16.3269, Review: Textbooks/General Linguistics: Biloa (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3269. Sun Nov 13 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.3269, Review: Textbooks/General Linguistics: Biloa (2004)

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1)
Date: 11-Nov-2005
From: Claudine Pagliano < claudine.pagliano at u-paris10.fr >
Subject: Le cours de linguistique contemporaine 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 15:44:00
From: Claudine Pagliano < claudine.pagliano at u-paris10.fr >
Subject: Le cours de linguistique contemporaine 
 

AUTHOR: Biloa, Edmond
TITLE: Le cours de linguistique contemporaine
SERIES: LINCOM Coursebooks in Linguistics 09
PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-1422.html 

Claudine Pagliano, UMR 7114 (CNRS & University of Paris X)

SYNOPSIS

This coursebook, written in French, is designed for undergraduate 
beginners in linguistics, to introduce them to the fundamentals of the 
field. It covers a wide range of subjects from theoretical linguistics to 
applied linguistics, but does not include exercises. It is divided into 
nine parts, as follows. 

The first part, Introduction, is devoted to a delimitation of linguistics 
versus grammar, in a descriptive as well as in a psychological 
perspective; it also offers a definition for communication and linguistic 
system. It especially introduces the reader to linguistic signs and to 
double articulation.

The second part, Phonetics and Phonology, focuses on the English 
and French phonetic sounds before introducing the phoneme and its 
realisations, then distinctive features including prosodic ones, 
phonological processes such as assimilation and the dropping of a 
sound, and phonological rules and their interaction.

In the third part, Morphology, are presented classical issues, such as 
the word and its internal structure, types of morphemes, morphological 
categories, and verb morphology.

The next part is Syntax, the sentence level and how a sentence may 
be organised as well as the transformations and constraints that may 
weigh on it.

Semantics is the topic of the fifth section: Semantic analysis, types of 
meanings, connotations, semantic representations in the sentence as 
well as in speech, and enunciation markers. It is also deals with 
semantic relationships: hierarchy, inclusion, hyperonymy, equivalence, 
opposition, polysemy and the mechanism of tropes.

The Pragmatics part deals with acts of language, and focuses on 
pragmatics as developed by Grice. It also develops polyphony in 
linguistics, in both language and speech, introduces logic and 
inference, and explains pertinence theory.

Then follow two sections devoted to linguistics in relation with other 
scientific areas. Part seven deals with Psycholinguistics and starts with 
a chapter on biology, mentioning the different areas in the brain 
playing a role in language and pathologies linked to them. It then 
discusses the second major area of Psycholinguistics beside 
pathology: acquisition, whether of phonology, of morphology, of 
syntax or of meaning.

The following part, Sociolinguistics, defines this discipline in relation 
with the status of languages and variations. As the author teaches in 
Cameroun, it focuses more specifically on Camfrench, mainly its 
phonology and morphology.

Historical Linguistics is the theme developed in the last section, which 
deals with linguistic change on every level of the language, as well as 
with the comparative method and linguistic reconstruction.

EVALUATION

The book has many typos, anglicisms in both vocabulary and syntax, 
and problems of organisation (e.g. missing titles to figures and 
tableaux, references quoted in the text but not in the bibliographic 
section). Also, cross-references between the different parts of the text 
as well as to pertinent readings are not given (for example, there is no 
reference to Martinet where the author introduces the term 'moneme'). 
Examples are also missing where a student would crucially need them; 
for example, where the textbook deals with language functions of 
Jakobson. And, surprisingly for a textbook, there is no index. 

It is also notable that the phonetic transcription is not in IPA but in a 
personal code that does not appear at the beginning or at the end of 
the book. In addition, some elementary mistakes are made, e.g. the 
term 'phoneme' is used for 'sound' on p. 10.

Actually, it seems that the author wants to be as complete as possible, 
but this is to the detriment of clarity and pedagogical usefulness. For 
instance, the author evokes notions and their links and implications 
before explaining or illustrating them; which requires readers to come 
back to the beginning once they have understood the basics of the 
notion they are interested in. Even so, many topics that would have 
been welcomed in such an introductory textbook, such as applied 
linguistics, computational linguistics, the history of linguistics, and 
linguistic geography are not included. 

Here are some comments on specific sections of the book.

Phonetics and Phonology
One regrets the absence of diagrams of the oral tract to situate the 
organs implied in the articulation process. There are also problems 
with transcriptions: the sound [w] is classified both as a consonant and 
as a glide, [f] as [+distributed] and [-distributed], the phonetic symbol 
of the vowel is the same in 'boot' and 'should' whereas the description 
of the sound is different, diphthongs are not considered in certain 
words such as 'boat', the symbol of the vowel in 'brun' is [æ~], not [oe~], 
etc. [~ represents nasalization of the preceding vowel symbol --Eds.]

It is notable that there are repetitions from one chapter to the other. 
Both chapters 4 and 5 explain the articulatory description of 
consonant and vowels, and the explanation sometimes leads to 
misunderstanding; for instance, an obstruent is defined through a 
bilabial occlusion only, which would imply that [t] or [k] are not 
obstruents. Another example is a sentence implying that a phoneme 
may have allophones in a same phonetic context. 

The author does not mention the linguists whose concepts he refers 
to, such as Jakobson or Chomsky & Halle (1968). He does not deal 
with acoustic nor perspective phonetics. One also regrets the absence 
of post-1968 phonology, of neutralisation, of interfaces or relations of 
Phonology with the other components of the grammar, although it 
constitutes a current 'hot' subject in linguistics. One would expect an 
explanation and explication of these choices so that the student does 
not believe he has an access to every important concept or modern 
theoretical framework.

Morphology
A first criticism lies in the fact that the author considers the written 
form and not the oral one, without explicitly saying so. As in the 
phonological part, examples are very few. One also regrets the 
absence of such issues as headedness, lexical integrity, distributed 
morphology, and the morphology of nouns (gender, cases, etc.), 
among the main ones.

Syntax
The author recognizes only descriptive goals to syntax, and not 
explanatory ones. As in the morphology part, he refers to written 
rather than spoken forms; for example, the plural in French is said to 
be -s. Numerous concepts are explained far after their first evocation 
(projection, X-bar, topicalisation, ...). Generally, however, even if very 
brief or incomplete, the explanations are clear and one finds examples 
in several languages.

Semantics
This part is clear and well-exemplified; references are recent, varied 
and pertinent, except when it comes to the modalities of enonciation, 
whose differences with the ones of the utterance are not obvious. As 
in the other parts however, actual issues are not explored.

Pragmatics
In this part appears the first historical dimension of the book; the 
author successively evokes Austin, Searle and contemporary theory. 
He develops many notions, perhaps too many, as they are not always 
exemplified or the examples developed, especially when it comes to 
the section on logic, often difficult for students. It would have been 
more useful to develop fewer notions, but in more detail. One also 
regrets the absence of a critical perspective given to the different 
theories explored. 

Psycholinguistics
A diagram of the brain would have been useful in this part, to help with 
the identification of its different zones. The main issues in 
psycholinguistics are evoked; however very few references are 
offered, especially when it comes to acquisition. The author restricts 
his approach to the acquisition of a mother tongue and doesn't write 
anything about the acquisition of a second language.

Sociolinguistics
This section provides definitions for a number of concepts, even if 
some of them may be controversial. For instance, there is no contrast 
between creole and pidgin, and the definition for sabir is not complete. 
Camfrench is used to illustrate more concretely the different status a 
language may have as well as notions such as code switching. One 
may note that the author classifies inflection as a syntactic and not 
morphological process (whereas this is not the case in the following 
section), but in the syntactic part there is nothing said about the order 
of words. 

Historical linguistics
The issues are clearly presented, however, without many examples or 
references. The issue of a unique mother language is not mentioned, 
whereas it is a popular one among non-linguists, and the only 
language family discussed is Indo-European. 

To conclude the critical part of this review, I consider that this 
coursebook cannot substitute for a course in linguistics; but it may 
enable students to figure out the broad outline of linguistics, to have a 
list of most of the pertinent concepts to know in a given subdiscipline, 
even if important ones are missing, such as the Saussurian 
dichotomies (language versus speech, synchrony versus diachrony). It 
may also enable a teacher, who already knows the subject, to recap 
the notions necessary for particular areas.

REFERENCE

Chomsky, Noam & Morris Halle, 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. 
New York: Harper and Row. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Claudine Pagliano is a post-doctorate student in Phonology at the 
CNRS laboratory in University of Paris X. Her PhD thesis focuses on 
consonantal epenthesis in French, and she is currently working on 
consonant clusters at the initial of words and interfaces between 
phonology and the other components of the grammar. She works for 
the international project Phonology of Contemporary French (PFC) 
and is affiliated to the French association of morphology (GDR 2220). 
She has been teaching linguistics for five years: Introduction to 
general linguistics, structuralist and generative phonology, lexicology 
and lexicography, computers and linguistics, French for foreigners.





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