Word Structure, provides a complete introduction to morphology, the study of the structure of words. Word Structure: * examines how words work as part of the language system * encourages readers to take an objective and analytic approach * refers to a wealth of languages, including Turkish and Latin, to illustrate points raised * provides clear and succinct summaries at the end of each unit.
A genuine introduction to the linguistics of English that provides a broad overview of the subject that sustains students' interest and avoids excessive detail. It takes a top-down approach to language beginning with the largest unit of linguistic structure, the text, and working its way down through successively smaller structures.
The word is central to both naive and expert theories of language. Yet the definition of 'word' remains problematic. The 42 chapters of this Handbook offer a variety of perspectives on this most basic and elusive of linguistic units.
What kinds of words can exist in natural languages? How are sentences constructed? What is the relationship between a word and the sentence in which it appears? How do language learners figure all this out? Presenting over a decade of original research, Words and Structures collects four influential papers that address the theory of words, the structure of sentences, and the relationship between the two. Jane Grimshaw sheds new light on the fundamental questions of the nature of word meanings, sentence structure, and language acquisition. Those interested in the puzzles of language learning but dissatisfied with current theories and models will find this an indispensable volume on the subject.
A large vocabulary is always an asset. Students, teachers, politicians, salesmen, lawyers-in fact all of us-are judged by our ability to use words. It is not surprising, therefore, that many books have been written on the subject of vocabulary enrichment. Most rely heavily on memorization. Fortunately, there is amore efficient and practical way to enlarge your vocabulary. Many words are composed of meaningful elements that occur again and again in English. It, therefore, makes sense to learn word elements rather than whole words whenever possible. This method requires much less effort than it would take to memorize all the words or even the various forms of word elements. The Structure of English Words: is based on modern linguistic principles. These methods allow the reader to analyze words they have never seen before and to understand unusual uses of familiar words. is divided into two main sections-the text - which discusses the rules for relating the different forms or word elements, and the glossary, which covers the major Latin and Greek word roots and affixes that occur in English. features a glossary of roots in reverse order so that the reader can find a root by looking up its meaning. includes an instructors manual with answer keys, additional worksheets, explanations, charts and a note to instructors.
Analyzing Grammar is a clear introductory textbook on grammatical analysis, designed for students beginning to study the discipline. Covering both syntax (the structure of phrases and sentences) and morphology (the structure of words), it equips them with the tools and methods needed to analyze grammatical patterns in any language. Students are shown how to use standard notational devices such as phrase structure trees and word-formation rules, as well as prose descriptions. Emphasis is placed on comparing the different grammatical systems of the world's languages, and students are encouraged to practice the analyses through a diverse range of problem sets and exercises. Topics covered include word order, constituency, case, agreement, tense, gender, pronoun systems, inflection, derivation, argument structure and grammatical relations, and a useful glossary provides a clear explanation of each term. Accessibly written and comprehensive, Analyzing Grammar is set to become a key text for all courses in grammatical analysis.
This volume takes a variety of approaches to the question 'what is a word?', with particular emphasis on where in the grammar wordhood is determined. Chapters in the book all start from the assumption that structures at, above, and below the 'word' are built in the same derivational system: there is no lexicalist grammatical subsystem dedicated to word-building. This type of framework foregrounds the difficulty in defining wordhood. Questions such as whether there are restrictions on the size of structures that distinguish words from phrases, or whether there are combinatory operations that are specific to one or the other, are central to the debate. In this respect, chapters in the volume do not all agree. Some propose wordhood to be limited to entities defined by syntactic heads, while others propose that phrasal structure can be found within words. Some propose that head-movement and adjunction (and Morphological Merger, as its mirror image) are the manner in which words are built, while others propose that phrasal movements are crucial to determining the order of morphemes word-internally. All chapters point to the conclusion that the phonological domains that we call words are read off of the morphosyntactic structure in particular ways. It is the study of this interface, between the syntactic and phonological modules of Universal Grammar, that underpins the discussion in this volume.
This book is designed to provide students of phonology with an accessible introduction to the phonological architecture of words. It offers a thorough discussion of the basic building blocks of phonology - in particular features, sounds, syllables and feet - and deals with a range of different theories about these units. Colin Ewen and Harry van der Hulst present their study within a non-linear framework, discussing the contributions of autosegmental phonology, dependency phonology, government phonology and metrical phonology, among others. Their coherent, integrated approach reveals that the differences between these models are not as great as is sometimes believed. The book provides a more detailed analysis of this subject than previously available in introductory textbooks and is an invaluable and indispensable first step towards understanding the major theoretical issues in modern phonology at the word level.
