The Oxford Companion to the English LanguageThomas Burns McArthur, Feri McArthur Oxford University Press, 1992 - 1184 Language is the life blood of a culture, and to be interested in culture is in some sense to be interested in language, in the shapes and sounds of words, in the history of reading, writing, and speech, in the endless variety of dialects and slangs, in the incessant creativity of the human mind as it reaches out to others. It is surprising then that until now there has been no major one-volume reference devoted to the most widely dispersed and influential language of our time: the English language. A language-lover's dream, The Oxford Companion to the English Language is a thousand-page cornucopia covering virtually every aspect of the English language as well as language in general. The range of topics is remarkable, offering a goldmine of information on writing and speech (including entries on grammar, literary terms, linguistics, rhetoric, and style) as well as on such wider issues as sexist language, bilingual education, child language acquisition, and the history of English. There are biographies of Shakespeare, Noah Webster, Noam Chomsky, James Joyce, and many others who have influenced the shape or study of the language; extended articles on everything from psycholinguistics to sign language to tragedy; coverage of every nation in which a significant part of the population speaks English as well as virtually every regional dialect and pidgin (from Gullah and Scouse to Cockney and Tok Pisin). In addition, the Companion provides bibliographies for the larger entries, generous cross-referencing, etymologies for headwords, a chronology of English from Roman times to 1990, and an index of people who appear in entries or bibliographies. And like all Oxford Companions, this volume is packed with delightful surprises. We learn, for instance, that the first Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard later became President (John Quincy Adams); that "slogan" originally meant "war cry"; that the keyboard arrangement QWERTY became popular not because it was efficient but the opposite (it slows down the fingers and keeps them from jamming the keys); that "mbenzi" is Swahili for "rich person" (i.e., one who owns a Mercedes Benz); and that in Scotland, "to dree yir ain weird" means "to follow your own star." From Scrabble to Websters to TESOL to Gibraltar, the thirty-five hundred entries here offer more information on a wider variety of topics than any other reference on the English language. Featuring the work of nearly a hundred scholars from around the world, this unique volume is the ideal shelf-mate to The Oxford Companion to English Literature. It will captivate everyone who loves language. |
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Strona 330
... ( contrast singing / singeing ) , as well as excep- tionally in ageing ( although aging also occurs , especially in AmE , in which it is the preferred form ) . ( 3 ) After final s , e sometimes distinguishes a word that ends in voiceless ...
... ( contrast singing / singeing ) , as well as excep- tionally in ageing ( although aging also occurs , especially in AmE , in which it is the preferred form ) . ( 3 ) After final s , e sometimes distinguishes a word that ends in voiceless ...
Strona 888
... contrast to Norman , and sometimes in more recent times in contrast to Latin and Celt . The term has also been used to contrast a Low- land Scot with a Highland Scot or Gael : see ETH- NIC NAME [ SASSENACH ] . ( 6 ) Also Saxon English ...
... contrast to Norman , and sometimes in more recent times in contrast to Latin and Celt . The term has also been used to contrast a Low- land Scot with a Highland Scot or Gael : see ETH- NIC NAME [ SASSENACH ] . ( 6 ) Also Saxon English ...
Strona 1065
... ( contrast muddy , Judy ) and in bunion ( contrast trunnion , union ) . Put - U ( short ) . The lip - rounded put - u occurs in a few words , especially after the labial consonants b , p , and before l : bull , bullet , bulletin , bullion ...
... ( contrast muddy , Judy ) and in bunion ( contrast trunnion , union ) . Put - U ( short ) . The lip - rounded put - u occurs in a few words , especially after the labial consonants b , p , and before l : bull , bullet , bulletin , bullion ...
Inne wydania - Wyświetl wszystko
Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language Thomas Burns McArthur,Roshan McArthur Ograniczony podgląd - 2005 |
The Oxford Companion to the English Language Tom McArthur,Thomas Burns McArthur,Roshan McArthur Widok fragmentu - 1996 |
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accent adjectives African Afrikaans alphabet AMERICAN ENGLISH Amerindian Asia associated Australian Bible bilingual Britain British broadcasting Canada Canadian Canadian English Caribbean CARIBBEAN ENGLISH Celtic classical clause colony common Compare consonants Creole culture Cumbric developed dialect Dictionary digraph Dutch edition England English Language entries especially ethnic EUROPE European example FRANGLAIS French Gaelic German grammar Greek guage HISTORY Indian INDIAN ENGLISH Ireland Irish Islands Jamaican Creole Jamaican English Latin letters linguistic lish literary LITERATURE London meaning MEDIA Middle English noun OCEANIA Old English original Oxford phonetics phrase PIDGIN place-names plural printed pronounced pronunciation published RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION reference regional Roman Scots semantic sentence social sometimes sound South Spanish speakers speech spelling spoken standard English stress STYLE syllables T.MCA teaching term tionary traditional translation University Press usage usually varieties verb vernacular vocabulary vowel Welsh West words writing