Erica Ferencik

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Kansas

From the author of The River at Night and Into the Jungle comes a harrowing new thriller set in the unforgiving landscape of the Arctic Circle, as a brilliant linguist struggling to understand the apparent suicide of her twin brother ventures hundreds of miles north to try to communicate with a young girl who has been thawed from the ice alive. Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother, Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable—and disbelieving. She suspects foul play. When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility­—a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands—Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North to meet this girl, and try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death. The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val’s connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt’s research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val’s brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey—led by the unlikeliest of guides—to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.

Girl in Ice

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#hardcover #aphorisms #if #language #anthology #humor #quotes #linguistics #wordplay #wit

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

New York

An Anthology of Aphorisms That Begin with the Word IF





Perfect for linguaphiles and lovers of quotes, Ifferisms is a lively compendium of wit, wisdom, and wordplay from Dr. Mardy Grothe, author of I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like, Viva La Repartee, and Oxymoronica. A collection of aphorisms--pithy observations that communicate some kind of truth about the human experience--Ifferisms contains those that begin with "if." From "If life hands you lemons, make lemonade" to "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," the sayings in Ifferisms demonstrate how hypothetical thinking helps people contemplate their lives.

Ifferisms

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#paperback #English #grammar #writing #editing #copyediting #reference #education #language #linguistics

From the back cover:

A Student's Grammar of the English Language is a shorter and revised version of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, the widely acclaimed definitive grammar of modern English on which the authors worked in collaboration with Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik.

The structure of the parent book has been preserved so that reference to it can easily be made, but this version takes particular account of the needs of students who require depth of treatment and also clear presentation with detailed exemplification. A Student's Grammar of the English Language draws on the most recent research, including new findings not only in grammar but also in the neighbouring fields of semantics, pragmatics, and text linguistics. Discourse features are dealt with throughout, as well as being the theme of a major chapter entitled: 'From Sentence to Text."

The authors are careful to point out those features of grammar which distinguish spoken from written, formal from informal, and British from American English.

A Student's Grammar of the English Language will be a standard work and an indispensable text book for all those who need an advanced and authoritative description of contemporary English.

-----

I donate all money made from these book sales to local non-profits (SE Pennsylvania) that help people facing a wide range of crises. 


Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Pennsylvania

English

A Student's Grammar of the English Language

#thai #language #translation #travel #linguistics #foreignlanguage

Maryland

How to Express 1,000 Different Ideas with Just 100 Key Words and Phrases!

It's amazing how 100 key words and phrases provide instant communication!

Do you want to speak simple Thai but are too busy to study it? Are you visiting Thailand for a short time and want a Thai phrase book to help you communicate? If so, this Thai phrasebook is for you--it's the easiest and quickest way to learn Thai. It's tiny 0.4 x 4.1 x 5.9 inches size makes it incredibly convenient to travel with but without losing the essential content for communication.

The idea of Instant Thai is simple--learn 100 words and phrases and say 1,000 things. The trick is knowing which 100 words to learn, but the authors Stuart Robson and Prateep Changchit have solved the problem, choosing only those words you'll hear again and again. Even with a vocabulary this small, you'll be surprised how quickly and fluently you too can communicate in the Thai language. It also has an English-Thai wordlist, arranged alphabetically. At the end of the book are useful appendices for telling the time, kinship terms, some Thai proverbs, and emergency expressions. Here's a sample of what you'll be able to do with this Thai phrasebook:
 * Meet people.
 * Go shopping.
 * Ask directions.
 * Ride the subway.
 * Order food and drinks.
 * And much more.

Instant Thai

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#Greek #language #dictionary #travel #Berlitz #translations #linguistics

Soon, "It's Greek to me" will have new meaning. This phrase book is an easy-to-use, easy-to-understand, color-coded guide to the Greek language. Greek letters and their English equivalent are represented, allowing you to communicate with confidence and travel with ease! The Berlitz phrase book is the unparalleled market leader in its category.

Greek Phrase Book

2691501d-2ded-4e9a-888b-fdd9f7d89880-1

The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World





For lovers of language and fans of Blink and Freakonomics, New York Times bestselling author James Geary offers this fascinating look at metaphors and their influence in every aspect of our lives, from art to medicine, psychology to the stock market.

From President Obama's political rhetoric to the bursting of the housing bubble, from conversations to commercials, James Geary shows that every aspect of our day-to-day experience is molded by metaphor. Geary takes readers from Aristotle's investigation of metaphor right up to the latest neuroscientific insights into how metaphor works in the brain. Romeo's exclamation "It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!" may be one of the most well-known metaphors in literature, but metaphor is more than a device of love-struck poets. As Geary demonstrates, metaphor has leaped off the page and landed with a mighty splash right in the middle of the stream of consciousness.

Witty, persuasive, and original, I Is an Other explores metaphor's effects on financial decision making, effective advertising, leadership, learning, and more.





I Is an Other

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#hardcover #dictionary #writingtools #vocabulary #linguistics #english #choosetherightword

Book is in like new condition, no flaws except a little bump on the lower right of the front cover ( see photo ).

"This unique and concise compendium presents the most confused and misused words in the language today - words misused by careless speakers and writers everywhere. It defines, discerns, and distinguishes the finer points of sense and meaning."

Minnesota

The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate

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Some water (coffee?) damage to the bottom but in great shape. #hardcover #alphabetversusthegoddess #malewords #femaleimages #linguistics #etymology #history #language #leonardshlain 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Indiana

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess

#hardcover #nonfiction #humor #writing #language #English #linguistics

Iowa

Or, the Joy of Text

Alphabetter Juice

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#baseball #chatter #linguistics #sports #interviews

How to Talk Baseball hits a home run with fans who enjoy playing, watching, and talking our national game. The fascinating profiles of baseball's most famous stars will delight all aficionados, and the hilarious terms defined here will add pepper to anyone's game-watching.Beginning with a superlative line-up of people who have enriched America's favorite pastime, the first part of the book draws lively portraits of baseball's superstars and super characters, including Pete Rose, Dizzy Dean, Dennis Eckersley, Red Barber, Red Smith, Yogi Berra (It ain't over till it's over), and Casey Stengel. Find out who was the first to say Can he hit, hit with power, run, throw and field?, now the five dimensions of measuring a baseball player; How sweet it is; and Can't anybody here play this game? How to Talk Baseball's illustrated lexicon tells the origin and meaning of baseball's unique language--seventh-inning stretches, southpaws, spitballs, ohfers, hit-and-runs, foot in the bucket, beanballs, circus catches, Baltimore chops--terms indigenous to baseball, brought together in a comprehensive glossary. You'll learn whether a player is a bad-ball hitter, a bench jockey, a bonus baby or a clubhouse lawyer, and how to tell the difference. Even a novice fan can sound like a network sportscaster, describing how ducks on the pond are waiting for their MVP to dial 8 to a shutout. How to Talk Baseball is a fun read and will help readers warm up their vocal cords and get ready to talk their best game.

How to Talk Baseball

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#hardcover #educational #linguistics #Englishlanguage #Englishlanguagedevelopmemt #OldEnglish #GermanicEnglish #developmentofEnglish

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The English language is now accepted as the global lingua franca of the modern age. But how did it evolve? How did a language spoken originally be a few thousand Anglo-Saxons become one used by over a quarter of the human race? The Stories of English is a groundbreaking and entertaining history of the language by David Crystal, the world-renowned writer and linguist. Crystal turns the history of English on its head and provides a startlingly original view of where the richness, creativity, and diversity of the language truly lies-in the accents and dialects of nonstandard English users all over the world. Whatever their regional, social, or ethnic background, each group has a story worth telling, whether it is in Scotland or Canada, South Africa or the United States. Interwoven within this central chronological story are accounts of uses of dialect around the world and examples taken from current popular culture as well as literary classics. As Newsday wrote, "Crystal is bold, thoughtful, and often very funny.... His comparisons and allusions are effortless, and he's as up on Ali G and Middle Earth as he is on Anglo-Saxon and Middle English".

The Stories of English

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Margalit Fox

Texas

The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code

The Riddle of the Labyrinth is the true story of the quest to solve one of the most mesmerizing linguistic riddles in history and of the three brilliant, obsessed, and ultimately doomed investigators whose combined work would eventually crack the code. An award–winning journalist trained as a linguist, Margalit Fox not only takes readers step-by-step through the forensic process involved in cracking an ancient secret code, she restores one of the primary investigators, Alice Kober, to her rightful place in what is one of the most remarkable intellectual detective stories of all time.

The Riddle of the Labyrinth

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Lynne Truss

New Jersey

The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

0ca4866b-9768-4c2e-80b6-303eb69ca6c7-1

Deborah Tannen

Alaska

Women and Men in Conversation

"A chatty, earnest and endearing book that promises here-and-now rewards for taking the trouble to listen more carefully to what others are saying--and to be more sensitive to what others are hearing." LOS ANGELES TIMES Discover how men and women can interpret the same conversation differently, even when there is no apparent misunderstanding. Discover why sinscere attempts to communicate are so often confounded, and how we can prevent or relieve some of the frustration. This fascinating, helpful, and controversial book--on the NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller list for two years!--explores, in depth the differing style men and women articulate, and how to work through it and get to the heart of the matter.

You Just Don't Understand

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#hardcover #language #linguistics Name & number blacked out on first page. 

Massachusetts

The Amazing Science of Bad Language

An irreverent and impeccably researched defense of our dirtiest words.

Swearing Is Good for You

ab9727ab-c5b9-4389-8879-414aa109af33-1

Ander Monson

An Essay Daily Reader - Ex-library copy with typical markings. Some water damage - crinkly pages, staining.

An Essay Daily Reader

The best of Essay Daily--each a writer in conversation with and about an essay, whatever its variety, contemporary and classic.

How We Speak to One Another

7e27a12a-1111-4d14-83e7-eb101dbeacdd-1

contains a boatload of things you didnt know about the English language

Word Nerd

Jennifer Speake

A surprisingly useful reference book.  TCX

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Arizona

A dictionary of words and phrases regularly encountered in 20th-century British and American English, with words and phrases from more than 40 languages.

The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases

4627dea0-729b-4a83-844f-edd06da497e3-1

#paperback #nonfiction #animals #pets #dog #psychology #memoir #science #nature #linguistics 

Utah

Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words

Shares the story of a Border Collie who recognized an unprecedented number of human words to explore her role in advancing understandings about animal intelligence, recounting how she also demonstrated an ability to use deductive reasoning and imitation.

Chaser

889200ed-1661-4c3e-b0d3-9eff5f305c46-1

#hardcover #language #nonfiction #linguistics The book has underlined passages here and there.

Understanding the New Rules of Language

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!! Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Amazon, and The Washington Post A Wired Must-Read Book of Summer “Gretchen McCulloch is the internet’s favorite linguist, and this book is essential reading. Reading her work is like suddenly being able to see the matrix.” —Jonny Sun, author of everyone's a aliebn when ur a aliebn too Because Internet is for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are. Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time. Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.

Because Internet

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Lesley Jeffries

An Introduction to Language Study

This accessible and lively introduction to semantics and the multi-faceted nature of language guides the non-specialist through the major ways in which the English language makes meaning. The author discusses the meaning of linguistic units at all levels of language, from sound to discourse and the role of theories and models themselves in helping us to understand human behavior. Through examples and exercises, readers are encouraged to think through and evaluate complex ideas and theories for themselves.

Meaning in English

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Ferdinand la Saussure

Reconstructed from lecture notes of his students, these are the best records of the theories of Ferdinand De Saussure, the Swiss linguist whose theories of language are acknowledged as a primary source of the twentieth century movement known as Structuralism.

Save this search

Erica Ferencik

Girl in Ice

Mardy Grothe

Ifferisms

Sidney Greenbaum, Randolph Quirk

A Student's Grammar of the English Language

Stuart Robson; Prateep Changchit

Instant Thai

Berlitz Editors (Editor); Berlitz Publishing Staff

Greek Phrase Book

James Geary

I Is an Other

Eugene Ehrlich

The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate

Leonard Shlain

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess

Roy Blount

Alphabetter Juice

Mike Whiteford

How to Talk Baseball

David Crystal

The Stories of English

Margalit Fox

The Riddle of the Labyrinth

Lynne Truss

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Deborah Tannen

You Just Don't Understand

Emma Byrne

Swearing Is Good for You

Ander Monson, Craig Reinbold

How We Speak to One Another

Michael Powell

Word Nerd

Jennifer Speake

The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases

John W. Pilley; Hilary Hinzmann; John W. Pilley

Chaser

Gretchen McCulloch

Because Internet

Lesley Jeffries

Meaning in English

Ferdinand la Saussure

Course in General Linguistics

Edward T Hall

The Silent Language

Edwin Newman

Strictly Speaking