Books in the Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics series

Discourse analysis is a term that has come to have different interpretations for scholars working in different disciplines. For a sociolinguist, it is concerned mainly with the structure of social interaction manifested in conversation; for a psycholinguist, it is primarily concerned with the nature of comprehension of short written texts; for the computational linguist, it is concerned with producing operational models of text-understanding within highly limited contexts. In this textbook, first published in 1983, the authors provide an extensive overview of the many and diverse approaches to the study of discourse, but base their own approach centrally on the discipline which, to varying degrees, is common to them all - linguistics. Using a methodology which has much in common with descriptive linguistics, they offer a lucid and wide-ranging account of how forms of language are used in communication. Their principal concern is to examine how any language produced by man, whether spoken or written, is used to communicate for a purpose in a context.

This textbook is directed towards university students of English and linguistics at all levels. It can also serve as a source book for teachers and advanced students, and as an up-to-date reference concerning many word-formation processes of English and state-of the-art methodologies.

We live our lives in conversation, building families, societies and civilisations. In over seven thousand languages across the world, the basic infrastructure by which we communicate remains the same. This book introduces the methods and findings of conversation analysis, the field that has, more than any other, illuminated the mechanics of interaction.

Andrew Radford has acquired an unrivalled reputation over the past thirty years for writing syntax textbooks in which difficult concepts are clearly explained without the excessive use of technical jargon. Analysing English Sentences continues in this tradition, offering a well-structured introduction to English syntax and contemporary syntactic theory which is supported throughout with learning aids such as summaries, lists of key hypotheses and principles, extensive references, handy hints and exercises. Instructors will also benefit from the book's free online resources, which include PowerPoint slides of chapter key points and analyses of exercise material, as well as an answer key for all the in-book exercises. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated throughout, including additional exercises and an entirely new chapter on exclamative and relative clauses. Assuming no prior knowledge of grammar, this is an approachable introduction to the subject for undergraduate and graduate students.

This lively introduction to figurative language develops new analytical tools and proposes a cohesive view of a broad range of concepts, including metaphor, metonymy, simile, and irony. Comprehensive and practical, the book provides definitions of major concepts, offers in-depth analysis of examples and surveys figurative structures in different discourse genres.

This new edition of Richard Hudson's widely acclaimed textbook Sociolinguistics will be welcomed by students and teachers alike. To reflect changes in the field since publication of the first edition in 1980, the author has added new sections on politeness, accommodation, and prototypes; and he has expanded discussion of sex differences, culture and general theory. There remains coverage of classic topics such as varieties of language, speech as social interaction, the quantitative study of speech, and linguistic and social inequality. Like the first, the second edition of Sociolinguistics is an exceptionally clear and helpful overview of the relationship of language and society.

Analyzing Sound Patterns is a clear and concise introduction to phonological phenomena, covering a wide range of issues from segmental to suprasegmental problems and prosodic morphology. Assuming no prior knowledge of problem solving, this textbook shows students how to analyze phonological problems with a focus on practical tools, methodology and step-by-step instructions. It is aimed at undergraduate and beginning graduate students and places an instructional focus on developing students' analytical abilities. It includes extensive exercises of various types which engage students in reading and evaluating competing analyses, and involves students in a variety of analytical tasks. This textbook: * is designed around related phonological problems and demonstrates how they are analyzed step by step * presents and compares competing accounts of identical problems, and discusses and evaluates the arguments that distinguish one analysis from another * details how a broad array of sound patterns are identified and analyzed.

Corpus linguistics is the study of language data on a large scale - the computer-aided analysis of very extensive collections of transcribed utterances or written texts. This textbook outlines the basic methods of corpus linguistics, explains how the discipline of corpus linguistics developed and surveys the major approaches to the use of corpus data. It uses a broad range of examples to show how corpus data has led to methodological and theoretical innovation in linguistics in general. Clear and detailed explanations lay out the key issues of method and theory in contemporary corpus linguistics. A structured and coherent narrative links the historical development of the field to current topics in 'mainstream' linguistics. Practical tasks and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter encourage students to test their understanding of what they have read and an extensive glossary provides easy access to definitions of technical terms used in the text.

This useful textbook serves as a guide to different types of language acquisition: monolingual and bilingual first language development and child and adult second language acquisition. The essential guide to studying first and second language acquisition, it will be used on courses in linguistics, modern languages and developmental psychology.

Since the publication of F. R. Palmer's first edition of Mood and Modality in 1986, when the topic of 'modality' was fairly unfamiliar, there has been considerable interest in the subject. In this book, Palmer investigates the category of modality, drawing on a wealth of examples from a wide variety of languages.

Agreement in language relates to the correspondence between words in a sentence, in terms of gender, case, person, or number. This textbook offers an insight into how agreement works, and how it varies cross-linguistically. It will be essential reading for all those studying the structure and mechanisms of natural languages.

Language is a skill that young children master with incredible ease and speed, and the remarkable way in which they achieve this has long fascinated linguists and developmental psychologists alike. This accessible new textbook introduces the field of child language acquisition, exploring language development from birth.

Understanding Minimalism, first published in 2005, is an introduction to the Minimalist Program - the model of syntactic theory within generative linguistics. Accessibly written, it presents the basic principles and techniques of the minimalist program in a step-by-step fashion. Over 100 exercises are provided, encouraging students to put these new skills into practice.