon', deals with issues associated with processing and production. Two different models are offered, serial-autonomous and parallel-interactive. A model of mental lexicon is presented, which distinguishes "concepts" and "lexical entries". The former does not figure in the mental lexicon, and the latter is divided into two: lemma and form. Speech errors are used to support this. Chapter 15, 'Lexical disorders', begins with discussion of aphasia, divided into two major types. The first is agrammatism, exemplified by Broca's aphasia, sufferers of which produce speech that lacks functional categories. Wernicke's aphasia is the most famous example of the second type called paraphasias; the patients have problems with content words. Children suffering from Specific Language Impairment (SLI), on the other hand, have specific problems with inflectional morphology, but it is shown that this is different from agrammatism. Chapter 16, 'Lexical variation and change', concerns lexical variation, and the concept of register and contact are introduced to explain this. Contact is also used to account for morphological variation that is observable in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and East Anglian English.

    Part 3, 'Sentences', also begins with an Introduction (Chapter 17). The omission of conversations or discourse from the data covered in this book is justified by the argument that a discussion of larger linguistic units necessitates the introduction of extralinguistic knowledge, which falls outside the scope of linguistics. 'Basic terminology' in Chapter 18 includes grammatical functions such as arguments (subject and complement) and predicate, and topic and comment. Clauses are classified using three oppositions: main vs. complement and tensed vs. untensed, which is the same as the finite/non-finite distinction. Another important grammatical concept, aspect, is explicated with examples involving participles. Chapter 19, 'Sentence structure', examines in detail merger, a syntactic operation that combines words to form a phrase. A labelled tree diagram is presented as a convenient means to represent syntactic structure. Coordination is employed as a test for constituency, and merger is constrained by feature checking. The topic of Chapter 20, 'Empty categories', is perhaps one of the most contentious issues in contemporary syntactic theories. These types of covert constituents - PRO, trace and empty auxiliary among others - are needed to characterise nominals as D-projections, i.e. a noun phrase is a phrasal expansion of a determiner. Similarly, clauses are phrasal expansion of INFL, a category covering finite auxiliaries and the infinitival "to". Chapter 21 discusses another important syntactic operation, "Movement". This type of operation is involved in auxiliary inversion and polarity items (head and operator movement), and passivization (argument movement, or A-movement). Thus, the derivation of syntactic structure in this framework is driven by merger and movement. Chapter 22, 'Syntactic variation', further examines inversion, as realised in AAVE and Modern Standard English (MSE). Early Modern English (EME) is shown to have a null nominative pronoun called "pro"; this exemplifies null subject languages, which follows from the null subject parameter. Parameters appear to explain linguistic variation in this syntactic framework. Hence, the name "principle and parameters theory (PPT)". Chapter 23, "Logical form", discusses issues related to interpretation of meaning. Curiously, however, a representation used for this purpose, "Logical Form (LF)", is defined as a covert syntactic level which is produced from an overt syntactic structure by covert movement operations. Wh-questions in Chinese provide evidence for covert movement. Chapter 24, 'Children's sentences', focuses on two types of structural parameter setting: head parameter and null subject in non-finite clauses. Also explained is children's use of objective case with infinitives, and omission of determiners in non-finite clauses. Both of these can be explained by positing a feature [+/- fin]. Starting with a very brief explanation of the Derivational Theory of Complexity, Chapter 25, 'Sentence processing', presents results from click studies to show that clause boundaries are psychological real segmental units. Experimental results are also drawn in support of traces. Preferred interpretations in structural ambiguity are explained by local attachment. Processing difficulty associated with centre embedding and garden-path sentences are briefly discussed also. The final chapter, 'Syntactic disorder', examines aphasia, which was discussed earlier in Chapter 15. This time, however, the focus is on sentence comprehension. Using structured experiments, it is shown that, contrary to the accepted wisdom, Broca's aphasia is not modality-specific; rather, it affects comprehension as well as production. Yosef Grozinsky's work is cited to show that different manifestations of agrammatism in different languages do share one deficit; namely, agrammatics have underspecified feature values in positions that require specified values. Again, earlier in Chapter 15, Wernicke's aphasia was introduced as an example of paraphasias. Here it is shown that it also affects patients' grammar, and hence is called paragrammatism. These patients have problems with retrieving content words from their mental lexicon, and they stop and start a different sentence. Yet another condition introduced in Chapter 15, SLI, is re-examined. Apparent word order problems observed in German-speaking SLI children turn out to be a result of their difficulty with inflection. The generalisation that SLI affects inflection is thus proved valid. At the end of the chapter is a short 'Conclusion' for the entire book, maintaining that the position taken in this book faithfully follows Chomsky's view: linguistics is concerned with factors internal to human brains that affect linguistic choice.

    An Evaluation: Few Blemishes

    This book has five authors, but there appear to be no discernible stylistic differences among Chapters (or within each Chapter, for that matter). It offers lucid explanations and reads smoothly. There are a few minor issues that I noticed, and they seem to be related to one larger issue. I shall start with the minor ones.

    As an introductory textbook, the citation method of this book is a little short of being helpful. For example, on p. 338, "the research of Peter Sells and his colleagues" is cited. No mention of the publication date, but this is forgivable as it is later given as "Sells, Rickford and Wasow (1994)" in 'Further reading and references' on p.422. Moreover, full bibliographical entry for Sells et al. (1994) can be found in the Bibliography. However, in the 'Further reading and references' for Part 1, on p.135, the source of information regarding intonation change mentioned in Chapter 4 is identified as "Britain (1998)" and that of the Milton Keynes dialect as "Kerswill, P. and A. Williams (forthcoming)". Sadly, this time neither Britain's nor Kerswill & Williams' work is included in the Bibliography. This is disappointing, as their research seemed interesting, judging from the way the authors of this book present it.

    Even more unfortunate are the proponents of "different theoretical accounts" mentioned in the Introduction to Part 3 (p.280): "Joan Bresnan and her colleagues", and "Ivan Sag and Carl Pollard" and their associates. None of their works are included in the Bibliography. Since the authors decided not to ignore the existence of alternatives, this is indeed a pity. Surely the production cost would not have been substantially increased by the inclusion of one representative work each for these two frameworks, say, Pollard & Sag (1994) and Bresnan (1982)?

    Perhaps related to this is the fact that the authors do not explicitly state their theoretical affiliation from the outset. Trained linguists will already be aware of this affiliation, but not novices to the field. True, the authors mention "the Chomskian approach" on p.2 and Chomsky's name appears again and again, but it is not until p. 371 that "the overall organization of a grammar" appears with a diagram. Considering this book is subtitle "An introduction", it might have been better to put the organisation of the theory much earlier.

    Both of these issues may have the same origin, to which I shall turn presently.

    The Intended Audience?

    One issue that still puzzles me is the nature of the authors' intended audience. In 'A note for course organisers and class teachers on the use of this book' (pp.xv-xvi), a suggestion is made that the three parts of the book are more or less independent, and each part "could be integrated as the introductory segment of more specialised courses in phonology, morphology or syntax." This might be feasible in a small linguistics department where one person teaches phonology and morphology, and another teaches syntax and possibly semantics. I have direct knowledge of only two linguistics programmes in England where such a use could be easily envisaged. I wonder, however, whether it would be possible in a large department where the theoretical orientation of each teacher may greatly differ. Being more than 400 pages long, this book will not come cheap, and it would be a shame if undergraduate students were forced to buy it as the course book, read only one Part for their course, and left the rest unread.

    Furthermore, though the beauty of this book is its wider than usual coverage incorporating four hyphenated disciplines, I wonder how those teaching undergraduate introductory courses might find it. At the very beginning, it might be more beneficial to students to be exposed to a narrower theory. Teachers can, of course, select which parts of the book to use. Nevertheless, it might affect the flow of the text which otherwise is lucid. It would be fair to note here that the authors imply that the book might not be suitable for a 'real' introductory course; perhaps they intended it as a textbook for an advanced introductory course, if that is not a contradiction in terms.

    Alternatively, the authors suggest that the book might be an ideal source book for teaching assistants or tutors/supervisors. This I find more practicable and appealing. Similarly, this textbook would be eminently suitable as a self-study aid for postgraduate students because of its coverage and an abundance of data and exercises.

    I had not expected to enjoy reading a book intended to be an introductory textbook. However, enjoy it I did, and at the same time I learnt more about sub-disciplines outside my specialisation than I had ever done during my postgraduate studies. Personally, I would hesitate to use this book for an undergraduate introductory course, but this might reflect my limitations as a teacher, rather than those of the book. I would recommend this textbook especially to teachers like myself who have not had time to follow recent developments, particularly outside their own field.

    Bibliography

    Bresnan, J. (ed.) (1982) The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Pollard, C. and I. Sag (1994). Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sells, P., Rickford, J. and T. Wasow (1994) 'An optimality theoretic approach to variation in negative inversion in AAVE', manuscript, Stanford University.

    About the reviewer

    Mayumi Masuko did her postgraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, where she received an MPhil and a PhD in linguistics. She currently teaches English and linguistics at Waseda University in Tokyo. Her main research interest lies in semantics and pragmatics and their interaction with syntax and morphology. She has been involved in a research project on generative lexicon in Japanese funded by the Ministry of Education.