Language: Its Structure and Use

It is a good entry book for linguistics. The text is easily to follow. Provides a fair number of exercises. However, I would recommend choosing a different textbook for students in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), as the book lacks sufficient information in SLA.

This is a very accessible text. Many students find linguistics an intimidating subject to tackle, but this book makes it manageable. At the same time, Finegan does not just give students the "right" answers when discussing issues in linguistics--he presents those issues, then expects students to think for themselves, and draw their own conclusions. He is definitely not unbiased, but he also doesn't claim to have all the answers. Finegan presents students with a number of opportunities to connect what they are learning in this book to their own experiences and knowledge. It fulfills the purpose it was meant to serve as a textbook.

I received the shipment on time, and it was in better condition than I thought.

As an English Major, I enjoyed the science and research that went into Finegan's work. Surely, no other subject such as language has been studied with such verve and clearness.However, whoever designed the book, please take note: Chapter numbers at the top of the pages would be appreciated. It is very difficult to find a particular chapter without them. Also, the paper is too...too...WHITE. The black type against the blaring white of the bleached paper gives one tired eyes after only a few moments of study. Also, a bit of color would be appreciated in the charts and graphs to enable a student to clearly note the divisions Finegan makes in language.Overall, academically, Finegan's is a decent book; design-wise, it is in vast need of an over-haul. Now that I have violated several language maxims, I bit you all a good night.

This book is an excellent text for introductory linguistics courses or courses about language and society. It consists of two sections, both of which are well developed: Language Structure and Language Use. The Language Structure section covers the standard linguistic divisions of phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax, but it also has good coverage of pragmatics, universals and typology, and historical linguistics. The Language Use section contains chapters on speech acts, writing and graphology, sociolinguistics, the history of English, and language standards. Language acquisition, included as part of the introductory chapter, is the only topic given short shrift, while languages and the brain are not covered at all. Examples are provided throughout the book, not just in English or European languages, but from a wide range of world languages. A glossary is included and the index is quite useable. The language of the text is relatively easy to understand (compared with Akmajian, et. al's introductory text, for instance). Each chapter includes exercises (which seem to be rather difficult) as well as suggestions for further reading and references. The syntactic analyses use the Transformational Grammar terminology from the 1970s, but this seems to be entirely adequate for beginning students. Of the various introductory linguistic texts on the market, this is the most well-rounded and clearly written. I would recommend it for any introductory course, although the exercises may need to be supplemented with an additional workbook.