WHO TALKS FUNNY?

A general introduction to languages and linguistics, synchronic and diachronic—informative and entertaining in just the right proportions. Writing in a conversational style, Cox covers all the topics one would expect to find in an introductory textbook—language families, historical perspective, the formation of dialects and creoles, phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, writing systems—briefly sketching out the basic concepts of linguistics, and then filling most of each chapter with a colorful assortment of illustrations, facts, and anecdotes related to languages from all over the world. She thus exposes her readers to a great variety of experiments, and encourages them to learn languages. (appendix, glossary, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10+)