{"id":1812,"date":"2011-10-11T10:00:36","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T08:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1812"},"modified":"2011-10-10T09:04:57","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T07:04:57","slug":"an-introduction-to-language-and-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1812","title":{"rendered":"An introduction to language and communication"},"content":{"rendered":"
Linguistics: <\/strong>An introduction to language and communication. 6th edn. By Adrian Akmajian<\/strong>, Richard A. Demers<\/strong>, Ann K. Farmer<\/strong>, and Robert M. Harnish<\/strong>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. Pp. xiv, 630. ISBN 9780262513708<\/a>. $45.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Reda A. H. Mahmoud<\/a><\/strong>, Minya University<\/em><\/p>\n

This updated and revised sixth edition of Introduction to language and communication<\/em> handles the fundamental concepts in linguistics on both structural and cognitive levels. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with the basic structural elements of linguistics, starting with morphology, phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, language variation, and language change. Part 2 includes the cognitive-oriented sections on pragmatics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, and language and the brain. These two main parts are the results of classroom experience and discussion, reflecting the authors\u2019 intention for this book to be used in course design.<\/p>\n

In eight chapters, Part 1 introduces and discusses the core areas of structural linguistics. Chs. 2\u20136 handle the discrete units for the traditional main fields (e.g. morphemes, phonemic and phonetic features, syntactic units, and word formation processes), the properties of these structural units, and the rules that characterize the combination and organization of these units. Chs. 7 and 8 focus on the ways that language varies across individual speakers and dialect groups, and how languages vary and relate to each other historically.<\/p>\n

Part 2 departs from structural linguistics and turns to language use and acquisition, relying on the main concepts introduced in the first part. This part deals generally with language use and cognition, incorporating significant issues in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and artificial intelligence. Ch. 9 explores the nature of pragmatics, its subareas, and the study of language use in relation to structure and context of use. Chs. 10\u201311 focus on the study of the acquisition and use of linguistic knowledge. Ch. 10 investigates the production and comprehension of speech and explains how linguistic knowledge is represented in the mind and how this information is put to use in communication. Ch. 11 is devoted to the acquisition of language, exploring the development of human language compared to other primates in order to understand the processes of learning and the complexity of communication systems. Finally, Ch. 12 approaches the study of the neural basis of language by exploring the experiences of patients who have problems with speech production and comprehension.<\/p>\n

Every chapter in this book is supported by plentiful illustrative examples from English and other languages, study questions, exercises, and recommendation for further reading. The book also includes a valuable glossary of linguistic terms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linguistics: An introduction to language and communication. 6th edn. By Adrian Akmajian, Richard A. Demers, Ann K. Farmer, and Robert M. Harnish. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. Pp. xiv, 630. ISBN 9780262513708. $45. Reviewed by Reda A. H. Mahmoud, Minya University This updated and revised sixth edition of Introduction to language and communication handles the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1813,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions\/1813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}