The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics

by P.H. Matthews and Peter Hugoe Matthews

Book Overview

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics is the most authoritative and up-to-date dictionary of linguistics available. Written by distinguished and highly respected scholar Peter Matthews, this handy reference contains over 3,000 concise and informative entries on everything from phonetics to formal semantics.
Including world-wide coverage of languages and language families, the Concise provides grammatical terms in English as well as grammatical...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192800086
• ISBN13: 9780192800084
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 422 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.7" x 4.9"

Customer Reviews

Great Dicctionary

This dictionary is a great tool for English learnear or teachers. The seller shipped it in a good condition and very fast!

Very good reference, esp. for students

This is my second copy of the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics as this is the second edition. In my opinion better then the first one. It is a really good reference, especially for students, presents really good coverage of entries. Reasonable price!

Very handy and surprisingly complete

(The following comments are based on the first edition, which I bought a year ago. I see that Oxford published a second edition a few months ago.) I have found P. H. Matthews' dictionary of linguistic terms to compare very favorably with David Crystal's "A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics". In spite of the considerable difference in size and price, I have found that Matthews' work has more of the terms I want to look up, and his explanations are often more to the point. I don't use it much for phonetic terminology, so any deficiency in this regard vis a vis Crystal has not been an issue for me. I appreciate seeing the names of at least a few of the most outstanding linguists in history listed. New students in the field should find these references to the luminaries helpful. Their names show up in the literature with some regularity, and it is nice to have some place to turn for a quick summary of their contributions. For students of linguistics, I recommend that you get Matthews' dictionary first, if you can't afford both at once, and then get Crystal's dictionary later. It is always helpful to have more than one reference of this sort on your shelf.

The dictionary I turn to first

This slim dictionary succeeds nicely at providing concise but accurate and understandable definitions of linguistic terminology.Serious linguists will also want to own David Crystal's Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Crystal's dictionary is larger and more complete in most respects, especially with regard to phonetics. On the other hand, Matthews' dictionary, unlike Crystal's, has brief entries on individual linguists (Panini, Halliday) and specific languages (Etruscan, Pashto). Overall, I find Matthews' dictionary more "user-friendly": smaller, cheaper, and easier to read. I find myself consulting Matthews first, and then turning to Crystal for an alternative perspective.