Hi, Cayuga:
Here are a a couple of recommendations for your daughter, all of them nice gateways to further readings:
Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech
by Edward Sapir
Dr. Sapir has a wonderful writing style: precise, flexible, witty, warm, humane. Whether he discusses differences between analytic and synthetic languages, unpacks the lexical components of Latin nouns, describes language drift, or culture and linguistics, Dr. Sapir is gracious and kind. When he talks about language, race, and culture, your daughter may find him charmingly naive, but once she checks the copyright date, 1921, perhaps she’ll decide he was some kind of visionary. If she chooses to study linguistics, your daughter may decide that some of his findings are dated and his opinions superseded while wishing this intelligent man were still alive and living next door.
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
by Nicholas Ostler
This is nothing less than an attempt to write a history of all the great and widespread languages, where they sprouted, how they grew, how they thrived, in some cases how they died, in others how they continue. As the subtitle claims, it’s a kind of history of the world, which requires a lot of different kinds of context, including geography, culture, technology, speech generation, and so on. That’s a tall order. Dr. Ostler is more than equal to the task and he sets to it with a nice blend of enthusiasm, grit, and insight. In a fairly small space, he doles out a lot of information, all of it nicely organized and intelligently deployed. If his style can be a bit clunky, well, he’s working with some unwieldy topics. If you opt for the trade paperback, please look for the one with a blue-gray cover, costing 17.99 in the USA, with a title that spans the width of the spine, and a single ISBN, 978-0-06-093572-6. The alternative has the ISBN listed above along with a secondary, 0-06-093572-3; it has a deep blue cover, and cost 17.95 in the USA, and have a small font on the spine. The latter is badly printed, much harder to read than the former version.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
by David Crystal
The title sounds like the opening of a very dry tome but David Crystal loves languages, all languages in all their aspects and with all their eccentricities. Dr. Crystal is never dull, always incisive, always clear, writing in a pellucid style suffused with warmth and good humor. The book can be read serially or by leapfrogging from one chapter to another: either approach is rewarding. There’s an incredible amount of information here, from how a language is defined to communications media to machine learning to mathematical expression to language acquisition. This book is a splendid overview of a protean subject.
Pardel-Lux has recommended Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct, a very fine book heavily influenced by the teachings of Noam Chomsky, whose approach to linguistics is introduced quite nicely. Dr. Pinker has described his work with language and its relation to thought in many of his books, all of them intelligent and accessible. The Language Instinct is a terrific place to start with Drs. Pinker and Chomsky; and many thanks to Pardel-Lux for his post.
If pressed to recommend just one of these books, Dr. Sapir’s Language is wise and warm and wonderful. Yes, it’s old and, yes, it’s out-of-date, but it may be the sort of book that helps your daughter in any number of ways, from deciding what to do with her life to gaining an appreciation for other tribes and cultures. Whatever you decide, Cayuga, best wishes to her and to you.
Peace.