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Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback)

by P. H. Matthews (Author) "What is linguistics? ..." (more)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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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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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars As the title says: A very short introduction, 15 Nov 2008
By Nadine Awde "nebreek" (Newcastle, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Linguistics - the science and the mystery, 3 Oct 2008
By Jon Chambers (Birmingham, England) - See all my reviews
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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.
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