R. L. Trask

A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics

This dictionary of grammatical terms covers both current and traditional terminology in syntax and morphology. It includes descriptive terms, the major theoretical concepts of the most influential grammatical frameworks, and the chief terms from mathematical and computational linguistics. It contains over 1500 entries, providing definitions and examples, pronunciations, the earliest sources of terms and suggestions for further reading, and recommendations about competing and conflicting usages. The book focuses on non-theory-boumd descriptive terms, which are likely to remain current for some years. Aimed at students and teachers of linguistics, it allows a reader puzzled by a grammatical term to look it up and locate further reading with ease.

A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology

Written for students of linguistics, applied linguistics and speech therapy, this dictionary covers over 2,000 terms in phonetics and phonology. In addition to providing a comprehensive, yet concise, guide to an enormous number of individual terms, it also includes an explanation of the most important theoretical approaches to phonology. Its usefulness as a reference tool is further enhanced by the inclusion of pronunciations, notational devices and symbols, earliest sources of terms, suggestions for further reading, and advice with regard to usage. The wide range of topics explained include: * Classical phonology, including American Structuralism and the Prague School * Contemporary approaches, including Autosegmental Phonology, Metrical Phonology, Dependency Phonology, Government Phonology and Lexical Phonology * Prosodic ideas in phonology, both traditional and contemporary ^ * * historical phonology * Intonation and tonology This dictionary devotes space to the various theoretical approaches in proportion to their importance, but it concentrates most heavily on non-theory-bound descriptive terminology. It will remain a definitive reference for years to come.

The typological position of Basque : Then and now

Basque is the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in western Europe, and it is typologically very different from its Indo-European neighbors. Consequently, both genetic and typological maps of European languages invariably show the Basque-speaking region as a distinctively colored blob at the western end of the Pyrenees. Typologically, Basque is a rather well-behaved SOV language with almost all of the textbook characteristics of such languages: verb-final order, preposed modifiers, an abundance of non-finite verb forms, a rich case system, a highly regular agglutinating morphology with few alternations, an absence of prefixes, and so on. Phonologically, the language is not strikingly different from its neighbors except perhaps in the comparative rarity of alternations in its inflectional morphology. In this article, I want to consider the typological position of Basque from an explicitly historical point of view. In particular, I want to examine the degree to which Basque has undergone typological assimilation to its Indo-European neighbors during the last two thousand years or so. For the phonology, this is easier to do than one might have expected, since we possess a secure reconstruction of the phonology of the Pre-Basque of the Roman period. With morphology and syntax, however, we are heavily constrained by the absence of substantial Basque texts earlier than the sixteenth century, though there are nonetheless some interesting observations to be made and several intriguing hypotheses to consider. Finally, at the lexical level the massive influence of Indo-European languages during two thousand years or more is all too evident, though typological points of interest are few and largely confined to the modern period.