How Language Works

Finished reading David Crystal's latest this weekend passed. It's a great linguistics primer, but not so basic that I wasn't able to learn a few things. This book, or one like it, should be required reading in high school.

Running the gamut from the anatomical bases of speech and hearing, through an overview of the study of grammar, all the way to the preservation of nearly-extinct languages, Crystal gives a pretty complete overview of the entire scope of linguistics. While the coverage is necessarily light in order to provide such breadth, it rarely feels shallow. There is enough detail throughout to whet the (hard? soft?) palate and provide entree to the topics under discussion. Further reading is, of course, encouraged.

While I'm not particularly interested in foreign language teaching techniques or children's acquisition of language, Crystal's breezy style made those relatively interesting. Of course, that means his coverage of my interests - language and grammar evolution, migration patterns of languages, the formation of pidgins and creoles - was really appealing to me. I'd have to think anyone else with interest in any of these topics would likewise be well-served.

I'd first read Crystal's The Stories of English which was a great read for me. That book pretty much hit my sweet spot. While How Language Works is broader, I still gleaned interesting information in reading it.

One caveat: Crystal is a descriptivist grammarian. For the hard-core, immovably prescriptivist out there, this might be a deal killer.