Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication

This new and more comprehensive edition of Linguistics has, on the basis of classroom use, comments from linguists via a questionnaire, and letters sent to the authors, been radically rewritten and reorganized to accommodate the needs of teachers and students. The text is suitable for use in introductory courses in linguistics, and as a supplement in courses such as communication, language and literature, anthropology, speech and hearing, and psychology.

In the first part of the book, Background, the material on animal communication has been shortened and is now a single chapter. In the second part, The Structure of Human Language, the chapters on morphology, phonology, language variation, and language change have been totally revised. The book now contains a new section, Human Communication and Cognitive Science, which contains a completely rewritten chapter on pragmatics, and new chapters on the psychology of language and language acquisition. Exercises have been made easier to use and are graded in difficulty. A "key words" section has been added to appropriate chapters, and the book now contains a glossary.

The late Adrian Akmajian was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona.