Best Linguistics Tomes

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eido
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Best Linguistics Tomes

Postby eido » Wed Mar 29, 2023 8:26 pm

I may have already posted a thread like this :oops:

I’m also sure there has to be other threads like this on the forum.

But bear with me for a moment and do me a favor - do any of you most-definitely-more-knowledgeable-than-me people know of great linguistics texts?

I’ve already dipped my toes in just from reading this forum and taking a few classes, but I want to go deeper. I have my For Dummies texts, but I need to know more ;)

Thank you to all who have a look at this thread and might reply. I appreciate your help.
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Re: Best Linguistics Tomes

Postby Kraut » Thu Mar 30, 2023 10:55 pm

Linguistics is a wide field: general linguistics, historical linguistics, Romance philology, Spanish philology, structuralism .... languages and genetics, they often run parallel
Do you have special interests? What are the books about that you call "for dummies"?
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Re: Best Linguistics Tomes

Postby badger » Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:38 pm

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Re: Best Linguistics Tomes

Postby Lisa » Fri Mar 31, 2023 8:14 pm

I have a related request and it is very specific :-) I am wishing for something that goes into some depth on IPA, not just English but each of the phonemes, at least all those that are in the more common european languages (e.g. german, french, spanish), and that can e.g. explain the w/y ones that aren't vowels or consonants. In my dreams this clarifies things like differences between l in english, german and spanish, and of course would make all vowel sounds obvious... hahahaha
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Re: Best Linguistics Tomes

Postby galaxyrocker » Fri Mar 31, 2023 10:39 pm

One I haven't seen mentioned, but I started with Fromkin et al. I really enjoyed it and how it basically looked at most the branches of linguistics then really popular (this was before the explosion of cognitive/psycho/corpus linguistics), though I don't know how the newer editions are. From them I just dove into textbooks on what I liked, such as Campbell's Historical Linguistics and Hock's book ont he same topic.
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Re: Best Linguistics Tomes

Postby eido » Sat Apr 01, 2023 12:38 am

Kraut wrote:Linguistics is a wide field: general linguistics, historical linguistics, Romance philology, Spanish philology, structuralism .... languages and genetics, they often run parallel
Do you have special interests? What are the books about that you call "for dummies"?

Well, to give you an idea of my current sphere of interest:

I just ordered a book on Llanito, the "spanglish" spoken in Gibraltar. The book is in Spanish, and I believe is one if not the only currently existing longitudinal studies involving this specific variety of language mixing.

In addition, I ordered a similar book on el silbo "spoken" on the Canary Islands.

I have a "Hispanic world" theme going here.

But I have other interests as well. Currently I'm more focused on the broader aspects of linguistics, but as my language skills sharpen, I'm hoping so too will my abilities to analyze the tongues I've devoted time to.

And the series I mentioned is literally entitled For Dummies, as written by an American publisher.

Thanks for the reply, @Kraut!
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Re: Best Linguistics Tomes

Postby galaxyrocker » Sat Apr 01, 2023 8:03 am

eido wrote:I have a "Hispanic world" theme going here.




If you wanna read in Spanish, I know of at least one introduction to linguistics in Spanish. I actually bought a copy once for $2 at my local Half Price Books outlet. It was the second edition of Introducción a la lingüística española. There's a third edition out now, but the second edition can be found on Amazon for $3 used and probably doesn't have much missing, at least for a basic overview.

It covers a lot of the main topics, looking at them in in the case of Spanish. Chapters including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, dialectology, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, contextual variation, with a chapter dedicated to the language in the US (it was written by a professor at UC Berkley). Doesn't seem to cover semantics or pragmatics, but still a great introduction I'd say. Plus, it's in Spanish and about Spanish, so that might keep you a bit more interested and give you some more context.
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Re: Best Linguistics Tomes

Postby tungemål » Sat Apr 01, 2023 9:37 am

It's of course not necessary to read linguistics to learn a language. I've read one book - the Hornsby Teach Yourself book.

It gives (among other things) an interesting overview of the history of linguistics. In short:
- Classical Greece: debate about the essence of an object or concept and the word for it
- Medieval period: the preoccupation with Latin
- The first grammarian (12th century) in Iceland, a work about phonology and grammar of Icelandic
- 17th-18th century: The prescriptive tradition: manuals for good speech and writing
- 19th century: comparative linguistics after the discovery that Romance languages, Germanic and Sanskrit were related
- 20th century: Linguistics as descriptive rather than prescriptive, and the impressive work done by Saussure, who started modern linguistics - e.g. signifier and signified, synchrony and diachrony, and the concept of language as a system of differences. At this point linguistics becomes pretty abstract.
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Re: Best Linguistics Tomes

Postby tungemål » Sat Apr 01, 2023 9:51 am

Lisa wrote:I have a related request and it is very specific :-) I am wishing for something that goes into some depth on IPA, not just English but each of the phonemes, at least all those that are in the more common european languages (e.g. german, french, spanish), and that can e.g. explain the w/y ones that aren't vowels or consonants. In my dreams this clarifies things like differences between l in english, german and spanish, and of course would make all vowel sounds obvious... hahahaha

I'd also like to learn more IPA. Ideally this would be a practical course with someone who knows how to pronounce all the phonemes (or "phone" I guess). For a theoretical understanding of the system you could read wikipedia, but it doesn't necessarily means you'll be able to pronounce all the sounds. It's a practical skill where you need to know how to move the tongue in the right position.
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Re: Best Linguistics Tomes

Postby lavengro » Sat Apr 01, 2023 6:07 pm

tungemål wrote:I'd also like to learn more IPA. Ideally this would be a practical course with someone who knows how to pronounce all the phonemes (or "phone" I guess). For a theoretical understanding of the system you could read wikipedia, but it doesn't necessarily means you'll be able to pronounce all the sounds. It's a practical skill where you need to know how to move the tongue in the right position.

I recall forum member jonm highly recommending J.C. Catford's A Practical Introduction to Phonetics which might fit your bill. I had starting working through this previously and thought it was really good, but then I saw a squirel climbing a tree in an entertaining manner or a shiny coin or something similar so I put it (and likely whatever language I may have been trying then) on hold and never did manage to get back to it. Still in my list of things to do....
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