Denham Kristin, Lobeck Anne. Linguistics for Everyone. An Introduction

Second Edition. — Cengage Learning, 2012. — 547 p.Linguistics is the scientific study of language. You might think, when you see the word scientific, that linguistics is not for you and that a scientific approach to language will be dry, technical, and of no real relevance to your everyday life. In fact, just the opposite is true: the
scientific study of language is not just interesting but far more fun than peering into a test tube, because the laboratory in which we construct experiments, gather data, and form theories is everyday life, where we use language all the time.Linguistics for Everyone will lead you through the story of language, of how we acquire it as children and how it changes over time. We look at how language varies from country to country, region to region, and even city to city. Drawing on both scholarship and experience, we discuss what’s true about language and what’s not. Some exciting research is under way (e.g., Is there a gene for language? Is the left side of the brain better at language than the right? Does watching TV help babies learn language?), and misconceptions abound (e.g., French is more romantic than German, English descended from Latin, some languages are more advanced or more primitive than others, people who say gonna are using sloppy speech). We explore many of our ideas about language, not all of which are based on linguistic facts; many are rooted in social and cultural (mis)perceptions. We also take a new look at grammar, which you might think of as the list of rules you learned in school, but you will learn about the rules of language that allow you to produce and understand sentences you’ve never said or heard before.
Language is part of almost everything we do, and knowing more about it tells us more about ourselves.What Is Language and How Do We Study It?
The Human Capacity for Language.
Phonetics: Describing Sounds.
Phonology: The Sound Patterns of Language.
Morphology: Words and Their Parts.
Morphological Typology and Word Formation.
Syntax: Heads and Phrases.
Syntax: Phrase Structure and Syntactic Rules.
Semantics: Making Meaning with Words.
Semantics and Pragmatics: Making Meaning with Sentences.
The Early Story of English.
English Goes Global.
Representing Language: The Written Word.
The Life Cycle of Language.Library of Congress Control Number: 2011940389
ISBN13: 978-1-111-34438-2
ISBN10: 1-111-34438-8
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