This textbook introduces the field of linguistics, demonstrating syntactic categories, morphological structures, phonological/metric structures, syllable structures, and varieties of English in an accessible way by using portions of song lyrics from popular music.
The varieties of English covered include Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American, as well as some features of Australian English, southern US varieties, and Scottish English. Drawing on shared characteristics between language and music, including metrical structure, the author suggests a different approach to linguistic analysis and the description of spoken language.
The book introduces both students and instructors to a novel and engaging method of description, and provides a fresh vocabulary with which to start thinking about language. It demonstrates complex topics by using music as a fun and familiar starting point, and will be an ideal resource for introductory linguistics courses worldwide.
Author(s): Patrice Larroque
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 128
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
1 What Is Linguistics?
2 The Music-Speech Relationship
3 The Metrical Structure of English
4 A Few Words About the Corpus
5 Presentation
References
Chapter 2: English Phonetics and Phonology
1 Syllable Structure
1.1 Nature and Representation of Syllables
1.2 Syllable Division
1.3 Syllable Structure and Syllable Weight
2 Word Stress
2.1 Primary Stress
2.2 Secondary Stress
3 English Rhythm
4 Suprasegmental Phonology
4.1 English Intonation
4.2 The Functions of Intonation
5 To Conclude
References
Chapter 3: Morphology
1 Morphemes and Allomorphs
2 Allophones and Morphological Structure
3 The Shape of Bound Morphemes
4 Compound Words
References
Chapter 4: Syntax
1 English Syntactic Categories
2 Grammatical Functions: The Noun Phrase
2.1 Subject and Object
2.2 Other Complementation
2.3 Predicative as Complement
2.3.1 Subject-Predicative
2.3.2 Object-Predicative
2.4 Adverbial
3 The Internal Structure of the Verb Phrase
3.1 The Verb
3.2 Passive Constructions
3.3 Auxiliaries
3.4 The Perfective Aspect (Have + V-en)
3.5 The Progressive Aspect (Be + V-ing)
3.6 Negative and Interrogative Constructions
References
Chapter 5: Semantics and Pragmatics
1 Semantics
1.1 What Is Meaning?
1.2 Lexical Semantics
1.3 The Lexical Representation of Words
1.4 Cohesion
2 Pragmatics
2.1 Context
2.2 Deixis
2.3 Reference Again
2.4 Inference
2.5 Presupposition
2.6 Implicature
2.7 Speech Acts
2.8 Style and Verbal Strategy
2.9 Tentative Use
2.10 Relationship Between Language and Mind
References
Chapter 6: Accents and Dialects of English
1 The Dialect
2 Accent
3 The “Mid-Atlantic” Accent and Variability in Accents of British Singers
4 African American English
5 The Blues, Jazz, Rock Music, and Rap
5.1 The Blues and Jazz
5.2 Rock and Roll and Rock Music
5.3 Spoken Word and Rap
6 English Accent Variation
7 More on Language and Music
References
Chapter 7: Musical Structure and Linguistic Structure
1 Overlapping Between Musical Structure and Linguistic Structure
2 Mismatches Between Musical and Linguistic Structure
3 When Music and Language Come Together
4 Advantages and Drawbacks
5 The Conveyance of Information
6 More About Communication
7 Conclusion
References
Appendix
Corpus of Songs
Glossary
Index
