Friday, July 18, 2008

Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists




Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists (Paperback)
Even though this book is intended for linguists doing fieldwork, it is an absolute must for those who create languages for fun. Why? Well, the purpose of the book is to teach a fieldworker how to write a descriptive grammar for the language s/he's working on. It points out everything that should be recorded, and gives examples of different phenomena from different languages. Well, guess what? A language creator is essentially a fieldworker working on an undiscovered language: his/her own. This book will guide a language creator in creating a grammar of his/her own language, and, when you get stuck, it's always helpful to see how natural languages do things. As a language creator, I highly recommend this book to anyone who creates languages.

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