Consider the following phonetic data from the bantu language luganda

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Part of the Tongue Involved

Tongue Height

FRONT CENTRAL BACK

HIGH u boot

ROUNDED ʊ put

MID o boat

ǝ about ᴧ butt

LOW

i beet

ɪ bit

e bait

ɛ bet

æ bat a balm ɔ bawd

Classification of American English Vowels

Consonants Vowels

p pill t till k kill i beet ɪ bit b bill d dill g gill e bait ɛ bet m mill n nil ŋ ring u boot ʊ foot f feel s seal h heal o boat ɔ bore v veal z zeal l leaf æ bat a pot/bar θ thigh ʧ chill r reef ʌ butt ə sofa ð thy ʤ gin j you aɪ bite aʊ bout ʃ shill ʍ which w witch ɔɪ boy ʒ measure

A Phonetic Alphabet for English Pronunciation

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V i c t o r i a F r o m k i n

Late, University of California, Los Angeles

r o b e r t r o d m a n

North Carolina State University, Raleigh

n i n a h ya m s

University of California, Los Angeles

An Introduction to Language 10e

Australia • Brazil • Japan • Korea • Mexico • Singapore • Spain • United Kingdom • United States

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An Introduction to Language, Tenth Edition Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams

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In memory of Simon Katz and Lauren Erickson

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v

ChApter 1

What Is Language? 1

Linguistic Knowledge 1 Knowledge of the Sound System 2 Knowledge of Words 3

Arbitrary Relation of Form and Meaning 3

The Creativity of Linguistic Knowledge 5

Knowledge of Sentences and Nonsentences 7

Linguistic Knowledge and Performance 8

What Is Grammar? 9 Descriptive Grammars 9 Prescriptive Grammars 10 Teaching Grammars 12 Universal Grammar 13 The Development of Grammar 14 Sign Languages: Evidence for

Language Universals 15

What Is Not (Human) Language 16 The Birds and the Bees 16 Can Animals Learn Human

Language? 19

Language and Thought 21

Summary 25 References for Further Reading 27 Exercises 28

Preface xi

About the Authors ix

Contents

ChApter 2

Morphology: the Words of Language 33

Content Words and Function Words 35

Morphemes: The Minimal Units of Meaning 36

The Discreteness of Morphemes  38 Bound and Free Morphemes  39

Prefixes and Suffixes  40 Infixes  41 Circumfixes  41

Roots and Stems 42 Bound Roots 43

Rules of Word Formation 43 Derivational Morphology 44 Inflectional Morphology 46 The Hierarchical Structure of Words 49 Rule Productivity 52

Exceptions and Suppletions 54 Lexical Gaps 55

Other Morphological Processes 56 Back-Formations 56 Compounds 57 “Pullet Surprises” 60

Sign Language Morphology 60

Morphological Analysis: Identifying Morphemes 61

Summary 65 References for Further Reading 66 Exercises 66

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vi Contents

Lexical Semantics (Word Meanings) 152 Theories of Word Meaning 153

Reference 154 Sense 155

Lexical Relations 155 Semantic Features 158

Evidence for Semantic Features 159 Semantic Features and Grammar 159

Argument Structure 162 Thematic Roles 163

Pragmatics 165 Pronouns and Other Deictic Words 166

Pronouns and Situational Context 167

Pronouns and Linguistic Context 168 Implicature 170

Maxims of Conversation 171 Presupposition 174 Speech Acts 174

Summary 175 References for Further Reading 177 Exercises 178

ChApter 5

phonetics: the sounds of Language 189

Sound Segments 190 Identity of Speech Sounds 191 The Phonetic Alphabet 192

Articulatory Phonetics 194 Consonants 195

Place of Articulation 195 Manner of Articulation 197 Phonetic Symbols for American

English Consonants 203 Vowels 205

Tongue Position 205 Lip Rounding 207 Diphthongs 207 Nasalization of Vowels 208 Tense and Lax Vowels 208

Major Phonetic Classes 208 Noncontinuants and Continuants 209

ChApter 3

syntax: the sentence patterns of Language 76

What the Syntax Rules Do 77 What Grammaticality Is Not Based On 80

Sentence Structure 81 Constituents and Constituency Tests 82

Syntactic Categories 84 Phrase Structure Trees 87 Building Phrase Structure Trees 95 The Infinity of Language: Recursive

Rules 100 What Heads the Sentence 104 Structural Ambiguities 105 More Structures 107

Transformational Analysis 109 The Structure Dependency of Rules 111

UG Principles and Parameters 114

Sign Language Syntax 117

Appendix A 119

Appendix B 121

Appendix C 127

Summary 128 References for Further Reading 129 Exercises 129

ChApter 4

the Meaning of Language 139

What Speakers Know about Sentence Meaning 140

Truth 140 Entailment and Related Notions 141 Ambiguity 142

Compositional Semantics 143 Semantic Rules 144

Semantic Rule I 145 Semantic Rule II 146

When Compositionality Goes Awry 147 Anomaly 147 Metaphor 149 Idioms 150

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Contents vii

Slips of the Tongue: Evidence for Phonological Rules 251

Prosodic Phonology 252 Syllable Structure 252 Word Stress 253 Sentence and Phrase Stress 254 Intonation 255

Sequential Constraints of Phonemes 256 Lexical Gaps 257

Why Do Phonological Rules Exist? 258 Optimality Theory 259

Phonological Analysis 260

Summary 264 References for Further Reading 265 Exercises 266

ChApter 7

Language in society 279

Dialects 279 Regional Dialects 281

Phonological Differences 283 Lexical Differences 284 Syntactic Differences 284 Dialect Atlases 285

Social Dialects 287 The “Standard” 288 African American English 291 Latino (Hispanic) English 295 Genderlects 297 Sociolinguistic Analysis 300

Languages in Contact 301 Lingua Francas 301 Contact Languages: Pidgins and

Creoles 302 Creoles and Creolization 306 Bilingualism 309

Codeswitching 310

Language and Education 312 Second-Language Teaching Methods 312 Teaching Reading 313

Literacy in the Deaf Community 315 Bilingual Education 316 Minority Dialects 318

Obstruents and Sonorants 209 Consonantal Sounds 209 Syllabic Sounds 210

Prosodic Features 210 Tone and Intonation 211

Phonetic Symbols and Spelling Correspondences 213

The “Phonetics” of Signed Languages 215

Summary 216 References for Further Reading 218 Exercises 218

ChApter 6

phonology: the sound patterns of Language 224

The Pronunciation of Morphemes 225 The Pronunciation of Plurals 225 Additional Examples

of Allomorphs 228

Phonemes: The Phonological Units of Language 230

Illustration of Allophones 230 Phonemes and How to Find Them 232 Complementary Distribution 233

The Need for Similarity 235

Distinctive Features of Phonemes 235 Feature Values 236 Nondistinctive Features 237 Phonemic Patterns May Vary across

Languages 238 Natural Classes of Speech Sounds 239 Feature Specifications for American

English Consonants and Vowels 241

The Rules of Phonology 241 Feature-Changing Rules 243

Assimilation Rules 243 Dissimilation Rules 245

Segment Insertion and Deletion Rules 247

From One to Many and from Many to One 249

The Function of Phonological Rules 250

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viii Contents

Comparative Reconstruction 365 Historical Evidence 369

Extinct and Endangered Languages 371

The Genetic Classification of Languages 374 Languages of the World 375

Types of Languages 378

Why Do Languages Change? 381

Summary 384 References for Further Reading 385 Exercises 386

ChApter 9

Language Acquisition 394

The Linguistic Capacity of Children 394 What’s Learned, What’s Not? 395 Stages in Language Acquisition 398 The Perception and Production of Speech

Sounds 398 Babbling 400 First Words 401 Segmenting the Speech Stream 402

The Acquisition of Phonology 404 The Acquisition of Word Meaning 406 The Acquisition of Morphology 408 The Acquisition of Syntax 411 The Acquisition of Pragmatics 415 The Development of Auxiliaries:

A Case Study 416 Setting Parameters 419 The Acquisition of Signed Languages 420

The Role of the Linguistic Environment: Adult Input 422

The Role of Imitation, Reinforcement, and Analogy 422

The Role of Structured Input 424

Knowing More Than One Language 425 Childhood Bilingualism 426

Theories of Bilingual Development 427 Two Monolinguals in One Head 428 The Role of Input 429 Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism 429

Second Language Acquisition 430

Language in Use 318 Styles 319 Slang 319 Jargon and Argot 320 Taboo or Not Taboo? 320

Euphemisms 322 Racial and National Epithets 323 Language and Sexism 323

Marked and Unmarked Forms 324 Secret Languages and Language

Games 325

Summary 326 References for Further Reading 328 Exercises 329

ChApter 8

Language Change: the syllables of time 337

The Regularity of Sound Change 338 Sound Correspondences 339 Ancestral Protolanguages 339

Phonological Change 340 Phonological Rules 341 The Great Vowel Shift 342

Morphological Change 344

Syntactic Change 345

Lexical Change 350 Change in Category 350 Addition of New Words 351

Word Coinage 351 Words from Names 353 Blends 354 Reduced Words 355

Borrowings or Loan Words 356 Loss of Words 359 Semantic Change 360 Broadening 361

Narrowing 361 Meaning Shifts 361

Reconstructing “Dead” Languages 361 The Nineteenth-Century

Comparativists 362 Cognates 363

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Contents ix

Neurolinguistic Studies of Sentence Structure 473

Language and Brain Development 474 Left Hemisphere Lateralization for

Language in Young Children 475 Brain Plasticity 476 The Critical Period 476

The Modular Mind: Dissociations of Language and Cognition 479

Linguistic Savants 479 Specific Language Impairment 481 Genetic Basis of Language 482

Summary 482 References for Further Reading 486 Exercises 487

ChApter 11

Computer processing of human Language 495

Computers That Talk and Listen 495 Computational Phonetics and Phonology 496

Speech Recognition 496 Speech Synthesis 498

Computational Morphology 502 Computational Syntax 503 Computational Semantics 505 Computational Pragmatics 507 Computational Sign Language 508

Applications of Computational Linguistics 509 Computer Models of Grammar 509 Frequency Analysis, Concordances,

and Collocations 510 Computational Lexicography 511 The Culturomic Revolution 512

Twitterology 513 Information Retrieval and

Summarization 514 Spell Checkers 515 Machine Translation 516 Computational Forensic Linguistics 518

Trademarks 518 Interpreting Legal Terms 519 Speaker Identification 519

Is L2 Acquisition the Same as L1 Acquisition? 430

Native Language Influence in L2 Acquisition 432

The Creative Component of L2 Acquisition 433

Heritage Language Learners 434 Is There a Critical Period for L2

Acquisition? 434

Summary 436 References for Further Reading 438 Exercises 438

ChApter 10

Language processing and the human Brain 444

The Human Mind at Work 444 Comprehension 445

The Speech Signal 446 Speech Perception 447 Bottom-up and Top-down

Models 449 Lexical Access and Word

Recognition 451 Syntactic Processing 453

Speech Production 456 Lexical Selection 456 Application and Misapplication

of Rules 458 Planning Units 458

Brain and Language 461 The Human Brain 461 The Localization of Language

in the Brain 462 Aphasia 463 Split Brains 470 Dichotic Listening 471 Event-Related Potentials 471

Neural Evidence of Grammatical Phenomena 472 Neurolinguistic Studies of Speech

Sounds 472

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x Contents

Consonantal Alphabet Writing 536 Alphabetic Writing 537

Writing and Speech 539 Spelling 542

Texting 544 The Current English Spelling

System 544 Spelling Pronunciations 546

Pseudo-writing 547

Summary 548 References for Further Reading 549 Exercises 550

Glossary 555

Index 587

Summary 521 References for Further Reading 523 Exercises 523

ChApter 12

Writing: the ABCs of Language 527

The History of Writing 528 Pictograms and Ideograms 528 Cuneiform Writing 529 The Rebus Principle 531 From Hieroglyphics to the Alphabet 532

Modern Writing Systems 533 Word Writing 534 Syllabic Writing 535

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xi

The tenth edition of An Introduction to Language continues in the spirit of our friend, colleague, mentor, and coauthor, Victoria Fromkin. Vicki loved lan- guage, and she loved to tell people about it. She found linguistics fun and fascinating, and she wanted every student and every teacher to think so, too. Though this edition has been completely rewritten for improved clarity and currency, we have nevertheless preserved Vicki’s lighthearted, personal ap- proach to a complex topic, including witty quotations from noted authors (A. A. Milne was one of Vicki’s favorites). We hope we have kept the spirit of Vicki’s love for teaching about language alive in the pages of this book.

The first nine editions of An Introduction to Language succeeded, with the help of dedicated teachers, in introducing the nature of human language to tens of thousands of students. This is a book that students enjoy and under- stand and that professors find effective and thorough. Not only have majors in linguistics benefited from the book’s easy-to-read yet comprehensive pre- sentation, but also majors in fields as diverse as teaching English as a sec- ond language, foreign language studies, general education, the cognitive and neurosciences, psychology, sociology, and anthropology have enjoyed learning about language from this book.

highlights of this edition This edition includes new developments in linguistics and related fields that will strengthen its appeal to a wider audience. Much of this information will enable students to gain insight and understanding about linguistic issues

preface

Well, this bit which I am writing, called Introduction, is really the er-h’r’m of the book, and I have put it in, partly so as not to take you by surprise, and partly because I can’t do without it now. There are some very clever writers who say that it is quite easy not to have an er-h’r’m, but I don’t agree with them. I think it is much easier not to have all the rest of the book.

a. a. milne, Now We Are Six, 1927

The last thing we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.

blaise Pascal (1623–1662)

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xii prefACe

and debates appearing in the national media and will help professors and stu- dents stay current with important linguistic research. We hope that it may also dispel certain common misconceptions that people have about language and language use.

Exercises (250) continue to be abundant in this edition, and more research- oriented exercises have been added for those instructors who wish their students to pursue certain topics more deeply. Many of the exercises are mul- tipart, amounting to more than 300 opportunities for “homework” so that in- structors can gauge their students’ progress. Some exercises are marked as “challenge” questions: they go beyond the scope of what is ordinarily expected in a first course in language study. An answer key is available to instructors to assist them in areas outside of their expertise.

Chapter 1, “What Is Language?” continues to be a concise introduction to the general study of language. It contains many “hooks” for engaging stu- dents in language study, including “Language and Thought,” which takes up the Sapir-Whorf hypotheses; the universal properties of languages including signed languages of the deaf; a consideration of animal “languages”; and the occasional silliness of self-appointed mavens of “good” grammar who beg us not to carelessly split infinitives and who find sentence-ending prepositions an abomination not to be put up with.