Linguistics - 4th Edition [Paperback]

Adrian Akmajian (Author), Richard A. Demers (Author), Ann K. Farmer (Author), Robert M. Harnish (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262510863 | ISBN-13: 978-0262510868 | Publication Date: August 31, 1995 | Edition: 4

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.

Editorial Reviews

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 UniversityAdrian 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

(Susannah Levi )

"The sixth 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

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 530 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; 4 edition (August 31, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262510863
• ISBN-13: 978-0262510868
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,585,812 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent intro text, December 24, 2003

By 

magellan (Santa Clara, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Linguistics, 2nd Edition: An Introduction to Language and Communication (Hardcover)

This is the second edition and fourth printing of this popular text by Akmajian, Demers, and Harnish at the University of Arizona. Although this text is now over 15 years old, it's still a fine introduction to the subject. One nice thing about the book is that the prose is not too technical for the beginning reader while providing excellent coverage of the important concepts and technical points. This is often a problem with linguistics texts since, unlike other technical subjects, most people have little or no background in linguistics before taking their first real course in the subject, and having previously learned a foreign language isn't as helpful as many students might think since much of linguistics, especially in the transformational grammar and generative grammar and analytical syntax areas, is a highly technical, formal, and even mathematical discipline now.

As I am mainly a neuroscientist and secondarily a linguist, I was most interested in Part 3 of this book. The first two parts present the usual linguistics topics such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, language variation, and evolution. Part 3 deals with the area of Psycholinguistics, and there are four chapters discussing language from the standpoint of Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology. The four chapters are: Pragmatics: The Study of Language Use and Communication; Speech Production and Comprehension; Language Acquisition in Chimp and Child;, and Language and the Brain. The chapter on the brain might be a little too basic for neuroscience students, but it's an excellent introduction for the linguistics students, and I noticed that a number of the classic experiments such as the famous "Wada test" and dichotic listening experiments were discussed, as well as topics like conduction aphasia, Broca's aphasia, Wernicke's aphasia, hemispheric localization and dominance, and so on.

Overall still a fine text and worth picking up used if you can find it, when it will be bargain for the price.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!, February 8, 2008

By 

M. Gongora (Mesa, AZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication (Paperback)

This is a great book... I had to read it in a period of 9 weeks; and that is a lot for me, I like taking my time, but with this book I only wanted to keep going. The definitions were simple and I did not have to go back and read again because I got lost somewhere in the text.

16 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great book for learning linguistics, July 15, 2002

By 

"blanchefleur" (JPN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication (Paperback)

As the titele shows, this book is an intro to English linguistics. It covers almost all the fields of linguistics---morphology, phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. In this book, there are many examples, tables, and exercises. You can learn synthetic concepts of linguistics by reading the book. English is rather easy so even the foreign people can make good use of the textbook. You can rethink about the language and communication and it will be very interesting.