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An engaging celebration of global linguistic diversity, with plenty of fascinating cases of cross-linguistic variation in each chapter.
List of contents
Introduction; Part I. How Words are Studied: A. What is a word?; B. The internal affairs of words; C. The external affairs of words; Part II. How Words are Carved Out: 1. 1 =2, 5, 6 or 7; 2. Beer eyes and wine-dark sea; 3. Second cousins twice removed; 4. I have three sons and a child; 5. Concepts on the chopping block; 6. Unripe bananas and ripe tomatoes; 7. Mums and clocks mean death; 8. The past is in front of us and the future is behind our back; 9. Far and wide, here and there; 10. Bottles with throats; 11. Setting the TV on fire and extinguishing it; Part III. How Things are Done with Words; 12. Traduttore, traditore!; 13. May you suffer and remember; 14. I screw your 300 Gods; 15. Either he is crazy or his feet stink; 16. Shoo and scat; 17. A dog and pony show; 18. Blah-blah-blah, yada-yada-yada; 19. Acts of darkness; 20. This for that; 21. Me Tarzan, you Jane; 22. How many languages do you speak?; 23. Harmful and shitty people; Part IV. How Words are Born: 24. Cars with tails and leadfooted drivers; 25. Monkey, dog, worm, snail, i.e. 'Crazy A'; 26. Rovers and ski-rolls; 27. Extra crispy soccer players; 28. Chinglish and Eurenglish; 29. Comrade, Sir; 30. Beer and whiskey mighty risky; 31. SOFs and SOWs; Part V. Where Words Live: 32. Old-lady torturers, horse killers, and bad mornings; 33. A fleeing bus; 34. I wish that you enjoy in what you have deserved!; 35. Happy hunting ground; 36. A language is a dialect with an army and navy; Part VI. A Word After: Part VII. Words about Words.
About the author
Danko Šipka is Professor of Slavic Languages and Applied Linguistics at Arizona State University. His research interests include lexicography, lexicology, morphology, and computational linguistics. His publications encompass over 150 papers and reviews as well as thirty books.
Summary
Different languages organize their vocabularies in a myriad of ways. This book is an engaging, reader-friendly celebration of global linguistic diversity, with fascinating cases of cross-linguistic variety presented in each chapter. It is ideal for anyone who wants to learn more about the extent of variation across the human lexicon.
