Preface to the first edition; Preface to the second edition; Abbreviations and conventions used in the text; Part I Some fundamentals of linguistics; 1: Language; 2: Accent, dialect, variety; 3: Linguistics; 4: Grammar; 5: Parts of speech; 6: Rules; 7: The Neogrammarians; 8: The Saussurean dichotomies; 9: Chomsky's influence; 10: Some recurrent themes; 11: Form and function; 12: Contrast and substitution; 13: Binarity; 14: Trees; 15: State versus process; 16: Native speaker; 17: The data of linguistics; Part II Notation and terminology; 18: Notational conventions; 19: Frequent abbreviations and initialisms; 20: Terminology: ambiguity; 21: Terminology: synonymy; Part III Reading linguistics; 22: The International Phonetic Association; 23: Reading phonetics and phonology; 24: Foreign expressions; 25: Letters, accents and diacritics; 26: Laws and principles; 27: Statistics; 28: Some on-line resources for linguists; 29: Writing systems; 30: Figures of speech; Part IV Writing and presenting linguistics; 31: Essay writing; 32: Glosses; 33: Use versus mention; 34: Reification; 35: Spelling; Part V Bibliographies; 36: Citation etiquette; 37: Reference lists; Part VI Language file; Language file; Index.