Customer Reviews

The Study of Language

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE is a basic linguistics introductory published by Cambridge University Press. Generally CUP's linguistics textbooks are the best in the field, so I acquired this book to see how its basic introduction was. Unfortunately, I was left very disappointed, and doubt that this is a trustworthy introduction to the field.

The first warning sign is that there is no biography of the author George Yule, and therefore the reader cannot see how he is qualified to prepare a textbook, where his graduate degrees are from, etc. The author then goes on to pepper his work with urban legends, such as the assertion that English spelling comes from Dutch printers, and the tired yarn that William James had a run-in with a crazy old lady who believed the world was on the back of a turtle.

However, the greatest mark against the book comes in its use of Bill Bryson as a source. Bryson produced two popular-linguistics books over ten years over, even though he had no training in linguistics. Many linguists have condemned the books for their abundance of urban legends, misunderstandings, and total lack of error-checking ("Eskimo's have 50 words for snow", "Russian has no word for "engagement ring" or "fun"). In THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE, Yule uses questionable passages from Bryson's books to illustrate points, and even seems to recommend them to students.

Concerning other aspects of the book, it does not seem usable. Yule spends very little time on phonetics and phonology, and introduces only concepts found in English, even though most students undoubtedly wish to know about more exotic languages. The insubstantial offerings on phonetics and phonology make this book entirely unsuitable for students of philology; how can you teach the comparative IE philologists of tomorrow if you don't even mention laryngeals? Yule also has an annoying tendency to speak to the reader as if he was a child. While this is an undergraduate textbook, it is written at the reading level of a high school work. The epigraphs of each chapter are amusing, but any writer who quotes "Beavis and Butthead" is certainly not teaching at an intellectual level.

In summary, I recommend against the use of THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE as a textbook. The book is clearly not trustworthy, and does not seem an effective and rigorous introduction to linguistics. I feel it would be better to teach from Cambridge University Press' individual introductions, such as Laver's PRINCIPLES OF PHONETICS, Lass' PHONOLOGY, etc.

It's not the most comprehensive, analytic, graphically-appealing of the many linguistics texts out there. But for undergraduates I've found it to be the most readable and practical. Students can handle the book in a single semester, insuring that they will come away with an understanding of what linguistics is about. If the goal is to produce linguists, I'd look to other texts.

This book is a good general introduction to the field of linguistics, and it can be used in a course on "linguistics lite", or as the basis of a more indepth course, if the instructor supplements it with other materials. Since the book includes so little example material, I have gotten good results when I've paired it with the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, which is a wonderful source of illustrations and specifics. (Students can buy both books and still come out cheaper than if they had bought just one of the really miserable introductory texts that are in common use.) It has some good exercises in it, but I've found that the instructions need explaining, because for some reason, even though they seem clear, my students find them confusing.
In general, I liked this book very much, as did my students, but there is one very serious defect, which the instructor must address. The typesetter chose to use a sans serif font for phonetic transcription, and the result of this is that the character for a high front lax vowel is indistinguishable from /l/. This is very confusing for the students, but I've found that making up my own vowel and consonant charts as a handout has remedied the problem. I hope this is fixed in the next edition.

This book is a good basic introduction to the field of Linguistics. Most of the subfields of Linguistics are covered. Of particular interest are the chapters on second-language acquisition and dialects. As a language teacher, I found that by reading this book, I could understand a little more about how to explain the language I teach. If you teach, it really helps to understand the basic building blocks of a language. As I mentioned, this is an introductory level book, but the great thing about it is that it provides a reading list for each subfield, so you can easily find a lot of books to read in the subfields you're interested in. If you're thinking of studying Linguistics, get this book first to see if it interests you before you commit.

One point of caution--this book tries to present the field of Linguistics from the viewpoint of the development of the field. In reviewing the history of Linguistics for each subfield, the book covers some theories that have been disproven or are currently out of fashion. Be careful to read this critically.

This book certainly doesn't confuse the student with too many messy details, but it's good for a general idea of what linguistics are about. The introductory passages for the seperate chapters were well chosen for their diversity and humor, though they weren't always very illustrative as far as the subject in the chapter goes. This book is required reading for all Students of English at my University in Germany, but it is not intended for study in greater depth.

This book covers every part of the language study, and one can get introductory concepts and knowledge of language and its study. In this respect, this can be used as a textbook for undergraduate classes and as an introductory book for general. It doesn't have any chapter to skip, and is not too lengthy. I have chosen this book for my students in the Introduction to Language classes.

I very much enjoyed this book, as introductory material for language training.
I definitely see it being used in classrooms, as it brings many exercises and topics for discussion.

Probably the best introduction into the vast field of linguistics. George Yule covers all parts of language studies; and his book is highly readable (actually entertaining) to boot. Highly recommended for undergraduate classes or as an introductory book in general.

As others have already noted, this book by George Yule is not really comprehensive, but the concepts in this publication are well explained and clarified by tables and examples. Yule reviews disparate and competing theories on the origin of language. He also includes material on phonology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics. There are even chapters on discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and second language acquisition/learning. One could not ask for a more useful intro to the study of language. Lastly, Yule's approach is relaxed and sprinkled with humor. Is it ok to split the infinitive as the show Star Trek does in the sentence, "To boldly go where no man has gone before"? What is the difference between a free morpheme and a bound morpheme? Read Yule to find out the answer to that question, if you don't already know. All in all, a five star read.

It arrived on time and the state of the product was pretty good, a few pencil highlights but nothing major. It is a very easy to read book as well very educational. I simply loved it!