As explained by series editor H.G. Widdowson in the preface, the purpose of the Oxford Introduction to Language Study “is not to supplant but to support the more academically oriented introductions to linguistics: to prepare the conceptual ground. They are based on the belief that it is an advantage to have a broad map of the terrain sketched out before one considers its more specific features on a smaller scale...” (vii). Peter Roach, professor of phonetics at the University of Reading and a...