This book gives a thorough, yet easily accessible introduction to the main branches of English linguistics. The book is aimed at beginning and intermediate students of English who have little or no previous experience in doing linguistics, and who are expected to achieve a working knowledge of English morphology, syntax and semantics. The book contains a large number of written exercises which allow the students to practice linguistic reasoning and their own argumentation skills. The students will also learn how to use secondary material, such as dictionaries and various types of internet sources, to support their analyses and argumentation. The book is accompanied by a website containing, among other things, audio material and short podcasts on complex topics as well as keys to the exercises in the book.
Designed for those beginning to study linguistics, this is a lively introduction to two key aspects of the structure of language: syntax (the structure of sentences) and morphology (the structure of words). It shows students in a step-by-step fashion how to analyze the syntax and morphology of any language, by clearly describing the basic methods and techniques, and providing almost 100 practical exercises based on data from a rich variety of the world's languages. Written in an engaging style and complete with a comprehensive glossary, Exploring Language Structure explains linguistic concepts by using clear analogies from everyday life. It introduces a range of essential topics in syntax and morphology, such as rules, categories, word classes, grammatical relations, multi-clause constructions and typology. Providing a solid foundation in morphology and syntax, this is the perfect introductory text for beginning students, and will fully prepare them for more advanced courses in linguistic analysis.
The experience of having taught English language and morphology – syntax in particular – for more than seven years convinced the author that students of linguistics and translation mostly need a solid grounding in the course of morphology and syntax. Once they have a basic understanding of these two important areas, they have little trouble mastering English language as a whole. Hence, both morphology and syntax are important parts of linguistic knowledge and constitute a component of student's mental grammar. Of Course, the more courses are required of students within their discipline, the more they can benefit from the fields inside their major. Such factors often help students develop a positive attitude towards linguistics to be sensitized to the morphological and syntactic system of the language while being exposed to both morphology and syntax, and especially in an unfamiliar area. Obviously, an introductory book such as this has several limitations. First, there are entire subbranches of morphology and syntax that are not included. In terms of content, this book delimits both its scope and audience by shedding new light on a subject the problems and obscurities of which look inexhaustible. Therefore, a book of this kind is an attempt to, on the one hand, to make morphology and syntax – which usually appear to be incredible complicated at first glance – easier and, on the other hand, keep the standard high so that even postgraduate students can benefit from it; because the author strongly believes that students learn best by “doing” exercises, and, to this end,he has added dozens of practice exercises. In general, these require more research or analysis beyond what can be accomplished within a single classroom period. These exploratory exercises can also form the basis for short papers. Therefore, the book can be of immense help not only to students of linguistics and translation, but also to professors of linguistics and translation and research supervisors as well as advisors around the globe and in the Arab world in particular.
What exactly are words? Are they the things that get listed in dictionaries, or are they the basic units of sentence structure? Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy explores the implications of these different approaches to words in English. He explains the various ways in which words are related to one another, and shows how the history of the English language has affected word structure. Topics include: words, sentences and dictionaries; a word and its parts (roots and affixes); a word and its forms (inflection); a word and its relatives (derivation); compound words; word structure; productivity; and the historical sources of English word formation. Requiring no prior linguistic training, this textbook is suitable for undergraduate students of English - literature or language - and provides a sound basis for further linguistic study.
Geert Booij's popular textbook examines how words are formed, compounded, and inflected in different languages. It shows how, when, and why to use methods of morphological analysis and explains how morphology relates to syntax, phonology, and semantics. The author considers the universal characteristics of morphology and how these are reflected in the workings of mind. The revised edition has been revised and updated throughout; it has a full glossary and a new chapter on the field's most notorious problem: the status of the word. 'The Grammar of Words by Geert Booij covers a broad range of topics from structural questions to psycholinguistic issues and problems of language change. This introduction to morphology is thorough and accessible and, like other works by this renowned author, especially strong at showing the significance of empirical facts for theoretical reasoning.' Ingo Plag, University of Siegen 'A book that is fully comprehensive in its coverage as well as exemplary in its clarity, written by one of the major scholars of contemporary lexical theory.' Sergio Scalise, University of Bologna
The book guides students through the basic concepts involved in syntactic analysis and goes on to prepare them for further work in any syntactic theory, using examples from a range of phenomena in human languages. It also includes a chapter on theories of syntax.
This Handbook represents the development of research and the current level of knowledge in the fields of syntactic theory and syntax analysis. Syntax can look back to a long tradition. Especially in the last 50 years, however, the interaction between syntactic theory and syntactic analysis has led to a rapid increase in analyses and theoretical suggestions. This second edition of the Handbook on Syntax adopts a unifying perspective and therefore does not place the division of syntactic theory into several schools to the fore, but the increase in knowledge resulting from the fruitful argumentations between syntactic analysis and syntactic theory. It uses selected phenomena of individual languages and their cross-linguistic realizations to explain what syntactic analyses can do and at the same time to show in what respects syntactic theories differ from each other. It investigates how syntax is related to neighbouring disciplines and investigate the role of the interfaces especially the relationship between syntax and phonology, morphology, compositional semantics, pragmatics, and the lexicon. The phenomena chosen bring together renowned experts in syntax, and represent the consensus reached as to what has to be considered as an important as well as illustrative syntactic phenomenon. The phenomena discuss do not only serve to show syntactic analyses, but also to compare theoretical approaches with each other.
