General

Corpus linguistics is the study of language data on a large scale - the computer-aided analysis of very extensive collections of transcribed utterances or written texts. This textbook outlines the basic methods of corpus linguistics, explains how the...

The discovery of 'linguistic universals' - the properties that all languages have in common - is a fundamental goal of linguistic research. Linguists face the task of accounting for why languages, which apparently differ so greatly from one another on...

The relationship between language, discourse and identity has always been a major area of sociolinguistic investigation. In more recent times, the field has been revolutionized as previous models - which assumed our identities to be based on stable...

This major 2001 work explores the development of creoles and other new languages, focusing on the conceptual and methodological issues they raise for genetic linguistics. Written by an internationally renowned linguist, the book discusses the nature and...

This landmark study examines the role of gestures in relation to speech and thought. Leading scholars, including psychologists, linguists and anthropologists, offer state-of-the-art analyses to demonstrate that gestures are not merely an embellishment of...

There are many questions yet to be answered about how Standard English came into existence. The claim that it developed from a Central Midlands dialect propagated by clerks in the Chancery, the medieval writing office of the king, is one explanation that...

The Cambridge Dictionary of Linguistics provides concise and clear definitions of all the terms any undergraduate or graduate student is likely to encounter in the study of linguistics and English language or in other degrees involving linguistics, such...

Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology,...

Looking for an easy-to-use, practical guide to conducting fieldwork in sociolinguistics? This invaluable textbook will give you the skills and knowledge required for carrying out research projects in 'the field', including: * How to select and enter a...

The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage is an up-to-date, evidence-based account of the variable points in Australian usage and style, in alphabetical format. Its description of Australian English uses a wealth of primary sources (linguistic...

This insightful study proposes a unified theory of speech through which conflicting ideas about language might be understood. It is founded on a number of key points, such as the continuum of linguistic behaviour, extensive variation in language...

Cognitive Linguistics argues that language is governed by general cognitive principles, rather than by a special-purpose language module. This introductory textbook surveys the field of cognitive linguistics as a distinct area of study, presenting its...

This book provides an overview of the issues surrounding language loss. It brings together work by theoretical linguists, field linguists, and non-linguist members of minority communities to provide an integrated view of how language is lost, from...

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This 2003 study uses evidence from early English verse to reconstruct the course of some central phonological changes in the history of the language. It builds on the premise that alliteration reflects faithfully the acoustic identity and similarity of...

In this interdisciplinary study, Professor Clyne examines the impact of cultural values on discourse. Through an exploration of the role of verbal communication patterns in successful and unsuccessful communication, he sets out to integrate and develop a...

This book investigates the nature of human language and its importance for the study of the mind. In particular, it examines current work on the biology of language. Lyle Jenkins reviews the evidence that language is best characterized by a generative...

Language in Canada provides an up-to-date account of the linguistic and cultural situation in Canada, primarily from a sociolinguistic perspective. The strong central theme connecting language with group and identity will offer insights into the current...

This new edition of Richard Hudson's widely acclaimed textbook Sociolinguistics will be welcomed by students and teachers alike. To reflect changes in the field since publication of the first edition in 1980, the author has added new sections on...

To what extent is conceptualization based on linguistic representation? And to what extent is it variable across cultures, communities, or even individuals? Of crucial importance in the attempt to develop a comprehensive theory of human cognition, these...

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Modern journalism is often the subject of criticism and opposition. Written by one of the foremost authorities on language and the media writing today, this engaging book suggests that view is unfair, and that journalists are in fact skilled 'word...

The remarkable way in which young children acquire language has long fascinated linguists and developmental psychologists alike. Language is a skill that we have essentially mastered by the age of three, and with incredible ease and speed, despite the...

How and why do language changes begin; how and why do they spread; and how can they ultimately be explained? This new textbook sets out to answer these questions in a clear and helpful way which will be accessible to all students with an elementary...

This book is concerned with the machine-based generation of natural language text and presents a formal analysis of problems, which in the main have previously only been approached descriptively. In the process of producing discourse, speakers and...

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This book offers a distinct approach to the analysis of the multiple meanings of English modals, conjunctions, conditionals and perception verbs. Although such ambiguities cannot easily be accounted for by feature-analyses of word meaning, Eve Sweetser's...

This 1993 book traces language policy in Australia from World War II to the present, examining the changes in government policy over this time, and changes in major public institutions due to the presence of these languages. The major focus is on changes...

Chinese and Americans often unwittingly communicate at cross purposes because they are misled by the cultural trappings of talk. This book aims to clarify their misunderstandings by examining their different ideals and strategies of talk. It draws on...

American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society has included a regular collection of neologisms called 'Among the New Words'. One issue, for example, includes four quotations for 'date rape,' two for 'designated driver,' and six for 'DNA...

Although natural language processing has come far, the technology has not achieved a major impact on society. Is this because of some fundamental limitation that cannot be overcome? Or because there has not been enough time to refine and apply...

Stylistics is the linguistic study of style in language. It aims to account for how texts project meaning, how readers construct meaning and why readers respond to texts in the way that they do. This book is an introduction to stylistics that locates it...

In central cases of switch-reference, a marker on the verb of one clause is used to indicate whether its subject has the same or different reference from the subject of an adjacent, syntactically related clause. In central cases of logophoricity, a...

Languages die for political, economic and cultural reasons, and can disappear remarkably quickly. Between ten and fifty per cent of all languages currently spoken can be considered endangered, but it is only in the past ten years or so that due...

This book uses Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory to show that connectivity in discourse is a pragmatic rather than a semantic matter: it results from relevance relations between text and context rather than from relations linguistically encoded in...

This book is a collection of papers that explore the ways in which bilingual children cope with two language systems. The papers address issues in linguistics, psychology, and education bearing on the abilities that bilingual children use to understand...

A primary problem in the area of natural language processing has been that of semantic analysis. This book aims to look at the semantics of natural languages in context. It presents an approach to the computational processing of English text that...

This book examines the interrelations between language and society in the German-speaking countries. The questions 'what is German and who speaks it?' and 'how does the language vary dependent on social, political and geographical factors?' are addressed...

This book describes the ways in which politicians, church leaders, generals, leaders of national movements and others try to influence our use of language. Professor Cooper argues that language planning is never attempted for its own sake. Rather it is...