Strang Burton is a linguist with the Stolo nation and has taught linguistics at a number of universities. Rose-Marie Déchaine and Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson are professors of linguistics at the University of British Columbia.

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• Introduction 1Part I: Looking at Language through the Lens of Linguistics 7Chapter 1: Knowing a Language Versus Knowing What Language Is 9Chapter 2: Communicating with Language: The Design Features 21Part II: The Building Blocks of Language 33Chapter 3: Building Sounds: Phonetics 35Chapter 4: Putting Sounds Together: Phonology 57Chapter 5: Building Words: Morphology 77Chapter 6: Creating Sentences: Syntax 95Chapter 7: Making Sense of Meaning: Semantics 117Chapter 8: Using Language in Conversation: Pragmatics 133Part III: The Social Life of Language 151Chapter 9: Living with Language Variation: Sociolinguistics 153Chapter 10: Finding Family Relations: Historical Linguistics 171Chapter 11: Cataloguing Differences: Linguistic Typology 189Chapter 12: Beginning and Ending: Language Birth and Language Death 205Part IV: Your Brain on Language: Learning and Processing Language 221Chapter 13: Learning Language 223Chapter 14: Perceiving Language 245Chapter 15: Producing Language 259Chapter 16: Locating Language in the Brain: Neurolinguistics 277Part V: Getting from Speaking to Writing 293Chapter 17: Writing Down Language 295Chapter 18: Writing Changes You 307Part VI: The Part of Tens 321Chapter 19: Ten Myths about Language Busted by Linguistics 323Chapter 20: Ten Unsolved Problems in Linguistics 331Chapter 21: Top 10 Jobs for Linguists 337Index 343