The Cambridge encyclopedia of language

The second edition of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language incorporates extensive new research in areas such as speech synthesis and recognition, acoustics, machine translation, natural language processing, endangered languages, language teaching and World English. In addition there is new and revised material on the number of speakers of languages, revised geopolitical data, new language distribution maps and a new table of world languages. The book has been redesigned to suit the needs of present-day readers and is printed in full colour for the first time.

Part I. Popular Ideas about Language: 1. The prescriptive tradition -- 2. The equality of languages -- 3. The magic of language -- 4. The functions of language -- 5. Language and thought -- Part II. Language and Identity: 6. Physical identity -- 7. Psychological identity -- 8. Geographical identity -- 9. Ethnic and national identity -- 10. Social identity -- 11. Contextual identity -- 12. Stylistic identity and literature -- Part III. The structure of Language: 13. Linguistic levels -- 14. Typology and universals -- 15. The statistical structure of language -- 16. Grammar -- 17. Semantics -- 18. Dictionaries -- 19. Names -- 20. Discourses and text -- 21. Pragmatics -- Part IV. The Medium of Language: Speaking and Listening: 22. The anatomy and physiology of speech -- 23. The acoustics of speech -- 24. The instrumental -- 25. Speech reception -- 26. Speech interaction with machines -- 27. The sounds of speech -- 28. The linguistic use of sound -- 29. Suprasegmentals -- 30. Sound symbolism -- Part V. The Medium of Language: Writing and Reading: 31. Written and spoken language -- 32. Graphic expression -- 33. Graphology -- 34. The process of reading and writing -- Part VI. The Medium…