Conlangery #116: The Conlanger’s Bookshelf

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.