An Introduction to Language and Linguistics Breaking the Language Spell

by Hall, Christopher J.

• ISBN13: 9780826487339
• ISBN10: 0826487335
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-02-20
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

'Christopher Hall's book is the best new introduction to linguistics that I have seen in decades. It is engagingly written without talking down to the reader and it covers all the subparts of the field in a comprehensive and even-handed manner. I pla

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Part I: Magic	1	(46)
1 The Spell	3	(25)
Thought and sound...with language in between	4	(3)
Under the spell of language	7	(5)
The spell is cast: linguistic awareness and linguistic belief	12	(14)
More information	26	(2)
2 Linguistics	28	(19)
Linguistics, applied linguistics and the language professions	29	(5)
Breaking the spell: linguistic knowledge	34	(11)
More information	45	(2)
Part II: Words	47	(84)
3 Names, Words and Things	49	(36)
Problems with names	49	(8)
Words, meanings and thought	57	(19)
So what is a word?	76	(8)
More information	84	(1)
4 Where Words Come From	85	(25)
How children put names and things together	85	(9)
Behind The Dictionary	94	(14)
More information	108	(2)
5 Forming Words	110	(21)
Word forms: speech and spelling	110	(12)
Creating new lexical forms	122	(6)
More information	128	(3)
Part III: Grammar	131	(78)
6 Morphology	133	(21)
Morphological combination	133	(8)
Where affixes come from	141	(13)
More information	n153
7 Syntax	154	(33)
Syntactic combination	155	(16)
Syntax and pragmatics: conventional meaning in novel contexts	171	(6)
Syntactic rules	177	(8)
More information	185	(2)
8 From DNA to Discourse Community	187	(22)
Acquiring the rules	187	(10)
Pragmatics: sentences in use	197	(11)
More information	208	(1)
Part IV: Babel	209	(91)
9 Interlinguistic Diversity	211	(27)
Languages of the world	212	(10)
Multilingualism	222	(14)
More information	236	(2)
10 Diversity Within	238	(32)
Styles and registers	239	(12)
Dialects and accents	251	(6)
Linguistic diversity, education and power	257	(11)
More information	268	(2)
11 The Spell unbroken	270	(30)
Language biology	271	(8)
Language evolution	279	(10)
Living under the Language Spell	289	(9)
More information	298	(2)
Sources	300	(5)
Bibliography	305	(5)
Glossary	310	(23)
Subject Index	333	(10)
Scholar Index	343