A General Introduction to Linguistics takes the lay reader through the scientific study of language, linguistics. Moving away from a Euro-centric premise, the author begins with Panini’s description of Sanskrit grammar in his eight books, the Ashtadhayi and moves on to linguists who have contributed to the discipline like de Saussure, Bloomfield and Chomsky, whose theories it conveys simply and lucidly. It also deals with current linguistic theories and touches upon issues in socio-linguistics, linguistic human rights and language death.

1. What is Linguistics? 1
2. A Brief History of Linguistics 7
3. The Study of Sounds 22
4. The Study of Sound Patterns 41
5. How Words are Made 49
6. The Study of Meaning 57
7. Introduction to Chomsky’s Theories 67
8. Transformational Generative Grammar–1 75
9. More about grammar 95
10. Government and Binding Theory 104
11. Universal Grammar 109
12. Anthropological Linguistics 119
13. Sociolinguistics 131
14. Writing in South Asia 151
15. Language Politics 167
16. Language Death 175
17. Educational Linguistics 180
18. A Final Word 185
19. Bibliography 186