In Linguistic Theory, Robert de Beaugrande analyses linguistic theories not as abstract ideas or theses, but as the process and product of theoretical discourse. He argues that the best documentation of this discourse can be found in the 'fundamental' works of major linguists from Ferdinand de Saussure to Teun van Dijk and Walter Kintsch. He therefore employs the highly unusual strategy of a close reading of these works as discourse performances and strives to uncover their main points and characteristic moves in the linguist's own words. Through this approach, the reader is able to appreciate and understand the variety and controversy among linguistic theories as they have emerged and developed in interaction with each other. Special scrutiny is allocated to the issue of how far the active practice of the linguists followed their own theories and proposals, and why. The author concludes by assessing the prospects for linguistics to be drawn from the retrospect in the previous chapters.

This volume presents nine of today's grammatical theories with a view to comparing their starting points and their methods. The particular features and properties of each theory are discussed in this book, as well as the major conceptual differences and methodological obstacles each has overcome and has yet to overcome. The parallel structure of the papers makes for easy comparison and cross-reference. This systematic and thorough introduction to the recent history of the discipline provides a state-of-the-art report on current leading tendencies as well as a wealth of directions for future research.

This volume further elaborates the empirical tradition of Columbia School (CS) Linguistics by offering diverse empirical analyses for a wide variety of languages. These studies open a much needed debate advocating the necessity of the independent validation of linguistic hypotheses. This research exemplifies how such a validation should be conducted by determining which forms underlie the analyses and extracting those observations that are considered to be objective. The volume consists of two parts: a section on synchronic and diachronic grammatical problems and a section on Phonology as Human Behavior (PHB), the Columbia School version of phonology, applied to evolutionary, developmental and clinical issues and the phonotactics of the selected lexicon of a literary text. It provides a wealth of useful empirical data and in-depth and sophisticated qualitative and quantitative analyses of a broad range of languages from diverse families: French, Spanish, Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Polish, Russian, Japanese, and Hebrew.

Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory is a textbook, written for introductory courses in linguistic theory for undergraduate linguistics majors and first-year graduate students, by twelve major figures in the field, each bringing their expertise to one of the core areas of the field - morphology, syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology, and language acquisition. In each section the book is concerned with discussing the underlying principles common to all languages, showing how these are revealed in language acquisition and in the specific grammars of the world's languages.

Feminism and Linguistic Theory is a critical introduction to feminist scholarship. It encompasses work in linguistics, anthropology, literary and cultural theory, psychoanalysis and postmodern philosophy.

Although there has been a significant revival in interest in Bertrand Russell's work in recent years, most professional philosophers would still argue that Russell was not interested in language. Here, in the first full-length study of Russell's work on language throughout his long career, Keith Green shows that this is in fact not the case. In examining Russell's work, particularly from 1900 to 1950, Green exposes a repeated emphasis on, and turn to, linguistic considerations. Green considers how 'linguistics' and 'philosophy' were struggling in the twentieth century to define themselves and to create appropriate contemporary disciplines. They had much in common during certain periods, yet seemed to continue in almost total ignorance of one another. This negative relation has been noted in the past by Roy Harris, whose work provides some of the inspiration for the present book. Taking those two aspects, Green's aim here is to provide the first full-length consideration of Russell's varied work in language, and to read it in the context of developing contemporary (i.e. with Russell's work) linguistic theory. The main aims of this important new book, in focusing exclusively on Russell's work on language throughout his career, are to place Russell within the changing contexts of contemporary linguistic thought; to read Russell's language-theories against the grain of his own linguistic practice; to assess the relationship between linguistic and philosophical thought during Russell's career, and to reassess his place in the history of linguistic thought in the twentieth century. As such, this fascinating study will make a vital contribution to Russell studies and to the study of the relationship between philosophy and linguistics.

In this paper,(1) I will restrict the term ""linguistic theory"" to systems of hypotheses concerning the general features of human language put forth in an attempt to account for a certain range of linguistic phenomena. I will not be concerned with systems of terminology or methods of investigation (analytic procedures). The central fact to which any significant linguistic theory must address itself is this: a mature speaker can produce a new sentence of his language on the appropriate occasion, and other speakers can understand it immediately, though it is equally new to them. Most of our li.