The Miracle of Language
1 journaler for this copy...
General book on language which I picked up some years ago. I've read portions of it and the style is conversational and easy to follow. It covers a wide variety of linguistic topics, and the information seems accurate. However, I'm getting to the point where I'd like something which goes a bit further than the introductory stage, and I know somone who might like this, so it's time for it to move on.
Overall, quite a good introduction to linguistic concepts. It begins with a brief discussion of what language is and how it developed, then traces the history of English from Indo-European, explaining along the way how vocabularies and meanings of words change, introducing such concepts as generalization, specialization, compounding, borrowing. From there he moves on to sound shifts, and a discussion of general phonetics. After that he covers grammar, writing and alphabet systems, punctuation, and orthography. The book finishes with a lecture on the importance of language as a tool for communication and the possibilities of English as a world language.
As I mentioned in my previous entry, the style is engaging and the subject matter approached with humor as well as knowledge. Even in the discussions of linguistic concepts, the focus of the book is on English, suitable for a reader with a casual interest in language but training, no since it explains everything in terms of something he is already intimately acquainted with - the language he uses every day. Likewise, it doesn't get bogged down in evidence and examples. Examples are chosen to illustrate the concepts, and are incorporated without slowing down the pace of the narrative. I have a few minor complaints about the book as a whole (the lack of a bibliography for further reading is the primary one), but overall it is quite satisfactory.
To take a look at some of the individual sections:
The history of English has been covered more extensively elsewhere, on books focusing primarily on the subject. I would recommend Mario Pei's "The Story of English" and a wonderfully illustrated book also called "The Story of English" by Robert McCrum which was written as a companion to a PBS television series. Both are intended for the layman.
The section on phonetics is explained as well as might be expected for a difficult subject; I, at least, find it hard to hear the difference between the various vowel sounds and between certain voiced and unvoiced consonants. But the explanation is sufficient to understand how these variations are made, if not to connect them with the actual sounds that come out. (American English speakers, I might add, are at a disadvantage because of the tendency to reduce all unstressed vowels to a schwa (short e) or a short i sound.)
The section on English grammar I found to be the most illuminating part of the book. His stance on the subject is likely to seem heretical at first: he asserts that traditional grammar, as it has been taught in schools for centuries, is nonsense. I've encountered this before, and gradually come to understand the point, that English grammar has been taken from Latin grammar, and rules which work for Latin have been forced upon an language which functions quite differently. This is the first time I've seen an explanation that goes much beyond criticizing two clearly arbitrary rules imposed from Latin (don't split an infinitive and don't end a sentence with a preposition) to actually explaining why our current system of grammar is unsufficient to describe English. Laird doesn't seem to be trying to completely discard the traditional divisions of subject, verb, direct object, dependent clause, etc., which as far as I am concerned are useful for understanding how a sentence works, even if they don't capture the whole picture. His point is that English has become a distributive language rather than an analytical one, and that word order is the basis for English grammar. He pays particular attention to the complications of the English verb and how it tends to become tangled up with its complements, particularly prepositions.
The only sour note for me came in the last couple of chapters, where he speculates on the future of English, and the suitability of it as a world language. Some of this is typical of the time it was written (the 50s), when uniting the world under a single language seemed like a solution for world peace. And it seems to be almost mandatory in this type of book for authors to end with a judgment of sorts about the state of the language and the direction it is likely to take. But to me this section reeked of linguistic chauvinism.
As I mentioned in my previous entry, the style is engaging and the subject matter approached with humor as well as knowledge. Even in the discussions of linguistic concepts, the focus of the book is on English, suitable for a reader with a casual interest in language but training, no since it explains everything in terms of something he is already intimately acquainted with - the language he uses every day. Likewise, it doesn't get bogged down in evidence and examples. Examples are chosen to illustrate the concepts, and are incorporated without slowing down the pace of the narrative. I have a few minor complaints about the book as a whole (the lack of a bibliography for further reading is the primary one), but overall it is quite satisfactory.
To take a look at some of the individual sections:
The history of English has been covered more extensively elsewhere, on books focusing primarily on the subject. I would recommend Mario Pei's "The Story of English" and a wonderfully illustrated book also called "The Story of English" by Robert McCrum which was written as a companion to a PBS television series. Both are intended for the layman.
The section on phonetics is explained as well as might be expected for a difficult subject; I, at least, find it hard to hear the difference between the various vowel sounds and between certain voiced and unvoiced consonants. But the explanation is sufficient to understand how these variations are made, if not to connect them with the actual sounds that come out. (American English speakers, I might add, are at a disadvantage because of the tendency to reduce all unstressed vowels to a schwa (short e) or a short i sound.)
The section on English grammar I found to be the most illuminating part of the book. His stance on the subject is likely to seem heretical at first: he asserts that traditional grammar, as it has been taught in schools for centuries, is nonsense. I've encountered this before, and gradually come to understand the point, that English grammar has been taken from Latin grammar, and rules which work for Latin have been forced upon an language which functions quite differently. This is the first time I've seen an explanation that goes much beyond criticizing two clearly arbitrary rules imposed from Latin (don't split an infinitive and don't end a sentence with a preposition) to actually explaining why our current system of grammar is unsufficient to describe English. Laird doesn't seem to be trying to completely discard the traditional divisions of subject, verb, direct object, dependent clause, etc., which as far as I am concerned are useful for understanding how a sentence works, even if they don't capture the whole picture. His point is that English has become a distributive language rather than an analytical one, and that word order is the basis for English grammar. He pays particular attention to the complications of the English verb and how it tends to become tangled up with its complements, particularly prepositions.
The only sour note for me came in the last couple of chapters, where he speculates on the future of English, and the suitability of it as a world language. Some of this is typical of the time it was written (the 50s), when uniting the world under a single language seemed like a solution for world peace. And it seems to be almost mandatory in this type of book for authors to end with a judgment of sorts about the state of the language and the direction it is likely to take. But to me this section reeked of linguistic chauvinism.
Gave this to a high school student I've been giving extra German tutoring to keep him challenged. He wants to study linguistics, so this seemed appropriate.
