Whether we grow up with one, two, or several languages during our early years of life, many of us will learn a second, foreign, or heritage language in later years. The field of Second language acquisition (SLA, for short) investigates the human capacity to learn additional languages in late childhood, adolescence, or adulthood, after the first language --in the case of monolinguals-- or languages --in the case of bilinguals-- have already been acquired. Understanding Second Language Acquisition offers a wide-encompassing survey of this burgeoning field, its accumulated findings and proposed theories, its developed research paradigms, and its pending questions for the future. The book zooms in and out of universal, individual, and social forces, in each case evaluating the research findings that have been generated across diverse naturalistic and formal contexts for second language acquisition. It assumes no background in SLA and provides helpful chapter-by-chapter summaries and suggestions for further reading. Ideal as a textbook for students of applied linguistics, foreign language education, TESOL, and education, it is also recommended for students of linguistics, developmental psycholinguistics, psychology, and cognitive science. Supporting resources for tutors are available free at www.hodderplus.co.uk/linguistics (registration required).

People use metaphors every time they speak. Some of those metaphors are literary - devices for making thoughts more vivid or entertaining. But most are much more basic than that - they're "metaphors we live by", metaphors we use without even realizing we're using them. In this book, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that these basic metaphors not only affect the way we communicate ideas, but actually structure our perceptions and understandings from the beginning. Bringing together the perspectives of linguistics and philosophy, Lakoff and Johnson offer an intriguing and surprising guide to some of the most common metaphors and what they can tell us about the human mind. And for this new edition, they supply an afterword both extending their arguments and offering a fascinating overview of the current state of thinking on the subject of the metaphor.

The Guidebook to Sociolinguistics presents a comprehensive introduction to the main concepts and terms of sociolinguistics, and of the goals, methods, and findings of sociolinguistic research. Introduces readers to the methodology and skills of doing hands-on research in this field Features chapter-by-chapter classic and contemporary case studies, exercises, and examples to enhance comprehension Offers wide-ranging coverage of topics across sociolinguistics. It begins with multilingualism, and moves on through language choice and variation to style and identity Takes students through the challenges involved in conducting their own research project Written by one of the leading figures in sociolinguistics

本部纪录片是BBC地平线系列推出的一档探秘人类特有能力“说话”的纪录片。说话，这种区别于动物、以此界定为人类的我们所特有的属性，却至今仍是一个谜。当你说话时，轻松自如、毫不费力，以至于你都意识不到它的存在。其实它需要成千上万次的思考和决策，“说话”并非你想象的那么简单。虽然语言学教父诺姆·乔姆斯基指出：我们说话的能力是与生俱来的，但是“语言”或者说“说话的能力”到底来自哪里，它又是如何形成的呢？在本片中，你将看到三组不同的测试和实验：一位父亲用摄像机记录下了儿子头三年里是如何学会说话的，一位会说超过20种语言的自闭症患者，以及第一位找到说话基因的科学家。不仅如此，你还将看到一门新的语言是如何诞生的。
地平线系列纪录片是英国广播公司BBC制作的一档流行并且播放已久的科学纪录片，于1964年5月2日首播，到2013年为止已有49个系列超过1100集。本系列纪录片从历史、人文、宗教、地理、设计、艺术、生物、哲学、环保、伦理等多个方面，提供世界上最伟大科学家和哲学家一个可以交流他们看法和观点的平台，并将他们对世界的新看法引入到我们的日常知识中来的科教节目。

This popular and accessible introduction to phonetics has been fully updated for its third edition, and now includes an accompanying website with sound files, and expanded coverage of topics such as speech technology. Describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages Written by the late Peter Ladefoged, one of the world's leading phoneticians, with updates by renowned forensic linguist, Sandra Ferrari Disner Includes numerous revisions to the discussion of speech technology and additional updates throughout the book Explores the acoustic, articulatory, and perceptual components of speech, demonstrates speech synthesis, and explains how speech recognition systems work Will be supported by a forthcoming accompanying website featuring additional data and recordings of the sounds of a wide variety of languages, to reinforce learning and bring the descriptions to life