Showing titles in Linguistics

Returning to the "Aunt Hill" from a two-year trip around the world, 20-year-old Rose Campbell suddenly finds herself surrounded by male admirers, all expecting her to marry them! Rose is rich and pretty, and she suspects many of these suitors are more interested in her wealth than her dreams. But she is determined to live her own life and find her own love, despite the many plans of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Louisa May Alcott wrote this delightful sequel to Eight Cousins at the request of her many fans.

How do two languages coexist in the same brain? Why is it possible to forget a language? What are the advantages and challenges of being bilingual? Over half of the world's population is bilingual, and yet this fascinating, complex ability is understood by few. In The Bilingual Brain, leading expert Albert Costa explores the science of language through a wide range of cutting-edge studies and examples from South Korea to Spain and Canada.

The virtuous and loving Emily, the young protagonist, finds herself in the care of her aunt following the death of her father. Her aunt promptly marries the villain Montoni, a cruel and calculating man whose scheming leads him to lock both women in the dark and winding castle of Udolpho. Will they survive to tell of its terrors?

China today is one of the world's most powerful nations, yet just a century ago it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, left behind in the wake of Western technology. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu shows that China's most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: to make the formidable Chinese language - a 2,200-year-old writing system that was daunting to natives and foreigners alike - accessible to a globalised digital world.

Mr. Royston is driving his hansom through the night-time streets of Melbourne when he is hailed by a man supporting a slumped, intoxicated figure and requesting that the cabman take the unfortunate fellow home - before proceeding to drop his burden and make a rapid exit.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Have You Eaten Grandma? written and read by Gyles Brandreth. It can be much harder than it seems; commas, colons, semicolons and even apostrophes can drive us all mad at times, but it riles no one more than the longest-serving resident of Countdown's Dictionary Corner, grammar guru Gyles Brandreth. In this brilliantly funny tirade and guide, Gyles anatomises the linguistic horrors of our times, tells us where we've been going wrong (and why) and shows us how, in future, we can get it right every time.

In this wildly entertaining A to Z of verbal acrobatics, Gyles takes you on a whirlwind tour of our mother tongue – from the origins of words and correct grammar and punctuation, to similes, euphemisms and record breaking tongue twisters (try getting your mouth around floccinaucinihilipification!). An idiosyncratic blend of history, word play, anecdote, and hyperbole, all in 60-second instalments, this is Gyles Brandreth at his word-perfect, Just-a-Minute best. You’ll never mix your metaphors again...

An insider’s tour through the construction of invented languages from the bestselling author and creator of languages for Legendary's Dune, the HBO series Game of Thrones and the Syfy series Defiance.

Full of unforgettable characters and humour, this is the original edition of On Our Selection as it was first written. These are Steele Rudd's immensely popular stories about the selection on the Darling Downs in Queensland where Dad, Mother, Dave, and the rest of the family nearly starve, and eventually prosper. Rudd meant them as a tribute to small selectors like his own family.

When Geppetto makes a wooden puppet of a little boy, he is astonished when the puppet comes to life! But Pinocchio dreams of being a real boy.... A magical retelling of the classic tale, read by Stephen Mangan.

Completely revised and updated to tackle today’s issues, the 10th Anniversary Edition not only explains what framing is and how it works but also reveals why, after a brief stint of winning the framing wars in the 2008 elections, the Democrats have gone back to losing them, and what can be done about it. In this powerful new volume, George Lakoff delves into the issues that will dominate the midterm elections in 2014, the coming presidential elections, and beyond.

Follow the journey of Horace Holly and his ward, Leo Vincey, to a lost kingdom in the African interior. There they encounter a primitive race of natives and a mysterious white queen named Ayesha who reigns as the all-powerful "She", or "She-who-must-be-obeyed". In this work, Rider Haggard developed the conventions of the Lost World subgenre, which many later authors emulated.

For millennia, philosophers and scientists have been trying to unlock the secrets of the mind with only limited success—until now. Today, with modern technologies including the best in neuroscience, medical imaging, and recent advances in artificial intelligence, we are making more progress than ever before. In Introduction to Cognitive Science, Professor Thad A. Polk takes you on a fascinating tour of the latest discoveries in the relatively new field of cognitive science. In 24 exciting lectures, Professor Polk shares dozens of the most challenging questions in cognitive science today.

We all learn at least one language as children. But what does it take to learn six languages...or seventy? In Babel No More, Michael Erard, "a monolingual with benefits," sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages; Emil Krebs, a pugnacious German diplomat, who spoke sixty-eight languages; and Lomb Kat, a Hungarian who taught herself Russian by reading Russian romance novels.

Better Vocabulary in 30 Minutes a Day offers a lively and entertaining method for adding a more impressive list of words to your everyday speech, and for learning how to use them effortlessly and accurately. Besides giving definitions, this invaluable guide also provides root meanings and elements of words so you can increase your vocabulary base by thousands of exciting new words and use them with aplomb in sentences.

Learn how to decode the private languages that are swapped around us every day - amongst cabbies and paramedics, soap stars and comedians, cricketers and barristers - in Susie Dent's unique and witty guide to Britain's modern tribes. Did you know that a soldier's biggest social blunder is called 'jack brew' - making yourself a cuppa without making one for anyone else? That twitchers have an expression for a bird that can't be identified - LBJ (the letters stand for little brown job)?

Thomas De Quincey's highly charged and hauntingly accurate account of laudanum addiction is considered the root of all drug novels. From Baudelaire to Burroughs, Confessions of an English Opium Eater paved the way for later generations of writers. Initially prescribed as pain relief for a chronic condition, De Quincey soon found himself compelled by the opium experience.

Described by the New York Times as "arguably the most important intellectual alive," Noam Chomsky is known throughout the world for his highly influential writings on language and politics. Featuring two of Chomsky's most popular and enduring books in one omnibus volume, On Language contains some of the noted linguist and political critic's most informal and accessible work to date, making it an ideal introduction to his thought.

Our use of language naturally evolves and is a living breathing thing that reflects who we are. Says Who? offers clear, nuanced guidance that goes beyond “right” and “wrong” to empower us to make informed language choices. Never snooty or scoldy (yes, that’s a “real” word!), this book explains where the grammar rules we learned in school actually come from and reveals the forces that drive dictionary editors to label certain words as slang or unacceptable.

Conventional wisdom suggests English is going to the dogs, that bad grammar, slang, and illogical constructions signal a decline in standards of usage - to say nothing of the corruption wrought by email and text messages. But English is a complicated, marvelous language. Far from being a language in decline, English is the product of surprisingly varied linguistic forces, some of which have only recently come to light. And these forces continue to push English in exciting new directions.