I own a dozen introductory linguistics textbooks, and this is my least favorite. Physically, the book is short and thick, with narrow margins, which makes it hard to read without breaking the spine. There are few exercises, and almost none include data from languages other than English. The bibliography slightly exceeds four pages. It is the only introductory textbook I have ever seen without a glossary.The title is misleading. This book is really an introduction to Chomskyan generative grammar, not an introduction to linguistics. Students who read this book will be plunged into the world of empty categories, covert movement, Merge, and the Economy Principle; on the other hand, they will never encounter the terms spectrogram, ergative, pragmatics, or Indo-European. If that sounds like your idea of what an introduction to linguistics should be, then I suppose this is the book for you.