Conlangery Podcast

Conlangery #116: The Conlanger’s Bookshelf

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Today we take some time to suggest a few books that conlangers should check out.

Linguistics Books
  • Heine, B., & Kuteva, T. (2002). World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge University Press.
  • Bybee, J., Perkins, R., & Pagliuca, W. (1994). The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. University of Chicago Press.
  • Dixon, R. M. (2012). Basic Linguistic Theory (Volumes 2 and 3). Oxford University Press.
  • The Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics (“Red Books”) and the Oxford Linguistics collection. (Somehow we mixed these two together)

    • Not Quite Linguistics
    • Watkins, C. (1995). How to kill a dragon: aspects of Indo-European poetics (Vol. 11). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    • Florian, C. (1996). The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. Oxford: Blackwell, 174.
      Grammars of Inspiration and Magnificence
      • Any Germanic grammar by Henry Sweet and Joseph Wright
      • Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2008). The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea. OUP Oxford.
      • Young, R. W., & Morgan, W. (1980). The Navajo language: A grammar and colloquial dictionary (Vol. 3). University of New Mexico Press.
        Suggestions from Tumblr
        • narnuinotes: The Art of Grammar (Aikhenvald), Dialectology (Chambers and Trudgill), Languages of Native North America (Mithun).
        • vaxjedi answered: In terms of conscripts, I found Writing Systems by Geoffrey Sampson to be useful.
        • official-data: The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher.
        • neschria answered: In addition to the things mentioned, I have found _The Conlanger’s Lexipedia_ by Mark Rosenfelder gives me things to think about as I am generating vocabulary. (G note: I took a look at the Lexipedia, but I’m not super into it — I feel it’s better to get that information from other sources)
        • vilikemorgenthal answered: “An Introduction to Linguistic Typology”, from Viveka Velupillai. The amount and variety of examples from natlangs is breathtaking. Oh, and it delves into sign languages on an equal footing! A personal favorite
        • 1nsomnizac answered: What Language Is by John McWhorter is a good reference for the sorts of features that develop in natural languages, and it explains things well for laymen.
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