This is a bit vague but I’m not sure where to start, just don’t want anything to do with etymology.
Cheers
Finegan’s Language: Its Structure and Use is a really good textbook. McWhorter’s The Power of Babel would make for an ideal fun, yet serious and illuminating, companion read.
Later, you might get into one of Steven Pinker’s more specialized books, like * Words and Rules* — he’s a terrific writer.
Do you want books about the study of languages, or about languages? (If you see the subtle difference I’m making.)
Anyway, you could try The Language Instinct, Through the Language Glass, or In the Land of Invented Languages.
I’ll second Steven Pinker. He’s very opinionated, and very persuasive; I have to remind myself when reading him that good rhetoric doesn’t always mean a person is 100% right. Even so I’ve been strongly influenced by reading his books.
Well put — I agree with every word!
Yeah, pinker looks good.
Study of languages mainly, wouldn’t object to the latter.
Andred Radford’s Transformational Syntax.
Not a book, exactly, but John McWhorter’s lectures for The Teaching Company/The Great Courses are good.
I would also recommend Pinker’s The Language Instinct.
If you’re looking for something a bit shorter/lighter but still written by people who know what they’re talking about, there’s a book called Language Myths that contains essays by different linguists tackling common misconceptions about language.
Linguistics is a very scientific discipline. Not only is every proposed law refutable, they are virtually all refuted often only a short time after they are proposed. I’m not saying there are no rules, but after spending years studying it fairly seriously, I realized that they are at the stage of alchemy trying, trying, to become chemistry. They will get there but not in my lifetime.
I started with Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Clear and well written. And wrong in virtually every detail. Okay that was more than 50 years ago. But when I lost interest in the mid 80s, it still seemed that rules were getting more involved and less convincing. Maybe it has gotten better recently.
And his books are good too.
I second the recommendation for “In the Land of Invented Languages”
My mother had a Ph.D in linguistics. I read her textbooks when I was in intermediate school, and I enjoyed most of them. There’s nothing to stop you from going to the nearest college bookstore and browsing the linguistics department. Although, if you are interested in a book in the graduate section, I’d note the title and author, then buy it elsewhere, because schools tend to order just enough books for the students in grad courses.
That is, assuming that college bookstores still exist, and students don’t just get all their books on ereaders now.
That would kinda bum me out. One of my happier moments was the day after my college graduation, when I repeatedly backed my car over the text for my math class that I’d gotten the D in, but it had been just enough to squeak me through graduation. I had spent four years worrying that I was wasting my time, because I’d never pass a math course.
A college buddy of mine told me he had accidentally (?) ruined a EE textbook (by leaving the window in his car ajar during a rainstorm, when the book was on the floor), but got some joy from the event by tying the remains of the book to a tree and shooting it with a crossbow bolt (the semester was over).
Pinker and McWhorter get my seal of approval, too. I’ll add Mario Pei to the list, although his books are going to be a bit older.
David Crystalhas written or edited over 100 books on language, at all levels. He’s the place I would start.
Here are a lot of suggestions:
Besides the books that have already been mentioned in this thread so far, I would recommend these:
The Unfolding Of Language by Guy Deutscher
Far from the Madding Gerund: And Other Dispatches from Language Log by Mark Liberman and Geoffrey K. Pullum
Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett
Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends by David Wilton
The Linguistics Wars by Randy Allen Harris
Ideology and Linguistic Theory: Noam Chomsky and the Deep Structure Debates by John A. Goldsmith and Geoffrey J. Huck
Women, Fire, & Dangerous Things by George Lakoff
As an undergraduate, I quite enjoyed Raimo Antilla’s Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Lots of Finno-Ugric examples–yum!
If you want something nontechnical, check out anything by David Crystal, but particularly The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language or The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. They’re both broad surveys, but they’re fun to leaf through.
If you want something technical, check out Clackson’s Indo-European Linguistics. It’s a good example of what linguists actually do, and there’s enough stuff there (including some unresolved problems) to at least whet your appetite for the subject.
You are evil. But in a good way.
The Routes of English by Melvin Bragg
MiM