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NEW BOOK
Linguistic Linguistics: An Intradisciplinary Introduction
by Constantine Köprülü
Psammeticus Textbooks in Linguistics
Published 2007. Hardcover, 97 pages. Price: $249
Psammeticus Press is proud to present a one-of-a-kind new intradisciplinary linguistics textbook—with no more of this trendy, namby-pamby interdisciplinary dilution of linguistics. Köprülü urges a return to hard core fundamentals, discarding all distractions that lead away from what truly matters in the field.
Some of the questions Köprülü answers in the introduction include:
- Can Washoe or Koko use language? Do whales or birds? Who cares!?
- What is the relationship between the anthropological study of indigenous peoples and the linguistic study of their languages? Something for anthropology fieldworkers to worry about—not us!
- What is the biological basis of Universal Grammar? Irrelevant!
- What light does archeology shed on the evolution and origin of human language? Not nearly enough to matter!
- What do computational and statistical models of language have to teach us about human linguistic competence? Nothing!
- What about the important contributions of literature? Oh, please!
Once these unpleasant preliminaries are dispensed with, Köprülü gets to the meat of the matter: linguistics—linguistics, linguistics, linguistics—and just linguistics. Phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, and a few other core subfields are addressed.
And only modern theories and truly relevant historical information are covered. The founders of the field may be rolling over in their graves, but, honestly, incoming freshmen born in the late 80’s or early 90’s just don’t care about Sir William Jones or Otto Jespersen. These students need a quick-cut hip-hop edit of the material that they can download to their iPods, or they aren’t going to get it. Köprülü delivers just that.
Furthermore, instructors will find that they can cover three semesters-worth of material in under two. Even better, the focus on core linguistics ensures that there is no material that would let an interdisciplinary crossover student embarrassingly show up a linguistics professor in front of the class. (Those English lit and anthropology grad students can be so uppity—but no more!)
Students will be glad to have fewer books to buy. They will also appreciate that there is less material to regurgitate on each exam. Student reviews of your introductory course are guaranteed to improve if you adopt this textbook. We promise!
Includes three hardcore rub-on tattoos: “Linguistics RoX0Rs!”, “Optimal 2 da Max”, and “Doin’ it /old skul/: Move-α”.
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