32.3008, Review: General Linguistics: Bruhn de Garavito, Schwieter (2021)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-32-3008. Wed Sep 22 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.3008, Review: General Linguistics: Bruhn de Garavito, Schwieter (2021)

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Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2021 21:11:23
From: David Karaj [davidmkaraj at gmail.com]
Subject: Introducing Linguistics

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36717097


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-699.html

EDITOR: Joyce  Bruhn de Garavito
EDITOR: John W.  Schwieter
TITLE: Introducing Linguistics
SUBTITLE: Theoretical and Applied Approaches
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: David M. Karaj

SUMMARY

As the title suggests, “Introducing Linguistics. Theoretical and Applied
Approaches”, edited by Joyce Bruhn de Garavito and John W. Schwieter, is an
introductory textbook in linguistics aimed at beginners to the field. Like any
textbook, the main audience is students of linguistics but, in an attempt to
appeal to the widest audience possible, “it is also geared towards those who
are interested in language and communication in general” (p. xi). The book
covers a wide range of topics in an attempt to illustrate the extensive array
of subdisciplines and applications of linguistics. 

The book follows a general structure resembling that of other introductory
linguistic textbooks. It is divided into 8 parts – (1) “Introduction”, (2)
“Sound”, (3) “Structure and Meaning”, (4) “Language Typologies and Change”,
(5) “Language and Social Aspects”, (6) “Language Acquisition”, (7) “Language,
Cognition, and the Brain”, and (8) “Brief Chapters on the Companion Website”
(not included in the book but, as the name states, available on a website
accompanying the book at www.cambridge.org/introducing-linguistics). The book
ends with a Glossary of linguistic terms and an Index. This structure, as well
as the contents of every chapter and their features, is presented in the
Preface (xi-xvi) by the volume editors. Each chapter follows the same
structure – it starts with a brief overview of the introduced material and
ends with a summary and exercises. The chapters are enriched with pedagogical
boxes, “Pause and Reflect” providing discussion stimuli and thought-provoking
questions, “Linguistics Tidbits” and “Eyes on World Languages” giving students
additional examples and various language facts. Like any introductory text,
the titles of the chapters are largely self-explanatory.

Part 1 consists of a single chapter - “Introducing Linguistics”, written by
the editors of the volume. It provides a concise introduction to what
linguistics is, presents motivation for studying the discipline, points out a
few common misconceptions about the study of language, and briefly presents
various subfields of linguistics and its main objects of study. Finally, an
overview of the book’s structure is provided, with brief explanations of what
is covered in each chapter.

Part 2 – “Sound” consists of two chapters – “Phonetics” (Chapter 2, by
Christine Shea and Sarah Ollivia O’Neill) and “Phonology” (Chapter 3, by Joyce
Bruhn de Garavito). The former introduces students to speech production and
guides them through the International Phonetic Alphabet and phonetic
transcription. The latter introduces notions such as phonemes, allophones,
minimal pairs, and syllables. This chapter is enriched with an Appendix
explaining how to determine the phonemes of a given language.

Part 3 – “Structure and Meaning” consists of three chapters – “Morphology:
Word Structure” (Chapter 4, by Joyce Bruhn de Garavito), “Syntax: Phrase and
Sentence Structure” (Chapter 5, same author), and “Semantics: Language and
Meaning” (Chapter 6, by Roumyana Slabakova). Chapter 4 explains word formation
processes (derivation, inflexion, compounds, and others). In two appendices to
this chapter, the author gives some criteria for identifying root and bound
morphemes (Appendix 1, p. 156) and how to represent complex words with a tree
structure (Appendix 2, pp. 157-158). Chapter 5 presents the concept of word
classes and introduces the notion of constituents. It further explains how
these categories interact in a sentence within the framework of the Minimalist
Program (the X-bar schema and the operations Merge and Move are explained).
The Appendix (pp. 209-215) guides the students step-by-step on how to
represent a sentence with a tree diagram. Chapter 6 explores semantics, namely
“meaning of words”, “meaning of sentences”, and various “approaches to the
study of semantics”.

Part 4 – “Language Typologies and Change” starts with “The Classification of
Languages” (Chapter 7. by Asya Pereltsvaig) – and explores the variety of ways
in which linguists label the world’s languages, e.g. genetic, typological, as
well as touching upon the notion of language universals. Chapter 8 –
“Historical Linguistics” by Laura Grestenberger discusses language change on
the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. 

The next part - (5) – “Language and Social Aspects” opens with Chapter 9 –
“Sociolinguistics: Language in Society” (authored by Terry Nadasdi), which
discusses aspects of language variation within individuals, subgroups, and in
bilingual communities. Chapter 10 “Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis” by Maite
Taboada, as the title states, focuses on pragmatics and discourse analysis.
Next, Peter T. Daniels and John W. Schwieter explore the origins and evolution
of various writing systems and their relationships with language (Chapter 11 -
“Writing Systems”). 

Part 6 (“Language Acquisition”), written entirely by John W. Schwieter,
focuses on “First language acquisition” (Chapter 12) and “Second language
acquisition” (Chapter 13). In these chapters different stages of communicative
development are discussed, including phonological, vocabulary, morphological,
and syntactic (in Chapter 12); special attention is dedicated to bilinguals.
Chapter 13 presents some of the differences and similarities between first and
second language acquisition, the development of L2, some of the factors
affecting second language acquisition, briefly discusses language teaching and
learning, and, finally, discusses popular approaches to the study of this
subfield.

Part 7 (“Language Cognition and the Brain”, also authored entirely by John W.
Schwieter) consists of two chapters – Chapter 14 “Psycholinguistics: Language
processing”, and Chapter 15 “Neurolinguistics: Language and the Brain”. The
former deals with the issue of language processing (including bilingual
processing), psycholinguistic methods, and points to some ongoing debates in
the field. Chapter 15 presents the parts of the human brain responsible for
language and communication, and discusses various types of language
impairment, as well as methods of studying the brain.

Finally, there are three short chapters not included in the book but which can
be viewed on the book’s companion website. Together they form Part 8 – “Brief
Chapters on the Companion Website”. Chapter 16 - “Animal Communication and
Language” by Con Slobodchikoff explores the difference between language and
communication, what information can be conveyed in animal communication, and
illustrates these phenomena with two examples – prairie dog communication and
honeybee communication. Chapter 17 – “Computational Linguistics” written by
Robert E. Mercer discusses the notion of natural language and its ambiguities.
It further introduces the concepts of computation, probabilities, and how they
apply to Machine Learning. The last chapter, Chapter (18) – “English Varieties
Outside of North America” by Daniel Schreier briefly touches upon the notion
of English as a World Language, World Englishes, and the status of English
globally.

The companion website containing the short chapters also provides some
additional readings – “Delving Deeper”, written by the authors of the
respective chapters from the book. Besides that, teachers may request access
to “Instructor’s Materials” available on Cambridge Core websites. These
include quizzes and PowerPoint presentations for each chapter, as well as
figures and images used throughout the book.
 
EVALUATION

My first impression on reading “Introducing Linguistics. Theoretical and
Applied Approaches” is decidedly positive – its structure is clear, the
chapters are subdivided into smaller sections which make the text easy to
follow and allow the reader to stop and reflect after each new concept is
introduced. The language of the textbook is simple and the tone is
conversational – the reader won’t have difficulties understanding the
phenomena described. The editors have done an excellent job, as there is no
perceivable difference in style between the chapters – it reads as if the book
were written by a single author. A quick glance at the table of contents shows
that the authors wanted to present the multitude of applications of
linguistics and to treat the topic comprehensively, giving students an
opportunity to understand the vastness of the field and, possibly, triggering
their increased interest in one of the subdisciplines. This is a great
advantage of this textbook, as it gives the student an overview of what
linguistics is about and allows them to follow their interests further.
However, the textbook would greatly benefit from adding “Further reading”
sections at the end of each chapter, in order to direct students to useful
resources that might help expand their knowledge. Currently, only Chapters 10,
16, 17, and 18 contain such a section at the end; however, they should be
extended as they contain very few recommendations, some of which I consider
too advanced for students just beginning to learn linguistics.

Like any text, “Introducing Linguistics” is not free from various, more or
less serious, drawbacks, which I shall point out below (not exhaustively,
though). My first concern is the lack of citations. For instance, p. 246
mentions Goldberg, Kay, Fillmore, and Lakoff but does not include any
appropriate citations (referencing only Lakoff at the end of the chapter). A
similar situation is found in other chapters, some missing citations and
references include Rappaport Hovav (p. 277); Greenberg (pp. 281 and 282);
Chomsky (p. 281); Bowern (p. 312); to name a few. Similarly, many chapters do
not provide sources of the presented data (e.g. Chapter 12, Chapter 14) and
contain numerous sentences such as “research has shown…” or “there’s evidence
that…” that aren’t followed by any citations. Therefore, a reader who is
interested in discussed topics (or a particularly sceptical one!) cannot read
the books or articles that support the presented statements. 

Another concern is the quality (and number!) of linguistic examples. While the
pedagogical boxes (“Linguistics Tidbits” and “Eyes on World Languages”) are an
excellent idea, as they allow students to take a break from the main text, the
information they contain unfortunately reads more like a set of language
trivia that can be found on the Internet rather than stimulating facts from a
textbook. While these boxes point to interesting phenomena in various
languages, they generally do not provide many glossed examples (which would
have been a great advantage!), making them more anecdotal. Moreover, they
contain some inaccuracies and errors (including a few typos) that shouldn’t be
found in a book about linguistics. To mention just a few examples: p. 460
Swahili ‘hakuna matata’ does literally mean ‘no problems’ rather than ‘be
happy’, which could have been easily checked and leaves the impression that
this information was found on a random Internet forum and was not verified; p.
256 (box “Pause and Reflect 7.2”) the Hungarian example ‘A zöld leguán
felugrott egy levél’ is ungrammatical (expected form: ‘levélre’); p. 436
another Hungarian example – the word for ‘girl’ is ‘lány’ not ‘lany’; p. 381
on the same page two spellings of the Mandarin word for ‘woman’ ‘nǔ’ and ‘nü’
are found, the correct variant is ‘nǚ’. While such errors will not
substantially affect the students’ understanding of the introduced phenomena,
they are easily verifiable and should have been double-checked.

Other than a few errors in the language examples and a lack of citations, some
of the exercises and discussion stimuli are a source of annoyance and should
be revised or, in many cases, removed (the following examples are not
exhaustive). Several exercises are quite awkward, for instance, Ex. 1.1. on p.
20 describes a murder scene and asks the students to discuss what could be
“the policeman’s hypothesis in relation to the crime”, “what evidence did he
find” and whether it supported his hypothesis, etc. Likely, the author’s
intention was to introduce students to the scientific method, forming
hypotheses and collecting evidence, but in this reviewer’s opinion such
exercises may confuse students as its purpose is not immediately clear.
Another “atypical” one is Exercise 9.6 on p. 354, which asks students for an
opinion on the practice of some women changing their surnames upon marriage
and its possible societal impact. While this might be a prompt for an
interesting discussion, it seems to have very little to do with linguistics.
Another bizarre exercise can be found on page 425 in “Pause and Reflect 12.4”.
The box prompts the students to “ask a few English speakers to imitate how
they think a baby or child would say the words” from Table 12.5 (p. 424) and
to compare it with the syllable simplification processes described in the
table and to ask whether their “imitations are plausible” from the point of
view of language acquisition. The purpose of this exercise is not quite clear
to me, and in my personal opinion, it might be harmful to the understanding of
language acquisition-related phenomena as well as to the students’ research
methods. One last example I’d like to mention here is the box “Pause and
Reflect 15.8” on page 548. It reads: “Have you or anyone you know ever had an
X-ray? What about a CT scan of the head? What were the doctors looking for?”.
While clearly inspired by methods used in neurolinguistics, this particular
question has nothing to do with linguistics and is a potential trigger for
sensitive topics as it inquires about the details of the students’ health. In
this reviewer’s opinion, questions of this kind should never be asked in class
and as such this box should be removed from the textbook. 

In sum, “Introducing Linguistics” evokes mixed feelings. Its strengths include
complex treatment of the field of linguistics and its conversational tone,
especially suitable for a young audience. In my personal opinion, some
chapters stand out positively – Chapters 2, 3, and 4 provide an excellent
introduction to phonetics, phonology, and syntax (including a very good
introduction to drawing syntax trees in the Appendix), respectively, and I
would be happy to recommend these to anyone interested in these aspects of
linguistics. A few other chapters are often spoiled by bizarre remarks and
exercises (as discussed above). I assume that the decision to put three short
chapters on the accompanying website was dictated by issues of space (the book
counts well over 600 pages) but at the same time I believe that the textbook
could substantially improve by incorporating, at least in part, these texts in
the printed edition – for instance an extended version of Chapter 16 would fit
well as the Introduction to the book (I perceived the current Introduction to
be a bit chaotic), as it touches upon some fundamental aspects such as
differences between language and communication, which should have been spelt
out in the Introduction. Similarly, Chapter 17 (“Computational Linguistics”)
would be an appropriate addition to the printed book as interest in Machine
Learning and Computational Linguistics has been steadily increasing in recent
years and, in my view, it could give students an exciting opportunity to see
the applicability of (sometimes abstract) linguistic concepts to new
technologies. Given the above, I believe that “Introducing Linguistics” might
be more suitable for students for whom linguistics is not their major field of
studies. In any case, however, I am of the opinion that in the hands of an
experienced instructor, and with carefully selected supplementary materials,
“Introducing Linguistics. Theoretical and Applied Approaches” will constitute
a good companion for those who are taking their first steps in the study of
language and, hopefully, will encourage students to reach for more.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

David M. Karaj is a PhD candidate in linguistics at the University of Pavia,
Italy. His main research interests regard language typology, syntax and Malay
historical linguistics.





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