Is Ebonics really a dialect or simply bad English? Do women and men speak differently? Will computers ever really learn human language? Does offensive language harm children? These are only a few of the issues surrounding language that crop up every day. This thoroughly revised second edition updates the book with a new co-author, and includes new chapters on language and power, language extinction, and what it is linguists actually do. Language Matters is sure to engage both general readers and students of language and linguistics at any level.
Language, more than anything else, is what makes us human. It appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Any normal human child will learn a language based on rather sparse data in the surrounding world, while even the brightest chimpanzee, exposed to the same environment, will not.
What are the unique characteristics of sign languages that make them so fascinating? What have recent researchers discovered about them, and what do these findings tell us about human language more generally?
What constitutes "bad" language? Is it slang? Curse words? In this academic volume, Battistella, a professor of English, examines language's relationship to social conditions and constraints and argues for relativism in looking at language. He maintains that hard-nosed, traditional ideas about what is "good" and what is "bad" are open to debate, and that labeling English as either "good" or "bad" is simplistic and unnecessary. Battistella suggests "how we might think more productively about language.
"Перевод и смысловая структура", 1976 г. Автор: Л.А. Черняховская
Книга посвящена одной из наиболее актуальных проблем современной лингвистики. На богатом фактическом материале описаны различные типы смысловой структуры и способы их синтаксического оформления в английском и русском языках. Книга представляет собой не только теоретический интерес; она полезна и для переводчиков-практиков и для всех изучающих иностранный язык.
