Linguistics - 4th Edition - Softcover

Adrian Akmajian; Richard A. Demers; Ann K. Farmer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262510863 ISBN 13: 9780262510868

Publisher: The MIT Press, 1995

Synopsis

The fourth edition of Linguistics has been thoroughly updated and revised to reflect the increasing confluence of linguistics and cognitive science. This is especially evident in the chapter on language acquisition, which now includes sections on the acquisition of morphology, syntax, and pragmatic competence. More special topics have also been added to give teachers greater freedom to shape courses to their own interests. The basic structure of the book, however, remains unchanged, with its focus on a small set of linguistic concepts that are fundamental to the field and that will allow students to get a feel for how work in different areas of linguistics is actually done. A new and expanded third edition of the companion Linguistics Workbook adds complementary material on universals and cross-language data.

Linguistics is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the structural and interpretive aspects of language: morphology, phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, language variation, and language change. The second part is cognitively oriented and includes chapters on pragmatics, the psychology of language, language acquisition, and language and the brain. This new edition adds special topics to the chapters on morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, acquisition, and language and the brain.

About this title

About the Author:

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

Richard A. Demers is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona.

Ann K. Farmer is an Information Engineer at Google.

Robert M. Harnish is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Arizona.

Review:

Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication has long served as the yardstick introductory textbook to Linguistics. This new edition continues in that tradition, offering a carefully updated presentation of diverse aspects of the discipline. The text succeeds in being engaging without sacrificing conceptual sophistication or analytic accuracy, it challenges the reader without overwhelming. Its comprehensive coverage of traditional linguistic topics combined with its cognitive science perspective makes this textbook uniquely adaptable for a broad range of courses. It is to my mind the best overall single volume for making state-of-the-art linguistics accessible to the novice student.

(Steven Franks, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures; Chair and Professor of Linguistics, Indiana University, Adrian Akmajian, Richard A. Demers, Ann K. Farmer, and Robert M. Harnish)

The 6th edition of Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication is a wonderful introductory textbook for linguistics. The book is flexible enough to be used in both introductory and more advanced survey courses by including more advanced special topic sections and lengthy reference lists for the interested student. It also combines 'famous' linguistic examples (e.g., Canadian raising) in the presentation of the material and in the exercises with new and clever examples (e.g, 'Cops-ization') to give students a range of linguistic data to consider.

(Susannah Levi, Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, New York University)

About this edition

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0262510863
• ISBN 13: 9780262510868
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 530