Textbook choices

On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Robert Hailman wrote:

> jesse stephen bangs wrote:
>
> > That's the textbook for my Intro to Linguistics class.  In my conlanging
> > years I've picked up quite a bit of linguistics, albeit very haphazardly,
> > so this class is completely review.  The phonetic system described in the
> > Akmajian book is an embarassment.  I retaliated when my teacher assigned
> > me to transcribe some of my own speech by using the real IPA and
> > transcribing every little detail that I could think of--aspiration,
> > nasality, stress, pre-glottalization, flapping, etc.
>
> LOL! I'd probably do something like that too. I've been picking through
> the book, it's a good intro, seeing as I know almost nothing about
> linguistics. I've read the first 4 chapters (4 being Phonology) and I
> read chapter 8 - Language Change or whatever.
>
> The phonetic system in the book is pretty useless, it seems very much so
> designed for describing English, and forcing every other language into
> an English mold - at least when they describe the symbols they use, they
> also show the IPA equivalents. That's the only reason I didn't give up
> when I got there.
I use the Akmajian et al, text (and accompanying workbook) for my
Intro to the Study of Language course for several reasons:

1)  It presents a theoretically coherent point of view to the study of
language (not all texts do; Language Files from the Ohio State U comes
to mind!).

2)  It focuses on English, and therefore makes discussion of
theoretical issues *easier*, since students don't need to interpret
data from "exotic" languages before the principle is uncovered.

3)  The data to be examined, while never complete or comprehensive,
are presented with a degree of accuracy which not all texts achieve.

4)  The phonetic transcription scheme presented for English is
extremely useful for discussion of tense/lax oppositions--especially
when I turn the discussion to syllable structure and stress patterns.
Having tense vowels presented as branching nuclei allows the
generalization that syllables with branching rhymes attract stress in
English. This point is difficult to make with other transcription
systems. It is a relatively simple matter to remind students that not
all languages have a tense/lax opposition like that found in English,
and that using the tense/lax transcription conventions may not be
appropriate elsewhere.

Also, it should be remembered that *all* transcription schemes are
arbitrary. This is equally true for the alphabet of the IPA as it is
for the common scheme in use in North America. I often have students
who have previous experience with the IPA's system (usually vocal
performance majors and international students) and who therefore
prefer to use it in appropriate contexts. I have never had a problem
with that, as long as they are consistent in using it.

As for Jesse's "retaliation," all I can say is that if I had a student
who was that motivated and ambitious, I would weep for joy.

5)  The presentation of syntax, while overly complex in parts, begins
with an extremely useful discussion of Yes/No Question formation in
English. This discussion then allows me to generalize about how a
linguist might arrive at a particular hypothesis about a syntactic
phenonmenon.

Some points which are less advantageous:

1)  The phonology and syntax chapters present way too much formalism
for an introductory course. I have my students skip that material.

2)  The writing style is rather dense (though no more so than the
O'Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Aronoff text commonly used).

3)  It's expensive!

All in all, I find it to be a reasonable and useful textbook.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu