Hello! Was just curious if you could post some beginner friendly recommendations for books in Linguistics. (I do have a degree in English, so I think some things will overlap and I’ve had some basic courses, but I’d like to see things from a more linguistic focus) Sorry if you posted before.
Some recommendations.....
...for language enthusiasts:
"Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn (this is a lipogrammatic book (meaning that the author progressively uses less and less letters of the alphabet). It's a novel made entirely of letters between the inhabitants of the island of Nollop, which was named after Nevin Nollop who created the famous phrase containing all letters of the alphabet: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". As the letters fall from a statue of Nevin Nollop, the Council forbids their use in speech and writing. The protagonist Ella tries to save her friends and family and fights for her freedom of spreech)
the movie "Arrival" (it's based on a short story by Ted Chiang and focuses on a linguist who is tasked with studying and interpreting the language of aliens who have come to earth. It gives really good insights into language studies and also into the theory that the languages we speak shape the way we view and understand the world)
Babel, the language magazine (for anyone who is interested in languages and linguistics; focuses on loads of different linguistic topics)
...for advanced linguistic topics:
These are some of the books I used in my uni studies:
"Introduction to English Linguistics" by Becker/Bieswanger
"A History of the English Language" by Baugh/Cable (I used this in several courses)
Longman's "Advanced Learners' Grammar" (about English grammar)
"Advanced Grammar" by Diane Hall (about English grammar)
"Die Sprache Chaucers", by Obst/Schleburg ( ! this is a German book about Middle English)
"English morphology and word-formation" by Hans-Jörg Schmid
And here are some books that were suggested to me during my studies, but which I haven't looked at yet:
"An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics", by P. Griffiths (2017)
"An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics" by Ungerer/Schmid
"Meaning in language: an introduction to semantics and pragmatics" by Cruse
"Basic Color Terms. Their Universality and Evolution" by Berlin/Kay
"Register, Genre, and Style" by Biber/Conrad
"Cohesion in English" by Halliday/Hasan
"Internet Linguistics: A Student Guide" by David Crystal
"Cyberlines 2.0. Languages and Cultures of the Internet" by Gibbs/Krause
"Understanding Digital Literacies: A Practical Introduction" by Jones/Hafner
"An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English" by Alfred Gimson
"A manual of English phonetics and phonology" by Skandera/Burleigh
"English Lexicology: Lexical Structure, Word Semantics, and Word-Formation" by Leonhard Lipka
"The History of English: A Student's Guide" by Singh
"English Around the World: An Introduction", by Edgar Schneider
"Introducing Second Language Acquisition" by Saville-Troike


















