/lit/, what is a good book to start with for linguistics? Textbook

>>9889466
Ten years ago I would've written Baker's The Atoms of Language. The scape has changed considerably since then, however.

>>9889466

Saussure, keeping in mind that the model is considered out of date now

>>9889650
saussure is long and outdated

>>9890341

I already said it's considered out of date, but it is a foundational work for modern linguistics. And no, 236 pages is not a long book

An Introduction to Language by Fromkin

Or you could skip that and read intro textbooks on grammar, syntax, semantics, and psycholinguistics. This would cover an intro text roughly.

>>9890911
Any good textbooks you would recommend?

>>9892201

A Student's Introduction to English Grammar.

Either Syntax: A Generative Introduction by Carnie, or the workbook and coursebook on syntax by Carnie.

Either Introducing Semantics by Riemer, or Semantics: A Coursebook.

Either Language in Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics, or Introducing Language and Cognition: A Map of the Mind.

This would cover the big picture of these areas, and probably bring you up to about second year university level linguistics minus stuff on pragmatics and speech. After this you could dig deep into different areas, e.g. morphology, formal semantics, etc (which you would already be prepared for with the above reading).

>>9893512
How important is understanding grammar before going into linguistics?

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>>9893653
Would this be alright for an introduction to grammar?

The Grammar Book, An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course by Diane Larsen-Freeman and Marianne Celce-Murcia

https://www.youtube.com/user/thelingspace

>>9893653

I think of understanding as a matter of degree, kind of similar to belts in a martial art. So understanding grammar before jumping into some textbook on syntax straight away is like having a yellow belt in syntax. You'll have a bunch of motivating examples, you'll understand certain terminology, and you'll have a less-rigorous approach to syntax before busting out parse trees.

>>9893685

Table of contents looks fine, and reviews are good, so sure. I haven't read it though.

>>9889578
the atoms of language is a sort of pop-sci book dealing with a then-current speculative trend in linguistics in a particular paradigm (principles & parameters). it's not really a starter book because it doesn't provide a background in the field, and isn't primarily marketed toward an academic audience.

>>9889650
saussure's general course is a classic, which can be read for very broad distinctions & concepts still in use today, like the arbitrariness of the sign, the distinction between synchronic & diachronic linguistics, and some rudimentary stuff about sound systems & morphology. but it's more of historical interest, and not an opening text. however if you are interested in continental phil. language this is a good place to start & can help you make sense of derrida and so on. by and large the field is no longer structuralist.

>>9893653
linguistics is a distinct discipline from prescriptive grammar. the latter is totally orthogonal to it – linguistics seeks to understand human language as a natural phenomenon and so is largely indifferent to prescription (except when trying to describe it as a sociolinguistic phenomenon). 'knowing grammar' in the sense that an english class teaches you will largely be of no help, except that there are some very basic descriptive things that carry over into theoretical linguistics – e.g. linguists still talk about things like adjectives and subordinate clauses, though these are much more sophisticated notions that have different theoretical status depending on who you ask.

i would recommend you read the latest edition of the language files, which has a survey introduction to the major subfields. good luck.

This question obviously doesn't deserve it's own thread but it's one I wondered a while ago when I was considering whether or not I was even interested in the field, but how much maths does linguistics involve?

>>9894677
this depends on the sort of linguistics you do. thr majority of theoretical linguistics are not even close to mathematicians – they're interested in mathematical tools insofar as they're useful for modeling linguistic data. if you work in the core fields of phonology or syntax, there will be complex formal frameworks with their own jargon, technical apparatuses, and so on, and manipulating these will require field-specfic technical skill, but these don't typically require mathematical knowledge on a work-a-day basis. that said, there are mathematical formalizations of them that the linguist interested in foundations (especially syntax) may work through or be interested in for their own sake.

that said, the generative syntax boom in the 1950's was made possible by advancements in mathematics, and early generative grammars liked describing languages as mathematical objects of a certain kind, using inductive definitions of sets of sentences constructed according to recursive rules, sentences themselves being strings of a certain sort. 'everyday' linguistics doesn't really deal this explicitly in these terms, though.

semantics is a little different for historical reasons, and even a working knowledge of it will require some rudimentary mathematical tools, using naive set theory, an understanding of functions, and use of mathematical logic of various sorts.

more broadly, experimental linguists in general will have need of statistics standard to any statistically driven discipline. however, it's possible to get help from specialists in these areas if you've got to do experimental work but aren't a full-time experimentalist. computational linguists may also be interested in mathematical models of various sorts. and some specialized sub-disciplines may use other mathematical tools – for example, pragmatics can sometimes make use of game theory.

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if you want an intro to the sort of math that it'd be useful for an ordinary theoretical linguist to know, check out 'mathematical methods in linguistics.' it's one of the best textbooks ever, and goes over a bunch of stuff in great detail.

>>9893512
Thanks. Maybe I'll get a start with these sometime in the future.

>>9889466
For linguistics basics:
>The study of language, by George Yule.

For sociolinguistics basics:
>communication across cultures, by heather bowe & kylie martin.
Or a little more advanced:
>An Introduction to Language and Society, by Martin Montgomery

Once you've read those two, if you decide you like sociolinguistics you could move onto cross-cultral pragmatics, such as work by Anna Wierzbicka.

I don't study pure linguistics so I can't recommend anyone else in that field beyond Yule.

>>9896114
Looks good.

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Personally I'm a fan of [pic related]. It gives a developmental approach to linguistics (how toddlers learn it, or foreign speakers) which helps distinguish some of the nuances on how languages change and adapt over time.