Reddit reviews An Introduction to Historical Linguistics

>The grammar simplifies itself the more people use it.

How are you defining grammar? I would highly recommend cracking a textbook on historical linguistics (Introduction to Historical Linguistics by Crowley and Bowern is great, as is Historical Linguistics by R.L. Trask).

You seem to be specifically referring to the tendency of highly synthetic languages to become more analytic over time -- but seem to be forgetting (or are unaware of) the fact that analytic languages become agglutinating and then synthetic over time. The whole process is referred to as the grammaticalization cycle.

>Language carries with it a certain amount of entropy; if it's taught properly it can maintain itself, but most people don't have the time or need.

Again, I highly recommend consulting an introductory textbook for historical linguistics.

>So gradually people start playing fast and loose with the syntax and what not.

This is flat-out wrong. Either of the books I mention above will explain why.

>Lexical complexity is only the result of introducing more words though conquest or immigration which is common enough but it doesn't happen on it's own.

This is also wrong. Seriously, both of the above books are great -- both are very readable, and Trask has the excellent quality of being charmingly (and intentionally) hilarious.

You're clearly interested in language, otherwise you wouldn't be posting in this subreddit. I think you'll find the scientific study of language to be incredibly interesting and fun -- and more rewarding than just positing unsubstantiated suppositions.

As far as I know, the most popular introductory textbook is Fromkin's. You can get an older edition for cheaper. I studied with the 5th edition less than 3 years ago and it was fine. For something less unwieldy and more practical to carry around with you, Barry Blake's All About Language is really good. Less than 300 pages and manages to cover a huge amount of stuff clearly.

Personally, I think that historical linguistics is a really fun and relatively easy way to get into Linguistics as a whole so I'd recommend Trask's Historical Linguistics. I know that the Campbell and Crowley textbooks are also very popular, but I don't have personal experience with them. Maybe somebody else can weigh in on which is easiest for a beginner?

I have to plug my professor Kate Burridge here who has written some excellent pop-linguistics books: Gifts of the Gob, Weeds in the Garden of Words and Blooming English. Her more serious books are also written in a highly accessible manner and she is probably one of the world's experts on Euphemism and taboo. Here's a clip of her in action.

Some fun linguistics-related videos:

TED - The Uncanny Science of Linguistic Reconstruction

Pinker on Swearing

David Crystal on British tv

Another fun way to learn would be to listen to this song and look up all the terms used in it.

I can only speak for hist ling, but I've loved Trask's - detailed and the exercises can be challenging. I used Crowley/Bowern's in a class and found it a bit slower with not all the information you might want, though there are tons of examples from non-IE languages which is nice. Judging by Amazon another favorite seems to be Campbell's, though I don't have experience with it. I think all of these books would require some prior work in phonology/phonetics, though nothing you couldn't pick soon enough (they might even have a refresher sections, I can't recall).

I don't know why it would come across like that. The facts are the ones you choose to ignore here because it conflicts with something you were taught years ago. If you want to know some actual facts read a book like this one.

But without actually taking the time to study the field why would you think you have the facts? It seems to me more like something challenged what you believed to be true and you got incensed over it.