Re: CHAT: (no subject)

Jakob Kotas wrote:
> Hey all, I've been a member of this list for about a month now, and I'm just
> starting my own language.  I am very much an amateur, as I only have about a
> week
> of experience.  Could anyone suggest any helpful/well-known books that deal with
> basic grammar, phonology, etc. of natural languages?... hopefully something
> common enough to find at my local library.  Thanks in advance.
>
Welcome! (I'm almost tired of saying that, but someone has to do it :) )

I don't know what your library can get, but there are 2 books I can
recommend:

The World's Major Languages, Bernard Comrie.
This book talks about 50 languages (well, about 40 languages and 10
language families), with lots of grammar and phonology. It's from 1987,
but I don't think that the languages have changed that much in 17 years.
The references to the USSR are a little jarring, though.

Describing Morphosyntax, Thomas Payne
Supposedly, it's a manual for field linguists that want to write
grammars for the languages they're studying. It ends up being a conlang
handbook. :)

 > By the way, if anyone is interested in seeing and critiqueing some of my
 > prelimary work, let me know.
 >
 > -Jakob
 > jakob@imsa.edu
 >

By all means, post it! We always need something new to talk about.

--
Michael