In-depth books on linguistics (for conlanging)

[EnterJustice]

ZBB'ers,

I've getting back into conlanging as of late and I'm looking for some goods books on linguistics (covering things such as phonology, semantics, historical linguistics, even writing systems etc.). I'm especially interested in books that cover many areas simultaneously and in-depth, concrete content.

The purpose for these books is to serve as a reference as I develop my own conlang (which is supposed to have a somewhat developed protolang as well). So I'm very much interested in books that give me a good overview of what a language needs to be "complete", examples of features and mechanisms of languages etc.

I do own Describing Morphosyntax, but its scope is too limited for it to be usefull as an only reference.

Thanks for your input.

[Cael]

Trask's Historical Linguistics if you want to understand what kind of sound changes are out there and which ones are typical.
Indo-European Language and Culture by Benjamin W. Forston if you want an good sketch of a proto-language
Analyzing Grammar by Paul R. Kroger.
The language construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder

[Yng]

The language construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder

rly

I mean don't get me wrong it's good but it's not exactly in the same genre as those other three

Difficult for me to know exactly what to recommend. There's WALS which is a good resource and a lot of grammars out there. Comrie's Aspect is pretty good. I seem to remember there's a series called something like The World's Languages which has nice sketches of things?

I mean if you were looking for something on a specific topic I could recommend books but for very general reading I'd just go and download as many PDFs of grammars as you can and get flicking through.

[Ser]

Zompist's book isn't exactly an "in-depth" source...

The reflex answer to an in-depth work on writing systems is Daniels and Bright's The World's Writing Systems, of course.
EDIT:

I seem to remember there's a series called something like The World's Languages which has nice sketches of things?

The World's Major Languages contains sketches of 50-something... major languages.

[Gulliver]

Everything mentioned so far is pretty solid. What sort of resources do you have access to? A university library is a wonderful thing, but Wikipedia might have to do.

Find a book on number. Read it. It will have lots of examples of number in different languages.
Find a book on gender. Read it. It will have lots of examples of gender in different languages.
Find a book on tense. Read it. It will have lots of examples of tense in different languages.
Find a book on modality. Read it. It will have lots of examples of modality in different languages.
&c.

Routledge and Cambridge University Press both do lots of books called things like "The Blah Handbook" and "An Introduction to Blah" that are generally written by very well-respected authors and will certainly provide you with other authors to follow. In every field, there are a few big names and then lots of people reacting to their work, either positively or negatively. For example, in language acquisition it's hard to move without seeing the names Skinner, Chomsky and Krashen, and then when you do move past them it's all Saville-Troike this or Mitchell & Miles that. Get to grips with the big influential theories.

Failing that, Wikipedia is really pretty good with linguistics, especially if you follow the citations through. Oh, and practice reading IPA on the bus, out loud. You're not a real linguist until you've practised your minimal pairs on the bus.

[Hallow XIII]

Illustrative anecdotes to Gulliver's statement:

I have garnered an estimated 10'342 weird stares on the tram (I don't use the bus that often, I hope this still counts?) saying weird sounds to myself.
I have spent an hour with an Indian (and, more importantly, Hindi-speaking) friend that consisted of us both saying "Mahabharata" over and over again, interspersed with occasional exasperation on her side, so that I could learn to say breathy-voiced stops.
I have a conlang whose principal purpose is two-fold: a) to be as monosyllabic as possible b) to force me to into phonation (see also the above example). Example: [dˤɨ̃ ɡʱɔ̰p̚ d̪ˤʱːɯ̤̃ːŋ̊] is a personal name.
Etc, etc.

More on topic: University libraries are the coolest, and tend to be at least partially accessible to the public. I have gotten my hands on grammars of Ubykh and Navajo simply by waltzing into one and asking them whether they had such things (they did). Which brings me to the only bit of practical advice in this post: reading books on specific features is all well and good, but nothing beats looking at reference grammars of languages with that feature (except maybe speaking one). Theory is best supported by at least some knowledge of how the object of discussion actually surfaces in the field.

[Cedh]

I recommend The Languages of Native North America by Marianne Mithun. The major part of that book consists of detailed typological descriptions of various unusual features that are characteristic for Native North American languages, e.g. head-marking, noun incorporation, lexical affixes, direct-inverse alignment etc., and it contains lots of glossed examples from many languages. The book can be an eye-opener for how different languages can be from the SAE model, and how all those exotic features actually make sense.

[Xephyr]

I'm going to take the incredible vagueness of the OP as an excuse to talk about some books about decipherment.

Really though, I think more conlangers and glossophiles should read Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson. It's not a technical book by any means, but it is in-depth, probably more than any other book book on the subject of deciphered and undeciphered scripts. Really nice illustrations, too.

More detailed descriptions are found in The Decipherment of Linear B by John Chadwick and Breaking the Maya Code by Michael Coe, and I remember the first two chapters of A History of Babylonia and Assyria: Volume I by Robert Rogers being pretty good, but for everything else Robinson is as good as it gets-- people don't like getting into the technical details of this kinda thing, for instance Empires of the Plain, Lesley Adkins' biography of Henry Rawlinson, barely discusses the process of decipherment at all.

I've also heard good things about Ancestral Voices: Decoding Ancient Languages by James Norman, which I have but haven't read yet. IIRC it's written for young adults, but is pretty detailed. And why not? Kids tend anymore to be about the only people who are intellectually curious about anything.

[Cael]

The language construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder

rly

I mean don't get me wrong it's good but it's not exactly in the same genre as those other three

Difficult for me to know exactly what to recommend. There's WALS which is a good resource and a lot of grammars out there. Comrie's Aspect is pretty good. I seem to remember there's a series called something like The World's Languages which has nice sketches of things?

I mean if you were looking for something on a specific topic I could recommend books but for very general reading I'd just go and download as many PDFs of grammars as you can and get flicking through.

I was just recommending what I use personally

[EnterJustice]

I recommend The Languages of Native North America by Marianne Mithun. The major part of that book consists of detailed typological descriptions of various unusual features that are characteristic for Native North American languages, e.g. head-marking, noun incorporation, lexical affixes, direct-inverse alignment etc., and it contains lots of glossed examples from many languages. The book can be an eye-opener for how different languages can be from the SAE model, and how all those exotic features actually make sense.

Would you find it usefull for general conlanging as well? After all, I might as well pick up a book covering African languages if I'm looking for exotic. Unless there's something spefici about the Native North-American languages that makes them particularly interesting.

I think cedh's point was that many north american languages a typologically weird and even those that aren't are very un-european. This isn't unique to north america, of course, but it is probably more true of north america than of many other regions - at least, regions with similarly exhaustive research done and synoptic compendia published. Certainly, Standard Average African, if there were such a thing, would look a lot more familiar to a european reader than Standard Average North American.

EDIT: oh, sorry, I appear to have edited this post instead of replying to it. Sorry about that EJ! Feel free to change it back. -Salmoneus.

[Cael]

Trask's Historical Linguistics if you want to understand what kind of sound changes are out there and which ones are typical.
Indo-European Language and Culture by Benjamin W. Forston if you want an good sketch of a proto-language
Analyzing Grammar by Paul R. Kroger.
The language construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder

What would "Analyzing Grammar" by Paul R. Kroger cover? Does it cover phonology and morphology and semantics and pragmatics as well?

Covers morphology and syntax as well as other topics concerning grammar

[2+3 clusivity]

As an alternative, you might consider getting used versions of common textbooks.

For example, Ladefoged is "the guy" for phonetics. Consider getting his textbook for $0.01 + shipping $3.99.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/ ... ition=used

Or, Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology (Paperback) by Bernard Comrie for $0.10 + S/H:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/ ... ition=used

Six or seven books at that rate, and you'll have a pretty good platform you can fill in with .pdf grammars.

[Zaarin]

I recommend The Languages of Native North America by Marianne Mithun. The major part of that book consists of detailed typological descriptions of various unusual features that are characteristic for Native North American languages, e.g. head-marking, noun incorporation, lexical affixes, direct-inverse alignment etc., and it contains lots of glossed examples from many languages. The book can be an eye-opener for how different languages can be from the SAE model, and how all those exotic features actually make sense.

I just picked this book up myself and can second the recommendation--lots of great information on alternative ways to approach language building. And absolutely essential if you're considering polysynthesis.

[Melteor]

I use Google scholar, the local uni library, and worldcat as a last resort. Tracking down stuff from the refs on wiki is worthwhile.

[EnterJustice]

Thanks for all the replies guys! I now have somewhat of a better grip on where to look for info.

I'll start with "The World's Languages" and see how different languages work, before diving into specific areas. Thanks again.

[Przemysław]

Thanks for all the replies guys! I now have somewhat of a better grip on where to look for info.

I'll start with "The World's Languages" and see how different languages work, before diving into specific areas. Thanks again.

There's also "Languages of the World / Materials" (about 500 volumes) and other series published by Lincom. Expensive, though.

[roninbodhisattva]

I recommend The Languages of Native North America by Marianne Mithun. The major part of that book consists of detailed typological descriptions of various unusual features that are characteristic for Native North American languages, e.g. head-marking, noun incorporation, lexical affixes, direct-inverse alignment etc., and it contains lots of glossed examples from many languages. The book can be an eye-opener for how different languages can be from the SAE model, and how all those exotic features actually make sense.

This. If you want to have your mind blown wide open to the possibilities of language, read about North America. Then go read about Tuu and Kx'a languages.

[R.Rusanov]

Funny story about Ben Fortson's book. In high school I looked for Indo-European books in my (rather small) school library only to find that there was but one in the whole place - Introduction to Indo-European Language and Culture, Fortson 2004. I couldn't find it on the non-fiction shelves so I asked the librarian, who told me it was in the section of the library where books donated by alumni were stored!

If I was pursuing linguistics in college I'd probably have sent him an email asking for introductions and helping me get into programs and stuff on the basis of our common education. In Engineering we call that "networking" but I consider it pure triballism :^)