This innovative introduction outlines the structure and distribution of the world’s languages, charting their evolution over the past 200, 000 years.
* Balances linguistic analysis with socio-historical and political context, offering a cohesive picture of the relationship between language and society
* Provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of language by drawing not only on the diverse fields of linguistics (structural, linguist anthropology, historical, sociolinguistics), but also on history, biology, genetics, sociology, and more
* Includes nine detailed language profiles on Kurdish, Arabic, Tibetan, Hawaiian, Vietnamese, Tamil, !Xóõ (Taa), Mongolian, and Quiché
* A companion website offers a host of supplementary materials including, sound files, further exercises, and detailed introductory information for students new to linguistics
Tentang Penulis
Julie Tetel Andresen is Professor of English and former
Chair of Linguistic at Duke University. A linguistic
historiographer focusing on French, German, British, and American
theories of language from the eighteenth to the twenty-first
centuries, she is the author of Linguistics and Evolution:
A Developmental Approach (2013) and Linguistics in
America 1769-1924: A Critical History (1996).
Phillip M. Carter is Assistant Professor of English and
Linguistics at Florida International University. Specializing in
immigrant and ethnolinguistic minority communities in the Unites
States, his work on the language varieties and cultural practices
of U.S. Latinos has been published in leading journals,
including Language in Society, English
Worldwide, Journal of
Sociolinguistics, American Speech,
and Language in Linguistics Compass.