Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE, Ninth Edition, is appropriate for a variety of fields--including education, languages, psychology, anthropology, English, and teaching English as a Second Language (TESL)--at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. This completely updated edition retains the clear descriptions, humor, and seamless pedagogy that have made the text a perennial best-seller, while adding new information and exercises that render each topic fresh, engaging, and current.
 
About the Author

Victoria Fromkin received her bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley and her M.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She was a faculty member of the UCLA Department of Linguistics from 1966 until her death in 2000, and served as its chair for four years and as the Graduate Dean and Vice Chancellor of Graduate Programs for ten years. Dr. Fromkin served as president of the Linguistics Society of America, president of the Association of Graduate Schools, and chair of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Aphasia. She received the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award and the Professional Achievement Award, and was the U.S. Delegate and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Permanent Committee of Linguistics (CIPL). She was an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Science, the American Psychological Society, and the Acoustical Society of America, and in 1996 was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. She published more than 100 books, monographs, and papers on topics concerned with phonetics, phonology, tone languages, African languages, speech errors, processing models, aphasia, and the brain/mind/language interface -- all research areas in which she worked.
Robert Rodman received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles, master's degrees in both mathematics and linguistics, and a Ph.D. in linguistics. He was on the faculties of the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kyoto Industrial College in Japan, and North Carolina State University. His research areas included forensic linguistics and computer speech processing. In 2009, he was elected into the American Academy of Social Sciences as an Associate Fellow for his achievements in computational forensic linguistics. Robert Rodman passed away in January 2017.
Nina Hyams received her bachelor's degree in journalism from Boston University in 1973 and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in linguistics from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1981 and 1983, respectively. She joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1983, where she is a professor of linguistics. Her main areas of research are childhood language development and syntax. She is author of the book LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND THE THEORY OF PARAMETERS (D. Reidel Publishers, 1986), a milestone in language acquisition research. She has also published numerous articles on the development of syntax, morphology, and semantics in children. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Utrecht and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and has given lectures throughout Europe and Japan.