AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE, 11th Edition, offers an entirely up-to-date look at language studies and linguistics in today's world. Written from the ground up as if it were a first edition, the book is fresh, modern, and reflective of the current state of the field. At the same time, it maintains the acclaimed light, friendly, readable style and the breadth of coverage that have made it a perennial best seller. The authors examine grammatical subjects (e.g., morphology, syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology), childhood language development and adult secondary language acquisition, and the tremendous leap in knowledge achieved in neurolinguistics.

1. WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
Linguistic Knowledge. What Is Grammar? Universal Grammar. What Is Not (Human) Language. Language and Thought.
2. MORPHOLOGY: THE WORDS OF LANGUAGE.
Content Words and Function Words. Morphemes: The Minimal Units of Meaning.
Rules of Word Formation. Sign Language Morphology. Morphological Analysis: Identifying Morphemes.
3. SYNTAX: THE SENTENCE PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE.
What the Syntax Rules Do. Sentence Structure. Phrase Structure Trees. The Internal Structure of Phrases. Grammatical Dependencies. UG Principles and Parameters. Sign Language Syntax.
4. THE MEANING OF LANGUAGE.
What Speakers Know about Sentence Meaning. Compositional Semantics. When Compositionality Goes Awry. Lexical Semantics (Word Meanings). Pragmatics.
5. PHONETICS: THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE.
Sound Segments. Articulatory Phonetics. Major Phonetic Classes. Syllabic Sounds.
6. PHONOLOGY: THE SOUND OF LANGUAGE.
The Pronunciation of Morphemes. Phonemes: The Phonological Units of Language. Distinctive Features of Phonemes. The Rules of Phonology. Prosodic Phonology. Sequential Constraints of Phonemes. Why Do Phonological Rules Exist? Phonological Analysis.
7. LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY.
Dialects. Social Dialects. Languages in Contact. Language and Education. Language in Use.
8. LANGUAGE CHANGE: THE SYLLABLES OF TIME.
The Regularity of Sound Change. Phonological Change. Morphological Change. Syntactic Change. Lexical Change. Reconstructing "Dead" Languages. Extinct and Endangered Languages. The Genetic Classification of Languages. Types of Languages. Why Do Languages Change? The History of Writing.
9. LANGUAGE ACQUISITION.
The Linguistic Capacity of Children. The Role of the Linguistic Environment: Adult Input. Knowing More Than One Language.
10. LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND THE HUMAN BRAIN.
The Human Mind at Work. Brain and Language. Language and Brain Development. The Modular Mind: Dissociations of Language and Cognition.
Glossary.
Index.

AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE, 11th Edition, offers an entirely up-to-date look at language studies and linguistics in today's world. Written from the ground up as if it were a first edition, the book is fresh, modern, and reflective of the current state of the field. At the same time, it maintains the acclaimed light, friendly, readable style and the breadth of coverage that have made it a perennial best seller. The authors examine grammatical subjects (e.g., morphology, syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology), childhood language development and adult secondary language acquisition, and the tremendous leap in knowledge achieved in neurolinguistics. The eleventh edition has 10 chapters instead of the 12 of earlier editions. The chapters on computer processing of human language and writing have been eliminated, with some of the material on the history of writing incorporated into Chapter 8, "Language Change." This more streamlined edition enables teachers and students on a quarter system to more fully utilize the material. For those on the semester system, it allows extra time for the more challenging chapters such as phonology and syntax. Additional research-oriented exercises have been added throughout for instructors who wish their students to pursue certain topics more deeply. Some exercises continue to be marked as "challenge" questions: they go beyond the scope of what is ordinarily expected in a first course in language study. An updated Answer Key is available to instructors to assist them in areas outside of their expertise. New cartoons throughout the book illustrate the authors' clear descriptions of complex linguistic points and principles. Chapter 1 includes a new section entitled "Can computers learn human language?" The Chapter 2 section on compound words has been expanded to include a detailed discussion of their internal structure. Chapter 3 on syntax is the most heavily revised chapter. The first half of the chapter introduces the universal and easily understood notions of constituency, syntactic categories, phrase structure trees and rules, structural ambiguity, and infinite scope language. The second half delves into the internal structure of phrases, including the concepts of heads, complements, and selection. The chapter ends with a basic introduction to grammatical dependencies, including agreement rules and the transformational analysis of questions, carefully explained and illustrated. Chapter 4, "The Meaning of Language," contains revised sections on argument structure and thematic roles and semantic features, the latter now containing a discussion of how these features affect syntax. Chapter 8, "Language Change: The Syllables of Time," has been updated with the latest research on language families, language relatedness, and language typology. In response to reviewers' requests, the chapter presents a detailed and more complex illustration of the application of the comparative method to two contemporary dialects to reconstruct their ancestor -- often called "internal reconstruction." The thematically related section on the history of writing is also included, moved from its previous location in a separate chapter.