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"Teach Yourself Linguistics" is a straightforward introduction to linguistics, the systematic study that seeks to answer two fundamental questions: "What is language?" and "How does language work?" This book outlines the scope of linguistics, explaining the basic concepts and essential terminology. It discusses sound patterning, syntax, and meaning, as well as the rapidly growing areas of pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and stylistics. And it explores language and linguistic typology, as well as contemporary uses of language and style in literature, advertising, and newspapers.
504 pages, Unknown Binding
First published August 1, 1992
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About the author
Jean Aitchison
46 books55 followersJean Aitchison is a Professor of Language and Communication in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford.
Her main areas of interest include:
Socio-historical linguistics
Language and mind
Language and the media
Her main areas of interest include:
Socio-historical linguistics
Language and mind
Language and the media
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April 25, 2019I recall there were a few chapters on Chomsky in this book and I imagine that's been revised in subsequent editions as some of his ideas have fallen out of favour as research progresses, and we have more knowledge about the degree of diversity in human language.
My take away from this book was the idea of pragmatics - that by being able to understand language pragmatically rather than literally we are able to hear phases like 'sunbathing' without having to panic or be disturbed, so long as everybody has a shared set of references.
On reflection this doesn't seem like much to have learnt from two hundred pages of book, too bad I can't go sun bathing to make up for this.
My take away from this book was the idea of pragmatics - that by being able to understand language pragmatically rather than literally we are able to hear phases like 'sunbathing' without having to panic or be disturbed, so long as everybody has a shared set of references.
On reflection this doesn't seem like much to have learnt from two hundred pages of book, too bad I can't go sun bathing to make up for this.
December 18, 2018
نبذة عن الكتاب :
يقع الكتاب في 18 فصل ابتدأته المؤلفة بتعريف علم اللسانيات وأهدافه وما يدرسه . أن هذا الكتاب هو حقا مقدمة إلى المقدمات فهو يمتاز ببساطة في البداية ويبدأ مستوى التعقيد بالصعود فصل بعد فصل . بعد التعريف بهذا العلم تبدأ الكاتب بتعريف اللغة ومكوناتها من أصوات وكلمات ومعاني وكيف ترتبط هذه ببعضها البعض لكي تكون نظام بسيط يمكننا التعرف عليه . بعد ذلك تنتقل الكاتب إلى فروع هذا العلم المختلفة من –اللغويات التاريخية, الأجتماعية ,النفسية ... – وثم ختمت الكتاب بتبيين جهود العالم الشهير تشومنسكي ونظرياته التي أصدرها في الخمسينات ثم عدلها ثم بشكل مفاجئ أنقلب عليها . ثم أنهت الكتاب بوصف لحالة العجز الكبير في بنية هذا العلم حاليا بسبب ضعف النظريات الحالية والسعي الحثيث من قبل العلماء لحل مشاكل العلم الرئيسية مثل أيجاد اللغة الأم والنحو الكلي وغيرها من المواضيع .
خصص هذا الكتاب للدراسة للجامعية أو الدراسة الذاتية وهو يصلح بكلى الطريقتين . علي الاعتراف أني تهت في كثير من الجوانب خصوصا في المسائل النحوية فانا لم أكن جيداً في النحو العربي أو الانكليزي لكن على العموم كان هذا الكتاب تجربة ممتعة ومفيدة ولن أمانع أعادتها في يوماً ما.
لقد ساعد المترجم كثيراً في شرح كثير من النقاط وتبسيطها ومجرد قدرته على ترجمة هذا النوع من الكتب التي تتكلم عن النحو في اللغة الانكليزية للغة العربية هي أنجاز عظيم بحد ذاته.
يقع الكتاب في 18 فصل ابتدأته المؤلفة بتعريف علم اللسانيات وأهدافه وما يدرسه . أن هذا الكتاب هو حقا مقدمة إلى المقدمات فهو يمتاز ببساطة في البداية ويبدأ مستوى التعقيد بالصعود فصل بعد فصل . بعد التعريف بهذا العلم تبدأ الكاتب بتعريف اللغة ومكوناتها من أصوات وكلمات ومعاني وكيف ترتبط هذه ببعضها البعض لكي تكون نظام بسيط يمكننا التعرف عليه . بعد ذلك تنتقل الكاتب إلى فروع هذا العلم المختلفة من –اللغويات التاريخية, الأجتماعية ,النفسية ... – وثم ختمت الكتاب بتبيين جهود العالم الشهير تشومنسكي ونظرياته التي أصدرها في الخمسينات ثم عدلها ثم بشكل مفاجئ أنقلب عليها . ثم أنهت الكتاب بوصف لحالة العجز الكبير في بنية هذا العلم حاليا بسبب ضعف النظريات الحالية والسعي الحثيث من قبل العلماء لحل مشاكل العلم الرئيسية مثل أيجاد اللغة الأم والنحو الكلي وغيرها من المواضيع .
خصص هذا الكتاب للدراسة للجامعية أو الدراسة الذاتية وهو يصلح بكلى الطريقتين . علي الاعتراف أني تهت في كثير من الجوانب خصوصا في المسائل النحوية فانا لم أكن جيداً في النحو العربي أو الانكليزي لكن على العموم كان هذا الكتاب تجربة ممتعة ومفيدة ولن أمانع أعادتها في يوماً ما.
لقد ساعد المترجم كثيراً في شرح كثير من النقاط وتبسيطها ومجرد قدرته على ترجمة هذا النوع من الكتب التي تتكلم عن النحو في اللغة الانكليزية للغة العربية هي أنجاز عظيم بحد ذاته.
July 7, 2021
Aitchison is one of the best when it comes to intro Lingu books :)
Currently reading
February 1, 2016Ok, now for one more of my pre-reading rants.
I used not to give two hoots about language, coming as I do from as linguistically impoverished a country as Singapore. Here, the English language is a mangled, cumbersome tool of day-to-day communication. The prevailing attitude of the Singapore peoples is that it is ok to talk about everything using crude approximations, relying on gestures and phrases borrowed from Chinese and Malay to suggest, and I say 'suggest' rather than 'express', what is on one's mind. There used to be, in the past, many more national discussions about the rampant use of 'Singlish' back in the day when the country's founding father, essentially a (final-vestiges-of-the) colonial-era, Cambridge-educated gentleman, was still around. Singlish can be described as somewhat pidgin-esque, though still fundamentally an English construct that has its own simplified though well-understood grammatical rules and unique particles.
For example, instead of the Western (Australian?) colloquial truncation 'hey, what'cha doin', mate?', Singlish has 'eh, what you doing ah?' or even 'eh, you doing what ah?'. Particles like ah, eh, meh, mah, ya, aiyo, aiya, sia seem to originate from rhetorical (what's the appropriate word here...) constructs in Chinese, such as, in this case, '喂， 你做什么呀?', ‘wei, ni］ zuo ］shen me ］ya?' 'Wei, you］ do ］what］, ya?'. There are many other such chimeric grammatical constructions, and other particles involving the Malay lah & leh, as well as loh, which seems to be a hybrid with the Chinese 了 'le'.
Civil society as imagined in the western sense of democratic institutions and rights still doesn't really exist in Singapore, except in an adolescent sort of way, given that that is the primary demographic of its enthusiasts. However, Chinese civil society continues to play a strong, though waning dominance over the way Chinese Singaporeans conduct their lives. As far as I can tell, it is very rare to find a Singaporean Chinese person who is as much cognizant of Western as they are Chinese culture, or vice versa. The new guard has left the old guard behind, with an increasingly great rift between those who accept the fundamental tenets of liberalism, and those to whom society is an artifact within which one is rather trapped. This is a pity, since Chinese culture is so fundamentally different in the way it imagines the individual and one's way of life. The exception is probably a small class of well-to-do, highly-educated families, very much in keeping with the manner of Lee Kuan Yew and his stock, who are able to look beyond the limits of their own culture and its fads and fetishes. Some of them lose their measured understanding of the world for rabid liberalism. Nevertheless, this sector of what I would call sane progressive society in Singapore is rather small.
My point about all this is that the shallowness in a country's literary and civil consciousness leads to a shallowness in their language, and vice versa. It really does show when interviews are conducted offhand on the streets. In Europe (maybe not America) people come off as rather intelligent and thoughtful all round, very much in vogue with their country's and europe's national or regional consciousness. In Thailand, Japan or the Middle East, people express themselves with great fluency and intelligence in their native languages. In Singapore however, one is likely to be treated to a garbled mess of halting 'Singlish' and muddled thoughts, plus a distinctive Southeast-Asian small-mindedness. These things show that contrary to what Singapore's consistent performance in various worldwide educational benchmarks might suggest, Singaporeans are not at all 'well-educated'. To take as a counter-example, consider Hong Kong students, many of whom are eloquent in Mandarin, English (both of which are learnt in the classroom) as well as their native cantonese.
This is not to say Singaporeans are not intelligent: they are, and have their wits about them in most areas of life. Rather, what Singaporeans seem unable to do is to take questions of larger importance seriously. On the one hand there seems to be something pleasant about this down to earth attitude, but if only one would observe more carefully, it seems rather a case of a willfull ignorance towards matters of societal and moral importance. In choosing to acqueisce to the heavy hand of the government in exchange for personal (and moral) comfort, it seems the 'social contract' in our case is really a deal with the devil...
To my mind, Singapore's educational failings is an excellent case-study in the dangers of 'social engineering' a national language, as Lee Kuan Yew did in the 70s and 80s. Everyone wants to clamour on board (the English bandwagon) but no one does it particularly well. It also attests to the true difficulty of forging a national identity among peoples of distinct ethnic and cultural backgrounds. By contrast, Hong Kong doesn't have the racial and linguistic diversity that we do, and one has to conclude that something down here went wrong that down there went right, not just in language education, but education in general. One could never, for example, expect there to be a mass demonstration akin to Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement right here in Singapore, given our government's continuing tacit supression of civil liberties and the ubiquitous lack of a spirit of independent judgement among citizens. Even the recent election day stirrings in my country have been less to do with a country awakening into a new political awareness than the grumblings of a dissatisfied and ungrateful ken. By contrast, there seems to be a strong consensus among the young people of Hong Kong that if they want their freedom, they are going to have to fight for it, even though from what I can tell, there exists in Hong Kong the same rampant authoritarianism as there does in China, thanks to mainland pressure.
These are just impressions though, based in casual observations and unreliable memory. A serious linguistic study of Singapore, its mother tongues, Singlish, its educational programmes, ethnicity and ‘culture’, as well as class and socio-economic status, together with more detailed comparisons with Hong Kong's educational programme should prove more interesting and insightful than these offhand remarks. Plus, I have been long out of touch with the mainland Chinese students of my high school (all of whom enjoyed education and civil life in my country but who, unlike me, have not been conscripted to act, for the duration of two years, as cheap manpower for the country's national security programme). Well, my point is that I can't give an all too accurate account of mainland Chinese.
The introduction in this book attempts to paint the linguist as a value-neutral scientist. The use of language, he states rightly, isn't bound to absolute or unchanging standards of 'correctness'. Yet there are standards which linguists should be inspired to uphold, for the tremendous capacity for language to express human thoughts and shape human minds can be diminished by incorrect and lackadaisical use. Demanding that language is both precise and expressive can lead, I strongly believe, to the improvement of mind.
As children we knew of things neither their conceptual distinctions nor their words. Positing the words first can force the mind to search for and label meaningful distinctions in our perceptions of reality. Language is above all a heritage, a conceptual and symbollic programme guided by usefulness, and it accumulates wisdom over the many years of its development. The deterioration of language, and language use in society, is the deteriortion of thought, and the thoughts of society.
Back to track, there seems to be definitive, if sometimes irregular structure to every language, both a regular grammar and a regularity in lexicon, which was, really, what I had originally wanted to write about...
I used not to give two hoots about language, coming as I do from as linguistically impoverished a country as Singapore. Here, the English language is a mangled, cumbersome tool of day-to-day communication. The prevailing attitude of the Singapore peoples is that it is ok to talk about everything using crude approximations, relying on gestures and phrases borrowed from Chinese and Malay to suggest, and I say 'suggest' rather than 'express', what is on one's mind. There used to be, in the past, many more national discussions about the rampant use of 'Singlish' back in the day when the country's founding father, essentially a (final-vestiges-of-the) colonial-era, Cambridge-educated gentleman, was still around. Singlish can be described as somewhat pidgin-esque, though still fundamentally an English construct that has its own simplified though well-understood grammatical rules and unique particles.
For example, instead of the Western (Australian?) colloquial truncation 'hey, what'cha doin', mate?', Singlish has 'eh, what you doing ah?' or even 'eh, you doing what ah?'. Particles like ah, eh, meh, mah, ya, aiyo, aiya, sia seem to originate from rhetorical (what's the appropriate word here...) constructs in Chinese, such as, in this case, '喂， 你做什么呀?', ‘wei, ni］ zuo ］shen me ］ya?' 'Wei, you］ do ］what］, ya?'. There are many other such chimeric grammatical constructions, and other particles involving the Malay lah & leh, as well as loh, which seems to be a hybrid with the Chinese 了 'le'.
Civil society as imagined in the western sense of democratic institutions and rights still doesn't really exist in Singapore, except in an adolescent sort of way, given that that is the primary demographic of its enthusiasts. However, Chinese civil society continues to play a strong, though waning dominance over the way Chinese Singaporeans conduct their lives. As far as I can tell, it is very rare to find a Singaporean Chinese person who is as much cognizant of Western as they are Chinese culture, or vice versa. The new guard has left the old guard behind, with an increasingly great rift between those who accept the fundamental tenets of liberalism, and those to whom society is an artifact within which one is rather trapped. This is a pity, since Chinese culture is so fundamentally different in the way it imagines the individual and one's way of life. The exception is probably a small class of well-to-do, highly-educated families, very much in keeping with the manner of Lee Kuan Yew and his stock, who are able to look beyond the limits of their own culture and its fads and fetishes. Some of them lose their measured understanding of the world for rabid liberalism. Nevertheless, this sector of what I would call sane progressive society in Singapore is rather small.
My point about all this is that the shallowness in a country's literary and civil consciousness leads to a shallowness in their language, and vice versa. It really does show when interviews are conducted offhand on the streets. In Europe (maybe not America) people come off as rather intelligent and thoughtful all round, very much in vogue with their country's and europe's national or regional consciousness. In Thailand, Japan or the Middle East, people express themselves with great fluency and intelligence in their native languages. In Singapore however, one is likely to be treated to a garbled mess of halting 'Singlish' and muddled thoughts, plus a distinctive Southeast-Asian small-mindedness. These things show that contrary to what Singapore's consistent performance in various worldwide educational benchmarks might suggest, Singaporeans are not at all 'well-educated'. To take as a counter-example, consider Hong Kong students, many of whom are eloquent in Mandarin, English (both of which are learnt in the classroom) as well as their native cantonese.
This is not to say Singaporeans are not intelligent: they are, and have their wits about them in most areas of life. Rather, what Singaporeans seem unable to do is to take questions of larger importance seriously. On the one hand there seems to be something pleasant about this down to earth attitude, but if only one would observe more carefully, it seems rather a case of a willfull ignorance towards matters of societal and moral importance. In choosing to acqueisce to the heavy hand of the government in exchange for personal (and moral) comfort, it seems the 'social contract' in our case is really a deal with the devil...
To my mind, Singapore's educational failings is an excellent case-study in the dangers of 'social engineering' a national language, as Lee Kuan Yew did in the 70s and 80s. Everyone wants to clamour on board (the English bandwagon) but no one does it particularly well. It also attests to the true difficulty of forging a national identity among peoples of distinct ethnic and cultural backgrounds. By contrast, Hong Kong doesn't have the racial and linguistic diversity that we do, and one has to conclude that something down here went wrong that down there went right, not just in language education, but education in general. One could never, for example, expect there to be a mass demonstration akin to Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement right here in Singapore, given our government's continuing tacit supression of civil liberties and the ubiquitous lack of a spirit of independent judgement among citizens. Even the recent election day stirrings in my country have been less to do with a country awakening into a new political awareness than the grumblings of a dissatisfied and ungrateful ken. By contrast, there seems to be a strong consensus among the young people of Hong Kong that if they want their freedom, they are going to have to fight for it, even though from what I can tell, there exists in Hong Kong the same rampant authoritarianism as there does in China, thanks to mainland pressure.
These are just impressions though, based in casual observations and unreliable memory. A serious linguistic study of Singapore, its mother tongues, Singlish, its educational programmes, ethnicity and ‘culture’, as well as class and socio-economic status, together with more detailed comparisons with Hong Kong's educational programme should prove more interesting and insightful than these offhand remarks. Plus, I have been long out of touch with the mainland Chinese students of my high school (all of whom enjoyed education and civil life in my country but who, unlike me, have not been conscripted to act, for the duration of two years, as cheap manpower for the country's national security programme). Well, my point is that I can't give an all too accurate account of mainland Chinese.
The introduction in this book attempts to paint the linguist as a value-neutral scientist. The use of language, he states rightly, isn't bound to absolute or unchanging standards of 'correctness'. Yet there are standards which linguists should be inspired to uphold, for the tremendous capacity for language to express human thoughts and shape human minds can be diminished by incorrect and lackadaisical use. Demanding that language is both precise and expressive can lead, I strongly believe, to the improvement of mind.
As children we knew of things neither their conceptual distinctions nor their words. Positing the words first can force the mind to search for and label meaningful distinctions in our perceptions of reality. Language is above all a heritage, a conceptual and symbollic programme guided by usefulness, and it accumulates wisdom over the many years of its development. The deterioration of language, and language use in society, is the deteriortion of thought, and the thoughts of society.
Back to track, there seems to be definitive, if sometimes irregular structure to every language, both a regular grammar and a regularity in lexicon, which was, really, what I had originally wanted to write about...
July 31, 2010
This compact DIY book goes through a broad introduction of the field of linguistics including basic terminology, concepts, and different branches such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and the one I found most interesting (for obvious reasons): stylistics, which is the linguistic analysis of literary language.
Chomsky's various linguistic theories over the years are outlined and it's clear we haven't found a unifying grammar to describe English, let alone all languages. This last is Chomsky's goal, and he's lately put forth the vaguely disturbing theory that children are born with an 'innate' framework of linguistics and then switch on/off different parametres as culture and experience dictate.
I found it about half of the book to be extremely readable and accessible, and the other half suddenly dense and technical. Something in between might have been better, but as a first look for a lay person, it was quite good.
Chomsky's various linguistic theories over the years are outlined and it's clear we haven't found a unifying grammar to describe English, let alone all languages. This last is Chomsky's goal, and he's lately put forth the vaguely disturbing theory that children are born with an 'innate' framework of linguistics and then switch on/off different parametres as culture and experience dictate.
I found it about half of the book to be extremely readable and accessible, and the other half suddenly dense and technical. Something in between might have been better, but as a first look for a lay person, it was quite good.
April 5, 2023
قرأته بترجمة الدكتور عبد الكريم محمد جبل (نسخة المركز القومي للترجمة)
بعنوان (اللسانيات: مقدمة إلى المقدمات)
مدخل مهم جدا للمبتدئين في البحث اللساني، ترجمة الدكتور عبد الكريم ممتازة، تعليقاته وهوامشه ذكية ومفيدة
جزاه الله خيرا
أنصح المهتمين أيضا بسماع مساق
Understanding Linguistics
المقدم من مؤسسة
the Great Courses
بعنوان (اللسانيات: مقدمة إلى المقدمات)
مدخل مهم جدا للمبتدئين في البحث اللساني، ترجمة الدكتور عبد الكريم ممتازة، تعليقاته وهوامشه ذكية ومفيدة
جزاه الله خيرا
أنصح المهتمين أيضا بسماع مساق
Understanding Linguistics
المقدم من مؤسسة
the Great Courses
August 7, 2019
الكتاب ذخيرة حية لكل دارس لغات أو من يرغب في التثقف حول اللغة كنظام و ظاهرة انسانية بكل جوانبها. يمتاز الكتاب ببساطته النسبة و قدرة المؤلف على إسصال الأفكا�� دون "لف و دوران" و بفضل ذلك فقد فهمت جوانب من علم اللغة سمعت عنها الكثير لكنني لم أفهما حق الفهم خلال أربع سنوات. تحية كبيرة للمترجم الذي جسد قاعدة "على المترجم أن يكون صديقا للقارئ" ليس فقط بترجمته الوافية للنص الأصلي و التي تمكن شخصا غير مترس في التحو الانجليزي أن بفهم مواصع النقاس و الخلاث بل أيضا لأنه كان يمد القارئ في الحواشي بمعلومات عن المصطلاحات و اللغوين و شروح إضافية و تعريبات إضافية للمصلحات كما و اسقاطات على اللغة العربية.
June 11, 2010
This books seems to be fulfilling its promise, and I feel I'm getting a good very-high-level overview of this subject, which will prepare me for further reading.
...
At about the 1/2-way point, I can say that it's still well worth it, that I'm getting a (n admittedly high-level) good overview of this subject, from which I can strike out on my own in the future...still recommended!
...
At about the 1/2-way point, I can say that it's still well worth it, that I'm getting a (n admittedly high-level) good overview of this subject, from which I can strike out on my own in the future...still recommended!
April 26, 2019
An introduction to linguistics and its fields like socio-linguistics, psycholinguistics, pragmatics, semantics, syntax and phonology.
Teach Yourself Linguistics is a straightforward introduction to linguistics, the systematic study that seeks to answer two fundamental questions: "What is language?" and "How does language work?" This book outlines the scope of linguistics, explaining the basic concepts and essential terminology. It discusses sound patterning, syntax, and meaning, as well as the rapidly growing areas of pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and stylistics.
Teach Yourself Linguistics is a straightforward introduction to linguistics, the systematic study that seeks to answer two fundamental questions: "What is language?" and "How does language work?" This book outlines the scope of linguistics, explaining the basic concepts and essential terminology. It discusses sound patterning, syntax, and meaning, as well as the rapidly growing areas of pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and stylistics.
February 20, 2022
العلامة المثيرة للتعمق في بحور اللغة وسبر اغوارها ، ما تتقنه العالمة اللغوية جين إتشسن في هذا المجال مثري جدا ، ولها عدة كتابات في هذا المجال من ضمنها هذا الكتاب وكتب أخرى ك اNew media language الذي تبحث فيه التغيرات التي تُفرض على اللغات فتتغير ضمن سياقات ثقافية وتكنولوحية معينة .
الحديث عن الاصالة اللغوية في الحفاظ على الفصحة من اللغة اصبحت جهود تعاكس تيار التغيرات الجارية ، حيث يؤكد العلماء ومن ضمنهم جين ان اللحن في اللغة سنة تكوينية في اللغة سوف تستمر في الحدوث جيل بعد جيل ، فليس من يبذلون جهود كبيرة في تخصيص يوم عالمي مثلا للغة العربية للاحتفاء بها وحث الكتاب والافراد للتمسك بها الا محاولات لا تثمر الا القليل جدا ولو تم توجيه هذه الجهود لدراسة التغيرات واسبابها وكيفية انتقال الجيل الجديد لاستحداث لغاتهم الجديدة لسوف تكون ذات فائدة أعمق ، الجدير بالذكر ان هذه النداءات اصبحت معروفة ايضا في عمق اللغة الانجليزية التي تعتبر اللغة العالمية المسيطرة على بقية اللغات ، حيث يناضل البريطانيون من أجل المحافظة على الفصحة في اللغة الانجليزية وذلك بسبب التحولات الجديدة في بنيتها التركيبية والصوتية .
هذا الكتاب مقدمة لجميع المقدمات التي تعالج نشأة اللغة وابنيتها واستمرارها وكل ما يحيط بها من مسائل ، ما يميز هذا الكتاب موضوعاته الموجز وشموليته ، فهو يقدم كل ما له علاقة باللغة .
الحديث عن الاصالة اللغوية في الحفاظ على الفصحة من اللغة اصبحت جهود تعاكس تيار التغيرات الجارية ، حيث يؤكد العلماء ومن ضمنهم جين ان اللحن في اللغة سنة تكوينية في اللغة سوف تستمر في الحدوث جيل بعد جيل ، فليس من يبذلون جهود كبيرة في تخصيص يوم عالمي مثلا للغة العربية للاحتفاء بها وحث الكتاب والافراد للتمسك بها الا محاولات لا تثمر الا القليل جدا ولو تم توجيه هذه الجهود لدراسة التغيرات واسبابها وكيفية انتقال الجيل الجديد لاستحداث لغاتهم الجديدة لسوف تكون ذات فائدة أعمق ، الجدير بالذكر ان هذه النداءات اصبحت معروفة ايضا في عمق اللغة الانجليزية التي تعتبر اللغة العالمية المسيطرة على بقية اللغات ، حيث يناضل البريطانيون من أجل المحافظة على الفصحة في اللغة الانجليزية وذلك بسبب التحولات الجديدة في بنيتها التركيبية والصوتية .
هذا الكتاب مقدمة لجميع المقدمات التي تعالج نشأة اللغة وابنيتها واستمرارها وكل ما يحيط بها من مسائل ، ما يميز هذا الكتاب موضوعاته الموجز وشموليته ، فهو يقدم كل ما له علاقة باللغة .
October 2, 2014
Typical orthodox linguistics intro.
August 19, 2011
Very good primer course for the hobbyist linguist. Helped to provide a good foundation and scope of knowledge that proved a very useful reference in all my future linguistics readings.
May 10, 2019
نکات جالبی در کتاب در خصوص رابطه زبان با جامعه شناسی و روانشناسی مطرح شده است. با این وجود ترجمه چندان روانی از آن ارائه نشده و به همین علت به آن دو ستاره بیشتر اختصاص نمیدهم.
April 20, 2022
really good introduction to linguistics for beginners and people who want a recap of some of the basic principles in general. plenty of chapters on chomsky's work, but i assume in more updated versions these chapters would be updated too as some of the ideas in my version which were praised as "revolutionary" are now a little outdated and have since been replaced with more recent ideas. but overall a really good revision of basic linguistic concepts written in an easy to understand format!
August 17, 2017
I'm off to apply for linguistics programs now
October 3, 2019
this is the right book to read
Want to read
September 28, 2020Great as usual
July 5, 2021
G
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 30, 2024
This introduction is aimed for non-linguists who want to get into linguistics, it does not, however, delve into details about the topics presented. Only a headstart for the reader.
December 25, 2024
This book was really helpful. I needed an overview of linguistics to get a handle on some of the terminology. After reading this, I have a better idea about how to follow up in my areas of interest.
October 15, 2008
Good overall review of the basics of linguistics and its branches of stufy. This will be a good jumping off point into a few different areas.
I did love that in the reading I have been doing over the last month, this is the THIRD time I have come across the quote below : (now I REALLY have to read the original text of alice in wonderland)
'When *I* use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less'
-Lewis Carroll
I did love that in the reading I have been doing over the last month, this is the THIRD time I have come across the quote below : (now I REALLY have to read the original text of alice in wonderland)
'When *I* use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less'
-Lewis Carroll
July 13, 2021
Surprisingly readable for such a complex topic. Some seriously funny examples. I think Aitchison spent many hours amusing herself by thinking of cute sentences to demonstrate what academia would love to portray as boring.
November 10, 2007
I passed my CSET because of this book!
June 20, 2010
A good and basic intro.
Read
July 27, 2011Great and fun introduction to linguistics, unfortunately it doesn't give much emphasis on phonology.
March 31, 2012
very good
November 28, 2012
A gem of a book.
Read
November 20, 2013word formation
January 2, 2015
Its a intro book.. clear enough to move onto the next level.
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