good books; typology & verse forms

[combining messages bcs Listserv is spurning me for sins
of blathersomeness]

Tom:
> > > The is a programmatic but fascinating article on this by Patricia
> > > Donnegan and David Stampe in CLS (Proc. of the nth regional meeting
> > > of the Chicago Linguistic Society) from c. 1983. For the full
> > > reference, I suggest either Google or Dirk; each is pretty reliable!
>
> Or I can do it -- I am a *current* officer of the Chicago Linguistic
> Society, afterall.  I have access to all the proceedings for all
> four decades of CLS's existence, in fact.  If you still need it, I can
> take a look next time I'm in the CLS office.
I subsequently posted the ref (it's in the 1983 parasession vol) to
the list. But if you in your abundant free time fancied posting a
precis to the list, I'm sure it would be read with much interest.

Doug Dee:
> Some of my other favorite books are in a series from Cambridge U. Press
> that includes:
>
> _Gender_ by Greville Corbett
> _Number_ by Greville Corbett
> _Tense_ by Berbard Comrie
> _Aspect_ by Bernard Comrie
> _Case_ by Barry Blake
> _Definiteness_ by Christopher Lyons
> _Ergativity_ by RMW Dixon
These are all excellent surveys of the ways natlangs do things
(except perhaps for _Aspect_, which some find disappointingly
thin & superficial, and for _Definiteness_, which I haven't seen).
One from the same series that I found especially useful for
conlanging was F.R. Palmer's _Mood and modality_: on every page you
find something that makes you think "Yes! My conlang has GOT to have
a way of expressing that!". In fact, that is the *only* linguistics
book that has had any demonstrable direct effect on my conlanging
(even though it was 15 years ago).

--And.