Product Description

AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE is ideal for use at all levels and in many different areas of instruction, including education, languages, psychology, anthropology, English, teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), and linguistics. All chapters in this best-seller have been revised to reflect recent discoveries and new understanding of linguistics and languages.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75779 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

Review
"It’s the most comprehensive introduction to linguistics ever, and it never strays far from my elbow."

"I am pleased with the text’s wide selection of topics—I feel like the students are getting more for their money. I encourage interested students to read further in the text—even after the course ends. I think many keep it as a reference for future work."

". . . I appreciate the expertise this text represents. This is a solid scholarly study of linguistics."

"I have used this book for 29 years already and am still very happy with it. So far, new editions have come closer and closer to my ideal textbook. Even now, it’s the only textbook for any of my courses that does just what I want it to do in terms of topics covered and level of difficulty. Just as important, the students find it clear and straightforward, yet fun and intriguing as well. . . ."

"An Introduction to Language is comprehensive and inclusive. It gives students an excellent introduction to language study and outlines the concepts in general linguistics as well as sociolinguistics and recent work in language processing. There seems to be something for everyone."

About the Author
Victoria Fromkin received her bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1944 and her M.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1963 and 1965, respectively. She was a member of the faculty of the UCLA Department of Linguistics from 1966 until her death in 2000, and served as its chair from 1972 to 1976. From 1979 to 1989 she served as the UCLA Graduate Dean and Vice Chancellor of Graduate Programs. She was a visiting professor at the universities of Stockholm, Cambridge, and Oxford. Professor Fromkin served as president of the Linguistics Society of America in 1985, president of the Association of Graduate Schools in 1988, and chair of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Aphasia. She received the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award and the Professional Achievement Award, and served as the U.S. Delegate and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Permanent Committee of Linguistics (CIPL). She was an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Science, the American Psychological Society, and the Acoustical Society of America, and in 1996 was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. She published more than one hundred books, monographs, and papers on topics concerned with phonetics, phonology, tone languages, African languages, speech errors, processing models, aphasia, and the brain/mind/language interface--all research areas in which she worked. Professor Fromkin passed away on January 19, 2000, at the age of 76.

Robert Rodman received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1961, a master's degree in mathematics in 1965, a master's degree in linguistics in 1971, and his Ph.D. in linguistics in 1973. He has been on the faculties of the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kyoto Industrial College in Japan, and North Carolina State University, where he is currently professor of computer science specializing in the areas of forensic linguistics and computer speech processing.

Nina Hyams received her bachelor's degree in journalism from Boston University in 1973 and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in linguistics from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1981 and 1983, respectively. She joined the UCLA faculty in 1983, where she is currently professor of linguistics. Her main areas of research are childhood language development and syntax. She is author of the book LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND THE THEORY OF PARAMETERS (D. Reidel Publishers, 1986), a milestone in language acquisition research. She has also published numerous articles on the development of syntax, morphology, and semantics in children. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Utrecht and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and has given numerous lectures throughout Europe and Japan.

Customer Reviews

A must-read, especially for any professional communicator.
20 years ago, I was toying with the idea of taking the linguistics option as part of my English degree at Oxford University. My course tutor recommended I read Fromkin & Rodman to "see if the subject suited me". F & R hooked me completely: All the major areas are covered, simply presented and introduced by a cleverly chosen cartoon which helps to breaks the ice.

I must have recommended the book to more than 100 people since then and am ordering another copy now because a [former!] friend lost my (heavily thumbed and annotated) original. I now lecture on communications-related subjects and still find myself referring regularly to this seminal work. A must for any serious student of communications science; it draws you gently into a complicated subject and makes the process highly enjoyable.

Fun is the theme
This book might be the most used introductory linguistics book in the world. I am very glad to have read its seventh edition. The number of editions might be proof of the quality and popularity of this book. How many textbooks can be in print for such a long time?

The theme of this book is to make linguistics fun, and accessible. The use of cartoons, the quotes from famous authors, paragraphs discussing everyday use of language, and many more, all make the reader enjoy reading and studying linguistics.

But on the other hand, the effort to make it fun will probably turn those serious students away. Anyways they are here for a university level course on the science of linguistics, where they expect to see compelling arguments, and serious discussions, rather than cartoons and funny word games.

Moreover since this book was first written in the 70's, there are still many outdated data in the seventh edition, although it has been updated.

The chapters on the core fields of linguistics, i.e. phonetics/phonology, syntax, semantics, and historical linguistics, seem to be a little too thin. While chapters on sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, and writing systems can be interesting, students still need to be solidly grounded in the core fields of linguistics before they can successfully tap into the more interdisciplinary fields.

Overall, this is one of the best introductory linguistics textbooks, although it tends to be not very serious, and in-depth, which could be excused for an intro textbook.

This is the BEST INTRODUCTOR Book of Linguistics.
This book uses lots of funny cartoons and its use of words is quite easy and udnerstandable. So it's good for non-English speakers as well as native speakers. This book gave me all the basic concepts of linguisitcs, and no matter you have lingusitics background or not, you will get much through careful reading.