An introduction to the science of language, discussing such topics as how languages work, historical linguistics, language acquisition, language change, and language perception.

An offbeat natural history of language takes readers from the educational and cultural innovators of Sumeria, to the resilience of Chinese, to the global spread of English, in a volume that offers linguistic perspectives on numerous past and present civilizations.

The English language is spoken by more than a billion people throughout the world. But where did English come from? And how has it evolved into the language used today? In this Very Short Introduction Simon Horobin investigates how we have arrived at the English we know today, and celebrates the way new speakers and new uses mean that it continues to adapt. Engaging with contemporary concerns about correctness, Horobin considers whether such changes...

"The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics introduces readers to language-related issues that arise in the real world where languages are learned and used. It is a reference work compiled from the more extensive Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, which in 2019 was available in close to 1,000 libraries and professional organizations throughout over 50 countries worldwide.1 Usage data from the electronic versions of The Encyclopedia of Applied...

"Everyone likes to think they know a bit about language: There are some words that you simply can't translate into English. The origin of a word tells you how it should be used. A dialect is inferior to a language. The problem is, none of these statements are true. In Don't Believe a Word, linguist David Shariatmadari explodes nine common myths about language and introduces us to some of the fundamental insights of modern linguistics. By the end of...

The use of experimental methodology in the field of linguistics has boomed in recent decades. However, implementation of such methods does require an understanding and mastery of specific theoretical and methodological principles. Introduction to Experimental Linguistics presents the key concepts of experimental linguistics in an accessible way, addressing, in turn: the application of experimentation in linguistics; the techniques most frequently...

"This book introduces mathematical foundations of statistical modeling of natural language. The author attempts to explain a few statistical power laws satisfied by texts in natural language in terms of non-Markovian and non-hidden Markovian discrete stochastic processes with some sort of long-range dependence. To achieve this, he uses various concepts and technical tools from information theory and probability measures. This book begins with an introduction....

Five scientists (Carol Padden, Victor Ferreira, Martin Monti, Ellen Bialystok, Greg Hickok) explore the question of what language is, from investigations on bilingualism and its relation with neuroplasticity to what it means to have an impairment when using sign language.

A Spanish teacher and her student develop an unexpected friendship.