A guide to creating realistic languages for RPGs, fantasy and science fiction, movies or video games, or international communication... or just an unusual way to learn about how languages work.

The sequel to the Language Construction Kit: learn more about constructed languages and about linguistics: logic, pidgins and creoles, sign languages, the linguistic life cycle, and a meaty step-by-step survey of morphosyntax. Create detailed and plausible languages for RPGs, fantasy and science fiction, movies, or video games... or just learn more about how languages work with the same accurate yet fun approach as the original LCK.

A companion volume to the Language Construction Kit, this book explains everything you need to know about creating your own world with its own geology, creatures, cultures, religions, technology, and styles of war- plus how to create maps, illustrations and 3-D models. An essential whether you're writing science fiction or fantasy, designing RPGs, creating movies or video games, or remodeling a spare asteroid.

An accessible but incisive introduction to modern syntax and generative grammar, for conlangers and anyone interested in languages or linguistics. Syntax can be frustrating, because there are multiple schools that seem to fight over inessential things. I hope I can show you that this is normal for a new field, and that it actually makes syntax fun. New discoveries are being made, and you can participate- something that's a lot harder to do in, say, quantum mechanics. The emphasis here is on doing syntax-- learning how to make and how to evaluate syntactic arguments.What's in it? An introduction to the Chomsky Hierarchy, a classification of grammars that's used both in linguistics and computer science, as well as a comparison to other generative techniques, such as Markov text generators. A tour of Chomsky's methods- production rules and transformations- with overnight stays in the Syntactic Structures, X-bar, and Minimalist stages in his thought. A leisurely stroll through interesting bits of syntax: the English verbal complex, pronouns and other anaphors, relative clauses, quantifiers and more. The emphasis is on doing syntax- not just learning rules and drawing trees, but learning how syntactic arguments are made. An overview of alternatives to Chomsky's approach: generative syntax, cognitive linguistics, relational grammars, word grammar, construction grammar, Jackendoff's Simpler Syntax, and Comrie's universals. A chapter on production which asks, how real are these grammars? Do we really have syntactic categories and transformations in the brain, or in the genome? A chapter on how you can apply all this to your conlangs. The Syntactic Bestiary- an annotated list of transformations and constraints, which you can think about for conlanging, or use to evaluate syntactic theories. Plus, unlike most syntax textbooks, this one comes with a set of web toys so you can see the rules in action and write your own. It makes the ideas come alive much more than mere diagrams can.

"This book is an essential reference on creating words. It's packed with etymologies, ideas on derivation, places you can diverge from English, and fascinating things to think about. Plus it contains the real-world knowledge you need to name everything from colors to elements, from kinship systems to guilds" -- Back cover.

Mark J.P. Wolf’s study of imaginary worlds theorizes world-building within and across media, including literature, comics, film, radio, television, board games, video games, the Internet, and more. Building Imaginary Worlds departs from prior approaches to imaginary worlds that focused mainly on narrative, medium, or genre, and instead considers imaginary worlds as dynamic entities in and of themselves. Wolf argues that imaginary worlds—which are often transnarrative, transmedial, and transauthorial in nature—are compelling objects of inquiry for Media Studies. Chapters touch on: a theoretical analysis of how world-building extends beyond storytelling, the engagement of the audience, and the way worlds are conceptualized and experienced a history of imaginary worlds that follows their development over three millennia from the fictional islands of Homer’s Odyssey to the present internarrative theory examining how narratives set in the same world can interact and relate to one another an examination of transmedial growth and adaptation, and what happens when worlds make the jump between media an analysis of the transauthorial nature of imaginary worlds, the resulting concentric circles of authorship, and related topics of canonicity, participatory worlds, and subcreation’s relationship with divine Creation Building Imaginary Worlds also provides the scholar of imaginary worlds with a glossary of terms and a detailed timeline that spans three millennia and more than 1,400 imaginary worlds, listing their names, creators, and the works in which they first appeared.

Illustrated with real-life examples throughout, this book provides a complete introduction to one of the most fundamental question about what it means to be human: how does human language arise in the mind? Theory is explained in an easy-to-understand way, making it accessible for students without a background in linguistics.

In this student-friendly text, Jones and Singh explore the phenomenon of language change, with a particular focus on the social contexts of its occurrence and possible motivations, including speakers' intentions and attitudes. Presenting new or little-known data, the authors draw a distinction between "unconscious" and "deliberate" change. The discussion on "unconscious" change considers phenomena such as the emergence and obsolescence of individual languages, whilst the sections on "deliberate" change focus on issues of language planning, including the strategies of language revival and revitalization movements. There is also a detailed exploration of what is arguably the most extreme instance of "deliberate" change; language invention for real-world use. Examining an extensive range of language situations, Exploring Language Change makes a clear, but often ignored distinction between concepts such as language policy and planning, and language revival and revitalization. Also featured are a number of case studies which demonstrate that real-life language use is often much more complex than theoretical abstractions might suggest. This is a key text for students on a variety of courses, including sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and language policy and planning.

Form-Meaning Connections in Second Language Acquisition is an interdisciplinary and timely edited book of essays and empirical studies, most of which are based on the papers presented at the Form and Meaning Conference held in Chicago in 2002. The goal of the conference and now of the book is to present linguistic and cognitive approaches to second language acquisition, attempting to integrate external and internal issues in interlanguage development, while outlining directions for future research. The editors address questions, such as: What is the nature and sequence of the form-meaning mapping process? How are these connections made? How are these connections used to construct grammars and lexicons? And, how can conditions and external factors be manipulated to improve the chances of making these form-meaning connections? Contributors to this volume include such second language acquisition scholars as Susan Gass, Nick Ellis, Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig, Catherine Doughty, and Diane Larsen-Freeman. They address these form-meaning issues from a variety of settings and from multiple perspectives. Researchers and graduate students in applied linguistics, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and language pedagogy will find this volume to be an important resource.

Enchanted with Elvish? This is Neo-Sindarin, the language as it has flourished on the Internet using Tolkien's creation as a roadmap. This book functions as a friendly introduction to the Neo-Sindarin community. Included is the most current information available to fans. Within explore Neo-Sindarin academics, learn simple linguistic concepts, practice useful phrases while studying grammar, and look at the world through Elven eyes: from how they count on their fingers to how they organize the cosmos. Govano ven! (Join us!)