When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records. For half a century, the meaning of the inscriptions, and even the language in which they were written, would remain a mystery. Award-winning New York Times journalist Margalit Fox's riveting real-life intellectual detective story travels from the Bronze Age Aegean--the era of Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Helen--to the turn of the 20th century and the work of charismatic English archeologist Arthur Evans, to the colorful personal stories of the decipherers. These include Michael Ventris, the brilliant amateur who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of the decipherment; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code.

    It also discusses 'mixed methods research', that is, the various combinations of qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

    certainly has, and after forty years of making a living using words in every medium, print or electronic, except greeting cards, he still can't get over his ABCs. In Alphabet Juice, he celebrates the electricity, the juju, the sonic and kinetic energies, of letters and their combinations. Blount does not prescribe proper English. The franchise he claims is "over the counter."Three and a half centuries ago, Thomas Blount produced Blount's Glossographia, the first dictionary to explore derivations of English words. This Blount's Glossographia takes that pursuit to other levels, from Proto-Indo-European roots to your epiglottis. It rejects the standard linguistic notion that the connection between words and their meanings is "arbitrary." Even the word arbitrary is shown to be no more arbitrary, at its root, than go-to guy or crackerjack. From sources as venerable as the OED (in which Blount finds an inconsistency, at whisk) and as fresh as Urbandictionary.com (to which Blount has contributed the number-one definition of alligator arm), and especially from the author's own wide-ranging experience, Alphabet Juice derives an organic take on language that is unlike, and more fun than, any other.

    If you’re struggling to learn English and speak it well in your work, business, teaching or daily life this is the book for you."Master English FAST – An Uncommon Guide to Speaking Extraordinary English", by Dr Julian Northbrook, will get you started on the right track by showing you step-by-step what to do as an intermediate or advanced English learner to speak English as a second language at a very high level.This is Julian's most complete and comprehensive guide on the topic and is the recommended starting point for all of his English improvement books.

    F. Bruce commented on the first edition, "I am glad to give it my warm commendation. As an introduction to the criticism of the New Testament it has . . . no equal in English." Since Bruce's comments on the original edition thirty years ago, this clear and comprehensive introduction to New Testament textual criticism has remained a popular text for beginning and intermediate students."A celebrated pedagogue who has kept abreast of his field for over four decades, Harold Greenlee is uniquely suited to produce an introduction to the complex world of New Testament textual criticism. His first edition provided lucid explanations of the most important aspects of the field, making it an ideal introduction for beginning students. For this second edition, Greenlee has revised significant features of his presentation, ensuring that this will be a useful and important primer for years to come."Â�Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Chair, NT Textual Criticism Section of the Society of Biblical Literature"It is good to have Greenlee's primer available again, for nowhere else will one find explanations of and introductions to so wide a range of critical editions of the New TestamentÂ�from Tischendorf to UBS, including the lesser known but still valuable editions of Souter, Merk, Bover, and Legg. The student who works through Greenlee's discussion of the praxis of textual criticism will learn the craft from a reliable guide."Â�Michael W. Holmes, Bethel College, North American Editor, International Greek New Testament Project

    This is a comprehensive introduction to Latin forms and syntax, designed to train the student in reading ancient texts at an early stage.

    There are good reasons that language fascinates us so. It not only defines humans as a species, placing us head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators, but it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries. For example: * How did different languages come to be? * Why isn’t there just a single language? * How does a language change, and when it does, is that change indicative of decay or growth? * How does a language become extinct? Dr. John McWhorter, one of America’s leading linguists and a frequent commentator on network television and National Public Radio, addresses these and other questions as he takes you on an in-depth, 36-lecture tour of the development of human language, showing how a single tongue spoken 150,000 years ago has evolved into the estimated 6,000 languages used around the world today.An accomplished scholar, Professor McWhorter is also a skilled popularizer, whose book The Power of Babel was called "startling, provocative, and remarkably entertaining," by the San Diego Union-Tribune.The London Times called him "a born teacher." And Steven Pinker, best known as the author of The Language Instinct, offered this praise for the book: "McWhorter’s arguments are sharply reasoned, refreshingly honest, and thoroughly original."Course Lecture Titles1. What Is Language? 2. When Language Began 3. How Language Changes—Sound Change 4. How Language Changes—Building New Material 5. How Language Changes—Meaning and Order 6. How Language Changes—Many Directions 7. How Language Changes—Modern English 8. Language Families—Indo-European 9. Language Families—Tracing Indo-European 10. Language Families—Diversity of Structures 11. Language Families—Clues to the Past 12. The Case Against the World’s First Language 13. The Case For the World’s First Language 14. Dialects—Subspecies of Species 15. Dialects—Where Do You Draw the Line? 16. Dialects—Two Tongues in One Mouth 17. Dialects—The Standard as Token of the Past 18. Dialects—Spoken Style, Written Style 19. Dialects—The Fallacy of Blackboard Grammar 20. Language Mixture—Words 21. Language Mixture—Grammar 22. Language Mixture—Language Areas 23. Language Develops Beyond the Call of Duty 24. Language Interrupted 25. A New Perspective on the Story of English 26. Does Culture Drive Language Change? 27. Language Starts Over—Pidgins 28. Language Starts Over—Creoles I 29. Language Starts Over—Creoles II 30. Language Starts Over—Signs of the New 31. Language Starts Over—The Creole Continuum 32. What Is Black English? 33. Language Death—The Problem 34. Language Death—Prognosis 35. Artificial Languages 36. Finale—Master Class

    Throughout, the emphasis is on promoting a plain English style. This little book can help you communicate more effectively by showing you how to enliven your sentences.

    With humor and insight, Melissa Mohr takes readers on a journey to discover how "swearing" has come to include both testifying with your hand on the Bible and calling someone a *#$&!* when they cut you off on the highway. She explores obscenities in ancient Rome and unearths the history of religious oaths in the Middle Ages, when swearing (or not swearing) an oath was often a matter of life and death. Holy Sh*t also explains the advancement of civility and corresponding censorship of language in the 18th century, considers the rise of racial slurs after World War II, examines the physiological effects of swearing and answers a question that preoccupies the FCC, the US Senate, and anyone who has recently overheard little kids at a playground: are we swearing more now than people did in the past?A gem of lexicography and cultural history, Holy Sh*t is a serious exploration of obscenity.

    This problem has deep philosophical implications: If languages are all the same, it implies a fundamental commonality--and thus mutual intelligibility--of human thought.We are now on the verge of solving this problem. Using a twenty-year-old theory proposed by the world's greatest living linguist, Noam Chomsky, researchers have found that the similarities among languages are more profound than the differences. Languages whose grammars seem completely incompatible may in fact be structurally almost identical, except for a difference in one simple rule. The discovery of these rules and how they may vary promises to yield a linguistic equivalent of the Periodic Table of the Elements: a single framework by which we can understand the fundamental structure of all human language. This is a landmark breakthrough both within linguistics, which will herewith finally become a full-fledged science, and in our understanding of the human mind.

    Includes a foreword by Dr. Ronald A. Morse, professor of Japan Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

    We use these phrases every day and yet have only the vaguest idea of where many of them come from. The origins of hundreds of common phrases are explained in this irreverent journey through the most fascinating and richest regions of the English language. Once you've read one, you'll be diving back in to look up all the others. Red Herrings is full of amazing definitions that take us all over the world, including military traditions and famous people who lent their names to describe familiar situations. From the drop of a hat to the bitter end - you'll never speak English in the same way again.

    If you need to extend your verbal eloquence to include vulgarity from 1811, this is the book for you.

    Abridged from Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament, the popular exegetical Greek grammar for studies in Greek by Daniel B. Wallace, The Basics of New Testament Syntax offers a practical grammar for second-year students.The strengths of this abridgment will become quickly apparent to the user:• It shows the relevance of syntax for exegesis and is thoroughly cross-referenced to Exegetical Syntax.• It includes an exceptional number of categories useful for intermediate Greek studies.• It is easy to use. Each semantic category is discussed, and a definition and key to identification are provided.• Scores of charts and tables are included to enable the intermediate student to grasp the material quickly.

    It is designed for libraries, institutions and individuals who need or prefer the information in ebook format. All the hand signs were approved by American sign language experts. The signs are shown in large illustrations from two view points in order to facilitate understanding, as well as grouped together in a comprehensive chart. BONUS: The book contains a link to a set of unique printable ASL alphabet charts for your personal use.Lassal's work for Fingeralphabet.org has earned her a nomination for The German Prize for Civic Engagement 2013.