Linguistic Speculations

by Fred W. Householder

Overview

This 1974 book is a personal survey by an eminent linguist of most branches of linguistics, setting out its position, questioning some underlying assumptions, and in general testing the adequacy of descriptive theories. Though the underlying theory is basically that of transformational-generative linguistics, there are many queries and disagreements, some of which might be called structuralist in a broad sense, or even taxonomic. The particular problems chosen are those which have forced themselves on Professor Householder during a lifetime of reading, teaching and writing about linguistics, including the justification of linguistic research itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521174275
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/03/2011
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.83(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. The ultimate goals; 2. Remembering and talking; 3. What must a language be like?; 4. Sounds; 5. Sameness, similarity, analogy, rules and features; 6. Mood, modality and illocution; 7. On rules of grammar, ordered and unordered; 8. Subgrammars, planes, levels and components; 9. Phonemes and distinctive features: I; 10. Phonemes and distinctive features: II; 11. Discovery and testing: I phonology; 12. Discovery and testing: II morphology, syntax, semantics; 13. The primacy of writing; 14. Accent, stress, prosodies and tonal features; 15. Corrections, revisions and centos; 16. Idiolect, dialect, linguistic change and the neogrammarian principle; Bibliography; Index.