C. Alphonso Smith's 'Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book' is a concise guide to the essentials of Anglo-Saxon grammar. Written for beginners, the book focuses on providing just enough information to understand Old English literature and grammar without overwhelming the student. The grammar exercises and reading selections are carefully chosen to reinforce the lessons taught in each chapter. With its emphasis on practical application and historical context, this book is the perfect starting point for anyone interested in learning Old English. The glossaries at the end of the book provide useful reference tools for both translating Old English into modern English and vice versa.
This is a revised and expanded edition of Cowan and Rakušan’s Source Book for Linguistics. In addition to the chapters on Phonetics, Phonology, Phonological Alternations, Morphology, Syntax, Sound Change and Historical Reconstruction, there are two new chapters: one on Semantics and one on Grammatical and Lexical Change. In addition, an index of the 93 languages and dialects represented in the book has been added, as well as a revised bibliography. The solutions to the exercises have also been revised and expanded. The number of exercises has been increased from 333 to 472. New exercises have been added to most chapters, and many exercises have been revised to focus on new issues in linguistics. The text has been completely reset in high-quality letterpress, with a wide range of phonetic symbols and diacritics. This newly revised edition will continue to be useful as a teaching tool and a source of examples in a variety of linguistic applications. If you’ve been teaching upper-level undergraduate introductions to linguistics without Cowan & Rakusan, then you’ve been scrambling about in search of examples and exercises in phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax long enough. Order the Source Book; in the long run, if it does for you what it did for me, you’ll probably wind up just dumping your traditional textbook order. (Lynn Eubank, University of North Texas)