| Description |
1 online resource (592 pages) |
| Contents |
Prelims; Half-Title; Title; Copyright; Brief Contents; Contents; Preface; Acknowledgements; About the authors; Resources Guide; Part 1: The nature of human language; Chapter 1: What is language?; Linguistic knowledge; Knowledge of the sound system; Knowledge of words; The creativity of linguistic knowledge; Knowledge of sentences and non-sentences; Linguistic knowledge and performance; What is grammar?; Descriptive grammars; Prescriptive grammars; Teaching grammars; Universal Grammar; The development of grammar; Sign languages: evidence for language universals; What is not (human) language |
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The birds and the beesCan animals learn human language?; Language and thought; Summary; Further reading; Online study resources; Exercises; Endnotes; Chapter 2: Brain and language; The human brain; The localisation of language in the brain; Aphasia and localisation; Further experimental evidence of brain organisation; Language and brain development; Left-hemisphere lateralisation and brain plasticity in young children; The critical period; Modularity: dissociations of language and cognition; Linguistic savants; Specific language impairment; Genetic basis of language |
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The evolution of languageThe development of language in the species; Summary; Further reading; Online study resources; Exercises; Endnotes; Part 2: Grammatical aspects of language; Chapter 3: Morphology: the words of language; Content words and function words; Morphemes: the minimal units of meaning; The discreteness of morphemes; Bound and free morphemes; Bound roots; Rules of word formation; Derivational morphology; Inflectional morphology; The hierarchical structure of words; Rule productivity; Other morphological processes; Meaning of compounds; Universality of compounding |
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Sign language morphologyMorphological analysis: identifying morphemes; Summary; Further reading; Online study resources; Exercises; Endnotes; Chapter 4: Syntax: the sentence patterns of language; Our knowledge of syntax; Grammaticality; Sentence structure; Syntactic categories; Selection; Phrase structure; Phrase structure rules; Structural ambiguities; The infinity of language; Transformational analysis; Structure dependence; UG principles and parameters; Sign-language syntax; Summary; Further reading; Online study resources; Exercises; Endnotes |
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Chapter 5: Semantics and pragmatics: the meanings of languageWhat speakers know about sentence meaning; Truth; Entailment and related notions; Ambiguity; Compositional semantics; Semantic rules; When compositionality goes awry; Lexical semantics (word meanings); Theories of word meaning; Lexical relations; Semantic features; Argument structure; Pragmatics; Pronouns and other deictic words; Summary; Further reading; Online study resources; Exercises; Endnotes; Chapter 6: Phonetics: the sounds of language; Sound segments; Identity of speech sounds; The phonetic alphabet; Articulatory phonetics |
| Summary |
An Introduction to Language continues to be instrumental in introducing students to the fascinating study of human language. Engaging and clearly written, it provides an overview of the key areas of linguistics from an Australian perspective. Chapters in this eighth edition have been extensively updated and revised to reflect recent discoveries and new understandings in linguistics and language. In particular, the chapter on syntax now provides a more basic introduction to parts of speech and sentence structure. New learning objectives and margin definitions in each chapter, along with summary |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Language and languages.
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Linguistics.
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languages (study discipline)
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language (general communication)
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linguistics.
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Language and languages.
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Linguistics.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| Author |
Rodman, Robert
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Hyams, Nina
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Amberber, Mengistu
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Cox, Felicity
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Thornton, Rosalind
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| ISBN |
9780170281164 |
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0170281167 |
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