"Language Files 7" (A basic linguistics textbook)

[David Robertson]

Klahowya,

By coincidence, my local public library has just gotten a good new
linguistics text for beginners; I've been thinking it would be good for
our list members who've asked for such a thing; and another one of you has
just asked again.

So I present to you "Language Files,  7th edition" (ed. by Nick Cipollone,
Steven Hartman Keiser, Shravan Vasishth, published by Ohio State
University Press, Columbus, 1998).  This book just happens to have special
relevance for students of Chinook Jargon, too!

There's an introduction which lays out for you the goals of the text,
telling you what you can expect to learn, and of course, what linguistics
is.  Excellent thought-experiments are suggested, and exercises in
applying your knowledge are also provided.  So for example you'll get to
practice describing sounds phonetically; analyzing grammatical structures
of a language; and becoming conscious of the semantic content of words you
use every day.

The chapters are:

	1 Introduction
	2 Animal Communication
	3 Phonetics
	4 Phonology
	5 Morphology
	6 Syntax
	7 Semantics
	8 Pragmatics
	9 Psycholinguistics
	10 Historical Linguistics
	11 Language Contact******
	12 Language Variation
	13 Visual Languages
	14 Languages in a Wider Context

(I highlight the "Language Contact" section because it's been unusual in
the past to see such a subject given an entire chapter in a linguistics
textbook.  The study of languages like ChInuk Wawa has made great
advances, and I feel it certainly deserves the attention.)

I intend to present in a separate email some of the discussion of ChInuk
Wawa that appears in this book.

In the meantime, maybe some of the other linguists on this list have made
use of "Language Files" in their teaching, and have comments.  (There are
definitely some corrections to be made in the text; e.g. the Russian
exercise on p.112 is terribly flawed by the misprinting of palatal
consonants as nonpalatals.)

Best,
Dave


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