What the hell does THAT mean?!?! - A reading list

Started by suomichris, February 11, 2010, 09:02:59 PM

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suomichris

There's been quite a lot of questions here about basic linguistics.  This is pretty important for understanding Na'vi at this stage, since it was designed by a linguist, and some of what we know about Na'vi has been derived by people experienced in linguistic analysis.  This can make some of the discussions seem rather overwhelming for those not familiar with linguistic terms.  So, I thought I would post a list of books which one could use to get a crash course in linguistics, along with some online resources.  All of these books are relatively inexpensive, and should serve as a good basic introduction.

Books:
Teach Yourself Linguistics - A general overview of the subject.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language - A big, beautiful book that makes for an excellent coffee table volume.  Great fun to flip through!
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics - Useful for a quick and dirty look-up of the meaning of terms.

Online resources:
SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms - An online index of linguistic terminology.  It does presume that one has some (but very little) background in linguistics already.

If people have other recommendations, post them here, and I'll try to keep this first post updated.