Re: CHAT: (no subject)

On Jul 14, 2004, at 17:09, 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.
>
> By the way, if anyone is interested in seeing and critiqueing some of
> my
> prelimary work, let me know.
>
> -Jakob
> jakob@imsa.edu
>
Welcome to the list. You are encouraged to post conlang ideas, however
preliminary! (Just don't feel too ignored if no one replies--you have
probably noticed that discussions here can range over most topics.)

As for books:
My public library has the following (after doing a subject search for
'linguistics')
     The Cambridge encyclopedia of language, by David Crystal
     The language instinct, by Steven Pinker (subtitle is 'How the mind
creates language')
     The origin of language: tracing the evolution of the mother tongue,
by Merritt Ruhlen
     The story of language, by Mario Pei
I have not read any of these. My main resource has been
     Describing Morphosyntax, by Thomas E. Payne (I bought it from
Amazon for not too much)

You could also search for specific natlangs you are interested in.
Also, the web is a great resource for finding grammatical explanations
of natlangs. My current interest is in Native American languages, and
there are a few (not as many as I'd like) sites that give more than
just a set of phrases, or basic courses. For lists of Native American
language sites try:

http://www.naaog.de/englisch/Links_Languages.html
or
http://www.native-languages.org/

Listen to web broadcasts in foreign languages; even (especially) ones
you don't understand. One cool site I found is:
http://www.nhk.or.jp/english/

They have 10 minute news readings in several different languages
throughout the day (and works as a dial-up stream :) ) such as:
Japanese, of course, Portuguese, Persian, Russian, Swahili, Chinese,
Korean, Spanish, Arabic, Italian, French, Swedish, German, Bengali,
Urdu, Hindi, Indonesian, Burmese, Vietnamese, Thai, Malay.

Anyway, don't be afraid of sounding ignorant. We all were at some point
(some of us still are :)) -- speaking of myself and not my fellow list
memebers). Ask questions, and you will likely receive several answers.

Enjoy!

James W.