Introduction to English Linguistics

This practice-oriented introduction to English linguistics impresses with easy-to-understand explanations, numerous examples, illustrations and exercises with solutions. This makes it an excellent basis for introductory courses as well as for self-study and exam preparation. For the fifth edition, the text, the exercises and the references have been revised and updated while maintaining the structure and taking into account recent developments in linguistics.

Prefaces VIII
1 Introduction 1
1. 1 What is Linguistics 2
1. 2 Branches of Linguistics 2
1. 3 Central Concepts of Linguistics 4
1. 4 Bibliography 9
2 A Brief History of English 11
2. 1 The Linguistic History of English 12
2. 1. 1 Old English (c450 c1150 13
2. 1. 2 Middle English (c1150 c1500 20
2. 1. 3 Early Modern English (c1500 c1700) 24
2. 1. 4 Modern English (c1700 present) 28
2. 2 English Around the World 30
2. 3 English in the 21st Century 34
2. 4 Exercises 36
2. 5 Bibliography 37
3 Phonetics and Phonology 39
3. 1 Phonetics: The Study of Speech Sounds 40
3. 1. 1 Speech Sound Production 41
3. 1. 2 Description and Classification of Consonants and Vowels. 43
3. 1. 3 Phonetic Transcription 50
3. 2 Phonology: The Function and Patterning of Sounds 58
3. 2. 1 Segmental Phonology 59
3. 2. 2 Suprasegmental Phonology 64
3. 2. 3 Connected Speech 68
3. 3 Exercises 70
3. 4 Bibliography 73
4 Morphology 75
4. 1 Morphology and Grammar 76
4. 2 Morphemes and Allomorphs 85
4. 3 Morphological Processes 86
4. 3. 1 Inflection 86
4. 3. 2 Word Formation 88
4. 4 Exercises 95
4. 5 Bibliography 97
5 Syntax 99
5. 1 Syntactic Categories 100
5. 2 Sentence Types 103
5. 3 Building Sentences 104
5. 4 Characteristic Phrase Structures and . Clause Structures of English 113
5. 5 Grammatical Rules and Grammaticality 120
5. 6 Exercises 123
5. 7 Bibliography 124
6 Semantics 127
6. 1 The Study of Meaning 128
6. 2 Lexical Semantics 128
6. 2. 1 Meaning Relations Among Words 129
6. 2. 2 Word Meaning 135
6. 2. 3 Conceptualisation and Categorisation 138
6. 3 Sentence Meaning 141
6. 3. 1 Meaning Relations Among Sentences 141
6. 3. 2 Sentence Interpretations 144
6. 4 Exercises 148
6. 5 Bibliography 149
7 Pragmatics 151
7. 1 What Does Pragmatics Do 152
7. 2 Deixis 153
7. 2. 1 Person Deixis 154
7. 2. 2 Place Deixis 156
7. 2. 3 Time Deixis 157
7. 3 The Cooperative Principle 158
7. 4 Speech Acts 160
7. 5 Conversation Analysis 164
7. 6 Exercises 166
7. 7 Bibliography 169
8 Sociolinguistics 171
8. 1 The Subject Matter 172
8. 2 Language Variation 173
8. 2. 1 Geographical Differentiation of Language 178
8. 2. 2 Social Differentiation of Language 181
8. 3 Language and Gender 185
8. 4 Exercises 193
8. 5 Bibliography 194
9 Appendix 197
9. 1 Answers 197
9. 2 Index 211