本書分為十二章，在系統(tǒng)介紹語言學(xué)基礎(chǔ)理論知識的同時，考慮到了教學(xué)實踐的需求，在編寫中突出了“簡明、易懂、實用”的特點，內(nèi)容豐富，涵蓋了語言學(xué)的主要分支和理論。

Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 What is linguistics?
1.1.1 Definition
1.1.2 The scope of linguistics
1.1.3 Some important distinctions in linguistics
1.2 What is language?
1.2.1 Definitions of language
1.2.2 Design features of language
1.2.3 Functions of language
Revision exercises
For further reading
Chapter 2 Phonology
2.1 The phonic medium of language
2.2 Phonetics
2.2.1 What is phonetics?
2.2.2 Organs of speech
2.2.3 Orthographic representation of speech sounds --
broad and narrow transcriptions
2.2.4 Classification of English speech sounds
2.3 Phonology
2.3.1 Phonology and phonetics
2.3.2 Phone, phoneme, and allophone
2.3.3 Phonemic contrast, complementary distribution,
and minimal pair
2.3.4 Some rules in phonology
2.3.5 Suprasegmental features -- stress, tone, intona-
tion
Revision exercises
For further reading
Chapter 3 Morphology
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Open class and closed class
3.3 Morphemes -- the minimal units of meaning
3.4 Analyzing word structures
3.5 Derivational and inflectional morphemes
3.6 Morphological rules of word formation
3.7 Derivation
3.8 Compounds
Revision exercises
For further reading
Chapter 4 Syntax
4.1 What is syntax?
4.2 Categories
4.2.1 Word-level categories
4.2.2 Phrase categories and their structures
4.3 Phrase structure rule
4.3.1 XPrule
4.3.2 Coordination rule
4.4 Phrase elements
4.4.1 Specifiers