Source Book for Linguistics

Source Book for Linguistics Source Book for Linguistics William Cowan Jaromira Rakušan Carleton University, Ottawa John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cowan, William. Source book for linguistics / William Cowan, Jaromira Rakušan. -- 3rd rev. ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Linguistics--Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Linguistics--Problems, exercises, etc. I. Rakušan, Jaromira. II. Title. P121.C62 1998 410--dc21 98-41604 isbn 978 90 272 2162 9 (eur) / isbn 978 1 55619 516 7 (us) (Pb; alk. paper) © 1998 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company • P.O. Box 36224 • 1020 me Amsterdam • The Nether- lands John Benjamins North America • P.O. Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA Table of Contents Introduction vii Phonetic Symbols xii 1. Phonetic Illustrations 1 Consonants 1 Vowels 11 Tests 18 2. Structural Phonology 21 English Vowels 42 3. Phonemic Alternations 45 4. Morphology 63 5. Structural and Functional Syntax 84 6. Semantics 123 7. Sound Change 144 8. Grammatical and Lexical Change 163 9. Historical Reconstruction 181 Solutions to the Exercises 197 Bibliography 245 Language Index 251 vi Introduction This is a revised and expanded version of the first edition of Source Book for Linguistics, published by John Benjamins in 1985. We have added two new sections, on Semantics and on Grammatical and Lexical Change, and have added many new exercises to the already existing sections. The earlier version contained 333 exercises; this present version contains 472 exercises. We have corrected a number of mistakes and misprints, and have made basic changes in the format. It is hoped that this new version will allow teachers and language scholars to bring a wealth of examples to bear in their exposition and development of the basic tenets of linguistics. The data have been drawn from a selection of 93 different languages and dialects, both Indo-European and non-Indo-European. The exercises have been designed to provide examples of various types of language structure for instructors using any standard textbook, or using none. It is hoped that this format has enough flexibility to allow the book to be used with a variety of different approaches to linguistics. We have found that the large number of exercises allows the student to continue practice in problem solving to whatever extent is necessary to master the techniques of linguistic analysis, both in terms of internal structure of language elements (their form) and in terms of the varied use of these language elements (their function). The large number of exercises also makes it possible to continue using the book in second year and higher level courses such as phonology, grammatical analysis, historical linguistics, typology, and others. A number of the features of this book should be brought to the reader’s attention: 1. In all sections, the exercises begin with and are drawn in large measure from languages other than English. Since the book is designed for use primarily by speakers of English, we feel that student presuppositions about English, whether from school traditions or the popular press, as well as those features of language beyond a speaker’s consciousness, would obscure or impede a student’s initial comprehension of many features of language structure SOURCE BOOK FOR LINGUISTICS if those features and methodologies were introduced by examples drawn from English. However, since we also feel that no English-speaking student should come away from an introductory course in linguistics without some appreciation of the linguistic structure of English, we have included at the end of each basic section a number of exercises demonstrating how the principles of that particular section apply to English. In effect, after the student has learned the basics of phonetics, or phonology or syntax, we then show how these basics can also be used to analyze English, just as they can be used to analyze Spanish or French or Russian or any of the other languages used earlier in the section. 2. The languages used for exemplification and exercises are, in the main, relatively representative and accessible, well-known and well-described, with standard grammars and dictionaries, and available native speakers. We have made an effort to keep our data within this framework for two basic reasons: first, so our data can be investigated, checked, and verified by either instructors or students. The second reason is that this choice of available languages gives instructors and students the opportunity to extend the data if desired. If our demonstrations and exercises are not sufficiently long to prove a point, more examples can be sought in grammar books, dictionaries, or from native speakers. 3. Many of the illustrative sets and exercises are short and treat only one point to be proven or have only one feature to be discovered. For a pedagogical text of this nature we have tried to establish a balance between the maximum data necessary and the minimum features to be highlighted. Other exercises contain a large amount of data. We have included these to give the student opportunity to manipulate large amounts of data so that he or she can get an appreciation of the realities of actual field work, which typically includes such large amounts of data. In compiling the material we have tried to insure that the instructor would feel free to use the exercises as he or she sees fit. However, we have the following suggestions for those who wish to know how we envision the use of the book: 1. Phonetic Illustrations. This section contains demonstrations, not problems to be solved. A page of phonetic preliminaries gives the phonetic symbols with which we present our examples, both in this section and throughout the book. The illustrations themselves are generally written in a transcription that is narrow for the feature under discussion, but broad for any other features. We do not illustrate all the sounds indicated in our list of phonetic viii INTRODUCTION symbols, but only those that are worthwhile pointing out to English-speaking students. All the examples have been recorded by native speakers of the languages concerned and are available on tape from the authors. The final ten exercises in the phonetics section are a series of dictation exercises in a variety of languages, designed to be use as test material. They are also on tape, recorded by native speakers. The text contains only the English gloss; the transcriptions are to be found in the answers at the back of the book. 2. Structural Phonology. The material in the initial exercises displays different allophones of one phoneme, and the problem is to state the conditioning factors for these different allophones. Our answers are given in structural notation, but instructors who wish to use other notations, like distinctive features, are free to translate our notation into theirs. Later exercises are of a more elaborate nature, sometimes consisting of a series of problems on related phonemic features. This section also includes several exercises concentrating on the use of phonemic features for the purposes of describ- ing natural classes and phonetic and phonological processes. The section ends with a set of ten exercises of words of increasing length and phonemic complexity to assist in learning to make phonemic transcriptions of English words. 3. Phonemic Alternations. The data of this section illustrate phonemic alternations in individual morphemes. The format is similar to that of the previous section: a series of relatively easy sets of words that can be used as demonstrations of phonological processes or as exercises to be done by the students. The instructions in this section are of a very general nature to enable the instructor to use a variety of approaches to the problems. 4. Morphology. The data in this section have been chosen to illustrate wide typological as well as individual language differences in inflectional and derivational or word-forming systems. Most of the exercises require a simple analytic procedure which yields a statement of the morphemic content of the words. Other exercises require considerations of the functional aspects of individual morphemes, thus reaching beyond the traditional descriptive analysis. 5. Syntax. This section consists of a series of sentence sets from a variety of languages. The exercises in the first part illustrate various ways of expressing predication, agreement, and government. In some cases the student is led to establish a word order pattern and contrast this with English. In the second part, exercises from various languages involve descriptive analysis of ix SOURCE BOOK FOR LINGUISTICS constituent structure. The third section presents sets of sentences designed to teach the student how to formulate phrase structure rules and simple transformations. The English sentences at the end of the section are designed for practising elementary transformational processes. 6. Semantics. This section consists of a series of exercises that call upon the student to supply semantic explanations for grammatical and lexical features of a variety of languages. In addition, technical terms for semantic analysis are introduced and exercises involving them are included, giving the students the opportunity to practice recognition of different types of meaning and semantic relations. Due to the nature of semantics, which requires a greater competence and deeper understanding of a language than other types of linguistic analysis, most of the exercises in this section are in English. 7. Sound Change. The examples in this section follow the format of word sets to be used either as demonstrations or as exercises, depending on the instructor’s method of presentation.

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