This book traces the development of speech from a time when the spiritual roots of words were still experienced, down to the present day when words are in danger of being little else than 'bits' of information. The book illustrates the origins of everyday words and names and traces the use of words through history. It shows how certain sounds…

The present work is divided into two parts. Part I provides a general orientation to the material for both linguists and non-linguists. Part II contains information about 700 of the world's languages. Chapter 1 presents a few of the essentials about language and languages for non-linguists. Chapter 2 provides a brief explanation of how the data…

This book is intended to serve as a broad orientation to the discipline of language study rather than as an introduction to be employed in technical linguistics classes. The 13 chapters touch upon aspects of theoretical as well as applied linguistics, including psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language instruction. Each chapter is followed…

This book is intended for use in conjunction with an introductory text on linguistics and language study, for beginning students of linguistics, or as a source of information for more advanced students who wish to become familiar with many of the issues that have concerned linguists in recent years. The variety of issues covered in this volume are…