Linguistics: An Introduction
By Andrew Radford, Martin Atkinson, David Britain, Harald Clahsen, Andrew Spencer
* Publisher: Cambridge University Press
* Number Of Pages: 450
* Publication Date: 2009-02-23
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0521849489
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780521849487
Product Description:
Written by a team based at one of the world's leading centres for linguistic teaching and research, the second edition of this highly successful textbook offers a unified approach to language, viewed from a range of perspectives essential for students' understanding of the subject. Using clear explanations throughout, the book is divided into three main sections: sounds, words, and sentences. In each, the foundational concepts are introduced, along with their application to the fields of child language acquisition, psycholinguistics, language disorders, and sociolinguistics, giving the book a unique yet simple structure that helps students to engage with the subject more easily than other textbooks on the market. This edition includes a completely new section on sentence use, including an introduction and discussion of core areas of pragmatics and conversational analysis; new coverage of sociolinguistic topics, introducing communities of practice; a wealth of new exercise material and updated further reading.
Summary: difficult introduction, expensive
Rating: 2
The writing style in this textbook is sometimes just too intellectual for its own good. By the way, it has a really backwards explanation on page 131 paragraph 3: "...we have appealed to three types of criteria..." (here the 3 criteria are finally revealed!! after you have waded though several paragraphs with no way of knowing what the material was getting at in the first place!)
The book gives a small treatment of pragmatics at the end, and overall, the material throughout the book, in my opinion, is not always at an introductory level. Though it is a hardbound book and does use high quality paper, one-hundred dollars for this textbook is too much, it doesn't even have a glossary!
Summary: Written by and for True Believers
Rating: 2
I own a dozen introductory linguistics textbooks, and this is my least favorite. Physically, the book is short and thick, with narrow margins, which makes it hard to read without breaking the spine. There are few exercises, and almost none include data from languages other than English. The bibliography slightly exceeds four pages. It is the only introductory textbook I have ever seen without a glossary.
The title is misleading. This book is really an introduction to Chomskyan generative grammar, not an introduction to linguistics. Students who read this book will be plunged into the world of empty categories, covert movement, Merge, and the Economy Principle; on the other hand, they will never encounter the terms spectrogram, ergative, pragmatics, or Indo-European. If that sounds like your idea of what an introduction to linguistics should be, then I suppose this is the book for you.
Summary: Response to watzizname's review
Rating: 4
The review posted by watzizname slams this book on a few fronts, but the slams are unfounded. Watzizname may be a casual observer of linguistics, but he doesn't seem to know what is going on in the field presently.
For example, when referring to case, watzizname says that English no longer uses case, but is a positional language. This is true to some extent, but most contemporary theories of syntax use case as a crucial component, even when the case is not overtly marked (as in English). The Principles and Parameters model of syntax contains the "case filter," where all overt DPs (or Noun Phrases) must be case-marked at Surface Structure, else the sentence is ruled ungrammatical. In the more modern Minimalist Program, uninterpretable case must be "checked." These apply to even non-case languages like English, since they refer to abstract case, not morhpological or "inherent" case. Pronoun case markings are simply the most concrete way of explaining case in English, since we have few morphological reflexes left.
The other gripe of watzizname's was that Noun Prases are referred to as Determiner Phrases in the book. Watzizname clearly doesn't know where the theory is nowadays. Noun Phrases are now thought to be embedded withing DPs, with the determiner serving as sort of a 'fuctional shell,' even when there is no overt determiner in the phrase. These function just like the 'light verb' "v" serves as a functional shell for verb phrases and TP/IP/AgrP/CP serve as functional shells for clauses (preveiously termed "S").
So, please ignore watzizname's complaints about this book. What he is complaining about actually reflects some of the more recent developments in the fields of syntax and linguistics and should actually be considered PLUSSES for this book, not detractors. Most intro to linguistics textbooks show you where the field was 20 years ago.
Summary: A Decent Survey
Rating: 4
I found this book to be a decent survey of Linguistics. It is written at a higher level, assuming the reader already knows a bit about language, which I appreciated, yet is not so complex you cannot follow it. Obviously a graduate level read. I recommend it for anyone who is brushing up on linguistics and already has a background in it. It is an overview with more depth than typical linguistics books.
Summary: A Decent Survey
Rating: 4
I found this book to be a decent survey of Linguistics. It is written at a higher level, assuming the reader already knows a bit about language, which I appreciated, yet is not so complex you cannot follow it. Obviously a graduate level read. I recommend it for anyone who is brushing up on linguistics and already has a background in it. It is an overview with more depth than typical linguistics books. |
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