This second edition of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language presents a mass of new information and introduces the subject of language to a fresh generation of students and general readers. The first edition of the book is probably the most successful general study of language ever published. This second edition extends the range of coverage to include advances in areas like machine translation, speech interaction with machines, and language teaching. There is new material on acoustics, physiological concepts of language, and World English, and a complete update of the language distribution maps, language-speaking statistics, a table of the world's languages, and further reading. All geopolitical material has been revised to take account of boundary changes. The book has been redesigned and is presented for the first time in full colour, with new pictures and maps added.
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'… a celebration of language in all its oddity, beauty, fun, astonishing complexity and limitless variety.' London Review of Books
'The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language is a masterpeice of comprehensiveness and clarity.' New Internationalist
'… an ingenious tour de force … stunningly diverse linguistic menu.' Robert Burchfield, The Times
'… magnificently demonstrates Professor Crystal's outstanding breadth of knowledge, incisiveness of judgment and superb skills at getting to the heart of highly complex issues in a clear and straightforward manner.' Randolph Quirk, FBA
'… David Crystal has a great facility for explaining language issues with plain good sense, wit and admirable brevity.' The Times Educational Supplement
'The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language is a masterpeice of comprehensiveness and clarity.' New Internationalist
'… an ingenious tour de force … stunningly diverse linguistic menu.' Robert Burchfield, The Times
'… magnificently demonstrates Professor Crystal's outstanding breadth of knowledge, incisiveness of judgment and superb skills at getting to the heart of highly complex issues in a clear and straightforward manner.' Randolph Quirk, FBA
'… David Crystal has a great facility for explaining language issues with plain good sense, wit and admirable brevity.' The Times Educational Supplement
Book Description
This second edition of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language presents a mass of new information and introduces the subject of language to a fresh generation of students and general readers. In full colour for the first time, it offers a complete update of the most successful general study of language ever published.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
The overwhelming effect this book leaves the reader is amazement of the scholarship of its single author, who manages to cover everything you could possibly include under the heading 'language' in a single volume. To give you some idea, the indexes and glossary of the 65 chapters information take up nearly 40 pages. Although the depth he can cover everything in is therefore limited, even in 450-odd large pages, a good proportion of what is there is absolutely fascinating and of interest to anyone who uses language (i.e. everyone).
The book makes excellent use of boxes of information and visuals in full colour such as maps, graphs and photos. Like any good encyclopaedia, it can be dipped into almost randomly with the guarantee that some interesting titbit will stick in your head. More unusually, the fact that it doesn't use an A to Z format means that it can quite easily be read through as a general introduction to linguistics. In a sense it could be just as usefully called an encyclopedia of linguistics, as it provides as much information on research and theories of language as it does on the language itself. This shouldn't be taken to mean any of this would only be of interest to the professionally interested, though. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in what is going on around them, and even more so to any teacher or student of language or linguistics.
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book was recommended to me as part of my Linguistics course at university. It has proved very useful for my course (not boring like other Linguistics books can be!), is extremely interesting and contains lots of pictures! My only complaint is that my studies take me AGES because I can't stop looking through it.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book is a great refernce guide for students of Language, Sociology, Psycology and probably other subjects too. It's fresh approach and easy to use page format makes it interesting to read as a whole. From Latin and Greek to Bush Negro and Yoda this has to be the most comprehensive guide I've encountered. It explians word order and grammar using examples which will engage most students .
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Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
This book is too well known in the field to require much comment. As an introduction to the field it is excellent in the range of its information.
Published 2 months ago by Wallman
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
The book is fantastic not only for specialists but also for anybody who may be interested in languages in general. Read more
Published on 16 Dec 2009 by Andreea Dear
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Linguistics A-Level Book
David Crystal's encyclopedia is probably one of the biggest references in A-Level English Studies and it will prove to be a good companion to anyone doing Linguistics or English... Read more
Published on 25 Jan 2005
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating, Informative and Comprehensive
This book is not only a fantastic reference book, but also a great read! The pages are covered with interesting graphs, diagrams, facts, photographs, examples and newspaper... Read more
Published on 29 Sep 2000
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