In this fascinating book, Ray Jackendoff emphasizes the grammatical commonalities across languages, both spoken and signed, and discusses the implications for our understanding of language acquisition and loss.

    Clearly arranged and easy to use, it offers an astonishing wide range of suggestions for rhyming words, from the common and everyday to the more difficult and obscure.

    C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words explores this fascination by taking a series of words and teasing out their connotations using examples from a vast range of English literature, recovering lost meanings and analysing their functions. It doubles as an absorbing and entertaining study of verbal communication, its pleasures and problems. The issues revealed are essential to all who read and communicate thoughtfully, and are handled here by a masterful exponent and analyst of the English language.

    However, this not-so-easy-to-use reference of journalistic style is often not up-to-date and leaves reporters and copyeditors unsatisfied. Bill Walsh, copy chief for the Washington Post's business desk, addresses these shortcomings in Lapsing into a Comma. In an opinionated, humorous, and yes, curmudgeonly way, he shows how to apply the basic rules to unique, modern grammar issues. Walsh explains how to deal with perplexing situations such as trendy words, foreign terms, and web speak.

    How do you react to sandwich boards, road signs, laminated instructions, and other written missives that are just not exactly what their creator meant? If you've ever (gently) judged anyone else for their linguistic failures, if you find yourself guffawing about the frequent confusion between "incontinence" and "inconvenience," if you've ever been tempted to whip out your marker to add in or cross out apostrophes, and if you've refused to answer e-mails in which "your" and "you're" are used interchangeably, this book is for you. With pictures culled from the Facebook group by the same name, I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar is a hilarious and eye-opening tour through restaurants and shops, through parking lots and along winding roads, and around the world.

    A dance that leaves telltale marks on the lower legs of participants is a shindig. Alibi - The word is taken straight from Latin and means "elsewhere." The perfect "alibi" is to prove one was "elsewhere" when the deed was done. And many more...

    With characteristic vigor and iconoclasm, Pound illustrates his precepts with exhibits meticulously chosen from the classics, and the concluding “Treatise on Meter” provides an illuminating essay for anyone aspiring to read and write poetry. The ABC of Reading emphasizes Pound's ability to discover neglected and unknown genius, distinguish originals from imitations, and open new avenues in literature for our time.

    However, because it leaves no permanent trace, its evolution has long been a mystery, and it is only in the last fifteen years that we have begun to understand how language came into being. "The First Word" is the compelling story of the quest for the origins of human language. The book follows two intertwined narratives. The first is an account of how language developed?how the random and layered processes of evolution wound together to produce a talking animal: us. The second addresses why scientists are at last able to explore the subject. For more than a hundred years, language evolution was considered a scientific taboo. Kenneally focuses on figures like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, along with cognitive scientists, biologists, geneticists, and animal researchers, in order to answer the fundamental question: Is language a uniquely human phenomenon? "The First Word" is the first book of its kind written for a general audience. Sure to appeal to fans of Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" and Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Kenneally's book is set to join them as a seminal account of human history.

    There, a bore is "a person who talks when you wish him to listen," and happiness is "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce’s satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book’s ninety-year history.A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi’s exhaustive investigation into the book’s writing and publishing history. All of Bierce’s known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is a classic that stands alongside the best work of satirists such as Twain, Mencken, and Thurber. This unabridged edition will be celebrated by humor fans and word lovers everywhere.

    New features in this revised edition:-A new chapter on "SELF-DESIGNATION" discusses the names by which countries and people call themselves, as opposed to the names outsiders give them.-A new chapter on "LANGUAGE AND PSYCHOLOGY" covers one of the mysterious areas of language - the connection of words with the mental processes of both the individual and the social group.-Detailed discussion of such additional languages as Vietnamese and the African tongues.-New material on nonlinguistic systems of communication, such as gestural and symbolic language, and animal talk.-Most recent findings on the origin of language and how a child learns to speak.-Coverage of slang (American, British, foreign); underworld cant and professional jargons; government gobbledygook; the language of euphemism, politeness and insult brought up to date.

    It is democratic, everchanging and ingenious in its assimilation of other cultures. English runs through the heart of the world of finance, medicine and the Internet, and it is understood by around two thousand million people across the world. It seems set to go on. Yet it was nearly wiped out in its early years.Embracing elements of Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi and Gullah, this 1500-year story covers a huge range of countries and people. The Adventure of English is not only an enthralling story of power, religion and trade, but also the story of people, and how their day-to-day lives shaped and continue to change the extraordinary language that is English.

    Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule.This revised and updated edition of Paul Silvia's popular guide provides practical, light-hearted advice to help academics overcome common barriers and become productive writers. Silvia's expert tips have been updated to apply to a wide variety of disciplines, and this edition has a new chapter devoted to grant and fellowship writing.

    The textbook discusses three important issues: languages and language change are systematic; the inner history of a language is profoundly affected by its outer history of political and culural events; and the English of the past has everywhere left its traces on present-day English. By uncovering the language's past, one can better communicate with it.

    The story of how this ragtag collection of words evolved is a winding tale replete with intriguing accidents and bizarre twists of fate. In this eye-opening, fabulously entertaining book, James Essinger unlocks the mysteries that have confounded linguists and scholars for millennia.From the sophisticated writing systems of the ancient Sumerians through the tongue twisters of Middle English, the popular National Spelling Bee, and the mobile phone text-messaging of today, Spellbound chronicles the fascinating history of English spelling, including insights about the vast number of words English has borrowed from other languages (“orange,” “vanilla,” and “ketchup,” to name a few), and how their meanings differ from country to country. Featuring a lively cast of characters ranging from the fictional to the historically noteworthy (Chaucer, Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, Shakespeare, Bill Gates), this affectionate tribute to English spelling shows why our whimsical, capricious common language continues to hold us spellbound.

    A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.What do we see when we read? Did Tolstoy really describe Anna Karenina? Did Melville ever really tell us what, exactly, Ishmael looked like? The collection of fragmented images on a page - a graceful ear there, a stray curl, a hat positioned just so - and other clues and signifiers helps us to create an image of a character. But in fact our sense that we know a character intimately has little to do with our ability to concretely picture our beloved - or reviled - literary figures.In this remarkable work of nonfiction, Knopf's Associate Art Director Peter Mendelsund combines his profession, as an award-winning designer; his first career, as a classically trained pianist; and his first love, literature - he thinks of himself first, and foremost, as a reader - into what is sure to be one of the most provocative and unusual investigations into how we understand the act of reading.