Introducing English Linguistics

Self-study activities
1. Why do some feel that email has features of both spoken and written
English?
2. Name some contexts better suited to writing than to speech, and vice
versa. For instance, are there situations when you’d rather send someone
an email than talk to them on the phone?
3. Would the conversation a patient and doctor have during an annual med-
ical examination be part of an open or closed register?
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INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

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Further reading
For a discussion of general differences between speech and writing as well as differences between registers
of speech and writing, see D. Biber, Variation Across Speech and Writing (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1988). Differences between spoken and written registers found at universities are described in 
D. Biber, University Language: A Corpus-based Study of Spoken and Written Registers (Amsterdam:
Benjamins, 2006). A more cognitively based approach to text structure can be found in W. Kintsch,
Comprehension: A Paradigm for Cognition (Cambridge University Press, 1998). An overview of conversation-
al analysis is presented in E. A. Schegloff, Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation
Analyis, Vol. I (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Two key books on unity of structure and texture are 
M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan’s Cohesion in English (London: Longman, 1976) and Language, Context, and
Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective (Victoria, Australia: Deakin University Press, 1985).
An overview of the Prague School approach to communicative dynamism is described in J. Firbas, Functional
Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communication (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
4. In the sentences below, which expressions would be considered old
information? 
Lately, the Boston area has been hit with a number of ice storms. 
These storms have caused numerous traffic accidents. 
They have also made sidewalks very slippery to walk on.
5. Style manuals frequently criticize the use of sentences in the passive
voice, advising writers to prefer the active voice instead. Is this good
advice? Are there occasions when the passive voice is necessary?
6. Find two different types of cohesion in the passage below. Explain your
choices. 
Ordinarily, earthworms are considered gardeners’ most trusted helpers,
natural plows that churn dirt and deposit nutrient-rich beads of soil that
feed plants. But the wrigglers have a darker side ... they are now so
numerous and widespread that they are dramatically changing the forest
ecosystem, devouring a layer of the forest floor that native wildflowers,
beetles, and other species need to survive.
(Boston Globe, Monday, Dec. 11, 2006, p. C1)
The structure of English texts
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C H A P T E R
English syntax
5
This chapter is concerned with one facet of structure,
English syntax: how words are grouped and ordered within
sentences, clauses, and phrases. For instance, English
places adjectives before nouns (e.g. beautiful house) rather
than after them (*house beautiful ), a feature of English
syntax that distinguishes Germanic languages from Italic
languages, which generally favor the placement of adjec-
tives after the nouns that they modify (e.g. Italian casa
bella ‘house beautiful’).
Clause functions
Clauses
Constituency
Form/function
Formal/notional
definitions
Linear/
hierarchical
structure
Phrases
Sentences
Word classes