Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics

10487 Pages·2005·1.03 MB·English

by  Keith Brown (ed.)

FOREWORD
I remember being slightly surprised when I first heard that a second edition of the Encyclopediaof Language
andLinguistics(ELL2)wasintheworks:Iwonderedifitwasn’tpremature,abittoosoonafterthefirstedition.
ButnowthatIseetheresult,itisclearthatthisneweditionisbothtimelyandamajoradvanceoverthevery
successfulELL1.Linguisticsisafast-movingfield.
Theoretical controversies continue and develop; linguistic and sociolinguistic data collection has increased
rapidlyoverthepast10yearsorso,stimulatedinlargepartbylinguists’awarenessofthecriticalproblemof
languageendangerment;thegreatlyexpandedroleofdigitalresourcesismakinghugebodiesofdataavailable
toallscholars;andinterdisciplinaryoutreachbylinguistsandtolinguisticshasmadeourdisciplineabitmore
visible beyond the in-group. We and our students still hear the same old question all too often – ‘‘What is
linguistics,anyway?’’–butwithinacademia,atleast,colleaguesinotherdisciplinesnowtendtobeembarrassed
toaskit,eveniftheydon’tknowtheanswer.
All these developments make this encyclopedia an invaluable reference work. By 1990 it was already
impossible (as I know all too well from my years as editor of a general linguistics journal) for any linguist to
have expert knowledge of the entire range of the discipline, much less of the interdisciplinary areas that were
beginningtotakeonnewprominence.Thepast15yearshaveseenremarkabledevelopments,sothatitisnow
difficulttoimaginebeingfamiliarwithmorethanasmallishfractionofthemanyadvancesinourunderstanding
oflanguageandlinguistics.Havingaccesstoaquicksurveyofcurrentissuesandsourcesonlanguageandthe
brain,morphologicaltheory,statisticalmethodsinlanguageprocessing,categorialgrammars,theclassification
ofAustronesianlanguages,dialectsinbirdsongs,second-languageattrition,bilingualeducation,theCHILDES
database, and hundreds of other topics will delight and inform linguists and, I predict, a great many non-
linguists as well. The numerous articles on interdisciplinary topics should be especially valuable for linguists
withlimitedknowledgeoftheotherdisciplinesaswellasfornon-linguistswithaninterestininterfaceissues.
Another feature of ELL2 struck me as I began to prepare to teach a new course on social, political, and
economic implications of multilingualism: this encyclopedia will be an excellent resource for my students,
becauseithasawholerangeofarticlesonrelevanttopics,includingasetonthelanguagesituationincountries
all over the world and another set on language education policies in the world’s major regions. Other course
instructorswillsurelyalsobehappytosendtheirstudentstothiswork,forcoursesonlanguageandthebrain,
animalcommunication,second-languageacquisition,andanynumberofothergeneraltopics.
Frompeoplewhoenjoybrowsingthroughencyclopediastospecialistswhowantsomebasicorientationinan
areaneartheirown,readerswillfindELL2tobeanoutstandingsourceofinformation.
SarahG.Thomason
WilliamJ.GedneyCollegiateProfessorofLinguistics
UniversityofMichigan,AnnArbor,USA
INTRODUCTION
ThefirsteditionoftheEncyclopediaofLanguageandLinguistics(ELL1),withR.E.AsherasEditor-in-Chief
and J. M. Y. Simpson as Coordinating Editor, was published in 1994. It was intended to be ‘authoritative,
comprehensive,internationalandup-to-date.’Thereviewsshowthatitlargelysucceededintheseaims.
Whenin2002 Iwas invited byChris Pringle(Publisher,ElsevierSocialSciences), tobeEditor-in-Chiefofa
neweditionofELL,IassumedthatwhatElsevierhadinmindwasarevisionofELL1.Howeveritsoonbecame
clearindiscussionswithChrisandwithSarahOates(LinguisticsPublishingEditor)thatthiswasnotatallwhat
wasintended.Inthe10yearssincethefirsteditionwaspublished,linguisticshadgrownexplosively,bothinits
ownspecializationsandininterdisciplinaryfields.WedecidedthatELL2shouldreflectthisgrowthandbean
entirely new work, with new and expanded sections, new topics, new editors, new authors, and newly
commissioned articles. At the same time, we wanted to retain the broad vision of ELL1 as an encyclopedia
concernedbothwithlanguagesandwithlinguistics.Wehavethereforesoughttodealcomprehensivelywiththe
currentstateofthefundamentallinguisticdisciplines,withtheirapplicationstothestudyoflanguage,andwith
theinterdisciplinaryrelationshipsbetweenlinguisticsandtheotherdisciplinesfromwhichitdrawsinspiration
andtowhichitcontributesexpertise.Wehavealsosoughttoretain,andindeedexpandon,ELL1’scoverageof
thelanguagesoftheworld.
WealsoplannedtopublishtheEncyclopediaintwoversions,a14-volumeprintversionand,inparallel,an
onlineversionavailableathttp://www.sciencedirect.com.Thetwoversionshavethe sametext,buttheonline
version supplementsthe writtentext withadditional illustrative material that is onlypossible in an electronic
version–samplesofspokenorsignedlanguage,videosoftheuseoflanguageincontext,andthelike.
Our first task was to set up an Editorial Board. This consisted of the Editor-in-Chief and six Coordinating
Editors, each having general oversight over a particular area of the encyclopedia. We were fortunate in being
abletorecruitasCoordinatingEditorsJimMillerandLaurieBauer(whobetweenthemcoveredthefundamen-
tal linguistic disciplines of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse),
Anne Anderson (psychololinguistics and cognitive science), Graeme Hirst (computational applications of
linguistics),andMargieBerns(appliedlinguisticsandapplicationsoflinguisticsineducation,thelaw,politics,
themedia,andsoon).WehadhopedthatSeumasSimpson,whohadbeenCoordinatingEditorforELL1,would
be able to join us as Coordinating Editor for languages, writing systems, biographies, and the history of the
subject, but unfortunately that turned out not to be possible, so I took on the task of the sixth Coordinating
Editor.ThefirstmeetingofthiseditorialboardandElsevierwasatWoodstockin2002.Bygoodfortune,both
Ron Asher and Seumas Simpson also attended this meeting, so we were able to draw on their experience of
ELL1. At this meeting we determined the overall architecture of ELL2, drew up the list of sections, set the
generalscopeofeach,andbegantothinkaboutSectionEditors.
ThesixCoordinatingEditorswereinvitedtofindaneditorforeachofthesectionsintheirgeneralarea,and
theseSectionEditors,astheywererecruited,wereinvitedtotakeprimaryresponsibilityforaparticularsubject
area.TheywerealsoinvitedtojoinanExecutiveEditorialBoard.ELL1had34editors,ELL2has45;fulldetails
of the board are included in the front matter. The names of many of the ELL1 sections have been retained –
pragmatics,semantics,syntax,morphology,phonetics,phonology,andsoon–butinallcasesthestructureof
thesectionsandtheircontentshavebeenrethoughtandarticlesfreshlycommissioned.SomeELL1sectionsin
xxviii INTRODUCTION
whichtherehavebeensubstantialrecentdevelopmentsorthatwefeltwereratherscantilycoveredinELL1have
beenconsiderablyexpanded,andnewsectionshavebeenadded.Intheareaofsyntaxandmorphologythereisa
new section on typology and universals; in the area of psycholinguistics there are new sections on language
acquisition and on cognitive science, and the ELL1 section on language pathology has been expanded into a
section on brain and language dealing not only with language disorders but also with the contemporary
developments in neurolinguistics. In the area of text linguistics and discourse there are now separate sections
onwrittenandspokendiscourseandasetofnewsectionsondiscourseinparticularfields–medicine,thelaw,
the media, politics, etc. The section on computational linguistics and natural language processing has been
expandedinlinewithrecentdevelopments,andthereisanewsectiononspeechtechnology.Newdevelopments
inpragmaticshavelikewisebeentakenintoaccount:interculturalpragmatics,pragmaticsofreading,pragmatic
acts,andothers.Thereisincreasedcoverageofbiographiesandoflanguages.
In 2003 we held a meeting of all the editors. For this meeting, each of the Section Editors was asked to
articulatethecoverageoftheirsection,todrawuplistsofarticletitles,andtobegintothinkofauthors.Asa
groupwescrutinizedtheSectionEditors’proposals,examinedtheirlistsofarticles,proposedfurthertitles,and
attempted to identify gaps in coverage and to plug them. This process of determining the coverage of the
encyclopedia did not, of course, end with this meeting, but was continually negotiated over several more
months. Finally, we also proposed a small international Honorary Editorial Advisory Board to scrutinize
our plans and comment on them: Barry Blake (La Trobe), Yukio Otsu (Keio), Sally Thomason (Michigan),
YueguoGu(Beijing),andNigelVincent(Manchester).Wearegratefulfortheirhelpandadvice.Theextentto
which the encyclopedia meets its aims of being comprehensive and authoritative is due to the expertise and
dedication of the members of the editorial boards, the Coordinating Editors and Subject Editors, the interna-
tionaladvisors,andofcoursetheauthors.Weareparticularlypleasedthattheauthorshipistrulyinternational.
Our authors come from more than 70 different countries: some 45% are from Europe and some 40% from
NorthAmerica.Afulllistcanbefoundinthelistofcontributors.
Thelargenumberofeditorsandsectionsgaverisetoageneralstructuralproblem.Somedivisionofeditorial
responsibility was necessary in order to cover a subject so wide-ranging and interdisciplinary as linguistics. It
will be clear from the list of section editors and their commissioning responsibilities, and from the subject
classification, that our sections correspond largely to the traditional partitioning of linguistics into syntax,
semantics, pragmatics, etc., and also recognizes the customary applications in psycholinguistics, sociolinguis-
tics, comparative linguistics, computational linguistics, and so forth. In many of the proposed sections, even
within the more centrally linguistic disciplines, the phenomena that we are dealing with are not readily
classifiable as belonging exclusively to one area. Consequently, there is on the one hand the possibility of
overlap, and on the other, the possibility of gaps in coverage. Overlap, where it does not involve repetition,
is not necessarily vicious because it can offer revealingly different perspectives on particular issues, and in a
projectaslargeasthis,itisdifficulttoavoid.Wehavetriedourbesttominimizeanygaps.Alltheeditorswere
involvedinscrutinizingthelistofarticlestotryandidentifyandfillgaps,anditwasageneraleditorialpolicy
thattherewasnostrictdemarcationbetweentheresponsibilitiesofthevariouseditors,whowereencouragedto
negotiatetheirareaofresponsibilitywithotherneighboringareastoensurethatthecoveragewasascompleteas
possible.
Inafast-changinganddevelopingfieldlikelinguisticsitisimportantforaworkcalledanencyclopediaboth
tobeup-to-dateandtoremainincontactwithitstraditions.Inthecentralareasoflinguisticsitisprobablythe
case that many of the fundamentals have remained much as they were 10 years ago, but they should be
reinterpretedinthelightofnewdataornewtheoreticalpositions.Theyneedtoberestatedforanewgeneration
toinformthestudentandoffersuitablebackgroundinformationtotheresearcherorprofessionalfromarelated
areawhoseekstounderstandlinguistics.
The various subdisciplines have developed rapidly. Linguistics, like other disciplines in the arts and social
sciences,isdrivenbyboththeoryanddataandtheinteractionbetweenthetwo.Sointhe10yearssinceELL1
wehaveseenthearrivalofnewtheoriesandthefadingofoldonesinthefundamentallinguisticdisciplinesas
wellasininterdisciplinaryareas.Itisinterestingtoseehowworkinthelinguisticdisciplinesincreasinglydraws
insightsfrominterdisciplinarycooperation,anditisstrikinghowdifferentthebibliographiesinELL2arefrom
thoseinELL1.
Inthesameperiod,wehavealsoseenaconsiderableincreaseintheamountofdataavailable.Thereismore
data on individual languages, which is reflected in the language articles, and substantially more on basic
linguistic phenomena of both typological and universal issues: on topics such as the word, complementation,
case, tense, aspect, and modality, and on functional domains such as possession and comparison. Data feeds
INTRODUCTION xxix
theory,andthesephenomenaareaslikelytobecoveredintheinterdisciplinarysectionsastheyare,forexample,
inthesectionsonmorphologyorsyntax.
Another area of substantial change since ELL1 is the development of new technologies. Developments in
computer technology have made it possible to assemble substantial corpora of spoken and written text, and
analysis tools have improved beyond measure so that in many areas corpus linguistics has had a substantial
impactonbothdescriptionandtheory.TheInternet,text-messagingonmobilephones,onlinechatgroups,and
the like bring new dimensions to the use of language in the media and to the study of discourse in general.
Similarly, new technologies for investigating speech and neural activity open up new insights on the mental
storageandprocessingoflanguage.
All these developments have led to a considerable increase in the amount of interdisciplinary work in
linguistics. For example, developments in psycholinguistic theory have been influential in many areas – so
muchsothatlinguisticinvestigationsarenowlikelytobeconductedindepartmentsotherthanDepartmentsof
Linguistics–ascanbeseenbylookingatthedepartmentalaffiliationsoftheSectionEditorsandauthors.This
rendersthedistinctionbetweenthe‘core’andthe‘periphery’oflinguistics,whichwasstillbeingdrawninELL1,
nolongerasviableasitoncemayhaveseemed.
ELL2hasattemptedtoaddresssomeoftheseissuesbysystematicallyincludingarticlesoninterfacesbetween
disciplines and, in the subject classification, by listing individual articles under more than one classification.
This also implies that the classification does not entirely correspond to the commission responsibilities of
individualSectionEditors.
We have tried to be comprehensive in our coverage. The articles are ordered alphabetically by title, so the
readerwhowishestoseethecoverageinaparticularareawillfindithelpfultoconsultthesubjectclassification.
Whatfollowsisabriefexplicationoftheclassificationandthecoverageofeachsection.
Foundationsoflinguisticsexploresfundamentallinguisticconceptsastheyrelatetolinguistictheoriesandto
the collection and organization of data. Many of these foundational issues are also discussed, from a philo-
sophicalpointofview,inthesectiononphilosophyandlanguageandfromotherperspectivesinothersections.
Thesectionalsobroachesissuesrelatingtotheoriginandevolutionoflanguage.
The section on animal communication discusses the complex communicative signals that non-human indi-
vidualsacrosstheanimalkingdomhaveevolvedtocommunicateinformationaboutthemselves,theirage,their
individualidentity,theirsocialstatus,etc.,andalsotheircapacityforreferentialsignalingaboutexternalobjects
suchasthelocationoffoodsourcesorspecificinformationaboutpredators.Animalcommunicationisagreatly
expanding field of research by biologists and psychologists that can make a significant contribution to
understanding human language. In the online version there are multimedia annexes that give a wide range of
examplesofanimalcommunication,fromthebeedancetofishcommunication.
Thesectiononissuesinsemioticsdealswiththeoriesofthesignastheyapplybothtolinguisticsandtoother
communicativeactivitiesandothermodalitiessuchasmusic.
It is to be expected that an encyclopedia of linguistics should pay major attention to the fundamental
disciplines at the heart of all linguistic investigations: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics,
pragmatics,anddiscourse.Ineachoftheseareastherearearticlesonfundamentalconceptsofthediscipline,on
models within the discipline, and on interfaces with other linguistic disciplines as well as on interdisciplinary
links.
Phoneticsisthestudyofthewayspeechsoundsareproducedandinterpreted.Thisincludesthearticulation
andperceptionofspeechsoundsandinvestigationsintothecharacterofandtheexplanationfortheuniversal
constraints on the structure of speech sound inventories and speech sound sequences. It increasingly encom-
passesthedesignofmechanicalsystemstocode,transmit,synthesize,andrecognizespeech.Italsoincludesthe
studyofhowspeechsoundsvaryindifferentstylesofspeaking,indifferentphoneticcontexts,overtime,and
over geographical regions; how children first learn the sounds of their mother tongue; how best to learn to
pronouncethesoundsofanotherlanguage;andinvestigationsintothecausesofandthetherapyfordefectsof
speechandhearing.Theseissuesarerelevanttomorethanonesection.Intheonlineversionmanyofthearticles
areaccompaniedbyaudiofiles.
The boundary between phonetics and phonology, the study of the more abstract, more functional, and
more psychological aspects of speech, is under constant debate. Phonology is the study of sound systems in
languageandwasthefirstsubdisciplineinwhichtheviewoflanguageasasystemwasdevelopedsuccessfully.
Thesectiondiscussesthenatureofphonologicalunitsandprocesses,bothatthesegmentalandattheprosodic
level and illustrates this with descriptions of the phonological systems of a number of typologically different
languages.
xxx INTRODUCTION
Morphology is concerned with the relationship between the form of a word and its meaning. Since
morphology is interested in the forms of words, it is related to phonology for the study of the sound shapes
of words and to syntax both for the study of the composition of words and for their syntactic function. And
becausemorphologyisconcernedwithmeaning,itisrelatedtothestudyofsemanticsandofthelexicon.These
many relationships mean that morphological theorizing has been much influenced by phonological and
syntactic theories, as well by changing ideas about the nature of the lexicon. Morphological processes,
inflection,derivation,andsoonremainattheheartofmorphologyandarefullycoveredintheencyclopedia,
as are more recent developments in morphological typology and the study of morphology within psycholin-
guistics.
Linguistics has always been concerned with developing a general theory of the structure and nature of
language while making its theorizing as empirically viable and as explanatory as possible. Nowhere has this
aimbeenmorerigorouslypursuedthaninthefieldofsyntax.Syntaxisconcernedwithmodelingthecombina-
tion of words and morphemes to build more complex meanings. The encyclopedia takes no party line with
respecttosyntactictheory,andtherearearticlescoveringthemainideasofvarioussyntactictheories,thus,for
example,ideasunderlyinggenerativegrammarareexploredinthearticle‘HistoryofLinguistics:Disciplineof
Linguistics,’thoseunderlyingrelationalgrammarinthearticle‘GrammaticalRelationsandArc-PairGrammar,’
andtheprinciplesunderlyingcognitivegrammarareexploredinanumberofarticles.Thesyntaxsectionofthe
subject classification contains an overview of the syntactic theories explored in the encyclopedia: it includes
articlesontheoriesthatwereprominentadecadeagobutarefallingoutofthespotlight,onthosethatremain
thesubjectofvigorousdevelopment,andonthosethathavecometoprominenceoverthelastdecade.
Thesesectionsinevitablyraisequestionsaboutlinguisticandtypologicaluniversals.Thesectionontypology
anduniversalsconcentratesontheseissuesandisconcernedmainly,butnotexclusively,withresearchfindings
made in the course of the last decade, deriving either from functionally oriented research or from generative
paradigms.Therearearticlesreflectingrecentfindingsonthetypologyoflinguisticcategoriesin,forexample,
grammatical domains such as evidentiality, reference marking, and serial verb construction. This section also
covers ‘areal’ linguistics, a field of increasing interest; since areal linguistics has a historical dimension, these
articlesintersectwiththesectiononhistoricalandcomparativelinguistics.
Iremarkedearlierthatphonologywasthefirstsubdisciplineinwhichthecontemporaryviewoflanguageasa
systemwasdevelopedsuccessfully.Inthemiddleofthe20thcenturythespotlightturnedfromphonologyand
morphologytosyntax,andlatterlysemanticshasbecomeincreasinglyprominent.Inmorphology,syntax,and
typologicallyorientedstudies,perhapsespeciallyin‘grammaticalsemantics,’semanticshasmadeaconsiderable
contribution to our understanding of verbal categories like tense or aspect, nominal categories like case or
possession, clausal categories like causatives, comparatives, or conditionals, and discourse phenomena like
reference and anaphora. Similarly, the study of lexical semantics and its relation to syntax, pragmatics, and
cognitive linguistics has grown vastly; and it goes without saying that the study of logical semantics has
developedandthrives,oftenininteractionwithcomputationallinguistics.
Oneviewofpragmaticsisthatseesitselfasinvolvingthestudyofhumanlanguageuseasitisexercisedina
communityofsocialpractice.Theexerciseis,however,notlimitedtoverbalsigns:othercommunicativemeans
arealsoincluded,asbecomesclearwhenonestudies‘pragmaticacts’aswellasthetraditional‘speechacts.’In
addition,emphasisisplacedonthewaycommunicationitselfisorganizedsocially,notjustasenvisagedinthe
earlier speaker-oriented models due to Austin, Searle, and Grice, but extending also to comprise more recent
advances,especiallyinourunderstandingofnotionsofinferenceandimplicature,includingarecentexpansion
intothedomainsofoptimalitytheoryandrelevancetheory.Pragmaticthinkinghasalsoadvancedinwhatused
tobecalledthe‘hyphenateddisciplines’–sociolinguistics,psycholinguistics,andsoon–andmorerecentlyin
thestudyofhumansininteractionwithcomputers,theteachingoffirstandsecondlanguages,literarystudies,
thetheoryofdiscourse,interculturalstudies,cognitiveresearch,andahostofotherpracticallyandtheoretically
orientedfieldsofstudy,suchasconversationanalysis.
Underpinningmuchofthestudyoflinguisticsemanticsandpragmaticsareissuesinphilosophy.Onewayof
understanding the contribution of philosophy to the study of language is to see it as giving fairly sweeping
answers to questions such as ‘What do the parts of language (e.g., words of various kinds) mean? What do
linguistic complexes, including sentences of various kinds, mean? What rules relate the part-meanings to the
whole meanings?’Philosophy then goes on toask: ‘What are we talkingabout when we talk aboutmeaning?
What kind of thing is a linguistic rule? What form should the statement of a linguistic rule take, including
especially a semantic rule?’ We can then enquire into the potential implications for philosophy itself of
the answers to these questions – for example, the implications of linguistic arguments for anti-realism for
INTRODUCTION xxxi
metaphysics, of the discussion of language rights for ethics, of linguistic notions relating to mentalese or
conceptsforphilosophyofmind,orofissuesrelatingtonon-standardlogicsornotionsoflogicalformforlogic.
Thestudyofdiscourseisanotherexpandingareaoflinguisticenquiry.Asageneralterm,‘discourse’applies
tobothspokenandwrittenlanguage,andspokenandwrittendiscoursehavecrucialcharacteristicsincommon.
Therecentexplosionoflanguagecorporaofallkindsandthetoolstoanalyzethemmakethisaburgeoningarea
of linguistic investigation. The linguistic traditions of the study of written and spoken discourse are different,
however, and this is reflected in ELL2 by focusing on written and spoken discourse in separate sections and
devotingasuiteofsectionstothediscourseofparticulargenres.
Textanalysisandstylisticsconcernsaspectsofwrittendiscoursewithparticularemphasisonstylistics.Atext
isclearlymorethanarandomsetofutterances:itshowsconnectedness,andacentralobjectiveistocharacterize
thisconnectedness.Thiscouldbedoneeitherthroughlookingatovertlinguisticelementsandstructuresorby
seeingconnectednessasacharacteristicofthementalrepresentationratherthanofthetextitself.Thissection
explores both these approaches. It also considers various features of text, metaphor, and figures of speech in
generalandthepropertiesofdifferenttextgenres,andcontainsarticlesonstylisticsandliterarytheory.
Since ELL1, research on spoken discourse has brought new and interesting insights to the broader field of
linguisticsthroughtheanalysisofstretchesofspontaneousspokenlanguageproducedinmorenaturalcontexts.
Thishasalsopushedforwardtheawarenessthatnewmodelsfordescribingandinterpretingspeechprocesses
arerequiredinphonetics,insyntax,andinthebroaderdomainoftextualrelations.Althoughthesententialand
extra-sententialsyntaxofspokendiscoursehasalwaysbeenpartofgrammarsoflanguageswithapredominant
oraldimension,onlyrecentlyhasitgainedmomentumasanautonomoussubject,interestingperse,especially
with respect to those languages with a long history of written and spoken dimensions running in parallel or
influencingeach other. Detailed descriptions ofthe syntax and discourse of individual spokenlanguageshave
broughtintofocusthedifferencesbetweenwrittenandspokenstructuresandopenedatheoreticaldebateover
thenatureofsuchdifferencesandthebestmodelstodealwiththem.Intheonlineversion,someofthephonetic
andphonologicalcharacteristicsofspokenlanguageareillustratedbyaudiofiles.
Lawandlanguageaddressesissuesandproblemsthatarisefromthenatureofthelanguageusedinthelegal
system, and since the law is an overwhelmingly linguistic institution, language is implicated in many of the
issuesandproblemsassociatedwiththelegalsystem.Anobviousissueisthatthewrittentechnicallanguageof
the law is extraordinarily complex and can be virtually impossible for non-legal specialists to understand.
Spoken legal language can similarly raise social issues since some social groups may not understand the
language and culture of the law and may be disadvantaged as a consequence. Applied forensic linguists
addresses issues and problems in the legal system that are language based, attempting to describe, and where
possibleexplain,thosefeaturesthatdistinguishthelanguageusedinlegalsettingsfromeverydaylanguage.
The mass media increasingly influence the way we understand other societies and cultures and the section
media and language follows contemporary debates about the nature of media language itself as it changes in
relation to changing industrial and social pressures. It notes the increasing use of conversational style by
journalistsandinterviewersintraditionalmedia,andexploresthegrowinginfluenceofemergingtechnologies,
the most obvious of which are related to internet communication channels with enhanced opportunities for
audienceinteractivity.
Politics and language deals with different aspects of the relation between language and politics, notably
differentapproachestotheanalysisof‘politicallanguage’initsbroadestsense.Researchinthisareareceivedan
impetus in the latter half of the past century with the analysis of National Socialist language as an important
startingpoint.Thereisalsoconsiderableresearchinto‘languagepoliciesandlanguageplanning’moregeneral-
ly.Thissectionconcernsitselfnotonlywithpoliticalrhetoricinthe‘classic’traditionbutalsowithrecentwork
involvingnewanalyticalmethodologies,particularlywithrespecttomultimodalityandtheimpactofthevisual.
Religionandlanguagelooksat‘religiouslanguage’initswiderangeofmanifestations.Thescripturesofall
religionsshowavastrangeofgenres,includingmyth,narrative,law,prophecy,andpoetry.Insomereligions,
written liturgical forms are normally elevated in style, sometimes poetic, often veering toward the archaic;
statementsofdoctrineandacademictheologicalwritingssharefeatureswithscientificwritingsuchasconsistent
useoftechnicalvocabulary,whilethelanguageusedinprivateprayermaybemorelikelytoreflecttheusageof
everyday language. Particular modalities of religious activity may exhibit their own stylistic features. In
common parlance, ‘religious language’ is often taken to mean liturgical language. However, in scholarly
contextsthetermisnowadaysoftenusedtocoverbothdiscourseaboutreligion(includingacademictheological
writingandstatementsofdoctrine)anditsrelationtoothertypesofdiscourse,anddiscussionofhowreligious
textsshouldbeinterpreted.
xxxii INTRODUCTION
Medicineandlanguagefocusesontwoaspectsofmedicaldiscourse:theoralandthewritten.Theoralpapers
addressissuesrelatedtopatient–doctorcommunication(e.g.,illnessnarratives,psychiatricinterviews,medical
conferencing,medicalspecialtyencounters).Mostarticlesthatdealwiththewrittenaspectofmedicaldiscourse
focus on the medical scientific ‘research article’ considered both from a generic, diachronic and a synchronic
perspective. Some of these articles also analyze the socio-historical construction of medical discourse and the
evolutionofthesocio-pragmaticphenomenonofhedging.
Psycholinguisticsisconcernedwithunderstandingmentalprocesses,sopsycholinguistsareinterestedinhow
linguisticunitsareprocessedandrepresentedinternally.Thepsycholinguisticssectionreviewsthefieldsinceit
emerged as a distinct discipline in the 1950s and reviews the major research topics over the last 50 years –
sentenceprocessing, speech production,speech recognition,discourse processing, reading,visualword recog-
nition,dialogue,andgesture–andtheresearchmethodsused,fromexperimentaltocomputationalmodelingof
languageprocesses.
Languageacquisitionsurveysthetimetableoflanguagedevelopmentfrominfancytoadulthood,dealingwith
infant sensitivity to linguistic form, and the development of phonology, words, morphology, grammar, prag-
matic,andmetalinguisticskills.Otherarticlescoversthetopicsofbilingualdevelopment,theacquisitionofsign
language, and some atypical developments. The articles deal with relevant theoretical issues, relating them to
othersections.
TheBrain andlanguagesection covers currentdevelopmentsinresearchon thebrainand languageproces-
sing. It includes accounts of studies of language disorders and language impairments from speech motor
processes to narrative and discourse impairments and their remediation. It is also concerned with the effect
on language of specific neurological diseases such as schizophrenia, Williams’syndrome, autism, Asperger’s
syndrome,etc.Anditdescribesrecentdevelopmentsinneuropsychology,psychiatry,neurology,andneurosur-
geryinsofarastheyaffectlanguageandcurrentmodelsoflanguageprocessing.
Cognitivescienceassumesthehumanmindtobeacomputationaldevicecontainingrepresentationsandseeks
to develop cognitive models of language processing. It draws on concepts from artificial intelligence and
computerscience,linguistics,psychology,philosophy,theneurosciences,andanthropology.
The section on computational linguistics and natural language processing reflects the fact that the past 10
years has seen the explosive growth of the World Wide Web, electronic mail, Internet publishing, and the
cellular phone used for fun, business, and academic enquiry. This mass connectivity has greatly increased the
demand for software tools and appliances for processing unstructured and semi-structured natural language
text, and has led to a consequential growth in information accessories. Web browsers, search engines, and
personal digital assistants have become ubiquitous and commonplace, and new modes of behavior have
developed around such everyday activities as purchasing goods, accessing entertainment, and conducting
business. There have also been considerable developments in the field of machine translation. This has led to
developments in language technology and has been facilitated by two technical breakthroughs. The first is
conceptual, and represents a new emphasis upon empirical approaches to language processing that rely more
heavily upon corpus statistics than linguistic theory (often referred to as corpus linguistics). The second is
computational,andconsistsofmorepowerful,networkedmachinesthatarecapableofprocessingmillionsof
documents and performing the billions of calculations that the statistical profiling of large corpora requires.
Thissectiondiscussesthesenewapplicationareasandsomerecentadvances.
Whiletheprevioussectionislargelyconcernedwiththemanipulationoftext,thespeechtechnologysectionis
concernedwiththecomputationalprocessingandgenerationofspeech.Itthusfocusesonissuesconcernedwith
the computer understanding of speech, such as speaker recognition, the computer generation of speech, and
applicationssurroundingthese.
Translationisanotherrapidlyexpandingacademicfieldofstudy,whichnowincludesasubstantialbodyof
theoreticalwriting.Thisdrawsoninsightsfromavarietyofrelateddisciplines:philosophy,linguistics,literary
studies and criticism, stylistics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and computational linguistics, and,
increasingly, it feeds insights back into those other disciplines. There are a number of different approaches to
translation, including linguistic approaches, philosophical approaches, cultural/gender-oriented approaches,
therelevancetheoreticapproach,Skopostheory,functionalapproaches,andtheso-calleddescriptiveapproach,
each of which adopts a particular point of view of the areas referred to above. In addition, there are well-
established translation theoretic notions such as translational equivalence, translation purpose, translation
functions,theunitoftranslation,and,ofcourse,theconceptoftranslationitself.Thereisalsoanincreasingly
finely defined field of interpreting studies, aspects of which hold particular relevance for a work dedicated to
linguistics.Thisfieldalsocoverssignlanguageinterpreting.
INTRODUCTION xxxiii
The section on sign languages shows the central place language has in human culture since it demonstrates
that in any human social group the emergence of language is inevitable, and if the auditory channel is not
available, language materializes in the manual-visual modality instead. Although transmitted in a radically
different physical modality, natural sign languages share key linguistic properties with spoken languages, for
example,the existenceofbothameaningless‘phonological’ level andameaningfulmorpho-syntacticlevel of
structure, derivational and inflectional morphology, and syntactic recursion. Sign languages are acquired by
children without instruction and according to the same timetable as spoken languages, and they are also
controlled primarily by the left hemisphere of the brain. Yet modality does matter, and comparing languages
ineachmodalityallowsustoisolatetheeffectofthephysicalmediumonthecontent,structure,andorganiza-
tionofnaturallanguage,beitspokenorsigned.Intheonlineversionthereareillustrationsofsigning.
Linguistictheoryneedsconstantrefreshmentfromlanguagedata,anditwouldbesurprisingifanencyclope-
diaonlanguagesandlinguisticsdidnotpaymajorattentiontothelanguagesoftheworld.Thereare,ofcourse,
abundantlanguagedatainthearticlesthemselves,butinaddition,thelanguagesoftheworldsectionpresentsa
setof400articlesonspecificlanguagesorlanguagefamilies.The15th(2005)editionofEthnologueidentifies
7299languages.Giventhislargenumber,theencyclopediacanclearlypresentonlyasample.Wehavetriedto
includearticlesonlanguagesfromallthemajorlanguagefamilies.Eachlanguagearticlegivesabriefdescription
of the language and its speakers, plus any known or hypothesized genetic relationships, and highlights
interestingphonological,semantic,orsyntacticfeatures.Intheonlineversionmanyofthearticlesareaccom-
paniedbyvideooraudiofiles.
There is an alphabetical list of these languages in the subject classification, and appended to the article
‘ClassificationofLanguages’isataxonomyofallthelanguagesdistributedintotheir‘families.’Thearticleitself
explainsthebasisoftheclassification.Therearearticlesonanumberoflanguagesnownolongerspokenand
numerousarticlesonendangeredlanguages.Thelanguagearticlesareallcross-referencedtotherelevantarticle
inthecountriesandlanguagessectionthatdescribesthelanguagesituationinthecountrywherethelanguageis
spoken.Throughthiscross-referencing,readersarereferredtoamapshowingthegeographicaldistributionof
theparticularlanguage.
Thesectioncountriesandlanguagescontainsasetofarticlesoutliningthelanguagesituationinmostofthe
countriesoftheworld.Theaimistoprovideup-to-dateinformationaboutthelanguagesspokeninthecountry,
aboutnumbersofspeakersforeachlanguage,howtheselanguagesareusedinsocietyandcommunication,and
aboutsocial,cultural,orpoliticalaspectsthatareofinterestforbothgeneralandspecialistlinguisticaudiences.
This information comes from public sources, such as censuses or education statistics, from the specialist
literature, or from personal experience in the country. Where possible we have found authors with first-hand
knowledge of the countries concerned, and in these cases the articles are signed. For a few countries and
territoriesthishasnotprovedtobepossible,andforthosewehavebeenfortunatetobeabletorelyonasmall
‘editorial team’: Lutz Marten (SOAS); Boban Arsenijevic´ (University of Leiden), Mark de Vos (University of
Leiden), Nancy Kula (University of Leiden),Aniko´ Lipta´k (University of Leiden),Anna McCormack (SOAS),
and Laura Mutti (SOAS). These articles are unsigned. Many of the articles in this section are associated with
multimediaannexesintheonlineversionofELL2.
Ethnologue has kindly permitted us to reprint their language maps. These are collected in the last volume.
Articles in the countries and languages section are associated with one or more of these maps. Individual
languagesarecross-referencedtocountriesandthencetotherelevantlanguagemap.
Allthelanguagesmentionedinthearticlesinthecountriesandlanguagessectiontogetherwiththelanguages
noted in the current edition of Ethnologue are collected into a list of languages. This list records the name of
alanguage,alternativenames,abriefsummaryofitsgeneticaffiliation,alistofthecountryorcountrieswhereitis
spoken, and the number of speakers. The identification of a ‘tongue’ as a distinct language is a well-known
difficulty; naming languages is another. Both issues are explored in the article ‘Ethnologue.’ In ELL2 we have
decidedtostandardizeonEthnologuenamestoachieveconsistencyacrosstheencyclopediasincethereisnoother
sourceofinformationaboutlanguagesthatisascomprehensive.Inthelistoflanguages,Ethnologuenamesare
usedasheadwords.Inlanguagearticles,languagesappearunderthenamepreferredbytheauthor,andtypically
where this differs from the Ethnologue name there is also a ‘dummy entry’ under the Ethnologue name cross-
referringtotheentryunderthenon-Ethnologuename.Thisisbecauseeventhoughaparticularauthormayprefer
not to use an Ethnologue name, there will be other scholars who do use Ethnologue names (and indeed there
couldbeotherarticlesintheencyclopediathatusethem),sobothnamesneedtobeincludedintheencyclopedia
somewhere.Inthelistoflanguages,languagesarealsoidentifiedbythethree-letterlanguageidentifiersoftheDraft
InternationalStandardcodesofISO/DIS639–3,identifiersthatarealsousedinEthnologue.
xxxiv INTRODUCTION
Lexicography is a discipline with a long history in most cultures. Typically, it aims at breadth of coverage
rather than depth. Depth is achieved in the related discipline of lexicology, through detailed studies of key
elementsinthelexicon.Theaimoflexicographyisthesystematiccollectionandexplicationof‘all’thewordsof
alanguage(morestrictlyspeaking,allthelexicalitemsofalanguage,includingidioms,multi-wordexpressions,
andboundmorphemes,aswellasindividualwords).Thisencyclopediacontainsarticlesonthehistory,current
state of the art, and available lexicographic resources of the world’s major languages, complementing the
correspondingarticlesonindividuallanguagesandlanguagesituations.Inthepasttwodecades,thepracticeof
lexicographyhasbeentransformedbytheevidenceofusagethatisnowtobefoundinlargeelectroniccorpora,
sothatthetraditionalhistorical-culturalfocusoflexicographyisbeginningtobematchedbyempiricallywell-
foundedaccountsofthedynamicnatureofthelexiconandtherelationshipbetweenwordmeaningandword
use.Thissectionalsocontainsarticlesonsomekeyaspectsofonomastics.
Writingsystemstracesthehistoryofwritingandwritingsystemsthroughouttheworld’slanguages.Ittraces
thedevelopmentofwritinginMesopotamia,theAegean,andAsiaandthedevelopmentofChinese,Japanese,
andKoreanscriptsandofMesoamericanwritingsystems.Thesectionalsohasasetofarticlesongeneralissues
todowithnotationofvariouskindsandonthemechanicsandaestheticsofwriting.
Appliedlinguisticsisaninterdisciplinaryareathat attemptstodescribe,explain,andwork outsolutions to
socialissuesandproblemsrelatedtoreal-worldlanguageproblems,themoreprominentamongthemassociated
withlanguagelearningandteaching.Inthiscontextithaslongbeeninterestedintheoreticalissuesandalsoin
thepracticalitiessurroundinglearningandteaching.Thesectioncontainsasetofregionalstudiesoftheseissues
aroundtheworld.Thisdevelopsintoaconcernforawiderangeofissuesrelatingtolanguageandlanguageuse
ingeneral:bi-andmultilingualism,languagecontact,languagepolicyandplanning,andthe professionaland
occupationaluseandmisuseoflanguage.Inrecentyears,researchinappliedlinguisticshasalsointeresteditself
ingeneralissuesinthenatureandpsychologyofsecondlanguageacquisitionandthecontributionthiscanmake
tolinguistictheoryingeneral.Appliedlinguisticsalsocontributestoresearchincorpuslinguistics,lexicography,
literacy,sociolinguistics,andteacherpreparation.
Thestartingpointofeducationallinguisticsisalwaysthepracticeofeducation,andthefocusissquarelyon
theroleoflanguageinlearningandteaching.Educationallinguisticshasbeencharacterizedas‘transdisciplin-
ary’ in that it brings together aspects of linguistics with the research tools and methodologies of other social
sciences, most often anthropology, psychology, and sociology, to investigate the totality of issues related to
languageacquisition,languageuse,andsociolinguisticcontextinformalandinformaleducation.Thissection
explores these issues and particularly the different approaches to language in education developed in Britain,
Australia,andAmerica.
The field of sociolinguistics is a broad one that focuses on the use of language in its social contexts. These
contexts may be physical, or at least, institutional, as in the study of domain-related registers or styles of
language;interactional,asinthestudyofthedialogicnatureofspeech;orsocial,pertainingtocharacteristicsof
individuals or groups along the lines of gender, class, ethnicity, age, etc. A central concern of the field is how
languagevariesaccordingtothesecontexts.Butsomestudiesalsofocusonhowlanguageitselfformspartofthe
socialcontext,emphasizingthatlanguageisnotjustreflectiveorcharacteristicofcertaincontexts,butmayhelp
shape, sustain, and reproduce those contexts. Other concerns of this field include the cultural dimensions of
language and issues pertaining to individual and social identity; many of these issues are also discussed, from
anotherangle,inthepragmaticssection.
The variation and language section is concerned with variation within speech communities with shared
linguisticsystemsastheyareaffectedbysocialnormsofuseandinterpretationandbysocialattitudestoward
language.Dialectvariationhaslongbeenthesubjectofacademicexploration,joinedinrecentyearsbystudies
oftheeffectsonlanguageuseofage,sexandgender,ethnicity,andothervariables.Therelevanceofsuchstudies
forsocialsciencehaslongbeenclear,andthereisanincreasingappreciationoftherelevanceofsuchvariationist
studiesforlinguistictheorymoregenerally.Anumberofthearticlesfocusonmethodsforstudyingvariation,
andwehopethesewillbeusefulpracticalguidesforreadersundertakingtheirownresearch.Thesectionalso
includesasetofarticlesonvariationindifferentlanguagecommunities.
Linguisticanthropologyisthestudyoflanguageinculture,andoflinguisticpracticesaspartofculture.The
fieldoflinguisticanthropologytakeslinguisticpracticestobeculturallysignificantactionsthatconstitutesocial
life. Indeed, the situated use of language is the exemplary case of how culture, as a meaning-making process,
constructsandshapesthesocialworld.Thatworldisinvariablysaturatedwithcontrastingvaluesandcontested
interests,withopposedpoliticalpositionsandidentities,withvariableaccesstoresourcesandpower.Linguistic
anthropology examines the role of discursive interaction – and the semiotic processes on which it relies – in