Key features

• A clear introduction to the traditional topics of structural linguistics - theories of sound, form, meaning, and language change
• Full coverage of structural linguistics, including separate chapters on discourse, dialect variation, language and culture, and the politics of language
• Up-to-date chapters on language and the brain, computational linguistics, writing, child language acquisition, and second language learning
• Each chapter is written by an expert linguist teaching and researching the topic, offering students a broad and balanced introduction to the subject
• Each chapter contains a chapter preview, providing a quick advanced outline of the chapter's main points
• End of chapter exercises allow lecturers to monitor students' understanding of material
• Inclusion of key terms enables readers to check their comprehension of the most important terms and concepts
• Textboxes of extra material provide additional and more advanced examples of important concepts
• Other features include a fully comprehensive glossary, goals, suggestions for further reading, summaries, illustrations, examples, and supplementary materials online