How Language Works

Author: David Crystal
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141911735
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 715

Book Description
In this fascinating survey of everything from how sounds become speech to how names work, David Crystal answers every question you might ever have had about the nuts and bolts of language in his usual highly illuminating way. Along the way we find out about eyebrow flashes, whistling languages, how parents teach their children to speak, how politeness travels across languages and how the way we talk show not just how old we are but where we’re from and even who we want to be.

How Languages Work

Author: Carol Genetti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107782570
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 677

Book Description
A new and exciting introduction to linguistics, this textbook presents language in all its amazing complexity, while guiding students gently through the basics. Students emerge with an appreciation of the diversity of the world's languages, as well as a deeper understanding of the structure of human language, the ways it is used, and its broader social and cultural context. Chapters introducing the nuts and bolts of language study (phonology, syntax, meaning) are combined with those on the 'functions' of language (discourse, prosody, pragmatics, and language contact), helping students gain a better grasp of how language works in the real world. A rich set of language 'profiles' help students explore the world's linguistic diversity, identify similarities and differences between languages, and encourages them to apply concepts from earlier chapter material. A range of carefully designed pedagogical features encourage student engagement, adopting a step-by-step approach and using study questions and case studies.

How Language Works

Author: David Crystal
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 522

Book Description
Ranges from how children learn to read to what makes words rude or polite, from eyebrow flashes to whistling languages. Unlocking the secrets of communication in an accessible, entertaining way, this book sheds light on the endless mysteries we speak, write and read every day.

I Saw the Dog

Author: Alexandra Aikhenvald
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1782833218
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Book Description
Every language in the world shares a few common features: we can ask a question, say something belongs to us, and tell someone what to do. But beyond that, our languages are richly and almost infinitely varied: a French speaker can't conceive of a world that isn't split into un and une, male and female, while Estonians have only one word for both men and women: tema. In Dyirbal, an Australian language, things might be masculine, feminine, neuter - or edible vegetable. Every language tells us something about the people who use it. In I Saw the Dog, linguist Alexandra Aikhenvald takes us from the remote swamplands of Papua New Guinea to the university campuses of North America to illuminate the vital importance of names, the value of being able to say exactly what you mean, what language can tell us about what it means to be human - and what we lose when they disappear forever.

The Language Instinct

Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062032526
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 578

Book Description
"A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book Review The classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind In The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

Language of Early Childhood

Author: M.A.K. Halliday
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826488250
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 430

Book Description
Professor M A K Halliday has been enriching the discipline of linguistics with his keen insights into the social semiotic phenomenon we call language. This ten-volume series presents his seminal works. This fourth volume contains sixteen papers that look at the development of early childhood language. They are presented in three parts.

Language and the Joint Creation of Knowledge

Author: Neil Mercer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429683634
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Book Description
In the World Library of Educationalists series, international experts themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces – extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and practical contributions – so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field. Language and the Joint Creation of Knowledge draws on the most prominent writing of Neil Mercer, covering his ground-breaking and critically acclaimed work on the role of talk in education, and on the relationship between spoken language and cognition. The text explores key themes, relating theoretical ideas to research evidence and to practical educational situations that improve children’s lives. Offering students and researchers a clear, accessible and up-to-date account of a sociocultural perspective on the relationship between spoken language and cognition, it explains one of the key themes in Neil Mercer’s work – that humans have uniquely evolved the capacity to think together, or ‘interthink’. Offering a crucial insight into the work of Neil Mercer, this selection showcases why his approach has become the dominant paradigm in educational research, and why it is increasingly influential in the psychology of teaching and learning. This unique collection of published articles and chapters, which represent the key themes and range of his research over the last 40 years, will be of interest to all followers of his work and any reader interested in the role of language in education.

How Conversation Works

Author: Ronald Wardhaugh
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631139393
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
Conversation is very often spontaneous, natural and informal. But even at its most casual it is governed by rules and principles of language and behaviour. This book lays bare the structure of conversation, describing what happens when people talk to each other and explaining why they say what they say in a wide variety of circumstances. Ronald Wardhaugh explores many aspects of conversation, asking how conversations start, how we decide who will speak next, how we change the subject, and how we know when a conversation has finished. How Conversation Works is the most accessible guide to discourse analysis and pragmatics yet written and will be read with profit and enjoyment by students and general readers alike.

Language and Education

Author: M.A.K. Halliday
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441131264
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Book Description
The ninth volume in Professor M.A.K. Halliday's collected works is dedicated to the subject of language and education. Professor Halliday sums up the scope of language education under the following five headings: mother tongue education; second language learning; multilingual societies; contexts of language education; and educational linguistics. In addition to the previously unpublished Applied Linguistics as an Evolving Theme (2002) originally presented by Professor Halliday on the occasion of his being awarded the first Gold Medal by the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA), this volume contains another nineteen papers covering a comprehensive breadth of topics in language and education addressed by Professor Halliday over the course of his career. The chapters cover language development, language teaching, multilingualism, functional variation in language, and the place of linguistics in education.

Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language

Author: David Shariatmadari
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324004266
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
A linguist’s entertaining and highly informed guide to what languages are and how they function. Think you know language? Think again. There are languages that change when your mother-in-law is present. The language you speak could make you more prone to accidents. Swear words are produced in a special part of your brain. Over the past few decades, we have reached new frontiers of linguistic knowledge. Linguists can now explain how and why language changes, describe its structures, and map its activity in the brain. But despite these advances, much of what people believe about language is based on folklore, instinct, or hearsay. We imagine a word’s origin is it’s “true” meaning, that foreign languages are full of “untranslatable” words, or that grammatical mistakes undermine English. In Don’t Believe A Word, linguist David Shariatmadari takes us on a mind-boggling journey through the science of language, urging us to abandon our prejudices in a bid to uncover the (far more interesting) truth about what we do with words. Exploding nine widely held myths about language while introducing us to some of the fundamental insights of modern linguistics, Shariatmadari is an energetic guide to the beauty and quirkiness of humanity’s greatest achievement.