An introduction briefly reviews attitudes that critics have revealed toward the tools which linguistic study has provided for literary analysis. Then two of these linguistic tools--the analysis and description of sound and the awareness of the ways in which meaning is expressed by structure--are discussed and illustrated. "Fringe benefits" of…

The approaches of traditional grammar, descriptive linguistics, and generative grammar are largely complementary rather than exclusive. Traditional grammar defines eight parts of speech according to meaning or function and concerns itself almost wholely with the written language. Descriptive linguistics postulates that English has a set of unique…