Introducing English Linguistics

Further reading
General overviews of semantics can be found in J. Lyons, Semantics, Vols. I and II (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977) and W. Frawley, Linguistic Semantics (Hillsdale, N J: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1992). 
P. Matthews’ Morphology (2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) describes English mor-
phology. J. M. Sinclair’s Corpus, Concordance, Collocation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) discusses
how collocations can be studied in linguistic corpora.
A lexicographical perspective on lexical semantics is presented in S. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft
of Lexicography (2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); linguistic treatments of the topic
are covered in D. A. Cruse, Lexical Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) and M. L.
Murphy, Semantic Relations and the Lexicon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). The WordNet
database is discussed in C. Fellbaum (ed.), WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1998).
A cross-linguistic description of semantic primitives is outlined in A. Wierzbicka, Semantics: Primes and
Universals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Word formation processes in English are described in
both L. Bauer, English Word-Formation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) and I. Plag, Word-
Formation in English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
7. Match the word groups in the left-hand column with the semantic relation
in the right-hand column with which each group would be associated.
(1) bee/mosquito
a.
synonyms
(2) hot/cold
b.
co-hyponyms
(3) help/assist
c.
antonyms
(4) anthropology/sociology
(5) guilty/innocent
(6) warm/tepid
8. Match the word in the left-hand column with the word formation process
in the right-hand column with which the word is associated.
(1) caveman
a.
affixation
(2) unhelpful
b.
compounding
(3) Xerox
c.
root creations
(4) attrit
d.
clippings
(5) RAM
e.
back formations
(6) Fahrenheit
f.
abbreviations
(7) hand (e.g. “give me a hand”)
g.
acronyms
(8) DOA
h.
proper nouns
(9) bottle (used as verb)
i.
folk etymologies
(10) toilet
j.
borrowings
(11) pea
k.
functional shift
(12) smog
l.
meaning extension
(13) gas
m.
blends

---

---

C H A P T E R
The sounds 
of English
7
This chapter provides an overview of the sound system of
English. It begins with a discussion of the smallest unit of
sound, the phoneme, and continues with a description of
the phonetic alphabet and how it differs from the English
alphabet. The phonetic symbols for English consonants and
vowels are then presented and classified according to three
criteria: voicing (whether the vocal cords vibrate or not),