The Penguin Guide to Punctuation is indispensable for anyone who needs to get to grips with using punctuation in their written work. Whether you are puzzled by colons and semicolons, unsure of where commas should go or baffled by apostrophes, this jargon-free, succinct guide is for you.
For all those who have ever feared being shown up by using one of the twenty worst words and phrases to be avoided at all costs, or confusing the complex with the complicated, this trouble-shooting guide to common errors in English should be able to help.
A guide to the terms and concepts used in the study of language and linguistics. Definitions featured range from: terms used in grammatical analysis, and branches of linguistics from semantics to neurolinguistics, to linguistic phenomena from code-switching to conversational implicature, and, language varieties from pidgin to standard language.
What makes human language unique? Do women speak differently from men? What is the meaning of 'meaning'? This book provides an introduction to the study of language. It features chapters on 'Language in Use', 'Attitudes to Language', 'Children and Language' and 'Language, Mind and Brain'.
This is a major introduction to historical linguistics, designed for students who have no background in historical linguistics but who have at least some knowledge of phonetics, phonology, and morphology. The author introduces all major types of change, consequences of change (dialect andlanguage families), and methods in historical linguistics. Later chapters deal with sociolinguistic aspects of change, language contact, birth and death of languages, language and prehistory, and finally the issue of very remote relations.
This text uses data from English and other languages to introduce the concepts central to language change. It covers the most frequent types of change, and how languages are born and die. It also looks at other key areas, such as attitudes to language change, and the consequences.