This book serves as a basis for the exploration of language in a more systematic way. The main impetus for writing this book derives from the fact that linguistics and semiotics are two fields of study that need to be brought together under one compass because language is what is known as the "passkey semiotic," i.e. the system of signs that underlies all other sign systems owing to its foundational status. Due to the current balkanization of linguistics as an academic discipline, the academic study of language structure rarely if ever incorporates the insights of semiotics and semioticians when presenting its material.By surveying the several major divisions of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis, tropology) and explicating the way in which sound and meaning cohere in them, this text lays bare--for students, scholars and advanced readers alike--the lineaments of an understanding of what makes language the sign system par excellence, in the service of its most important function as the instrument of cognition and of communication. This book is intended as a companion volume to Shapiro's The Speaking Self: Language Lore and English Usage. The two volumes taken in tandem will provide a solid grounding in the observational science of linguistics, linking theory with practice in a way that will expand one's understanding of language as a global phenomenon.

Autorentext

Michael Shapiro, Professor Emeritus of Slavic and Semiotic Studies at Brown University, was born in Yokohama, spent World War II in Japan, and grew up speaking Russian, Japanese, and English. He earned degrees in Slavic Languages and Literatures at UCLA (A. B., '61) and Harvard (A. M., '62; Ph. D. '65). Besides Brown and Columbia, he has taught at UCLA, Princeton, UC Berkeley, and Green Mountain College, and has given over one hundred public lectures to academic audiences all over the world.