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  1. Home
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  3. The Wonders of Language
  • Cited by 1
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
February 2017
Print publication year:
2017
Online ISBN:
9781316576595
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316576595
Subjects:
English Language and Linguistics: General Interest, Psychology, Cognition, Language and Linguistics
Information

Book description

Ian Roberts offers a stimulating introduction to our greatest gift as a species: our capacity for articulate language. We are mostly as blissfully unaware of the intricacies of the structure of language as fish are of the water they swim in. We live in a mental ocean of nouns, verbs, quantifiers, morphemes, vowels and other rich, strange and deeply fascinating linguistic objects. This book introduces the reader to this amazing world. Offering a thought-provoking and accessible introduction to the main discoveries and theories about language, the book is aimed at general readers and undergraduates who are curious about linguistics and language. Written in a lively and direct style, technical terms are carefully introduced and explained and the book includes a full glossary. The book covers all the central areas of linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, as well as historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics.

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Contents

Contents
References

Further Reading

Since this isn’t a textbook, I’ve avoided peppering the text with references and further reading, simply mentioning the key names here and there (Chomsky, de Saussure, Grimm, Labov, Austin, Grice, Greenberg and a few others). But I do want to encourage you to go on, and so here are a few things that you might find interesting and enjoyable now you’ve got this far. The first set are all general references; there are of course plenty of textbooks on all of the various areas of linguistics, and I’ve indicated the best ones to start with if there’s a particular area you want to read about in more detail. Of course, there are lots more textbooks on the various subareas, but you can get to those later by following the references in the readings suggested here. It’s very important to start with an overview of the whole field and not to specialise too much too soon.

General Introductions

Fromkin, Victoria, ed. Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
Fromkin, Victoria, Rodman, Robert and Hyams, Nina. An Introduction to Language. 7th edn. Boston, Mass.: Thomson Heinle, 2003.
Isac, Donca and Rice, Charles. I-language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Larson, Richard. Grammar as Science. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010.
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Harper Collins, 1994.
Smith, Neil. The Twitter Machine: Reflections on Language. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Smith, Neil. Language, Bananas and Bonobos: Linguistic Problems, Puzzles and Polemics. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

Specific Topics

Sign Language

Sutton-Spence, Rachel and Woll, Bencie. The Linguistics of British Sign Language: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Phonetics

Ladefoged, P. Vowels and Consonants. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

Phonology

Hayes, B. 2009. Introductory Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2009.

Morphology

Haspelmath, M. and Sims, Andrea D.. Understanding Morphology. London: Routledge, 2002.

Syntax

Jackendoff, Ray. Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.
Smith, Neil. Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Semantics

Elbourne, P. Meaning: A Slim Guide to Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Pragmatics

Allott, N. Key Terms in Pragmatics. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.

Historical Linguistics

Campbell, L. Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998.

Sociolinguistics

Trudgill, P. Introducing Language and Society. London: Penguin English, 1992.

Psycholinguistics/Language acquisition

Clark, E. First Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Language Typology

Comrie, B. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology; Syntax and Typology. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.

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