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Product Description
Product Description
Linguistics falls in the gap between arts and science, on the edges of which the most fascinating discoveries and the most important problems are found. Rather than following the conventional organization of many contemporary introductions to the subject, the author of this stimulating guide begins his discussion with the oldest, 'arts' end of the subject and moves chronologically through to the newest research - the 'science' aspects. A series of short thematic chapters look in turn at such areas as the prehistory of languages and their common origins, language and evolution, language in time and space (the nature of change inherent in language), grammars and dictionaries (how systematic is language?), and phonetics. Explication of the newest discoveries pertaining to language in the brain completes the coverage of all major aspects of linguistics from a refreshing and insightful angle.
About the Author
Peter Matthews is Professor of Linguistics at Cambridge University and a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. His many publications in the field of Linguistics include several academic books, particularly in the area of morphology, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (1997).
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As the title suggests, this is a very short introduction to Linguistics. What I particularly liked about this book is that it gives insight to what this study is in general about. It also makes the reader wonder about many aspects of one's language that may be taken for granted but in reality are very sophisticated. I recommend this book for absolute beginners in the field of linguistics. Otherwise, it may be wiser to invest in a book that covers the subject in more detail.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Linguistics (lin'gwistiks). Hmmm... not always such exciting stuff, judging by one particularly dull book read in student days. But this one is told with zest. It manages to let the reader approach the subject in a personal and meaningful way, and is a bit like sharing the voyage of discovery made by Humbert Humbert on the opening page of Lolita, where the obsessing narrator contemplates the tongue's subtly-shifting journey when pronouncing the name of his teenaged femme fatale.
Two maybe rather trivial things occurred to me while reading. First, how inadequate western alphabets are as systems of representing the myriad sounds produced in human speech (hence all those arcane symbols linguists use, most of which this keyboard is incapable of replicating.). Secondly, a question. Would a linguist as expert as P.H.Matthews be able to understand meaningful speech simply by studying its spectrogram?
Matthews is particularly interesting when dealing with the relationship between cultures and their language, and on vowel shifts (especially on the results of Labov's studies in the department stores of New York). Such modern, observable phenomena shed much-needed light on more distant equivalents like the Great Vowel Shift of Middle English.
Linguistics has often been described as the science of language. This book deals with the physics, biology, psychology and anthropology of speech. That it also deals with the mystery of language as well as the science is one of its great strengths. Sections on the origins of language and on language and the brain are intriguing if, necessarily, speculative. As good a taster as you're likely to meet even in so excellent a series as this.
Two maybe rather trivial things occurred to me while reading. First, how inadequate western alphabets are as systems of representing the myriad sounds produced in human speech (hence all those arcane symbols linguists use, most of which this keyboard is incapable of replicating.). Secondly, a question. Would a linguist as expert as P.H.Matthews be able to understand meaningful speech simply by studying its spectrogram?
Matthews is particularly interesting when dealing with the relationship between cultures and their language, and on vowel shifts (especially on the results of Labov's studies in the department stores of New York). Such modern, observable phenomena shed much-needed light on more distant equivalents like the Great Vowel Shift of Middle English.
Linguistics has often been described as the science of language. This book deals with the physics, biology, psychology and anthropology of speech. That it also deals with the mystery of language as well as the science is one of its great strengths. Sections on the origins of language and on language and the brain are intriguing if, necessarily, speculative. As good a taster as you're likely to meet even in so excellent a series as this.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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7 reviews
47 of 49 people found the following review helpful
Short and Somewhat Lacking
14 Jan 2005
Format:Paperback
In my search for a linguistics text for an undergraduate interdisciplinary course I teach, I ran across Peter Matthews' "Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction." The title suggested a brief overview of the subject, and the accompanying blurb described a book that sounded ideal for students who are not well versed in the subject. What I found was a text that touches on several aspects of linguistics but never really covers any in enough detail to satisfy this reader. My rating of this book, therefore, falls between that given by two other reviews, since I didn't find this book as dire as one reader nor as stellar as the other.
Matthews attempts to give an overview to a complex subject in just over 120 pages, a daunting task, to be sure. He accomplishes his goal to some degree by devoting nine short chapters to such topics as language families and phonology, but he tends to examine the shrubbery without considering the entire forest. For example, he first refers to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) on page 10, then defers his discussion of phonology till the penultimate chapter of the book; furthermore, he never produces a comprehensive phonetic chart of the IPA or any other notation system anywhere in the book. Likewise, he touches on morphosyntax, particularly in a historical context, but does little in explicating this cornerstone of linguistic analysis. I realize that space (i.e., the number of pages) is an issue in a "very short introduction," but the author found it necessary to include full-page photographs of Chomsky, Sweet, Jones, and Saussure (important figures in the field, to be sure, but why use up four pages of a book for that?), in addition to photos of grooming chimps and other visuals better left to longer textbooks.
Matthews' work does have its merits, such as his historical treatment of the development of language, an overview of language variation in English, and the inclusion of examples of morphological features in some unusual languages (Tuyuca, for instance). These illustrations are not as frequent as I would have liked, however, and the reader is left hanging with a very sketchy picture of how languages work. Matthews does provide a nice annotated bibliography at the end for those that wish to pursue a particular topic in depth.
In the main, "Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction" is a disappointing book for the layperson. I would recommend another text such as Akmajian's "Linguistics" as more in depth and much more logically organized.
Matthews attempts to give an overview to a complex subject in just over 120 pages, a daunting task, to be sure. He accomplishes his goal to some degree by devoting nine short chapters to such topics as language families and phonology, but he tends to examine the shrubbery without considering the entire forest. For example, he first refers to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) on page 10, then defers his discussion of phonology till the penultimate chapter of the book; furthermore, he never produces a comprehensive phonetic chart of the IPA or any other notation system anywhere in the book. Likewise, he touches on morphosyntax, particularly in a historical context, but does little in explicating this cornerstone of linguistic analysis. I realize that space (i.e., the number of pages) is an issue in a "very short introduction," but the author found it necessary to include full-page photographs of Chomsky, Sweet, Jones, and Saussure (important figures in the field, to be sure, but why use up four pages of a book for that?), in addition to photos of grooming chimps and other visuals better left to longer textbooks.
Matthews' work does have its merits, such as his historical treatment of the development of language, an overview of language variation in English, and the inclusion of examples of morphological features in some unusual languages (Tuyuca, for instance). These illustrations are not as frequent as I would have liked, however, and the reader is left hanging with a very sketchy picture of how languages work. Matthews does provide a nice annotated bibliography at the end for those that wish to pursue a particular topic in depth.
In the main, "Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction" is a disappointing book for the layperson. I would recommend another text such as Akmajian's "Linguistics" as more in depth and much more logically organized.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Poor introduction to the subject
12 Nov 2005
Format:Paperback
This book starts interestingly with the question of the meaning of words, how we encode sounds with symbols and how languages change over space and time. Unfortunately, from Chapter 4 onwards, the discussion becomes quite hard to follow because it relies on many linguistic terms and complex sentences. For example, I had to re-read this sentence in page 65 several times to understand it:
"This ['distributive' element] distinguishes a set whose members are in some way differentiated; so, for example, forms that might be glossed as 'flower-DIST' could be used of flowers that, as well as being two or more, are not all of the same sort."
The editing and formatting of the book could be better. Some linguistic terms (e.g. "gloss" in page 50 and "genitive" in page 110) are first introduced in an example rather than in the main text. Sometimes examples, captions and quotes are in boxes in a bold font (e.g. in pages 93, 94 and 95) but other times are formatted as a standalone paragraph (e.g. in pages 77, 78 and 79). Poor formatting has resulted in a photograph of Chomsky and some text in page 90, then a description of his ideas in a box starting in page 91 but with the final sentence in a box appearing in page 92.
Many pages in this short (152 page) book are wasted: four pages are allocated to photographs of linguists and eight pages are used to advertise other books in the series! I would have preferred to see some of these pages used for a glossary of terms.
Kam-Hung Soh, 12 November 2005.
"This ['distributive' element] distinguishes a set whose members are in some way differentiated; so, for example, forms that might be glossed as 'flower-DIST' could be used of flowers that, as well as being two or more, are not all of the same sort."
The editing and formatting of the book could be better. Some linguistic terms (e.g. "gloss" in page 50 and "genitive" in page 110) are first introduced in an example rather than in the main text. Sometimes examples, captions and quotes are in boxes in a bold font (e.g. in pages 93, 94 and 95) but other times are formatted as a standalone paragraph (e.g. in pages 77, 78 and 79). Poor formatting has resulted in a photograph of Chomsky and some text in page 90, then a description of his ideas in a box starting in page 91 but with the final sentence in a box appearing in page 92.
Many pages in this short (152 page) book are wasted: four pages are allocated to photographs of linguists and eight pages are used to advertise other books in the series! I would have preferred to see some of these pages used for a glossary of terms.
Kam-Hung Soh, 12 November 2005.
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Skip this one, even if you like the VSI series
16 April 2006
Format:Paperback
This book is neither very short nor a proper introduction. In this case, the title is totally misleading.
With respect to length, the book drones on and on, and took me a surprisingly long time to finish considering the modest number of pages.
With respect to being an introduction, the author seems more interested in showing his expertise rather than guiding those new to the subject. He spends a lot of time on esoterica, while failing to clearly present the basics of linguistics.
For a truly good introduction, I suggest "Teach Yourself Linguistics" by Aitchison, which is well organized, concise, and covers all of the basics. Also check out the excellent audio/video linguistics courses offered by "The Teaching Company."
With respect to length, the book drones on and on, and took me a surprisingly long time to finish considering the modest number of pages.
With respect to being an introduction, the author seems more interested in showing his expertise rather than guiding those new to the subject. He spends a lot of time on esoterica, while failing to clearly present the basics of linguistics.
For a truly good introduction, I suggest "Teach Yourself Linguistics" by Aitchison, which is well organized, concise, and covers all of the basics. Also check out the excellent audio/video linguistics courses offered by "The Teaching Company."
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