This book introduces the basic systems of language, and examines how these can be investigated and described. The systems of organizing speech sounds (phonology), meaning (lexical semantics), and grammar (morphology and syntax) are described, along with methods of figuring these out for other languages. The text will foster a deep appreciation in the reader of the fact that language is patterned and that these patterns can be discovered. To this end, problems using actual language data are presented so that the reader can apply the methods described in the book. In a sense, An Introduction to...

A powerful sorcerer of the Tikatu Brotherhood has escaped into the past. His goal: fulfill an ancient prophecy to rid the world of God. Now only soul hunter and U.S. Marshal Jim Mercantile stands in his way. Outgunned, outclassed, and surrounded by enemies. Jim must find and destroy the M'chival, a mystical device that can enact the prophecy, before the sorcerer captures it and uses it to re-create the world in the Brotherhood's image. But time is running out for Jim, and as he races against the powers and principalities that seek to possess the M'chival for their own evil purposes, he comes...

Eighteen hundred years ago, Jim Mercantile could have destroyed the M'chival and stopped the Brotherhood before it was ever created. But instead he used the relic's power to return to his own time. Now he is trapped in a world of the Founder's making, a world where every opposition is crushed, and the penalty for disobedience is death. Yet somehow, Christianity survives. Living in small pockets and hunted by soulless creatures determined to wipe every vestige of God from the Earth, the Christians live in hope of a new messiah: the Light Bearer, a powerful wizard who will rise up against the...