This is the third edition, revised and updated as well as greatly embellished with a number of additional attractive features, of a book first published in 2005. This fact alone speaks volumes for the book's immense popularity amongst its target readership primarily composed of students with no specialist knowledge about its subject matter. As part of the series “Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics,” of which there already are over a score of widely appreciated titles on the market, the book is true to the stated objective of the series which is to cater to “second and third-year undergraduate, and postgraduate university students” who “have completed a first-year introductory course in general linguistics.”