This book provides a brief and reader-friendly introduction to English linguistics. After a
short survey of the history of linguistics it deals with the main levels of spoken and written
language namely with phonetics and phonology spelling and orthography morphology (especially
inflectional morphology) syntax lexicology and lexicography (especially semantics
word-formation idioms and dictionaries). It moves on to text linguistics pragmatics
standard and varieties highlighting especially some of the main differences between British
and American English. A sketch of the history of English is also provided: Indo-European
Germanic Old and Middle English Early Modern and Modern English. The book concludes with a
brief introduction to historical linguistics a chapter on contrastive aspects (comparing some
features of English and German) and suggestions for further reading. The appendix lists the
phonetic symbols for English it also gives a few examples of dictionary entries.My First Door
to English Linguistics is intended for everybody interested in linguistics in general and in
English linguistics in particular. It is mainly addressed to students of English who take an
introductory course in linguistics but the authors hope that it is also useful to exam
candidates for a quick revision of the basic linguistic terms and concepts.
