English words : structure, origin and meaning : a linguistic introduction

This textbook is based on a survey of the main descriptive linguistic research that has been done over the past 40 years or so. It is not written in the perspective of a particular theoretical framework, but draws on insights from various research traditions, with a view to clarifying terminology and putting it to practice in the empirical analysis of language facts. We rely both on introductory sources, such as introductions to linguistics, textbooks, linguistic encyclopaedias and dictionaries of linguistic terms, as well as, on more advanced studies, such as handbooks, monographs and articles. The book is structured as follows.