Showing titles in Linguistics

In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land, explaining how a dusty hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't won, why Americans say 'lootenant' and 'Toosday', how Americans were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up, as well as exposing the true origins of the G-string, the original $64,000 question, and Dr Kellogg of cornflakes fame.

Can You Forgive Her? is the first of the six in the Palliser series. Trollope inextricably binds together the issues of parliamentary election and marriage, of politics and privacy. The values and aspirations of the governing stratum of Victorian society are ruthlessly examined, and none remains unscathed. But above all Trollope focuses on the predicament of women. 'What should a woman do with her life?' asks Alice Vavasor of herself, and this theme is echoed by every other woman in the audiobook.

Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. But it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries, allowing us to ponder why different languages emerged, why there isn't simply a single language, how languages change over time and whether that's good or bad, and how languages die out and become extinct.

The three novels that make up this trilogy have long been recognized as masterpieces of 20th-century literature, and Galsworthy as one of its leading exponents. But don’t let that be the reason you put off listening to this wonderful work. There are passion and lust in these pages, high art and low comedy, and unthinking violence that ride alongside ever-correct manners. Scandal, tragedy, despair, rape, accidental death, marriage, remarriage and a healthy leavening of births all unfold against a rolling backdrop of a world war.

Drawing on evidence from many fields, including archaeology, anthropology, neurology and linguistics, Sverker Johansson weaves these disparate threads together to show how our human ancestors evolved into language users. The Dawn of Language provides a fascinating survey of how grammar came into being and the differences or similarities between languages spoken around the world, before exploring how language eventually emerged in the very remote human past.

Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century.

For millennia, philosophers and scientists have been trying to unlock the secrets of the mind with only limited success—until now. Today, with modern technologies including the best in neuroscience, medical imaging, and recent advances in artificial intelligence, we are making more progress than ever before. In Introduction to Cognitive Science, Professor Thad A. Polk takes you on a fascinating tour of the latest discoveries in the relatively new field of cognitive science. In 24 exciting lectures, Professor Polk shares dozens of the most challenging questions in cognitive science today.

In this follow-up to Nesbit’s classic Five Children and It, Cyril, Robert, Anthea, Jane, and the Lamb have more magical adventures in store when a mysterious egg hatches in the nursery fireplace. Out comes a flame-colored bird, the Phoenix, who, though a bit conceited, proves very helpful indeed. The bird kindly explains that the second-hand Persian carpet recently acquired for the nursery is actually a flying one. On it, they may travel to any place and time that they wish. But once again, the children find that magic does not always go as planned.

You may think you speak only one language. In fact, your mind is interpreting multiple codes of communication. Some people speak Spanish, some Mandarin. Some speak poetry, some are fluent in maths. Humans are built for multilingualism. Drawing on cutting-edge research and theory, delivered with wit and lucid insight, psycholinguist Viorica Marian explores the ways in which the mind uses multiple languages and how, in doing so, we can open the doors to unique forms of creativity, brain health and cognitive control.

A bonzer (p. 288) discussion of the strange but dinkum (p. 289) pedigree (p. 224) of the naughty (p. 202), nice (p. 212), and, sometimes, obscene (p. 217) English language. We live in a torrent of words — from radio and television, books and newspapers, and now from the internet. But, as Julian Burnside reminds us in this new edition of the bestselling Wordwatching, words are a source both of pleasure and power, and can be deployed for good or for ill.

Daniel Everett, then a Christian missionary, arrived among the Pirahã in 1977 - with his wife and three young children - intending to convert them. What he found was a language that defies all existing linguistic theories and reflects a way of life that evades contemporary understanding. The Pirahã have no counting system and no fixed terms for color. They have no concept of war or of personal property.

Martin Eden, Jack London’s semiautobiographical novel, is about a struggling young writer. It is considered by many to be the author’s most mature work. Personifying London’s own dreams of education and literary fame as a young man in San Francisco, Martin Eden’s impassioned but ultimately ineffective battle to overcome his bleak circumstances makes him one of the most memorable and poignant characters Jack London ever created.

In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records.

A sinister masterpiece, Our Mutual Friend was Dickens' last completed novel. It is perhaps his ultimate vision of a dark, macabre London and the corrupting power of money.

Completely revised and updated to tackle today’s issues, the 10th Anniversary Edition not only explains what framing is and how it works but also reveals why, after a brief stint of winning the framing wars in the 2008 elections, the Democrats have gone back to losing them, and what can be done about it. In this powerful new volume, George Lakoff delves into the issues that will dominate the midterm elections in 2014, the coming presidential elections, and beyond.

Linguistics, the study of language, has a reputation for being complex and inaccessible. But here's a secret: There's a lot that's quirky and intriguing about how human language works-and much of it is downright fun to learn about. But with so many potential avenues of exploration, it can often seem daunting to try to understand it. Where does one even start?

The sentence is the common ground where every writer walks. A poet writes in sentences, but so does the unsung author who came up with Items trapped in doors cause delays. A good sentence can be written (and read) by anyone if we simply give it the gift of our time, and it is as close as most of us will get to making something truly beautiful. Enter acclaimed author Professor Joe Moran. Using minimal technical terms, First You Write a Sentence is his unpedantic but authoritative explanation of how the most ordinary words can be turned into verbal constellations of extraordinary grace.

Better Vocabulary in 30 Minutes a Day offers a lively and entertaining method for adding a more impressive list of words to your everyday speech, and for learning how to use them effortlessly and accurately. Besides giving definitions, this invaluable guide also provides root meanings and elements of words so you can increase your vocabulary base by thousands of exciting new words and use them with aplomb in sentences.

Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past.

Almost everyone swears, or worries about not swearing, from the two year-old who has just discovered the power of potty mouth to the grandma who wonders why every other word she hears is obscene. Whether they express anger or exhilaration, are meant to insult or to commend, swear words perform a crucial role in language. But swearing is also a uniquely well-suited lens through which to look at history, offering a fascinating record of what people care about on the deepest levels of a culture - what's divine, what's terrifying, and what's taboo.