34.2139, Review: Applied Linguistics, Language Acquisition, Ling & Literature, Phonetics: Yule (2022)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-34-2139. Fri Jul 07 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.2139, Review: Applied Linguistics, Language Acquisition, Ling & Literature, Phonetics: Yule (2022)

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Date: 14-Jun-2023
From: Samira Hamzehei [samira.hamzehei at mavs.uta.edu]
Subject: The Study of Language


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.102

AUTHOR: George Yule
TITLE: The Study of Language
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Samira Hamzehei

SUMMARY
This best-selling textbook provides a comprehensible and user-friendly
introduction to the study of language, requiring no prior knowledge of
the subject matter. All the key concepts in linguistics are explained
in a very clear fashion suitable for new readers. This eighth edition
has been updated with changes in the chapters on origins, phonetics,
syntax, pragmatics, discourse analysis, first and second language
acquisition, and culture. There are 40 new study questions, over 20
new tasks, and over 60 new additions to the further readings. The
expanded website provides further resources for students.
Chapter One discusses the origin of language, noting that there is no
definite and simple answer to the question of how language originated
or what language was like back in the early stages. This chapter
covers various theories of the origins of language, including the
divine source, the natural sound source, the musical source, the
social interaction source, the physical adaptation source, the
tool-making source, and the generic source. This edition also covers
another source which is called the gesture source. This newly added
section discusses the fact that our ancestors had managed to develop
some use of manual gestures to communicate. Even studies of
chimpanzees showed that they use sixty different hand signals to
communicate in their natural environment. At around ten months of age,
human infants also begin to use distinct gestures as a tool of
communication. This chapter is a good source for any reader who wants
to read about how human language was shaped over time.
Chapter Two explains the difference between animal communication and
human speech. It revolves around the fact that creatures can learn to
communicate with other members of their species and human language is
mostly unlearnable to them. Human language is unique for several
reasons such as the human ability to think and talk about the language
itself (reflexivity), human language can refer to things that happened
in the past and future and it can also refer to things that do not
exist in real life (displacement), the fact that there is no natural
connection between a linguistic form and its meaning (arbitrariness),
that we acquire language through interaction, not from biological
genes (cultural transmission), humans are capable of creating new
expressions by manipulating their linguistic resources whereas animal
communication has fixed references to choose from (productivity), and
that, unlike animal communication where signals appear to be fixed,
human language consists of two levels where at one level distinct
sounds are combined to create distinct meanings at a second level
(duality). This chapter is a good source to read about different
experiments involving humans and animals from the perspective of the
learnability of human language.
Chapters Three and Four cover phonetics and phonology by discussing
different types of phonetics (articulatory, acoustic, and auditory)
and the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA) in detail. There is
plenty of information about sounds of language and how the IPA chart
is designed in an informative way to categorize sounds based on their
places and manners of articulation. The fact that IPA symbols are used
to transcribe sounds not letters has received special attention. In
Chapter Three, there are charts for consonants and vowels that can be
used as a reference. Chapter Four covers different phonology-related
topics such as the distinction between phonemes, phones, and
allophones, as well as complementary distribution. There are also
sections dedicated to minimal pairs, phonotactics, syllables,
consonant clusters, and phonological processes such as assimilation,
nasalization, and elision.
Chapters Five and Six are about word formation and morphology,
respectively. Chapter Five begins with a discussion of neologisms and
etymology. It then continues talking about various processes of word
formation, such as adopting words from a donor language (borrowing),
combining two separate words to form a new one (compounding), reducing
a word of more than one syllable to a shorter form (clipping),
changing a lexical category of a word (conversion), inventing novel
words (coinage), and adding affixes to words to create terms with new
meanings  (derivation), which is the most common word-formation
process. This comprehensive chapter ends with a discussion of how
multiple processes of word formation can affect the same word. The
following chapter covers the concept of morphology and morphemes and
how they function. It discusses different types of morphemes such as
free and bound morphemes, lexical and functional morphemes,
derivational, and inflectional morphemes. It also covers morphological
description through sentence analysis. Chapter Six concludes with an
account of morphs, allomorphs, and their special cases in other
languages through examples from Kanuri, Ganda, Ilocano, and Tagalog,
which will appeal to readers who are interested in learning about
different languages through the lens of morphology.
Chapters Seven and Eight are about grammar and syntax. Chapter Seven
starts with the definition of traditional grammar, and parts of speech
(nouns, articles, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns,
and conjunctions). A separate section covers the agreement and its
dependence on the number, person, tense, voice (active or passive),
and gender (natural and grammatical). After that, this chapter focuses
on differentiating between a prescriptive and a descriptive approach
to grammar in detail. Word order is also discussed through language
typology, and finally, the chapter ends with a separate section
discussing the importance of studying grammar. Chapter Eight, “Syntax”
starts with the importance of syntactic rules and generative grammar.
The chapter continues by discussing syntactic analysis, phrase, and
structure rules, lexical rules, and tree diagrams. To close this
chapter, this edition contains a new section that was absent in the
seventh edition. This newly added section covers a movement rule. This
syntactic rule is discussed in examples from English. This chapter is
the right place to start reading and learning about syntax.
Chapter Nine covers semantics by discussing various types of meaning,
such as referential meaning (factual meaning of words) and associative
or emotive meaning (feelings or reactions to words). This notion is
discussed further in the next section where the author argues that
semantic features of words are required for them to appear with other
nouns or verbs. These features are used to analyze how words in a
language are connected (componential analysis). It is worth noting
that this approach considers words as containers of meanings, which is
very restrictive and limited in terms of practical use. This
limitation includes semantic roles including agent and theme,
instrument and experiencer, location, source, and goal. This chapter
also covers lexical relations by explaining synonymy, antonymy,
hyponymy, prototypes, homophones and homonyms, polysemy, and metonymy.
As the final point, collocation and concordance, and their relation to
corpus linguistics, are discussed. This chapter is a good source for
those who want to read about fundamental sub-topics under semantics.
Chapter Ten discusses pragmatics by first defining it as speaker
meaning. For this type of meaning, speakers' utterances are studied in
a particular context, which is why the distinction between the
physical and linguistic contexts is explored. One aspect of pragmatic
meaning is assigning reference, which is done by identifying the
referents of deictic expressions.  Two types of reference are
introduced by the author, namely inferences (making connections
between what is being said and what is meant), and anaphora/cataphora
(referring to an antecedent or vice versa). This chapter also
discusses presuppositions, pragmatic markers, politeness (positive and
negative faces), and speech acts (direct/indirect). There is a newly
added section in this chapter that covers Grice’s cooperative
principles through which hedges and implicatures are introduced. In
its current form, this chapter is recommended to readers who want to
get familiar with the building blocks of pragmatics.
Chapter Eleven defines discourse analysis as language beyond the
sentence level. Studying discourse is typically concerned with
studying language beyond the sentence in texts and conversations.
Thus, the connection between texts (cohesion), and connection between
parts of the discourse (coherence) which is obtained through pronouns
and conjunctions is crucial. This chapter covers conversation analysis
by discussing turn-taking, pauses, filled pauses, adjacency pairs, and
insertion sequences. There is a newly added section in this chapter
that discusses different types of conversational repair such as
self-initiated and other-initiated repair. For repairs to take place,
speakers must be able to rely on shared background knowledge of the
current topic in the conversation.
Chapter Twelve covers language and the brain by introducing
neurolinguistics as the study of the relationship between the two.
Areas in the brain that are associated with language such as Broca’s
area, Wernicke’s area, the motor cortex, and the arcuate fasciculus,
are also discussed. The view that specific aspects of language ability
can be accorded to specific locations in the brain is called the
localization view. This chapter then continues to cover the
tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, malapropisms, slips of the tongue,
spoonerisms, perseveration, anticipation, exchange, and slips of the
ear. Different types of aphasias including Broca’s, Wernicke’s, and
conduction are discussed with speech examples. This chapter also
explores dichotic listening tests and elaborates on how the left and
right hemispheres of the brain are involved in this process. The
critical period and cases of acquiring a language beyond it are
discussed to serve as an intro to the following on first language
acquisition.
Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen address first and second language
acquisition respectively. Chapter Thirteen starts by discussing
acquisition and the importance of input and caregiver speech.
Afterward, the acquisition schedule is discussed, covering stages such
as cooing, babbling, the one-word stage, the two-word stage, and
telegraphic speech.The acquisition process involves different
strategies, including learning through imitation and through
correction. The rest of Chapter Thirteen specifically covers the
development of morphology (including overgeneralization), syntax
(including the different stages of forming questions and negatives),
and semantics. This edition also addresses the development of
phonology as the first stage of acquiring a language. Chapter Fourteen
begins with a discussion of becoming bilingual through subtractive
bilingualism, heritage language, and additive bilingualism. After
that, acquisition barriers, the age factor, affective factors, and
motivation (instrumental and integrative) are described and elaborated
on. The rest of the chapter focuses on two related notions in SLA: the
teaching method and the learner. The latter is attended to further by
covering different teaching methods such as grammar translation,
audiolingual, communicative, and task-based approaches. The focus on
the learner is explained through the concepts of transfer (positive
and negative), interlanguage, input, and output. In conclusion, the
chapter states that achieving communicative competence depends on
different factors such as grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic
mastery of the language. In this edition, Chapter Fourteen has
undergone an overall reorganization and expansion.
Chapter Fifteen is assigned to American Sign Language. It begins with
a discussion of gestures, emblems, iconics, deictics, and beats. It is
followed by a section that addresses two general categories of
language that involve the use of signs: alternate sign languages and
primary sign languages. An alternate sign language is a system that is
developed by speakers for limited communication where speech cannot be
used. Primary sign language refers to the first language of people who
do not use spoken language. This chapter offers a brief historical
review of oralism and signed English. There is also a brief
introduction to the origins of ASL, and how signs are structured
(shape and orientation, location, movement, primes, facial
expressions, and finger-spelling). The rest of this chapter highlights
the fact that ASL contains all the linguistic characteristics of
spoken language and that all the children acquiring it as their first
language go through similar developmental stages as children learning
a spoken language.
Chapter Sixteen covers written language defined as the symbolic
representation of language through the use of graphic signs. It
addresses writing through three distinct types of writing:
phonographic, syllabic, and alphabetic. Phonographic writing is
described in terms of pictograms, ideograms, and logograms along with
the rebus principle (a symbol representing a sound of the spoken
word). Syllabic writing is introduced through examples from Japanese
in which symbols represent spoken syllables. Alphabetic writing is
introduced through the concept of the alphabet, consonantal alphabets,
and their role in history. Lastly, this chapter specifies the
relationships between Old English phonological changes and how that
resulted in changes in English spellings.
Chapter Seventeen is about language history and change. It starts with
an illustration of the Proto-Indo-European languages through a figure
of the Indo-European family tree. Cognates are then described as a
means of connection between different languages. To make this
connection between different languages, some specific concepts are
needed,  such as comparative reconstruction, the majority principle,
and the most natural development principle. Exploration of these
principles, the processes of comparing cognates, and sound and word
reconstruction are also offered. This chapter also contains a
discussion of the history of English, including Old English and Middle
English. Language change is shown to be characterized by sound changes
(metathesis, epenthesis, and prothesis), syntactic changes (loss of
inflections), and semantic changes (broadening and narrowing of the
meaning). The chapter is concluded with a section on the difference
between diachronic and synchronic variation. The former considers
language variation from a historical perspective and in terms of
change through time. The latter considers differences within one
language among different groups at the same time, which is the subject
matter of chapters Eighteen and Nineteen.
Chapters Eighteen and Nineteen are about regional and social
variations in language. Chapter Eighteen commences with an
introduction to the standard language. Accent, dialect, and variation
in grammar are given brief descriptions. The concept of dialectology
is discussed in view of regional dialects, isoglosses, dialect
boundaries, and the dialect continuum. The chapter then moves on to
regional bilingualism which then leads to the concept of language
planning strategies, pidgins, and creoles. Chapter Nineteen focuses on
social dialects, education, occupation, and social markers as
variables that can have an impact on personal idiolect and how the
speaker is realized as representative of a particular social group.
This chapter continues by discussing speech style and style-shifting
which includes prestige, speech accommodation, convergence, and
divergence. The chapter then moves on to register, jargon, slang, and
taboo terms. African American English and its vernacular are briefly
addressed in the final section.
Chapter Twenty focuses on language and culture, beginning with a
discussion of concepts such as categories and how certain linguistic
items are lexicalized in different languages. Subsequently, linguistic
relativity is discussed with a detailed account of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis and a mention of the example of snow terms to argue against
it. Cognitive categories,  social categories, and gender are covered,
with the latter including a discussion of gendered speech, gendered
interaction, and gender neutrality. This final section on gender has
been reorganized in comparison to the seventh edition.

EVALUATION
George Yule’s ‘The Study of Language’ was first published in 1985 as
an introductory textbook to linguistics. Since then, the book has
gained a great deal of recognition and popularity. Just like the
previous editions, the eighth edition of the book provides a clear
division of main topics and subtopics in linguistics within twenty
chapters. In each chapter headings and subheadings make it
particularly convenient for the reader to locate the information
presented. There are subtle changes and extra information in some
chapters compared to the seventh edition. On top of the revisions and
additions, the new visuals at the beginning of each chapter makes the
latest edition more attractive and updated. Each chapter ends with
study questions and exercises for independent learning. For readers or
students who are interested in reading further on a particular topic,
the book also provides a reading list.
As an introductory textbook to linguistics, ‘The Study of Language’ is
well-organized in terms of content. Each of the chapters follows a
similar pattern which makes it effortless to read and understand. In
addition, there are some extra materials that have been made available
for instructors, such as a student guide, an instructor’s manual,
figures and images from the book that can be used in slides, and a
test bank with 400 questions that are formatted for different LMS
systems including Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, and Brightspace.

REFERENCES
Yule, G. (2020). The Study of Language (7th ed.). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Yule, G. (2023). The Study of Language (8th ed.). New York: Cambridge
University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Samira Hamzehei is a second-year Ph.D. student and an Enhanced
Graduate Teaching Assistant at the Linguistics and TESOL Department of
the University of Texas at Arlington. She has a bachelor’s degree in
English Language and Literature and a master’s degree in TEFL. She is
a native speaker of Persian, Turkish, and Azeri. Her area of interest
is phonological theory and her research covers loanword phonology with
a particular focus on the prosodic theory of the syllable (onset/coda
restrictions). Her research is concerned with constraint-based
phonological theory, specifically with an optimality-theoretic model
of phonology.



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