Good resources for beginners?

[Priss]

I just graduated from UCSD last summer and am now working as a paralegal.

I double majored in History and International Studies-Economics for my undergraduate coursework. I have no interest in economic theories and did not do splendidly in those classes, but by the time I wanted to back out it was too late, so I stuck with it and got a double major.....Needless to say, my GPA got dragged down a lot by my economic courses.

Anyway, I'm considering going to graduate schools now because once I started working, I realized just how much I missed learning.

I am considering linguistics as one of my options because I am actually very interested in languages (and in learning them, too; I am fluent in Chinese and English, and have intermediate speaking/written abilities in Japanese). The thing is, I've never taken any linguistic classes, and as I'm working now, my time and resources have become very limited (I work in San Diego now). Can anybody suggest any introductory-level books on linguistics, so I can see if it's something that I would possibly want to commit to?

Any suggestion is appreciated; thank you very much!

[AppPsycholinX]

Welcome, prospective linguist! I highly recommend Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. It's more interesting than some intro Lx books. I like Pinker's attitude and insights into linguistics!

[vaaarr]

I will suggest... Wikipedia. And I am suggesting this with a straight face. In all seriousness, Wikipedia has a surprisingly large collection of well-written articles that will give you the gist (for free!) of the field. Start with articles about the broad sub-areas of the field, theoretical vs. applied, because that distinction is VERY important. I don't know about the specific sub-fields of applied linguistics, since I'm theoretical, but for theoretical you may want to further investigate its major divisions (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), because these too vary widely in what they investigate. Also of interest might be psycholinguistics, semiotics, linguistic anthropology, etc: the branches that are a bit harder to categorize in one place or another.

Don't let Wikipedia do the deciding for you, though: this is essentially an outline, or...well...an encyclopedia article. Do some more serious reading once you've zoomed in on a sub-area you like.

[nyrrac]

I think English Words by Heidi Harley is a good place to start. It introduces the history and structure of English from a theoretical linguistic standpoint. You would have an idea of how phonetics, phonology, syntax and semantics work in the analysis of English words. The book is a little wordy... sometimes it reads like a transcript of Harley's lectures however, it's pretty easy to understand unlike the other textbooks into the different sub-specialties. She even goes into historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and language acquisition theory. From there I think you can figure out if you do like linguistics as well as which field (theoretical or applied) you like to research in

[psycholinguist]

I agree with vaaarr about Wikipedia! One of my undergrad professors liked the phonology pages so much that she encouraged us to explore them, read them, cite them, whatever.

Also, the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, by David Crystal. Readable mini-chapters, lots of helpful images and graphs, great for browsing. The third edition just came out last year...meaning that inexpensive copies of the second should be easy to find! * grins * (Heck, I think the one I have is the first edition, which despite being as old as I am is still very decent.)

Welcome to the field, whether you decide to hang around or are just visiting for a while. * grins *