Synopses & Reviews
The best-selling classic, known for its comprehensive and balanced coverage, has been updated to reflect the most current research in the field of linguistics.
Features
-- Assuming no prior knowledge, An Introduction to Language is appropriate for a variety of majors and has been used at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
-- Up-to-date descriptions of all major components of language -- phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics -- are discussed at an introductory level.
-- Discussions of American Sign Language, and other sign languages of deaf people, are woven throughout so that readers can appreciate that they are bona fide human languages with many of the same characteristics that are equivalent to spoken languages.
-- Every chapter ends with a summary to help the student review, a comprehensive list of references, suggestions for further reading, and exercises.
New to the Seventh Edition
-- Chapter 8, "Language Acquisition, " has been completely rewritten, reflecting the expertise of the new co-author, Nina Hymans.
-- Chapter 2, "Neurolinguistics, " has been significantly revised to reflect new findings and progress in the field.
-- Chapters 3 and 4, on morphology and syntax have been rewritten to reflect current thinking on how words and sentences are structured, in particular with regard to the concept of head.
-- Chapter 7, "Phonology, " now discusses current paradigms and emphasizes insights on linguistic data accompanied by small amounts of well-explicated formalisms. Thus the student can appreciate the need for formal theories without experiencing the burdensome details.
-- In Chapter 9, "Language Processing: Human andComputer, " the section on psycholinguistics has been updated to include recent discoveries, and the section on computational linguistics has been entirely revised to reflect progress in machine translation, speech synthesis, speech recognition, and language understanding.
-- Chapter 10, "Language in Society, " offers a new section on language and sexism.
-- Chapter 11, "Language Change, " includes a greatly expanded section on language extinction; and the chapter has also been restructured to improve clarity.
-- Chapter 12, on writing systems, discusses communicating over the Internet.
-- New exercises have been added, but the tried and true exercises of previous editions have been retained.
-- The glossary has been revised and expanded.
Review
". . . I appreciate the expertise this text represents. This is a solid scholarly study of linguistics."
Review
"It's the most comprehensive introduction to linguistics ever, and it never strays far from my elbow."
Review
"An Introduction to Language is comprehensive and inclusive. It gives students an excellent introduction to language study and outlines the concepts in general linguistics as well as sociolinguistics and recent work in language processing. There seems to be something for everyone."
Review
"I am pleased with the text's wide selection of topics--I feel like the students are getting more for their money. I encourage interested students to read further in the text--even after the course ends. I think many keep it as a reference for future work."
Synopsis
AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE is ideal for use at all levels and in many different areas of instruction including education, languages, psychology, anthropology, teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), and linguistics. All chapters in this best-seller have been substantially revised to reflect recent discoveries and new understanding of linguistics and languages.
About the Author
Victoria Fromkin received her bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1944 and her M.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1963 and 1965, respectively. She was a member of the faculty of the UCLA Department of Linguistics from 1966 until her death in 2000, and served as its chair from 1972 to 1976. From 1979 to 1989 she served as the UCLA Graduate Dean and Vice Chancellor of Graduate Programs. She was a visiting professor at the universities of Stockholm, Cambridge, and Oxford. Professor Fromkin served as president of the Linguistics Society of America in 1985, president of the Association of Graduate Schools in 1988, and chair of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Aphasia. She received the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award and the Professional Achievement Award, and served as the U.S. Delegate and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Permanent Committee of Linguistics (CIPL). She was an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Science, the American Psychological Society, and the Acoustical Society of America, and in 1996 was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. She published more than one hundred books, monographs, and papers on topics concerned with phonetics, phonology, tone languages, African languages, speech errors, processing models, aphasia, and the brain/mind/language interface--all research areas in which she worked. Professor Fromkin passed away on January 19, 2000, at the age of 76.Robert Rodman received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1961, a master's degree in mathematics in 1965, a master's degree in linguistics in 1971, and his Ph.D. in linguistics in 1973. He has been on the faculties of the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kyoto Industrial College in Japan, and North Carolina State University, where he is currently professor of computer science specializing in the areas of forensic linguistics and computer speech processing.Nina Hyams received her bachelor's degree in journalism from Boston University in 1973 and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in linguistics from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1981 and 1983, respectively. She joined the UCLA faculty in 1983, where she is currently professor of linguistics. Her main areas of research are childhood language development and syntax. She is author of the book LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND THE THEORY OF PARAMETERS (D. Reidel Publishers, 1986), a milestone in language acquisition research. She has also published numerous articles on the development of syntax, morphology, and semantics in children. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Utrecht and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and has given numerous lectures throughout Europe and Japan.
Table of Contents
Part 1: THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE. 1. What Is Language? Linguistic Knowledge. Linguistic Knowledge and Performance. What Is Grammar? Language Universals. Animal "Languages." Language and Thought. What We Know about Language. 2. Brain and Language. The Human Brain. The Autonomy of Language. Language and Brain Development. The Evolution of Language. Part 2: GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE. 3. Morphology: The Words of Language. Dictionaries. Content Words and Function Words. Morphemes: The Minimal Units of Meaning. Rules of Word Formation. Sign Language Morphology. Word Coinage. Inflectional Morphemes. Morphological Analysis: Identifying Morphemes. 4. Syntax: The Sentence Patterns of Language. What the Syntax Rules Do. Sentence Structure. Sentence Relatedness. UG Principles and Parameters. Sign Language Syntax. 5. The Meaning of Language. What Speakers Know about Sentence Meaning. Compositional Semantics. Lexical Semantics (Word Meanings). Pragmatics. 6. Phonetics: The Sounds of Language. Sound Segments. The Phonetic Alphabet. Articulatory Phonetics. Prosodic Features. Phonetic Symbols and Spelling Correspondences. The "Phonetics" of Signed Languages. 7. Phonology: The Sound Patterns of Language. The Pronunciation of Morphemes. Phonemes: The Phonological Units of Language. Distinctive Features of Phonemes. The Rules of Phonology. Prosodic Phonology. Sequential Constraints of Phonemes. Why Do Phonological Rules Exist? Phonological Analysis: Discovering Phonemes. Part 3: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE. 8. Language Acquisition. Mechanisms of Language Acquisition. Children Construct Grammars. Knowing More Than One Language. Second-Language Teaching Methods. Can Chimps Learn Human Language? 9. Language Processing: Humans and Computers. The Human Mind at Work: Human Language Processing. Computer Processing of Human Language. Part 4: LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY. 10. Language in Society. Dialects. Languages in Contact. Language in Use. Secret Languages and Language Games. 11. Language Change: The Syllables of Time. The Regularity of Sound Change. Phonological Change. Morphological Change. Syntactic Change. Lexical Change. Reconstructing "Dead" Languages. Extinct and Endangered Languages. The Genetic Classification of Languages. Types of Languages. Why Do Languages Change? 12. Writing: The ABCs of Language. The History of Writing. Modern Writing Systems. Reading, Writing, and Speech. Glossary. Index.