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Re: a new person on the list

From:Eduard Ralph <conlang@...>
Date:Sunday, August 28, 2005, 12:53
Thank you all for the tips. I'm sure they will be a great help. Maybe it
would be a good idea to have a page with books for beginners or something on
langmakers.com. There is a wide selection of books on the page but
unfortunately not a category for the untutored. :-)

Eduard


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU] Im
Auftrag von Paul Bennett
Gesendet: Samstag, 27. August 2005 23:49
An: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
Betreff: Re: a new person on the list

On Sat, 27 Aug 2005 16:02:14 -0400, Eduard Ralph <conlang@...>
wrote:

> I've been lurking on this list for the past 2-3 weeks and thought it > time to > introduce myself shortly. My interest in conlanging stems from my > bilingual > upbringing and the interest in writing a fantasy book. Of course I want > it > to be as full of life as can be. Working in the IT field, I have to work > with very simple con languages every day. I was surprised how much > programming and writing have in common. I'll admit that I don't have much > linguistic background and as such I'm still fighting with some of the > terminology used on this list, so I hope you'll bear with me if I ask > questions which seem simple.
Welcome! Here are a few books you ought to consider buying: A Dictionary Of Grammatical Terms In Linguistics, Trask Language Universals And Linguistic Typology, Comrie Describing Morphosyntax, Payne The World's Writing Systems, Daniels & Bright Those four provide what I think of as the core canon of what's possible and what's likely within human language, as well as describing in great detail the terminology you're likely to find on this list, and should form part of the bookshelf of any conlanger. They can be quite dry, and heavy going, especially Comrie, but the payoff is well worth it. In the meantime, SIL maintain a glossary of linguistics terms that should help unmuddy the waters somewhat: http://www.sil.org/linguistics/glossaryoflinguisticterms/index.htm You also ought to become familiar with the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) and CXS, which is how we represent the IPA in ASCII. For an overview of CXS, see http://www.theiling.de/ipa/ Also of use are the Leipzig glossing rules, useful in presenting line-by-line, word-by-word translations of texts: http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/files/morpheme.html Paul