An Introduction to Language, International Edition - Softcover

Victoria A. Fromkin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1285079809 ISBN 13: 9781285079806

Publisher: Heinle & Heinle Publishers, 2013

Synopsis

Introduction-to-Language

About this title

About the Author:

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 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. 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 a 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, computer speech processing, and speaker verification and identification. Victoria Fromkin received her bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She was a member of the faculty of the UCLA Department of Linguistics from 1966 until her death, 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 in 2000, at the age of 76.

Review:

1. WHAT IS LANGUAGE? Linguistic Knowledge. What Is Grammar? Universal Grammar. What Is Not (Human) Language. Language and Thought. 2. MORPHOLOGY: THE WORDS OF LANGUAGE. Content Words and Function Words. Morphemes: The Minimal Units of Meaning. Rules of Word Formation. Sign Language Morphology. Morphological Analysis: Identifying Morphemes. 3. SYNTAX: THE SENTENCE PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE. What the Syntax Rules Do. Sentence Structure. UG Principles and Parameters. Sign Language Syntax. 4. THE MEANING OF LANGUAGE. What Speakers Know about Sentence Meaning. Compositional Semantics. When Compositionality Goes Awry. Lexical Semantics (Word Meanings). Pragmatics. 5. PHONETICS: THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE. Sound Segments. Articulatory Phonetics. Major Phonetic Classes. Prosodic Features. Phonetic Symbols and Spelling Correspondences. The "Phonetics" of Signed Languages. 6. PHONOLOGY: THE SOUND 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. 7. LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY. Dialects. Languages in Contact. Language and Education. Language in Use. 8. 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? 9.LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. The Linguistic Capacity of Children. Stages in Language Acquisition. The Role of the Linguistic Environment: Adult Input. Knowing More Than One Language. 10. LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND THE HUMAN BRAIN. The Human Mind at Work. The Human Brain. Language and Brain Development. The Modular Mind: Dissociations of Language and Cognition. 11. COMPUTER PROCESSING OF HUMAN LANGUAGE. Computers That Talk and Listen. Applications of Computational Linguistics. Computational Lexicography. 12. WRITING: THE ABCS OF LANGUAGE. The History of Writing. Modern Writing Systems. Writing and Speech. Pseudo-writing. Glossary. Index.

About this edition

• Publisher: Heinle & Heinle Publishers
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1285079809
• ISBN 13: 9781285079806
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 640