本书分为十二章，在系统介绍语言学基础理论知识的同时，考虑到了教学实践的需求，在编写中突出了“简明、易懂、实用”的特点，内容丰富，涵盖了语言学的主要分支和理论。

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 What is linguistics？

1.1.1 Definition

1.1.2 The scope of linguistics

1.1.3 Some important distinctions in linguistics

1.2 What is language？

1.2.1 Definitions of language

1.2.2 Design features of language

1.2.3 Functions of language

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Chapter 2 Phonology

2.1 The phonic medium of language

2.2 Phonetics

2.2.1 What is phonetics？

2.2.2 Organs of speech

2.2.3 Orthographic representation of speech sounds-broad and narrow tran*ions

2.2.4 Classification of English speech sounds

2.3 Phonology

2.3.1 Phonology and phonetics

2.3.2 Phone, phoneme, and allophone

2.3.3 Phonemic contrast, complementary distribution, and minimal pair

2.3.4 Some rules in phonology

2.3.5 Suprasegmental features-stress, tone, intona-tion

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Chapter 3 Morphology

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Open class and closed class

3.3 Morphemes-the minimal units of meaning

3.4 Analyzing word structures

3.5 Derivational and inflectional morphemes

3.6 Morphological rules of word formation

3.7 Derivation

3.8 Compounds

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Chapter 4 Syntax

4.1 What is syntax？

4.2 Categories

4.2.1 Word-level categories

4.2.2 Phrase categories and their structures

4.3 Phrase structure rule

4.3.1 XP rule

4.3.2 Coordination rule

4.4 Phrase elements

4.4.1 Specifiers

4.4.2 Complements

4.4.3 Modifiers

4.5 Sentences （The S rule）

4.6 Transformations

4.6.1 Auxiliary movement

4.6.2 Do insertion

4.6.3 Deep structure and surface structure

4.6.4 Wh movement

4.6.5 Move a and constraints on transformations

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Chapter 5 Semantics

5.1 What is semantics？

5.2 Some views concerning the study of meaning

5.2.1The naming theory

5.2.2The conceptualist view

5.2.3 Contextualism

5.2.4 Behaviorism

5.3 Lexical meaning

5.3.1 Sense and reference

5.3.2 Major sense relations

5.4 Sense relations between sentences

5.5 Analysis of meaning

5.5.1 Componential analysis-a way to analyze lexical meaning

5.5.2 Predication analysis-a way to analyze sentence meaning

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Chapter 6 Pragmatics

6.1 Some basic notions

6.11 Definition

6.1.2 Pragmatics vs.semantics

6.1.3 Context

6.1.4 Sentence meaning vs.utterance meaning

6.2 Speech act theory

6.2.1 Austin's model of speech acts

6.2.2 Searle's classification of speech acts

6.2.3 Indirect speech acts

6.3 Principle of conversation

6.4 Cross-cultural pragmatic failure

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Chapter 7 Language Change

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Phonological changes

7.3 Morphological and syntactic change

7.3.1 Addition of affixes

7.3.2 Loss of affixes

7.3.3 Change of word order

7.3.4 Change in negation rule

7.4 Lexical and semantic change

7.4.1 Addition of new words

7.4.2 Loss of words

7.4.3 Semantic changes

7.5 Some recent trends

7.5.1 Moving towards greater informality

7.5.2 The influence of American English

7.5.3 The influence of science and technology

7.6 The causes of language change

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Chapter 8 Language and Society

8.1 The scope of sociolinguistics

8.1.1 The relatedness between language and society

8.1.2 Speech community and speech variety

8.1.3 Two approaches to sociolinguistic studies

8.2 Varieties oflanguage

8.2.1 Dialectal varieties

8.2.2 Register

8.2.3 Degree of formality

8.3 Standard dialect

8.4 Pidgin and Creole

8.5 Bilingualism and diglossia

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CHAPTER 9 Language and Culture

CHAPTER 10 Language Acquisition

CHAPTER 11 Second Language Acquisition

CHAPTER 12 Language and Brain