This online textbook serves to provide an introduction to the science of linguistics, its major subfields, and its theoretical consequences.

Part of the Linguistics Collection

Contents Edit


 
"Freedom" (amagi), or "liberty", taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

00.Introduction- How does language work?

linguistics, descriptivism, hidden knowledge, deep structure, experimental data



 
"IPA" in IPA

01.Phonetics- The sounds of speech

articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, auditory phonetics, the International Phonetic Alphabet



 

02.Phonology- Internal Representations and Rules of Sounds

phonemes, allophony, morphophonology



 
Word structure tree of Dutch compounds

03.Morphology- How we make words

morphemes, affixes, other morphemes, inflectional morphology, derivational morphology, morphosyntax, non-morphemic theories



 
Parse of the sentence "John hit the ball".



 
Gavagai



 
Inclusive and exclusive "nous"



 
Ergative morphosyntactic alignment

07.Typology- The unity and diversity of language

phonological, morphological, morphosyntactic, syntactic



 
An example Old English typeface called "Blackletter".



 
An icon showing glyphs from different alphabets

09.Orthography- The use of written language

directionality, spelling systems, alphabets, abjads, abugidas, syllabaries, logographies, mixed scripts, unwritten language and new orthographies



 
Multilingual sign in Nador, Morocco



 
Linguistic hedge effect

11.Psycholinguistics- Language in the mind

understanding of language



 
Skull of Homo neanderthalensis





 
Tok Pisin Wikipedia logo



 
Sign language hands



 
Computer and stack



 
Brain



Glossary

definition of terms



IPA Chart

IPA chart






See also Edit