Plag I., Arndt-Lappe S., Braun M., Schramm M. Introduction to English Linguistics

3rd Edition, Revised and Enlarged. — Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2015. — XII, 291 p.This successful textbook introduces beginning university students of English to the study of English linguistics.Although language is a topic of interest for most people, having and using language is usually taken for granted. This book does the exact opposite, it asks all kinds of question about language and introduces its readers to its scientific study. The most fundamental question that still amazes most linguists is the following: How can it be that a speaker utters some kind of peculiar noise, and only milliseconds later a listener knows what the speaker has conceived shortly before, or during, the moment that noise was uttered?This introductory textbook will take you on a tour through the complexities involved in answering this question. In doing so, the present book is mainly concerned with one particular language, English, but often comparisons are made with other languages, German in particular. As a textbook for an undergraduate readership our book presupposes no prior knowledge of linguistics and introduces and explains linguistic terminology and theoretical apparatus as we go along. Important technical terms appear in bold print when first mentioned. Crisp definitions of these terms can also be found in the glossary, and more elaborate information can be easily found via the subject index.Apart from adding a new chapter, we implemented various changes, corrected errors, added new terms to the glossary, and updated several materials including the suggestions for further reading.The new and updated third edition of this highly successful textbook contains an additional chapter that presents modern empirical research methods in the form of exemplary small-scale studies. In these projects the authors invite the reader to develop and address research questions from phonetics/phonology, morphology and syntax. The pertinent experimental and corpus-linguistic techniques are introduced and students are familiarized with some basic statistical tools necessary for the analysis of the data.The major difference between this book and its potential competitors lies in its hands-on didactic orientation, with a strong focus on linguistic analysis and argumentation. Language and linguistic theory are approached from a strictly empirical perspective: given a certain set of data to be accounted for, theoretical and methodological problems must be solved in order to analyze and understand the data properly. The book is not written from the perspective of a particular theoretical framework and draws on insights from various research traditions. Introduction to English Linguistics concentrates on gaining expertise and analytical skills in the traditional core areas of linguistics, i.e. phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. The chapter on "Extensions and applications" widens the perspective to other areas of linguistic research, such as historical, socio- and psycholinguistics. Each chapter is accompanied by exercises and suggestions for further reading. A glossary and an index facilitate access to terms and topics.A good introduction to basic linguistics at a readable length.