An Introduction to Language
1. WHAT IS LANGUAGE? Linguistic Knowledge. What Is Grammar? Universal Grammar. What Is Not (Human) Language. Language and Thought. 2. MORPHOLOGY: THE WORDS OF LANGUAGE. Content Words and Function Words. Morphemes: The Minimal Units of Meaning. Rules of Word Formation. Sign Language Morphology. Morphological Analysis: Identifying Morphemes. 3. SYNTAX: THE SENTENCE PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE. What the Syntax Rules Do. Sentence Structure. UG Principles and Parameters. Sign Language Syntax. 4. THE MEANING OF LANGUAGE. What Speakers Know about Sentence Meaning. Compositional Semantics. When Compositionality Goes Awry. Lexical Semantics (Word Meanings). Pragmatics. 5. PHONETICS: THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE. Sound Segments. Articulatory Phonetics. Major Phonetic Classes. Prosodic Features. Phonetic Symbols and Spelling Correspondences. The "Phonetics" of Signed Languages. 6. PHONOLOGY: THE SOUND OF LANGUAGE. The Pronunciation of Morphemes. Phonemes: The Phonological Units of Language. Distinctive Features of Phonemes. The Rules of Phonology. Prosodic Phonology. Sequential Constraints of Phonemes. Why Do Phonological Rules Exist? Phonological Analysis. 7. LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY. Dialects. Languages in Contact. Language and Education. Language in Use. 8. LANGUAGE CHANGE: THE SYLLABLES OF TIME. The Regularity of Sound Change. Phonological Change. Morphological Change. Syntactic Change. Lexical Change. Reconstructing "Dead" Languages. Extinct and Endangered Languages. The Genetic Classification of Languages. Types of Languages. Why Do Languages Change? 9.LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. The Linguistic Capacity of Children. Stages in Language Acquisition. The Role of the Linguistic Environment: Adult Input. Knowing More Than One Language. 10. LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND THE HUMAN BRAIN. The Human Mind at Work. The Human Brain. Language and Brain Development. The Modular Mind: Dissociations of Language and Cognition. 11. COMPUTER PROCESSING OF HUMAN LANGUAGE. Computers That Talk and Listen. Applications of Computational Linguistics. Computational Lexicography. 12. WRITING: THE ABCS OF LANGUAGE. The History of Writing. Modern Writing Systems. Writing and Speech. Pseudo-writing. Glossary. Index.--This text refers to an alternatePaperbackedition.