An Encyclopaedia of Language

1. An Encyclopaedia of Language Call No. R410 Reference Services, LIBR 150, Kamal Lombardi

2. Bibliographic Citation • Collinge, N.E. ed. An Encyclopaedia of Language. Routledge : London. 1990. • Available: KCLS Bothell Regional Library, Reference Section

3. Arrangement • The text is arranged in the form of subject chapters. Within each chapter text is arranged as paragraphical text which fills the whole page with no pictures except for various diagrams which are presented throughout the book. References and further reading end each section. The text is also broken up into three main parts, covering the inner nature of language, the larger province of language, and special aspects of language. Indexing • The indexing is a table of contents, index of topics and relative terms, and index of names.

4. Scope • This text attempts to summarize linguistic information up to the 1980s. Subjects included in the text are a brief discussion of phonetics, a brief discussion of phonology, grammar as form and pattern, Chomsky and language as a mental faculty, semantics, pragmatics, language as a written medium and as a spoken medium, language universals and language types, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, language pathology and therapy, anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics, second languages: how learned and taught, language in education, language and literature, language and computation, lexicography, writing-systems, sign language, historical linguistics, language engineering,

5. SCOPE CONT. • language as it evolves, language as geography, and languages of the world. CURRENCY • It has information concerning language and linguistics up to 1990 when it was published. It is not necessarily out of date but some of the information might seem somewhat old. Here you see a set of phonetic inventories for Simon (a) and Graham (b) (adapted in this book from Grunwell 1988). This reflects what sounds these children can produce. Also presented on the following page are contrasted possibilities (again adapted in this book from Grunwell 1988)

6. Intended Purpose • The purpose is to provide a reference for looking up subject specific topics concerning what is known about language in the linguistic field. Thus, it serves, as its name implies, as a true encyclopaedia of language in all its different aspects and forms. Here are the signs for “think”, “true”, and “believe” in British Sign Language (BSL), associated here together because they are compound signs reflecting a historical change in BSL different from other sign systems.

7. Additional Purposes • A student might find this reference of interest in studying language and linguistics. Those from other fields could find this a useful reference in doing cross-comparative research outside their own field. Format (s) • It is in book form only. It is 1011 pgs. long. It is approx. 6 cm. in spine width.

8. Special Features • It has an editor’s introduction by N.E. Collinge and indexes of topics and names. • Here you see the table of contents page from An Encyclopaedia of Language. It is on pgs v and vi of the book. You can see that there are numerous subtopics divided into three main sections.

9. Authority and Review Opinions • Here is some information on the many contributors: • Jean Atchison: Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the London School of Economics Specialties: psycholinguistics and historical linguistics Publications: The Articulate Mammal: an Introduction to Psycholinguistics (3rd edition 1989), Word in the Mind: an Introduction to the Mental Lexicon (1987), Language Change: Progress of Decay? (1981), and Linguistics in the “Teach Yourself” series (3rd ed., 1987). • D. J. Allerton: Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Basle (Switzerland)

10. Authority and Review Opinions Cont. Specialties: grammatical topics, also, semantics and intonation Publications: Over forty works, including Essentials of Grammatical Theory (1979) and Valency and the English Verb (1982) • Christopher S. Butler: Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Nottingham Specialties: semantics, pragmatics, systemic linguistics, computational linguistics, and statistical methods Publications: (In 1985) Systemic Linguistics: Theory and Applications, Computers in Linguistics, and Statistics in Linguistics

11. Authority and review opinions cont. • N.E. Collinge: Professor Emeritus of Comparative Philology at the University of Manchester, founder of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, president of the Societas Linguistica Europaea Publications: numerous, including CollectaneaLinguistica (1970) and the Laws of Indo-European (1985). • D.A. Cruse: taught at the Universities of Baghdad and the West Indies, since 1972 Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Manchester. Specialty: Lexical Semantics Publications: Lexical Semantics (1986)

12. Authority and review opinions cont. • Erik Fudge: Lecturer in Linguistics at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge, in 1974 appointed to the Chair in that subject at University of Hull. Professor of Linguistic Science at the University of Reading, from 1988, Professor of Linguistic Science at University of Reading, editor of Journal of Linguistics, 1979 to 1984 Publications: Phonology (1973) and English Word Stress (1984) • James Milroy: Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sheffield Publications: The Language of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1977), Regional Accents of English (Belfast) (1981) Authority in Language (with Lesley Milroy, 1985), was working on Society and Language Change. (All of the above is paraphrased from “Notes of the Contributors” in Collinge, N.E. ed. An Encyclopaedia of Language Routledge: London. 1990. pp. vii – xiii)

13. Authority and review opinions cont. • There is one review of the text I found by Jane H. Hill, a professor at the University of Arizona in Language, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Mar. 1992) pp. 200-202. available on JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/416382. In this review, Hill (1992) states that unlike the past in which students had to be careful of dictionaries and encyclopedias “we live in a Golden Age of basic reference works.” (Hill, 1992, p. 200). She says that its place lies between “… David Crystal’s lively coffee-table Cambridge Encyclopedia of Linguistics and the four-volume Linguistics: the Cambridge Survey by Frederick Newmeyer.”She also says that the coverage of the book doesn’t really overlap with the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (1992), ed. by William Bright. • Hill (1992) also goes on to say that “while a brief review does not permit detailed critical assessment

14. AUTHORITY AND REVIEW OPINIONS CONT. I give a few caveats here. Some … may feel that the coverage in the first section, especially in the articles on phonology (by Eric Fudge) and morphology and syntax (by D.J. Allerton) errs a bit on the side of conservatism. However… two articles do cite recent theoretical work… Allerton concludes with a brief discussion of formalism that includes references to GPSG, categorical grammar, and dependency grammar … magisterial chapter on textuality by Janos Petofi is formidably The organs of speech used in voicing vowels and consonants. This diagram is presented in the first chapter, “Language as Available Sound: Phonetics” and could be of interest to those from many disciplines.

15. Authority and review opinions cont. technical (although carefully written and certainly accessible to ‘intelligent interest’) and is overwhelmingly text-linguistic in its perspective (although there is reference to, for instance, the work of Stanley Fish) … The chapter on ‘Language and Computation’, by Christopher S. Butler, is a very general survey including such matters as the use of computers in linguistic applications of statistics and word processing with relatively brief coverage of ‘computational linguistics in the strict sense (parsing, testing of grammatical formalisms, and the like…” (Hill, 1992, p. 201) and she goes on to look at other chapters as well in great detail. Overall, she thinks the encyclopedia, “…exhibits a high standard of editorial attention.” (Hill, 1992, p. 202), but she also notices some oversights in the phonetics chapter, Allerton’s chapter on morphology and syntax, and in Laycock and Mulhauser’s chapter on ‘language engineering’ and also notices that several chapters by Cruse and the Milroys do not cross-reference other related chapters (such as semantics and psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics and dialectology.)

16. Authority and review opinions (where available) • KCLS System: Bothell Regional Library, Reference., Bellevue Regional Library, Nonfiction, Federal Way Regional Library, nonfiction • SPL; Central Library, Reference collection • University of Washington: Odegaard stacks, Suzzallo Reference, and Suzzallo/Allen Stacks

17. These are neurophysiological models used in neurolinguistics to model both the recognition and comprehension of spoken and written words and non-words (left) and a model of the production of sentences (right) found in the chapter “Language in the Brain” in An Encyclopaedia of Languge (pp. 408-409) orig. excerpted from (left) M. Coltheart, G. Sartori, and R. Job (1987) The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Language. Lawrence Erlbaum: London: 6 and (right) B. Butterworth and D. Howard (1987) ‘Paragrammatisms’, Cognition, 26: 1-37:32.

18. Personal Impression • The text is a good introduction for the non-specialist to topics in linguistics. For example, from reading the phonetics and phonology sections which cover in them the organs of speech, one could quickly find a summary of all the important anatomical areas involving speech, which is information that might be of use to the non-specialist wanting to know something about speech. In the chapter on Phonology, one can find under “defining vowels and consonants” a good discussion of the differences between them such as “manner of articulation”, which can result in nasal flap trill features in other languages or also find other interesting linguistic variations such as [s] being produced with rounded lips. Much interesting info is also in the “Language and Mind: Psycholinguistics” and “Language in the Brain: Neurolinguistics” sections. Additionally, there is a quite interesting chapter on sign language.

19. Examples Typifying Reference Uses • Student: How do vowels and consonants differ? What are the major parts of speech? • Non-specialist: What studies have been done on language creation in the human mind? • General patron: What studies have been done regarding the use of sign language? • The diagram to the left is a diagram of the main regions associated with language. It is in An Encyclopaedia of Language (p. 373), reprinted from G.A. Davis (1983) A Survey of Adult Aphasia, Prentice-Hall, Englewood cliffs, NJ: 30. Diagrams like this would be of use to cross-comparative specialists looking for information on how studies of language intersect with the human mind such as possibly, medical students or doctors.

20. Complementary Sources • One complementary source that this reference item seems to be oft compared to is the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Linguistics by David Crystal. • In answering the sign language question in addition to the information found in An Encyclopaedia of Language it might be useful to also look at articles on sign language such as Stewart, David A. and C. Tane Akamatsu. The Coming of Age of American Sign Language Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Sep. 1988, pp. 235-252.) and Richardson, John T.E. and Alan Woodley. Approaches to Studying and communication Preferences among Deaf Students in Distance Education, Higher Education, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Jul., 2001) pp. 61-83, both available through JSTOR respectively at http://www.jstor.org/stable/3195832 • and • http://www.jstor.org/stable/3448083.

21. Complementary sources • Several texts available through KCLS on sign language: • Fox, Margalit.Talking hands : what sign language reveals about the mind. New York : Simon & Schuster, 2007. • Tabak, John.Significant gestures : a history of American Sign Language. Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2006. • Flodin, Mickey.Signing illustrated : the complete learning guide. New York : Berkley Pub. Group, 2004. Expanded ed. This is the British two-handed manual alphabet which is “… used as an adjunct to signing for ‘foreign’ words such as proper names, place names, and words not translated into sign…” (p. 756). It comes from p. 757 in An Encyclopaedia of Language. It is not made clear there where it is reprinted from. This is the last slide. Goodbye!