Linguistics, P.H. Matthews
Linguistics, P.H. Matthews
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Linguistics
A Very Short Introduction

Author: P.H. Matthews

Narrator: P.H. Matthews

Unabridged: 3 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/08/2021

Synopsis

Linguistics falls in the gap between arts and science, on the edges of which the most fascinating discoveries and the most important problems are found. Rather than following the conventional organization of many contemporary introductions to the subject, the author of this stimulating guide begins his discussion with the oldest, "arts" end of the subject and moves chronologically through to the newest research—the "science" aspects.

A series of short thematic chapters look in turn at such areas as the prehistory of languages and their common origins, language and evolution, language in time and space (the nature of change inherent in language), grammars and dictionaries (how systematic is language?), and phonetics. Explication of the newest discoveries pertaining to language in the brain completes the coverage of all major aspects of linguistics from a refreshing and insightful angle.

About P.H. Matthews

P. H. Matthews is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He has formerly held positions at Bangor University and the University of Reading, and has been an Honorary Member of the Linguistic Society of America since 1994. His many books include The Positions of Adjectives in English, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, Syntactic Relations: A Critical Survey, Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction, and A Short History of Structural Linguistics.

Reviews

Goodreads review by ☘Misericordia☘ on December 29, 2021

Brains, words, history, anthropology, culture - how does all of it compress into the territory of a human interaction? How did we come to learn to exchange clever combos of sounds to mean stuff? Why are languages so very different? Are they even translatable or do we lose large layers of meaning eac......more

Goodreads review by Chris on February 25, 2008

As the title says, this is indeed a very short introduction. Linguistics is a science that is well over a century old, and there's been reams and reams of paper devoted to it. Most, however, is incredibly obscure and not really geared for the casual reader. This book, fortunately, is. It does get da......more

Goodreads review by Antonis on November 17, 2020

A pretty decent read. I went into this already quite familiar with linguistics, wanting to get reacquainted with some concepts. On the historical side, this was very much accomplished. Our journey through the history of language was paved with nice wording and concise text. Jolly good! Unfortunately,......more

Goodreads review by Nhu Khue on February 08, 2018

It makes my curiosity great again.......more

Goodreads review by Frank on March 28, 2021

Excessively lightweight......more

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