The Structure of Modern English: A Linguistic Introduction (review)

This is a well-designed textbook (with CD-ROM workbook) consisting of eleven comprehensive chapters for courses entitled ‘the structure of modern English’, offered by many English departments such as mine. The back cover states that the ‘focus is exclusively on English data, providing an empirical application of the structure of the language, rather than exploring theoretical questions or theory for theory’s sake’—certainly a noble goal. Its approach is quite traditional. After the introductory chapter on the nature of language and linguistics (3–13), it presents the basics of phonetics and phonology in two chapters (17–69). Whichever approach an author chooses, surely students must somehow master the consonants of English (27), its vowels (37), strong and weak forms (60), phonemic rules (49–51), phonological processes (51–54), phonotactics (54–57), suprasegmentals (57–65), etc. Let me comment on one detail. Brinton mentions that ‘the upper-mid central vowel [is] represented by the Hebrew letter “schwa” [ə]’ (37). Schwa is not a letter in Hebrew, but rather a diacritic. In most varieties of written Hebrew, it is not indicated nor is it even needed.

The two well-written chapters on morphology (73–127) begin with the definition of a word (73–75) and treat allomorphy, enclitics, and the various types of morphemes. Although the author is correct to point out that the final root[s] voices in houses, the situation with blouses is, in my view, different (84). The voicing of that root-final [s] is an aspect of British English (this is also the opinion of The Cambridge international dictionary of English [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995:138], although The American heritage dictionary [4th edn., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000: s.v.] lists both [s] and [z] pronunciations for the singular, suggesting that root-final voicing in the plural, for American usage, may now simply carry over the voicing of the singular (whatever the origin of the plural voicing was originally).

The chapter on lexical semantics (129–59) is fascinating material since students I have taught generally find this topic to be the most interesting of all the contents presented. I believe that B’s componential analysis of the notion ‘vehicle’ (152–53) is right on target in that for some native speakers ‘a vehicle must be enclosed or that it must be something one sits in’ (153). Thus, not all consider a ‘shopping cart’ a vehicle, let alone a ‘scooter’ or ‘pogo stick’.

The three chapters on syntax present classical transformational grammar with its phrase structure rules, affix hopping, the passive transformation, wh-movement, cleft and pesudo-cleft sentences, etc. (163–260). This orientation accounts for the fact that there are only two books by Noam Chomsky in the bibliography: Syntactic structures (The Hague: Mouton, 1957), and The sound pattern of English, coauthored with Morris Halle (New York: Harper and Row, 1968). The author justifies her perspective by stating that ‘the version of generative grammar presented here is not the most recent one, which has become highly theoretical and quite abstract, but takes those aspects of the various generative models which are most useful for empirical and pedagogical purposes’ (163). I find myself sympathetic to her viewpoint.

Ch. 10 on sentential semantics delves into the notions of agent, patient, theme, goal, etc. (263–86). The recommended additional reading includes such vintage articles as Charles J. Fillmore’s ‘The case for case’ (in Universals in linguistic theory, ed. by Emmon Bach and Robert T. Harms, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968:1–88) (287).

The final chapter deals with speech acts and pragmatics (289–315). If any chapter could have been omitted, this would be the one I would have chosen. In my experience, having introductory students read works by J. L. Austin and John Searle (recommended reading, 315) often proves to be frustrating since those authors rarely write for the novice. Also, one wonders whether the goal of a tome such as this one should be to enable...