The Linguistics of Speech

by William A. Kretzschmar, Jr

• ISBN13: 9780521887038
• ISBN10: 0521887038
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-20
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This insightful study proposes a unified theory of speech through which conflicting ideas about language might be understood. It is founded on a number of key points, such as the continuum of linguistic behaviour, extensive variation in language features, the importance of regional and social proximity to shared linguistic production, and differential frequency as a key factor in linguistic production both in regional and social groups and in text corpora. The study shows how this new linguistics of speech does not reject rules in favour of language use, or reject language use in favour of rules; rather, it shows how rules can come from language as people use it. Written in a clear, engaging style and containing invaluably accessible introductions to complex theoretical concepts, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of sociolinguistics, dialectology and corpus linguistics.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. vii
List of tables	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
The road not taken	p. xii
Introduction	p. 1
The contemporary marketplace of ideas about language	p. 6
The academic marketplace of ideas about language	p. 6
The popular marketplace for ideas about language: Writing and sounding correct	p. 13
The right language at home	p. 18
Ebonics: Correctness, rightness, and the marketplace of ideas about language in action	p. 21
Saussure	p. 31
Saussure's marketplace of ideas about language	p. 33
The aims of linguistics and linguistic structure	p. 40
The alternative to linguistic structure	p. 44
Foundations of the linguistics of speech	p. 47
Linguistic features in speech and structure	p. 53
Aggregation of evidence from speech	p. 55
A different linguistics	p. 58
Principles of the linguistics of speech	p. 62
Evidence from linguistic survey research: basic description	p. 64
Findings from the LAMSAS survey: Boundaries and plots	p. 66
Findings from the LAMSAS survey: Lists and counts	p. 82
Statistical evidence from linguistic survey research	p. 104
Findings from the LAMSAS survey: Density estimation (DE)	p. 113
Findings from the LAMSAS survey: Spatial autocorrelation	p. 125
Findings from the LAMSAS survey: Social categories	p. 130
Evidence from corpus linguistics	p. 146
Firthian linguistics	p. 148
Corpus linguistics	p. 151
Text types	p. 158
Sampling text	p. 162
Sampling documents	p. 166
Conclusions	p. 172
Speech as a complex system	p. 174
Complex systems	p. 177
State cycles and simulations	p. 180
Linguists and complexity	p. 182
Speech as a complex system	p. 184
Dimensionality	p. 189
Zipf and non-linear distributions in speech	p. 190
Scaling	p. 198
Speech and chaos	p. 209
Speech and evolution	p. 211
Speech perception	p. 218
Prototypes and schemas	p. 220
Spatial perception	p. 225
Evidence from perceptual dialectology	p. 228
Perceptions of scaling	p. 236
Perceptions of the non-linear distribution of speech	p. 242
Perception and complex systems	p. 247
Speech models and applications	p. 251
Towards a formal model of speech	p. 252
A less formal model	p. 257
Relationship with the linguistics of linguistic structure	p. 260
Speech and time	p. 263
Speech and public policy	p. 271
A last thought	p. 277
References	p. 278
Index	p. 289
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