A clear, accessible introduction to language and its origins, from a leading scholar.
This is a single-volume set of lectures that explains what language is, where it comes from, and how it grows. It emphasizes clear, practical ideas over jargon, making complex topics easy to grasp for readers and students alike. The work aims to be widely adopted as a textbook, guiding readers from familiar ideas toward more advanced concepts.
The book surveys language’s nature, origin, growth, and classifications, while exploring its ethnological connections and its value to humankind. It treats methods gently, showing how linguistic study can illuminate thought, culture, and history without getting bogged down in technical terminology.
- Foundational concepts in language described in plain terms
- How languages develop, change, and relate to one another
- Early, accessible discussion of philology and linguistic methods
- Scope for classroom instruction and self-guided study
Ideal for students, educators, and curious readers who want a solid, readable introduction to language and its study.
William Dwight Whitney (1827-94) was the foremost American philologist and Sanskrit scholar of the nineteenth century. This 1867 work brought recent German scholarship to a wider Anglophone audience. He deals with English and its variants (including American English), the Indo-European language family and methods of linguistic research.