每一章的全面更新:新增了沃尔夫假说,神经语言学的*新成果,双语及双语教学的*新资料,句法处理的新方法,可以反映现代思维方式的语义语用学的新篇章,修订后的社会语言学一章侧重于*新的发现,另外还有一部分详细介绍了句法变化的问题。
对语言学各组成部分(语音、音系、词法、句法、语义以及语用学)的*新、流行的导论性介绍。
对美国符号语言学及通过文本体现的其他符号语言的介绍,使读者认识到这些符号语言也具备那些可以通过口头表达的语言的共同特点,也是真正的语言形式。
每一章的结尾部分都会对**部分做一总结,并会列出相应的参考书目、进一步研究所需的阅读材料以及相关练习。
书中使用的国际音标的用法。
大量简洁的术语注释,详细的索引,都使文章易读易懂。
该书的相关网址:www.thomsonedu.com/english/fromkin
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“西方语言学原版影印系列丛书”是北京大学出版社外语编辑部建立以来的一个新产品,具有重大意义。随着国内高等教育的发展,这几年来本科生、硕士生和博士生的招生名额都扩大了,教材建设再次提上了日程。除组织国内老师自行编写外,从国外直接引进仍不失为一个有效途径。语言学是一门领先科学,因此本丛书的有些内容对其他专业的老师和学生、研究者,甚至业余学习者也有很高参考价值。例如,像有关语料库、认知语言学的著作除外语老师外,计算科学、统计学、认知科学、词典编辑等专业的研究人员和师生也有一读之必要。
北大版“西方语言学原版影印系列丛书”的问世是意料中的事。早在2002年1月北京大学出版社已出版过“西方语言学丛书”,从剑桥大学出版社引进了六卷本《英语语言史》,Robert D.van Valin和Randy J.Lapolla的《句法:结构、意义与功能》,Andres Radford的《*简方案:句法理论与英语结构》……共七种,在外语界独树一
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另一点值得我们考虑的是,全面掌握语言学和应用语言学的专业知识固然是保证教学质量的一个方面,我们还要让高等学校的学生经常站在本学科的前沿,接触本学科的*新成果。掌握本学科的*新动向。这也是保证教材质量,从而保证所培养学生质量的—个重要方面。因此,本丛书既引进有关学科在各时期的经典著作,更注意引进21世纪的新著。长江后浪推前浪,许多经典著作*初也是以新著的形式问世的,其作者的年龄往往属于新生代。因此,时代意识是本系列丛书的一大特征。
为了实现这一目标,本丛书采取灵活的出版发行方式,既可系统成套出版,也可成熟一本,出版一本。这样,只要国外有好的新著出版,北京大学出版社就可以根据该书的质量和国内的需要,及时引进。这在信息爆炸的今天,尤为重要。我们还认为,这套丛书的建设与广大读者的监督和支持是分不开的。我们欢迎读者对本丛书不足之处提出宝贵意见,我们更欢迎读者和业内行家向我们**有引进价值的著作!

Contents
Preface
About the Authors
PARTI
The Nature of Human Language
CHAPTER
What Is Language?
Linguistic Knowledge
Knowledge of the Sound System
Knowledge of Words
Arbitrary Relation of Form and
Meaning
The Creativity of Linguistic
Knowledge
Knowledge of Sentences and
Nonsentences
Linguistic Knowledge and Performance
What Is Grammar?
Descriptive Grammars
Prescriptive Grammars
Teaching Grammars
Language Universals
The Development of Grammar
Sign Languages: Evidence for the Innateness of Language
American Sign Language
Animal "Languages"
"Talking" Parrots
The Birds and the Bees
Language and Thought
What We Know about Language
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
CHAPTER 2
Brain and Language
The Human Brain
The Localization of Language in the Brain
Aphasia
Brain Imaging Technology
Brain Plasticity and Lateralization
in Early Life
Split Brains
Other Experimental Evidence of Brain
Organization
The Autonomy of Language
Other Dissociations of Language and Cognition
Laura
Christopher
Genetic Basis of Language
Language and Brain Development
The Critical Period
A Critical Period for Bird Song
The Evolution of Language
In the Beginning: The Origin of Language
God's Gift to Mankind?
The First Language
Human Invention or the Cries of Nature?
The Development of Language in the Species
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
PART 2
Grammatical Aspects of Language
CHAPTER 3
Morphology: The Words of Language
Dictionaries
Content Words and Function Words
Morphemes: The Minimal Units of Meaning
Bound and Free Morphemes
Prefixes and Suffixes
Infixes
Circumfixes
Roots and Stems
Huckles and Ceives
Rules of Word Formation
Derivational Morphology
The Hierarchical Structure of Words
More about Derivational
Morphemes
Lexical Gaps
Rule Productivity
"Pullet Surprises"
Sign Language Morphology
Word Coinage
Words from Names
Back-Formations
Compounds
Meaning of Compounds
Universality of Compounding
Blends
Reduced Words
Inflectional Morphemes
Exceptions and Suppletions
Morphology and Syntax
Morphological Analysis: Identifying Morphemes
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
CHAPTER 4
Syntax: The Sentence Patterns of Language
What the Syntax Rules Do
What Grammaticality Is Not Based On
Sentence Structure
Constituents and Constituency Tests
Syntactic Categories
Phrase Structure Trees and Rules
Some Conventions for Building Phrase
Structure Trees
The Infinity of Language
Heads and Complements
Selection
What Heads the Sentence
Structural Ambiguities
More Structures
Sentence Relatedness
Transformational Rules
Structure-Dependent Rules
Syntactic Dependencies
Wh Questions
UG Principles and Parameters
Sign Language Syntax
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
CHAPTER 5
The Meaning of Language
What Speakers Know about Sentence Meaning
Truth
Entailment and Related Notions
Ambiguity
Compositional Semantics
Semantic Rules
Semantic Rule I
Semantic Rule II
hen Compositionality
Goes Awry
Anomaly
Metaphor
Idioms
Lexical Semantics (Word Meanings)
Theories of Word Meaning
Reference
Sense
Lexical Relations
Semantic Features
Evidence for Semantic Features
Semantic Features and Grammar
Argument Structure
Thematic Roles
Pragmatics
Pronouns
Pronouns and Syntax
Pronouns and Discourse
Deixis
More on Situational Context
Maxims of Conversation
Implicatures
Speech Acts
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
CHAPTER 6
Phonetics: The Sounds of Language
Sound Segments
Identity of Speech Sounds
The Phonetic Alphabet
Articulatory Phonetics
Consonants
Places of Articulation
Manner of Articulation
Phonetic Symbols for American English Consonants
Vowels
Lip Rounding
Diphthongs
Nasalization of Vowels
Tense and Lax Vowels
Different (Tongue) Strokes for Different Folks
Major Phonetic Classes
Noncontinuants and Continuants
Obstruents and Sonorants
Consonantal
Syllabic Sounds
Prosodic Features
Tone and Intonation
Phonetic Symbols and Spelling Correspondences
The "Phonetics" of Signed Languages
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
CHAPTER 7
Phonology: The Sound Patterns of Language
The Pronunciation of Morphemes
The Pronunciation of Plurals
Additional Examples of Allomorphs
Phonemes: The Phonological Units of Language
Vowel Nasalization in English as
an Illustration of Allophones
Allophones of /t/
Minimal Pairs in ASL
Complementary Distribution
Distinctive Features of Phonemes
Feature Values
Nondistinctive Features
Phonemic Patterns May Vary Across
Languages
Natural Classes of Speech Sounds
Feature Specifications for American
English Consonants and Vowels
The Rules of Phonology
Assimilation Rules
Dissimilation Rules
Feature-Changing Rules
Segment Insertion and Deletion
Rules
Movement (Metathesis) Rules
From One to Many and from Many to One
The Function of Phonological Rules
Slips of the Tongue: Evidence
for Phonological Rules
Prosodic Phonology
Syllable Structure
Word Stress
Sentence and Phrase Stress
Intonation
Sequential Constraints of Phonemes
Lexical Gaps
Why Do Phonological Rules Exist?
Phonological Analysis: Discovering Phonemes
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
PART 3
The Psychology of Language
CHAPTER 8
Language Acquisition
Mechanisms of Language Acquisition
Do Children Learn through
Imitation?
Do Children Learn through
Reinforcement?
Do Children Learn Language through
Analogy?
Do Children Learn through Structured
Input?
Children Construct Grammars
The Innateness Hypothesis
Stages in Language Acquisition
The Perception and Production of Speech Sounds
First Words
The Development of Grammar
The Acquisition of Phonology
The Acquisition of Word Meaning
The Acquisition of Morphology
The Acquisition of Syntax
The Acquisition of Pragmatics
The Development of Auxiliaries: A Case Study
Setting Parameters
The Acquisition of Signed Languages
Knowing More Than
One Language
Childhood Bilingualism
Theories of Bilingual Development
Two Monolingual in One Head
The Role of Input
Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism
Second Language Acquisition
Is L2 Acquisition the Same as LI
Acquisition?
Native Language Influence in L2
Acquisition
The Creative Component ofL2
Acquisition
Is There a Critical Period for L2
Acquisition?
Second-Language Teaching Methods
Can Chimps Learn Human Language?
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
CHAPTER 9
Language Processing: Humans and Computers
The Human Mind at Work: Human Language Processing
Comprehension
The Speech Signal
Speech Perception and Comprehension
Bottom-up and Top-down Models
Lexical Access and Word Recognition
Syntactic Processing
Speech Production
Planning Units
Lexical Selection
Application and Misapplication
of Rules 377 Nonlinguistic Influences
Computer Processing of Human Language
Frequency Analysis, Concordances,
and Collocations
Information Retrieval and
Summarization
Spell Checkers
Machine Translation
Computers That Talk and Listen
Computational Phonetics and Phonology
Computational Morphology
Computational Syntax
Computational Semantics
Computational Pragmatics
Computer Models of Grammar
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
PART 4
Language and Society
CHAPTER 10
Language in Society
Dialects
Regional Dialects
Accents
Dialects of English
Social Dialects
The "Standard"
African American English
Latino (Hispanic) English
Genderlects
Sotiolinguistic Analysis
Languages in Contact
Lingua Francas
Pidgins
Creoles
Language in Use
Styles
Slang
Jargon and Argot
Taboo or Not Taboo?
Euphemisms
Racial and National Epithets
Language and Sexism
Marked and Unmarked Forms
The Generic "He"
Secret Languages and Language Games
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
CHAPTER 11
Language Change: The Syllables of Time
The Regularity of Sound
Change
Sound Correspondences
Ancestral Protolanguages
Phonological Change
Phonological Rules
The Great Vowel Shift
Morphological Change
Syntactic Change
Lexical Change
Addition of New Words
Borrowings or Loan Words
History through Loan Words
Loss of Words
Semantic Change
Broadening
Narrowing
Meaning Shifts
Reconstructing "Dead" Languages
The Nineteenth-Century
Comparativists
Cognates
Comparative Reconstruction
Historical Evidence
Extinct and Endangered Languages
The Genetic Classification of Languages
Languages of the World
Types of Languages
Why Do Languages Change?
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
CHAPTER 12
Writing: The ABCs of Language
The History of Writing
Pictograms and Ideograms
Cuneiform Writing
The Rebus Principle
From Hieroglyphics to the Alphabet
Modern Writing Systems
Word Writing
Syllabic Writing
Consonantal Alphabet Writing
Alphabetic Writing
Reading, Writing, and Speech
Reading
Spelling
Spelling Pronunciations
Summary
References for Further Reading
Exercises
GLOSSARY
INDEX 567
……

《语言引论》一书是适合所有层次学生的理想教材,包含语言教学的诸多领域,诸如语言学、英语、教育、外国语言、心理学、人类学、社会学以及英语作为第二语言的教学。继承作者始终如一的写作与出版理念,每一版本都努力做到*前沿、*完整、内容*丰富,第八版的修订版除了保留面向学生的友善和情趣横生的风格之外,反映了语言学领域内*新的研究成果。 *全面的语言学导论,已经成为我的案头书。——约翰·奥森, 英国伦敦法律语言研究所所长