This bestselling textbook is the most fundamental and easy-to-use introduction for beginner students. Broad yet concise, this overview of key topics draws students in. The seventh edition has substantial changes to the chapters on phonetics and semantics, forty new study questions and more than twenty new tasks.

Designed for students with no prior experience in linguistics, this is an engaging guide to the rich variety and typology of world languages. This third edition has been updated with new problem sets, an updated glossary and index, and a new section on linguistic cartography.