Introduction to Linguistics

Author: Ye Baoquan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-09-01
Features: The book includes eight parts: Introduction, Language, Phonetics, Semantics, Vocabulary, Grammar, Writing, and the Origin and Development of Language. It is structured around horizontal combination relationships and vertical classification relationships, emphasizing relationships and functions, and strictly distinguishes between positional components and relational components. The book applies the basic principles of structuralism to all aspects of linguistic analysis and research. For example, in the phonetics section, the introduction of phonological theory is quite detailed, providing an in-depth explanation of the distinction between distinctive features and non-distinctive features. In the semantics section, semantic units are determined from a relational perspective, and the relationships and differences between distinctive semantic features, non-distinctive semantic features, and the interplay between distinctive features and semantic primes are explained. In the vocabulary section, traditional definitions such as "vocabulary is a collection of words in a language" and "vocabulary is the building material of language" are corrected and supplemented. Additionally, the productivity of basic vocabulary is questioned. In the grammar section, the author explicitly points out that the forms typically referred to as morphemes, lexemes, phrases, and sentences are not true grammatical units but rather objects of grammatical analysis.