A lovely flashback to first year of university. Those heady days when I believed I'd emerge with a double degree in linguistics and history!

I still am fascinated by language. This book is a great introduction to the fundamental concepts of linguistics. Things like aphasia and child language acquisition are just endlessly fascinating, and this book explained them in a simple and readable manner.

The only part I had trouble with was my most disliked aspect within the subject of linguistics: phonetics. This is not the authors' fault, but to me, phonetics is just sooooo boring. That was why the I took like a year to finish the book - I put it down at that section and procrastinated picking it up again. Once I did however, I finished it quickly, and I'm glad I persevered or else I would have missed the part on computer language!

My copy is from 2002, so I'm sure there are recent updates in the field that I missed. Also, the examples listed of Kiwi slang were pretty weird. Neither me nor any of my friends recognised the term "feather dinks". ( )

I've kept this book from my college days (and that was a very LONG time ago. It was, and is, a remarkably well-written book, and continues to be useful as a reference. I paid $19.15 in either 1979 or 1980; I'll bet it's quite a bit more now. It's still a great book. ( )

An extraordinary introduction to the study of language & linguistics; well-written, well-assembled & well-researched. Includes relevent cartoon panels to illustrate examples. ( )

standard text in field. ( )

Last year I had to get this book for my Phonetics class. Luckily I hold on to it, because this book is also the textbook for Introduction to Linguistics, which I'm taking this trimester.

First Round
Term: February-May 2012
Class: Phonetics
Professor: Millie Commander
Date: Feb 27, 2012 to May 10, 2012

Second Round
Term: February-May 2013
Class: Introduction to Linguistics
Professor: Millie Commander
Date: March 8, 2013 to Present ( )