Geoffrey K. Pullum

Language is the medium in which we humans compose our thoughts, explain our thinking, construct our arguments, and create works of literature. Without language, societies as complex as ours could not exist. Geoffrey Pullum offers a stimulating introduction to the many ways in which linguistics, as the scientific study of language, matters. With its close relationships to psychology, education, philosophy, and computer science, the subject has a compelling human story to tell about the ways in which different societies see and describe the world, and its far-reaching applications range from law to medicine and from developmental psychology to artificial intelligence. Introducing Polity’s Why It Matters series; in these short and lively books, world-leading thinkers make the case for the importance of their subjects and aim to inspire a new generation of students.

Why It Matters

Linguistics

Mark Liberman

Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log

Desmond C. Derbyshire

The fourth volume in a series on the languages of Amazonia. This volume includes grammatical descriptions of Wai Wai, Warekena, a comparative survey of morphosyntactic features of the Tupi-Guarani languages, and a paper on interclausal reference phenomena in Amahuaca.

Handbook of Amazonian Languages

HANDBOOK AMAZONIAN LANGUAGES

How reliable are all those stories about the number of Eskimo words for snow? How can lamps, flags, and parrots be libelous? These and many other odd questions are typical topics in this collection of essays that present and occasionally zany, often wry, but always fascinating look at language and the people who study it.

The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language

Rodney D. Huddleston

This grammar for the 21st century combines clear grammatical principles with non-technical explanations of all terms and concepts used.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language

Rodney Huddleston

This groundbreaking undergraduate textbook on modern Standard English grammar is the first to be based on the revolutionary advances of the authors' previous work, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002). The analyses defended there are outlined here more briefly, in an engagingly accessible and informal style. Errors of the older tradition of English grammar are noted and corrected, and the excesses of prescriptive usage manuals are firmly rebutted in specially highlighted notes that explain what older authorities have called 'incorrect' and show why those authorities are mistaken. This book is intended for students in colleges or universities who have little or no previous background in grammar, and presupposes no linguistics. It contains exercises, and will provide a basis for introductions to grammar and courses on the structure of English not only in linguistics departments but also in English language and literature departments and schools of education.

A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

William A. Ladusaw

Phonetic Symbol Guide is a comprehensive and authoritative encyclopedia of phonetic alphabet symbols, providing a complete survey of the hundreds of characters used by linguists and speech scientists to record the sounds of the world's languages. This fully revised second edition incorporates the major revisions to the International Phonetic Alphabet made in 1989 and 1993. Also covered are the American tradition of transcription stemming from the anthropological school of Franz Boas; the Bloch/Smith/Trager style of transcription; the symbols used by dialectologists of the English language; usages of specialists such as Slavicists, Indologists, Sinologists, and Africanists; and the transcription proposals found in all major textbooks of phonetics. With sixty-one new entries, an expanded glossary of phonetic terms, added symbol charts, and a full index, this book will be an indispensable reference guide for students and professionals in linguistics, phonetics, anthropology, philology, modern language study, and speech science.

Geoffrey K. Pullum

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