新世纪高等院校英语专业本科生系列教材（修订版）旨在打造完整的英语专业学科体系，全面促进学生的语言技能、学科素养和创新能力的培养，必将为我国培养国际化、创新型、高素质的英语专业人才奠定坚实的基础！
　　权威性和先进性的体现：按照《高等学校英语专业英语教学大纲》提出的培养目标、课程设置、教学要求和教学原则精心设计，凝聚海内外英语专业教育界专家学者的智慧，反映英语专业教育、科研的*新成果。
　　前瞻性和创新性的结晶：基于广泛的市场调研、详尽的需求。分析和严谨的科学判断，梳理现有教程，优化教材结构，更新教学方法和手段，强化学生综合能力的培养。
　　专业素质和人文素养的同步提升：专业技能、专业知识、相关专业知识的**匹配，帮助学生打下扎实的语言基本功，增强其分析问题、解决问题的能力，提高专业素质和人文素养，使学生真正成为国际化、创新型、高素质的英语专业人才。

我国英语专业本科教学与学科建设，伴随着我国改革开放的步伐，得到了长足的发展和提升。回顾这30多年英语专业教学改革和发展的历程，无论是英语专业教学大纲的制订、颁布、实施和修订，还是四、八级考试的开发与推行，以及多项英语教学改革项目的开拓，无不是围绕英语专业的学科建设和人才培养而进行的，正如《高等学校英语专业英语教学大纲》提出的英语专业的培养目标，即培养“具有扎实的英语语言基础和广博的文化知识并能熟练地运用英语在外事、教育、经贸、文化、科技、军事等部门从事翻译、教学、管理、研究等工作的复合型英语人才。”为促进英语专业本科建设的发展和教学质量的提高，外语专业教学指导委员会还实施了“新世纪教育质量改革工程”，包括推行“十五”、“十一五”**级教材规划和外语专业**精品课程评审，从各个教学环节加强对外语教学质量的宏观监控，从而确保为我国的经济建设输送大量的**人才。
　　跨人新世纪，英语专业的建设面临新的形势和任务：经济全球化、科技一体化、文化多元化、信息网络化的发展趋势加快，世界各国之间的竞争日趋激烈，这对我国英语专业本科教学理念和培养目标提出了新的挑战；大学英语教学改革如火如荼；数字化、网络化等多媒体教学辅助手段在外语教学中广泛应用和不断发展；英语专业本科教育的改革和学科建设也呈现出多样化的趋势，翻译专业、商务英语专业相继诞生——这些变化和发展无疑对英语专业的学科定位、人才培养以及教材建设提出了新的、更高的要求。

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 Funcions 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， intonation
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 XP rule
4.3.2 Coordination rule
4.4 Phrase element，，
4.4.1 Specifiers
4.4.2 Complements
4.4.3 Modifiers
4.5 Sentences （The S rule）
4.6 Transformations
4.6.1 Auxiliary movement
4.6.2 Do insertion
4.6.3 Deep structure and surface structure
4.6.4 Wh movement
4.6.5 Move α and constraints on transformations
Revision exercises
For further reading

Chapter 5 Semantics
5.1 What is semantics?
5.2 Some views concerning the study of meaning
5.2.1 The naming theory
5.2.2 The conceptualist view
5.2.3 Contextualism
5.2.4 Behaviorism
5.3 Lexical meaning
5.3， 1 Sense and reference
5.3.2 Major sense relations
5.4 Sense relations between sentences
5.5 Analysis of meaning
5.5.1 Componential analysis ——a way to analyze lexical meaning
5.5.2 Predication analysis -a way to analyze sentence meaning
Revision exercises
For further reading

Chapter 6 Pragmatics
6.1 Some basic notions
6.1.1 Definition
6.1.2 Pragmatics vs. semantics
6.1.3 Context
6.1.4 Sentence meaning vs. utterance meaning
6.2 Speech act theory
6.2.1 Austins model of speech acts
6.2.2 Searles classification of speech acts
6. 2.3 Indirect speech acts
6.3 Principle of conversation
6.4 Cross-cultural pragmatic failure
Revision exercises
For further reading

Chapter 7 Language Change
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Phonological changes
7.3 Morphological and syntactic change
7.3.1 Addition of affixes
7.3.2 Loss of affixes
7.3.3 Change of word order
7.3.4 Change in negation rule
7.4 Lexical and semantic change
7.4.1 Addition of new words
7.4.2 Loss of words
7.4.3 Semantic changes
7.5 Some recent trends
7.5.1 Moving towards greater informality
7.5.2 The influence of American English
7.5.3 The influence of science and technology
7.6 The causes of language change
Revision exercises
For further reading

Chapter 8 Language and Society
8.1 The scope of sociolinguistics
8.1.1 The relatedness between language and society
8.1.2 Speech community and speech variety
8.1.3 Two approaches to sociolinguistic studies
8.2 Varieties of language
8.2.1 Dialectal varieties
8.2.2 Register
8.2.3 Degree of formality
8.3 Standard dialect
8.4 Pidgin and Creole
8.5 Bilingualism and diglossia
Revision exercises
For further reading

Chapter 9 Language and Culture
9.1 Introduction
……
Chapter 10 Language Acquisition
Chapter 11 Second Language Acquisition
Chapter 12 Language and the Brain
A Gloccsry in English and Chinese
References

First, linguistics is descriptive while traditional grammar is prescriptive. A linguist is interested in what is said, not in what he thinks ought to be said. He describes language in all its aspects, but does not prescribe rules of "correctness". He does not believe that there is some absolute standard of correctness concerning language use which linguists or school teachers should view as their duty to maintain. Instead, he would prefer to be an observer and recorder of facts, but not a judge. He might recognize that one type of speech appears to be socially more acceptable than others because of the influence of fashion. But this will not make him think that the socially more acceptable variety can replace all the other varieties, or the old words are always better than the new ones, or vice versa. He will regard the changes in language and language use as the result of a natural and continuous process, not something to be feared.
　　Second, modem linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, not the written. Traditional grammarians, on the other hand, tended to emphasize, maybe over-emphasize, the importance of the written word, partly because of its permanence. Before the invention of sound recording, it was difficult for people to deal with utterances which existed only for seconds. Then, the traditional classical education was also partly to b
　　ame. People were encouraged to imitate the "best authors" for language usage. Many of the rules of traditional grammar apply only to the written language； they cannot be made meaningful in terms of the spoken language, without much qualification and addition.