The Linguistics Student's Handbook. Edinburgh University Press. 2007.

by Laurie Bauer

Linguistics Students Handbook

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Chadi Raheb]

A little bit old-school but still practical for a beginner. Specially the last chapters were the best parts.

[Christopher]

Laurie Bauer's THE LINGUISTICS STUDENT'S HANDBOOK is a compendium of information for those entering this academic pursuit that traditional textbooks don't explain so clearly. When I entered linguistics, I slowly learnt how to interpret the algebraic representation of sound change laws and syntax trees, how to write bibliographies, and glossing rules as I went along. Bauer presents all these little details in one handy book for the beginning undergraduate. Even I learned some new things here, such as the existence of Dania phonetic symbols and how some IPA symbols have been superseded.

The entire second half of the book is the "Language File", a listing of 280 languages that a student is likely to encounter in linguistics works. Now, this material can be useful in that each entry lists some of the noteworthy typological properties of the language, but I suspect that when many students encounter a language they're not familiar with, they'll be more comfortable just doing a Google search and winding up at Ethnologue or Wikipedia. Sadly, if it weren't for the Language File, than Bauer's work could have been a cheap pamphlet accessible to anyone. As it is, the book has been published at the full rate of a university press. I therefore can't really recommend it except to people who don't really worry about their budgets (and most undergraduates do fret about money).

[Rumi]

While students are likely to consult the Internet for their linguistics assignments, as someone mentioned in a previous review, I wouldn't agree that this book's "Language File" is useless. It's easily accessible, condensed information from AN ACADEMICAL SOURCE, which isn't as easy to find as it seems at first. I would have liked to see more languages in it, in fact. :)
Overall, the book was presented well and reminded me that I'm actually interested in Linguistics, which always gets pretty hard to remember over an exam period. I'm glad I read it and can see myself returning to it for future reference.