You have used IPA to document your language’s words and their features, but this chapter introduces other options for writing your conlang, beginning with a brief overview of different types of writing systems. The second section introduces romanization strategies, which utilize standard keyboard characters to represent sounds in a language. The third section discusses how you can adapt an existing orthography to your conlang, provided it makes sense for your speakers to have access to that existing orthography. Finally, the fourth section discusses the process of creating a unique orthography if that is the direction you want to take for your language. By the end of this chapter, you will decide how you might romanize your language and whether you will use an orthography to represent the written form of your language.

The focus of this chapter is on sounds. The chapter begins with an introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet to show how you can represent sounds with written symbols. The discussion turns to phonetic features of sounds and how they are connected to physical features of human anatomy. The second section focuses on the production and features of consonant sounds while the third section explores vowels and their features. The final section discusses how to create a balanced sound inventory when selecting sounds for your language. By the end of this chapter, you will select the consonant and vowel sounds you want to incorporate in your conlang.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the “replication crisis,” where studies are sometimes published without resources so that other researchers can replicate studies. Studies that have been retracted due to p-hacking, HARKing, or plainly falsifying data are presented. The importance of publishing data and detailing methods is discussed to improve readers’ confidence in studies and science. Students are guided through the major sections of a study proposal (introduction / literature review, planned methods, planned analysis, and discussion) and what steps are needed for each section. The American Psychological Association (APA) style is reviewed for formatting the proposal including the title page, paragraphs, citations, references, running headers, section headers, and statistical notation. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) is discussed along with common ethical considerations that are needed for a research study.

The Introduction outlines the central themes of economic history, focusing on the efficient use of resources and its implications for welfare. It explains how societies have historically used natural, human and manufactured resources to improve living standards, exploring the critical roles of technology and institutions in driving efficiency and growth. The chapter introduces the concept of total factor productivity as a measure of economic efficiency, and emphasizes how historical developments have shaped the wealth of nations. It also links economic history to contemporary concerns by discussing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and their relevance to resource management and welfare. By tracing historical improvements in efficiency and productivity, the Introduction sets the stage for understanding how economic history informs modern debates on sustainability and inequality.

This chapter examines economic growth in pre-industrial Europe, focusing on the agricultural sector as the primary driver of progress. It explores how technological innovations in farming, such as crop rotation and selective breeding, allowed for sustained economic growth despite limited resources. The chapter also discusses the Great Divergence, a period in which Europe’s economic development began to outpace that of other regions, and investigates the factors behind this phenomenon. By analysing the nature of pre-industrial growth, the chapter demonstrates how advances in agriculture and slow, but continuous, technological progress in other sectors provided the basis for Europe’s later industrialization. It highlights the importance of both internal and external factors in shaping Europe’s economic trajectory.

This chapter introduces constructed languages (conlangs) by first differentiating them from natlangs and then debunking common misconceptions about them. Along with defining major types of conlangs, one of the goals of this chapter is to identify the linguistic features that make conlangs languages. By the end of this chapter, you will make some important initial decisions about your conlang and conlanging goals.

This chapter builds on the grammatical foundation provided in Chapters 7 and 8, specifically diving into grammatical features of nouns. In this chapter, you will be introduced to three major ways nouns can inflect in languages: number, noun class, and case. The examples provided throughout each section focus on the most common types of inflections found in languages to help inspire you as you make noun-marking decisions for your conlang. The final section explores connections between adpositions and case. The exercises at the end of this chapter ask you to decide whether you will mark nouns for number, noun class, and/or case and, if so, how.

From this point on in the textbook, the student researcher has finished collecting data for the study and is performing the data analysis. In this chapter, students learn how to clean and screen their data as well as checking the relationships between independent variables (IVs) and the dependent variable (DV). Basic statistical calculations (e.g., mean, standard deviation, normal distribution) are reviewed and applied. How to create survey factors (e.g., by calculating the total or mean of a subset of survey items) is reviewed. Instructions for calculating Pearson r among the hypotheses’ variables are provided along with reasoning (and warnings) for using correlations to investigate relationships among the data. Step-by-step instructions are provided for both SPSS and R.

This chapter defines the term “natural language” (natlang) and introduces the field of linguistics. A major theme of the chapter is that languages change over time. The chapter demonstrates how you can systematically study those changes to understand how and why the language shifts typically occur. Language change is further connected to the development of language families and the importance of contact among speakers of different languages. At the end of the chapter, you will be asked to apply these concepts to a brief study of natural languages.

This chapter examines the long-term development of inequality in Europe, focusing on disparities between individuals, households and nations. It explores how social and economic inequalities have evolved over time, influenced by economic forces as well as factors such as gender, race and class. The chapter also considers global inequality, discussing the gap between rich and poor nations and the factors that have contributed to economic divergence or convergence. By analysing the historical roots of inequality and the role of institutions in mitigating or exacerbating it, the chapter provides insights into the social and economic consequences of unequal income distribution and how it shapes economic policy debates today.

This chapter focuses on how sounds can shift when they occur in particular environments. It introduces key concepts from the field of phonology, such as phonemes and allophones, and demonstrates how sounds commonly change during speech production. The major types of sound shifts discussed in this chapter include assimilation, deletion, insertion, and dissimilation. By the end of the chapter, you will be asked to apply phonological rules to a small data set and create a set of potential phonological shifts you can incorporate into your language.