Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39-41 North Road, London N7 9DP email: info@iconbooks.com www.introducingbooks.com ISBN: 978-184831-771-0 Text and illustrations copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd The author and artist have asserted their moral rights Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher Contents Cover Title Page Copyright A Brief History of Linguistics An Indian Linguist The Greek Origins of Linguistics Grammar or Parts of Speech Latin Grammar Traditional Grammar The Port-Royal Grammar Historical Linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure Saussure’s Lectures on General Linguistics Saussure’s Structuralism An Example from English An Example from Spanish Synchronic and Diachronic Structures Trubetzkoy’s Phonology Jakobson’s Work on Linguistics Jakobson and Semiotics The Origins of American Linguistics Sapir’s General Linguistics The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Example of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis A Pioneer of American Structuralism Post-Bloomfieldian Structruralists The Formalism of Zellig Harris Chomsky’s Generative Grammar Transformational Grammar Chomsky’s Programme Paradox of the TG Programme The Functional Approach What Does “Function” Communicate? Systemic Functional Linguistics: Texts Cognitive Linguistics Gendering Nouns Dyirbal Noun Genders Language Perception Differences Greek Perception of Time Metaphor What is Language? Natural Language Our Language Faculty What’s Special About Human Languages? What do all Languages Have in Common? Linguistic Abilities Language Media Units of Writing Duality of Patterning Sign Languages Nicaraguan Sign Language Grammar and Word Order Different Examples of Word Order and Location Tense and Time Grammatical Differences Sign Language Grammar The Written Record of Language And Further Back … … to Old English The Never-ending Story Conservative Prescriptivism Historical Perspectives Explaining Systemic Correspondence The Indo-European Family and PIE The Remote Origins of English Eastern Ancestors of PIE The Saussurean Paradox Sociolinguistic Studies of Variation Male-versus-Female Speech Variation and Social Context Semantics Meanings Occur in Connections Pragmatics Pragmatic Issues Extending Pragmatics Where Does Language Come From? Skinner’s Thesis Attacked by Chomsky Children Construct Rules Example of Active Construction Creating a Language Pidgin Creoles Chomsky’s Universal Grammar What is the Rule? Linguistic Nativism Obstacles to Confirming UG Respectively, with Respect Innate or Acquired? Language Planning Engineering Basque Standard English Sexism in Language Sexist Attitudes Descriptivism Disordered Language Wernicke’s Aphasia Neurolinguistics Specific Language Impairment Williams Syndrome A Psycholinguistic View of Language A Problem of Faulty Genes How Did Language Originate? What Do We Know Today? When Did Language Begin? The Gradualist Theory The Catastrophic Theory Criticism of the Gradualist View Bickerton’s Conclusion Another Cognitive Example Differences of Metaphor Conflicting Speculations The Purposes of Language Further Reading Index Biographies A Brief History of Linguistics Human beings have probably been speaking for as long as we have existed, but it was only around 3,000 years ago that anybody began to be curious about language and to start examining it This happened independently in two places GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS DEVELOPED VERY EARLY IN ANCIENT INDIA A DESCRIPTION OF GRAMMAR ALSO APPEARED AMONG ANCIENT GREEKS We might begin with an example from the Indian tradition An Indian Linguist Pā ini’s life (circa 5th century BC) is unknown, but his work, the Astādhayāyī, is a culmination of earlier studies in phonology and grammar Pā ini’s approach to grammar requires that the pieces of words should first be glued together in order Rules should then be applied to convert these sequences into the correct surface forms Pānini worked on Sanskrit, but we can illustrate his method very well with English Consider the verb penetrate and its related adjective impenetrable meaning “not able to be penetrated” This consists of the negative prefix in – (as in insane), the stem penetrate and the suffix – ble So, to start with, we have in-penetrate-ble Now we need some rules, which we will apply to pronunciation, not necessarily to spelling First, if a verb-stem ends in -ate immediately followed by another consonant (like b), drop the t of the verb-stem Biographies R.L Trask is professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex A specialist in historical linguistics and in the Basque language, he is the author of numerous books, including Language: The Basics, Language Change, Historical Linguistics, The History of Basque and A Student’s Dictionary of Language and Linguistics Bill Mayblin trained as a graphic designer at the Royal College of Art in London He is a senior partner in the London-based design practice, Information Design Workshop Many Introducing Graphic Guides are now available in ebook format including the titles below Check in at introducingbooks.com/ebooks/ to keep up to date with more titles as they are published in ebook format 9781848317567 - Introducing Psychology 9781848317574 - Introducing Quantum Theory 9781848317581 - Introducing Philosophy 9781848317598 - Introducing Freud *not available in North America 9781848317604 - Introducing Postmodernism 9781848317611 - Introducing Logic 9781848317628 - Introducing Nietzsche 9781848317635 - Introducing Marxism 9781848317642 - Introducing Particle Physics 9781848317659 - Introducing Capitalism 9781848317666 - Introducing Chaos 9781848317673 - Introducing Ethics 9781848317680 - Introducing Buddha 9781848317697 - Introducing Foucault 9781848317703 - Introducing Relativity 9781848317727 - Introducing Time 9781848317734 - Introducing Statistics 9781848317741 - Introducing Islam 9781848317758 - Introducing Continental Philosophy 9781848317765 - Introducing Slavoj Zizek 9781848317772 - Introducing Stephen Hawking 9781848317789 - Introducing Economics 9781848317796 - Introducing Melanie Klein 9781848317802 - Introducing Critical Theory 9781848317819 - Introducing Genetics 9781848317826 - Introducing Feminism 9781848317833 - Introducing Fractals