Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English is a landmark volume in the development of vocabulary frequency studies. Whereas previous books have in general given frequency information about the written language only, this book provides information on both speech and writing. It not only gives information about the language as a whole, but also about the differences between spoken and written English, and between different spoken and written varieties of the language.
n this study Michael Covington considers the origins and development of the theories of sentence structure formulated by the Modistae, a group of grammarians and logicians who flourished in Paris between about 1270 and 1310. Some of the concepts of the medieval theoretical framework, notably government and dependency, have survived to the present day, and Dr Covington introduces insights from modern grammatical theories where appropriate.
This clear and practical introduction to Syntactic Theory introduces students to theory building, hypothesis testing and evaluation through the framework of Chomsky's Government-Binding Theory. The liberal use of in-text exercises engage the reader at every stage of theory-development, while an 'Open Issue' at the end of each chapter encourages active participation and further exploration of the chapter's topic. With an engaging, informal style, Syntactic Theory makes the most difficult topics accessible to a wide range of students.
Thomas Spence's 'Grand Repository' differs from the many English pronouncing dictionaries produced in the late eighteenth century firstly in that it was intended primarily for the lower classes, and secondly in that it used a truly 'phonetic' script in the sense of one sound = one symbol. In this unique account, Joan Beal pays attention to the actual pronunciations with a view to reconstructing what was felt to be 'correct' pronunciation in eighteenth-century Britain.
The discovery of 'linguistic universals' - the properties that all languages have in common - is a fundamental goal of linguistic research. Linguists face the task of accounting for why languages, which apparently differ so greatly from one another on the surface, display striking similarities in their underlying structure. This volume brings together a team of leading experts to show how different linguistic theories have approached this challenge.
