Alternative Intro Ling courses

[Angus B. Grieve-Smith]

On 12/8/2010 10:37 AM, jlmendi at unizar.es wrote:
> I think George Yule's popular handbook fits most of your requierements 
> (I've used the second edition, but there's a new one, the fourth, 
> published in 2010):
>
> Yule, George. The Study of Language. Cambridge University Press

     I've been using this for the past four semesters (the third and 
fourth editions), and I agree.  It has the basic mainstream theoretical 
stuff, but it also covers a lot of the topics that Johanna mentions.  
It's also available as an ebook, which I've found very handy:

http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=502434

     At Saint John's, we have a course called "Language and Culture: 
Linguistics," which is basically the kind of survey course for 
non-majors that Johanna describes.  For that, we touched lightly on each 
chapter, and I assigned a few exercises from each.  I supplemented it 
with a few articles (I love David Sedaris's piece about nouns and gender 
in French) and videos (such as Lakoff's presentation to Google).

     We also have a two-semester Introduction to Linguistics series.  
For the first semester, I've used only Chapters 3-9 and 15, but I've had 
to supplement it with material from Language Files and other sources.  
For the second semester I plan to use at least some of the rest of the book.

     The book doesn't say much about functional theories, but it is less 
heavy on the generative stuff.

-- 
				-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
				Saint John's University
				grvsmth at panix.com