The Wonders of Language
Or How to Make Noises and Influence People

A lively and thought-provoking introduction to the main discoveries and theories about the nature and wonder of language.

Ian Roberts (Author)

9781316604410, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 9 February 2017

238 pages, 8 b/w illus. 16 tables
21.8 x 14.1 x 1.6 cm, 0.3 kg

Ian Roberts offers a stimulating introduction to our greatest gift as a species: our capacity for articulate language. We are mostly as blissfully unaware of the intricacies of the structure of language as fish are of the water they swim in. We live in a mental ocean of nouns, verbs, quantifiers, morphemes, vowels and other rich, strange and deeply fascinating linguistic objects. This book introduces the reader to this amazing world. Offering a thought-provoking and accessible introduction to the main discoveries and theories about language, the book is aimed at general readers and undergraduates who are curious about linguistics and language. Written in a lively and direct style, technical terms are carefully introduced and explained and the book includes a full glossary. The book covers all the central areas of linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, as well as historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics.

Introduction
1. How to make noises - phonetics
2. How to organise noises - phonology
3. How to build a word - morphology
4. How to say absolutely anything you want to - syntax
5. How to build a world - semantics
6. How to influence people - pragmatics
7. How to find lost languages - historical linguistics
8. How to influence the right people - sociolinguistics
9. How to lose a language and how to learn a language - psycholinguistics
10. How to build a language - language typology and universals.

Subject Areas: Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Linguistics [CF]