Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.102

AUTHOR: George Yule
TITLE: The Study of Language
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Samira Hamzehei

SUMMARY
This best-selling textbook provides a comprehensible and user-friendly introduction to the study of language, requiring no prior knowledge of the subject matter. All the key concepts in linguistics are explained in a very clear fashion suitable for new readers. This eighth edition has been updated with changes in the chapters on origins, phonetics, syntax, pragmatics, discourse analysis, first and second language acquisition, and culture. There are 40 new study questions, over 20 new tasks, and over 60 new additions to the further readings. The expanded website provides further resources for students.
Chapter One discusses the origin of language, noting that there is no definite and simple answer to the question of how language originated or what language was like back in the early stages. This chapter covers various theories of the origins of language, including the divine source, the natural sound source, the musical source, the social interaction source, the physical adaptation source, the tool-making source, and the generic source. This edition also covers another source which is called the gesture source. This newly added section discusses the fact that our ancestors had managed to develop some use of manual gestures to communicate. Even studies of chimpanzees showed that they use sixty different hand signals to communicate in their natural environment. At around ten months of age, human infants also begin to use distinct gestures as a tool of communication. This chapter is a good source for any reader who wants to read about how human language was shaped over time.
Chapter Two explains the difference between animal communication and human speech. It revolves around the fact that creatures can learn to communicate with other members of their species and human language is mostly unlearnable to them. Human language is unique for several reasons such as the human ability to think and talk about the language itself (reflexivity), human language can refer to things that happened in the past and future and it can also refer to things that do not exist in real life (displacement), the fact that there is no natural connection between a linguistic form and its meaning (arbitrariness), that we acquire language through interaction, not from biological genes (cultural transmission), humans are capable of creating new expressions by manipulating their linguistic resources whereas animal communication has fixed references to choose from (productivity), and that, unlike animal communication where signals appear to be fixed, human language consists of two levels where at one level distinct sounds are combined to create distinct meanings at a second level (duality). This chapter is a good source to read about different experiments involving humans and animals from the perspective of the learnability of human language.
Chapters Three and Four cover phonetics and phonology by discussing different types of phonetics (articulatory, acoustic, and auditory) and the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA) in detail. There is plenty of information about sounds of language and how the IPA chart is designed in an informative way to categorize sounds based on their places and manners of articulation. The fact that IPA symbols are used to transcribe sounds not letters has received special attention. In Chapter Three, there are charts for consonants and vowels that can be used as a reference. Chapter Four covers different phonology-related topics such as the distinction between phonemes, phones, and allophones, as well as complementary distribution. There are also sections dedicated to minimal pairs, phonotactics, syllables, consonant clusters, and phonological processes such as assimilation, nasalization, and elision.
Chapters Five and Six are about word formation and morphology, respectively. Chapter Five begins with a discussion of neologisms and etymology. It then continues talking about various processes of word formation, such as adopting words from a donor language (borrowing), combining two separate words to form a new one (compounding), reducing a word of more than one syllable to a shorter form (clipping), changing a lexical category of a word (conversion), inventing novel words (coinage), and adding affixes to words to create terms with new meanings (derivation), which is the most common word-formation process. This comprehensive chapter ends with a discussion of how multiple processes of word formation can affect the same word. The following chapter covers the concept of morphology and morphemes and how they function. It discusses different types of morphemes such as free and bound morphemes, lexical and functional morphemes, derivational, and inflectional morphemes. It also covers morphological description through sentence analysis. Chapter Six concludes with an account of morphs, allomorphs, and their special cases in other languages through examples from Kanuri, Ganda, Ilocano, and Tagalog, which will appeal to readers who are interested in learning about different languages through the lens of morphology.
Chapters Seven and Eight are about grammar and syntax. Chapter Seven starts with the definition of traditional grammar, and parts of speech (nouns, articles, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, and conjunctions). A separate section covers the agreement and its dependence on the number, person, tense, voice (active or passive), and gender (natural and grammatical). After that, this chapter focuses on differentiating between a prescriptive and a descriptive approach to grammar in detail. Word order is also discussed through language typology, and finally, the chapter ends with a separate section discussing the importance of studying grammar. Chapter Eight, “Syntax” starts with the importance of syntactic rules and generative grammar. The chapter continues by discussing syntactic analysis, phrase, and structure rules, lexical rules, and tree diagrams. To close this chapter, this edition contains a new section that was absent in the seventh edition. This newly added section covers a movement rule. This syntactic rule is discussed in examples from English. This chapter is the right place to start reading and learning about syntax.
Chapter Nine covers semantics by discussing various types of meaning, such as referential meaning (factual meaning of words) and associative or emotive meaning (feelings or reactions to words). This notion is discussed further in the next section where the author argues that semantic features of words are required for them to appear with other nouns or verbs. These features are used to analyze how words in a language are connected (componential analysis). It is worth noting that this approach considers words as containers of meanings, which is very restrictive and limited in terms of practical use. This limitation includes semantic roles including agent and theme, instrument and experiencer, location, source, and goal. This chapter also covers lexical relations by explaining synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, prototypes, homophones and homonyms, polysemy, and metonymy. As the final point, collocation and concordance, and their relation to corpus linguistics, are discussed. This chapter is a good source for those who want to read about fundamental sub-topics under semantics.
Chapter Ten discusses pragmatics by first defining it as speaker meaning. For this type of meaning, speakers' utterances are studied in a particular context, which is why the distinction between the physical and linguistic contexts is explored. One aspect of pragmatic meaning is assigning reference, which is done by identifying the referents of deictic expressions. Two types of reference are introduced by the author, namely inferences (making connections between what is being said and what is meant), and anaphora/cataphora (referring to an antecedent or vice versa). This chapter also discusses presuppositions, pragmatic markers, politeness (positive and negative faces), and speech acts (direct/indirect). There is a newly added section in this chapter that covers Grice’s cooperative principles through which hedges and implicatures are introduced. In its current form, this chapter is recommended to readers who want to get familiar with the building blocks of pragmatics.
Chapter Eleven defines discourse analysis as language beyond the sentence level. Studying discourse is typically concerned with studying language beyond the sentence in texts and conversations. Thus, the connection between texts (cohesion), and connection between parts of the discourse (coherence) which is obtained through pronouns and conjunctions is crucial. This chapter covers conversation analysis by discussing turn-taking, pauses, filled pauses, adjacency pairs, and insertion sequences. There is a newly added section in this chapter that discusses different types of conversational repair such as self-initiated and other-initiated repair. For repairs to take place, speakers must be able to rely on shared background knowledge of the current topic in the conversation.
Chapter Twelve covers language and the brain by introducing neurolinguistics as the study of the relationship between the two. Areas in the brain that are associated with language such as Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area, the motor cortex, and the arcuate fasciculus, are also discussed. The view that specific aspects of language ability can be accorded to specific locations in the brain is called the localization view. This chapter then continues to cover the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, malapropisms, slips of the tongue, spoonerisms, perseveration, anticipation, exchange, and slips of the ear. Different types of aphasias including Broca’s, Wernicke’s, and conduction are discussed with speech examples. This chapter also explores dichotic listening tests and elaborates on how the left and right hemispheres of the brain are involved in this process. The critical period and cases of acquiring a language beyond it are discussed to serve as an intro to the following on first language acquisition.
Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen address first and second language acquisition respectively. Chapter Thirteen starts by discussing acquisition and the importance of input and caregiver speech. Afterward, the acquisition schedule is discussed, covering stages such as cooing, babbling, the one-word stage, the two-word stage, and telegraphic speech.The acquisition process involves different strategies, including learning through imitation and through correction. The rest of Chapter Thirteen specifically covers the development of morphology (including overgeneralization), syntax (including the different stages of forming questions and negatives), and semantics. This edition also addresses the development of phonology as the first stage of acquiring a language. Chapter Fourteen begins with a discussion of becoming bilingual through subtractive bilingualism, heritage language, and additive bilingualism. After that, acquisition barriers, the age factor, affective factors, and motivation (instrumental and integrative) are described and elaborated on. The rest of the chapter focuses on two related notions in SLA: the teaching method and the learner. The latter is attended to further by covering different teaching methods such as grammar translation, audiolingual, communicative, and task-based approaches. The focus on the learner is explained through the concepts of transfer (positive and negative), interlanguage, input, and output. In conclusion, the chapter states that achieving communicative competence depends on different factors such as grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic mastery of the language. In this edition, Chapter Fourteen has undergone an overall reorganization and expansion.
Chapter Fifteen is assigned to American Sign Language. It begins with a discussion of gestures, emblems, iconics, deictics, and beats. It is followed by a section that addresses two general categories of language that involve the use of signs: alternate sign languages and primary sign languages. An alternate sign language is a system that is developed by speakers for limited communication where speech cannot be used. Primary sign language refers to the first language of people who do not use spoken language. This chapter offers a brief historical review of oralism and signed English. There is also a brief introduction to the origins of ASL, and how signs are structured (shape and orientation, location, movement, primes, facial expressions, and finger-spelling). The rest of this chapter highlights the fact that ASL contains all the linguistic characteristics of spoken language and that all the children acquiring it as their first language go through similar developmental stages as children learning a spoken language.
Chapter Sixteen covers written language defined as the symbolic representation of language through the use of graphic signs. It addresses writing through three distinct types of writing: phonographic, syllabic, and alphabetic. Phonographic writing is described in terms of pictograms, ideograms, and logograms along with the rebus principle (a symbol representing a sound of the spoken word). Syllabic writing is introduced through examples from Japanese in which symbols represent spoken syllables. Alphabetic writing is introduced through the concept of the alphabet, consonantal alphabets, and their role in history. Lastly, this chapter specifies the relationships between Old English phonological changes and how that resulted in changes in English spellings.
Chapter Seventeen is about language history and change. It starts with an illustration of the Proto-Indo-European languages through a figure of the Indo-European family tree. Cognates are then described as a means of connection between different languages. To make this connection between different languages, some specific concepts are needed, such as comparative reconstruction, the majority principle, and the most natural development principle. Exploration of these principles, the processes of comparing cognates, and sound and word reconstruction are also offered. This chapter also contains a discussion of the history of English, including Old English and Middle English. Language change is shown to be characterized by sound changes (metathesis, epenthesis, and prothesis), syntactic changes (loss of inflections), and semantic changes (broadening and narrowing of the meaning). The chapter is concluded with a section on the difference between diachronic and synchronic variation. The former considers language variation from a historical perspective and in terms of change through time. The latter considers differences within one language among different groups at the same time, which is the subject matter of chapters Eighteen and Nineteen.
Chapters Eighteen and Nineteen are about regional and social variations in language. Chapter Eighteen commences with an introduction to the standard language. Accent, dialect, and variation in grammar are given brief descriptions. The concept of dialectology is discussed in view of regional dialects, isoglosses, dialect boundaries, and the dialect continuum. The chapter then moves on to regional bilingualism which then leads to the concept of language planning strategies, pidgins, and creoles. Chapter Nineteen focuses on social dialects, education, occupation, and social markers as variables that can have an impact on personal idiolect and how the speaker is realized as representative of a particular social group. This chapter continues by discussing speech style and style-shifting which includes prestige, speech accommodation, convergence, and divergence. The chapter then moves on to register, jargon, slang, and taboo terms. African American English and its vernacular are briefly addressed in the final section.
Chapter Twenty focuses on language and culture, beginning with a discussion of concepts such as categories and how certain linguistic items are lexicalized in different languages. Subsequently, linguistic relativity is discussed with a detailed account of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and a mention of the example of snow terms to argue against it. Cognitive categories, social categories, and gender are covered, with the latter including a discussion of gendered speech, gendered interaction, and gender neutrality. This final section on gender has been reorganized in comparison to the seventh edition.

EVALUATION
George Yule’s ‘The Study of Language’ was first published in 1985 as an introductory textbook to linguistics. Since then, the book has gained a great deal of recognition and popularity. Just like the previous editions, the eighth edition of the book provides a clear division of main topics and subtopics in linguistics within twenty chapters. In each chapter headings and subheadings make it particularly convenient for the reader to locate the information presented. There are subtle changes and extra information in some chapters compared to the seventh edition. On top of the revisions and additions, the new visuals at the beginning of each chapter makes the latest edition more attractive and updated. Each chapter ends with study questions and exercises for independent learning. For readers or students who are interested in reading further on a particular topic, the book also provides a reading list.
As an introductory textbook to linguistics, ‘The Study of Language’ is well-organized in terms of content. Each of the chapters follows a similar pattern which makes it effortless to read and understand. In addition, there are some extra materials that have been made available for instructors, such as a student guide, an instructor’s manual, figures and images from the book that can be used in slides, and a test bank with 400 questions that are formatted for different LMS systems including Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, and Brightspace.

REFERENCES
Yule, G. (2020). The Study of Language (7th ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Yule, G. (2023). The Study of Language (8th ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Samira Hamzehei is a second-year Ph.D. student and an Enhanced Graduate Teaching Assistant at the Linguistics and TESOL Department of the University of Texas at Arlington. She has a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature and a master’s degree in TEFL. She is a native speaker of Persian, Turkish, and Azeri. Her area of interest is phonological theory and her research covers loanword phonology with a particular focus on the prosodic theory of the syllable (onset/coda restrictions). Her research is concerned with constraint-based phonological theory, specifically with an optimality-theoretic model of phonology.