Cambridge Approaches to Linguistics – serie

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Downes' textbook is an accessible introduction to the social aspects of language and their various explanations. Topics covered include domains of language use, language change, code-switching, speech as social action, and the nature of meaning and understanding. This second edition includes an analysis of language standardisation, language conflict and planning.

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Downes' textbook is an accessible introduction to the social aspects of language and their various explanations. Topics covered include domains of language use, language change, code-switching, speech as social action, and the nature of meaning and understanding. This second edition includes an analysis of language standardisation, language conflict and planning.

How do our brains enable us to speak creatively and build up an understanding of language? This concise and accessible book examines the linguistic and neuro-anatomical underpinnings of language and considers how language skills can systematically break down in individuals with different types of brain damage, such as children with language disorders, adults with right-hemisphere brain damage, demented patients, and people with reading problems. In a wide-ranging discussion, the authors also cover the effects of brain damage on bilingual people, as well as the reading and writing difficulties experienced by dyslexics and dysgraphics. Information is also provided on 'split-brain' patients, visual-gestural languages, and language savants. By studying the linguistic behaviour of these groupings, the authors provide an understanding of how language is organized in the brain.

This book is about investigating the way people use language in speech and writing. It introduces the corpus-based approach to linguistics, based on analysis of large databases of real language examples stored on computer. Each chapter focuses on a different area of linguistics, including lexicography, grammar, discourse, register variation, language acquisition, and historical linguistics. Example analyses are presented in each chapter to provide concrete descriptions of the research methods and advantages of corpus-based techniques. Ten methodology boxes provide clear and concise explanations of the issues in doing corpus-based research and reading corpus-based studies and there is a useful appendix of resources for corpus-based investigation. This lucid and comprehensive introduction to the subject will be welcomed by a broad range of readers, from undergraduate students to professional researchers.

Adults tend to take language for granted - until they have to learn a new one. Then they realize how difficult it is to get the pronunciation right, to acquire the meaning of thousands of new words, and to learn how those words are put together to form sentences. Children, however, have mastered language before they can tie their shoes. In this engaging and accessible book, William O'Grady explains how this happens, discussing how children learn to produce and distinguish among sounds, their acquisition of words and meanings, and their mastery of the rules for building sentences. How Children Learn Language provides readers with a highly readable overview not only of the language acquisition process itself, but also of the ingenious experiments and techniques that researchers use to investigate his mysterious phenomenon. It will be of great interest to anyone - parent or student - wishing to find out how children acquire language.

Some children can hear and can speak, yet have trouble understanding or producing utterances. In this accessible introduction to children's language difficulties, Shula Chiat explores the stumbling blocks which lie behind their struggle. The uniqueness of this book lies in its focus on individual children, the extensive and intriguing examples which illustrate their problems, and the step-by-step search for the source of those problems. Difficulties with words, verb structures, function morphomenes, and meaning are examined and illustrated by detailed case studies. This book provides a clear overview of what children with language difficulties say and do, and introduces a logical approach to identifying children's language problems. It will be welcomed by students and researchers of linguistics, language development and language disorders; teachers of language-impaired children; and speech and language therapists.

Some children can hear and can speak, yet have trouble understanding or producing utterances. In this accessible introduction to children's language difficulties, Shula Chiat explores the stumbling blocks which lie behind their struggle. The uniqueness of this book lies in its focus on individual children, the extensive and intriguing examples which illustrate their problems, and the step-by-step search for the source of those problems. Difficulties with words, verb structures, function morphomenes, and meaning are examined and illustrated by detailed case studies. This book provides a clear overview of what children with language difficulties say and do, and introduces a logical approach to identifying children's language problems. It will be welcomed by students and researchers of linguistics, language development and language disorders; teachers of language-impaired children; and speech and language therapists.

How and why do languages change? Where does the evidence of language change come from? How do languages begin and end? This introduction to language change explores these and other questions, considering changes through time. The central theme of this book is whether language change is a symptom of progress or decay. This book will show you why it is neither, and that understanding the factors surrounding how language change occurs is essential to understanding why it happens. This updated edition remains non-technical and accessible to readers with no previous knowledge of linguistics.