Selected Reference Resources for Linguistics
- Research Guide
- Encyclopedias
- Dictionaries
- The World’s Languages
- Bibliographies, Bibliographic Databases, Catalogs, and Portals
- Books, Media, and Journal Titles – General
- Articles – Linguistics
- Articles – Broader
- Portal to Web Resources
- The Library of Congress Clasification System
Research Guide
DeMiller, Anna L. Linguistics:
A Guide to the Literature. 2nd ed. Englewood, Colo.: Libraries
Unlimited, 2000.
A critically annotated, classified bibliography of reference materials on
linguistics in general and individual languages and language groups.
Encyclopedias
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. David Crystal. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. (DeMiller 18)
Concise Encyclopedia of Educational Linguistics. Ed. Bernard Spolsky. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1999.
The
Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Gen. ed. David
Corson. Dordrecht & Boston: Kluwer, 1997. 8 vols.
Each volume focuses on a particular aspect of the topic: v. 1 Language policy
and political issues in education; v. 2 Literacy; v. 3. Oral discourse and
education; v. 4. Second language education; v. 5 Bilingual education; v.
6 Knowledge about language;
v. 7 Language testing and assessment; v. 8 Research methods in language
and education.
The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (ELL). Ed.-in-chief R.E. Asher; co-ordinating ed. J.M.Y. Simpson. Oxford & New York: Pergamon Press, 1994. 10 vols. (DeMiller 5)
International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (IEL). Second edition. Ed.-in-chief William Frawley. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 4 vols. (DeMiller 13)
Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge,
1998. 10 vols.
Although not as detailed for linguistics as other sources above, covers
general principles of the philosophy of language and related topics, e.g.
structuralism and semiotics.
Dictionaries
Crystal, David. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 5th ed. (The Language Library). Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2003. (DeMiller 19)
Crystal, David. A Dictionary of Language. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. (British edition called Penguin Dictionary of Language. First edition called An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language and Languages, 1992, which is DeMiller 20).
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics: A Handbook for Language Teaching. Ed. Keith Johnson and Helen Johnson. Oxford & Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998. (DeMiller 366)
Pullum, Geoffrey K. and William A. Ladusaw. Phonetic Symbol Guide. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. (DeMiller 49)
Richards, Jack C., John Platt, and Heidi Weber. Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (LDAL). Harlow, England: Longman, 1985. (A newer edition, 1992, which UCSD doesn’t have, is DeMiller 368).
For dictionaries of a particular language, do a subject search in Roger for “[x] language—Dictionaries.”
See also the section “Dictionaries” in SAGE for some electronic dictionaries.
The World's Languages
Atlas of the World’s Languages. Gen. eds. Christopher Moseley and R.E. Asher. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. (DeMiller 629)
Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas. Eds. Stephen A Wurm, Peter Muhlhausler, Peter Tyron, and Darrell T. Tyron. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996. 2 vols. in 3 parts. (DeMiller 631)
Campbell, George L. Compendium of the World’s Languages. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 2 vols. (1st edition is DeMiller 555)
Campbell, George L. Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. (DeMiller 557)
Ethnologue:
Languages of the World. Ed. Barbara F. Grimes. Maps by
Richard K. Sanderson and Mary Kathleen Greene. 14th ed. Dallas: Summer Institute
of Linguistics, 2002. (DeMiller 572-574)
(Also available on the Web.)
Ruhlen, Merritt. A
Guide to the World’s Languages. Volume I: Classification.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987. (DeMiller 587)
A complete genetic classification of all the world’s languages, the
most comprehensive and up-to-date presently available.
Louw, Bill. The
Atlas of Languages: The Origin and Development of Languages Throughout the
World. Consultant eds. Bernard Comrie, Stephen Matthews,
and Maria Polinsky. Revised Edition. New York: Facts on File, 2003. (DeMiller,
620)
Circulating copy of 1996 edition.
Voegelin, Charles Frederick and Florence M. Voegelin. Classification
and Index of the World’s Languages. New York: Elsevier,
1977. (DeMiller 591)
Largely superseded by Ruhlen, this nevertheless remains an important reference
source, particularly for its index of names.
The World’s Major Languages. Ed. Bernard Comrie. London: Croom Helm, 1987. (DeMiller 561). Fifty separate chapters on language groups or languages, each written by an expert.
The
World’s Writing Systems. Ed. Peter T. Daniels and
William Bright. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. (DeMiller
564)
Provides a historical sketch and the table of signforms of the world’s
major scripts. The IPA (1989 revision) in its entirety can be found on the
book’s endpapers.
Bibliographies, Bibliographic Databases, Catalogs, and Portals
I. Books, Media, and Journal titles - General.
Roger. The UCSD Libraries’ Catalog. Provides searching by author, title, subject, keyword, and call number. Records for all materials owned by the Libraries (books, journals, documents, manuscripts, media, etc.) as well as links to electronic resources provided by the Library or by the California Digital Library (CDL) and selected Web sites. Does not catalog individual articles in journals.
Melvyl. The joint catalog of the University of California System’s libraries for books, periodicals, media, databases, and selected Web sites.
WorldCat. The largest available electronic catalog for books and other materials, with over 45 million records. Useful for identifying items not available in the UC system. (Interlibrary loan). A smaller, but also important, catalog is the RLIN Bibliographic File representing the collections of the Research Libraries Group.
II. Articles within journals, conference papers, book reviews, etc. - Linguistics
LLBA: Linguistics and
Language Behavior Abstracts.
Coverage: 1973 to present electronically; 1967 to present in print.
Print version: SSH Ref P 105 .L3
MLAIB:
Modern Language Association International Bibliography.
Coverage: 1963 to present electronically; 1921 to the present in print.
Print version: PB 41 .M68
These are the two big electronic bibliographic databases for linguistics research. There is considerable overlap between the two. In addition to journal articles, both cover books (although more selectively than articles), dissertations, conference proceedings, and, to some extent, individual chapters or articles within books. MLAIB does not contain book reviews; LLBA does. LLBA’s focus on linguistics (MLAIB covers literature and folklore as well) and its abstracts make it the primary database of the two, but for a comprehensive search, MLAIB needs to be consulted as well. (DeMiller 85 and 88)
Linguistics
Abstracts.
Coverage: UCSD has only from 1991 to 1997.
Focus on theory and practice of general linguistics, not applied linguistics,
nor the descriptive or historical study of individual languages or dialects.
(DeMiller 84)
SSH Ref P 1 .L78
Linguistic
Bibliography for the Year … = Bibliographie Linguistique de l’année
…
Coverage: 1939 to present.
Provides comprehensive, worldwide coverage of periodical articles, dissertations,
and contributions to collected works such as festschriften and conference
proceedings, including reviews of such publications. Somewhat slow to appear
(the latest covers the year 1999.) (DeMiller 78)
SSH Ref P 121 .L56
Bibliographie
linguistischer Literatur (BLL): Bibliographie zur allgemeinen Linguistik
und zur anglistischen, germanistischen und romanistischen Linguistik.
Coverage: 1978 to present; international in scope (for general linguistics
and English, Germanic, and Romance linguistics). Relatively quick in appearance
(the latest available covers the year 2002.) (DeMiller 79)
SSH Ref P 3 .B5
The Year’s Work in
Modern Language Studies.
Coverage: 1929/30 to present.
An annual, critical survey of research on language and literature. Five
main sections: General linguistics (begun in 1974), Latin, Romance languages,
Germanic languages, and Slavonic studies. Each of the latter four is divided
into language and literature sections, often with further subdivisions.
Sections written by separate experts in those fields. Somewhat slow to appear.
(DeMiller 652)
SSH Ref PB 1 .Y45
The first sixty years of this (1930-1990) are available electronically.
Annual
Bibliography of English Language & Literature (ABELL).
As title suggests, for English language research only.
Coverage: 1920-present (Print). Electronic: 1920-present.
Includes books, dissertations, chapters of books, and journal articles.
Unlike MLAIB, does include book reviews; in fact, a search can be limited
to reviews, or they may be excluded. (DeMiller 739)
Print version: SSH Ref PE 71 .M69
III. Journal Articles - Broader
Expanded Academic ASAP.
Coverage: 1988 to present.
Provides journal articles and book reviews from a broad range of periodicals
in many fields. Not at all comprehensive for linguistics; however, for core
journals, it is useful because it is much more quickly updated than either
LLBA or MLAIB. Also, there is an increasing number of full-text articles
provided.
Social Sciences Citation
Index. Part of The Web of Science.
Coverage: 1975 to present. (Electronic only).
Social Sciences Citation Index is a multidisciplinary database, with searchable
author abstracts, covering the journal literature of the social sciences.
It indexes more than 1,725 journals spanning 50 disciplines, as well as
covering relevant items from over 3,300 of the world's leading scientific
and technical journals. The unique feature of SSCI (along with its counterparts,
Arts & Humanities Citation Index—which can also be used for language
and linguistics—and Science Citation Index—which may be useful
for some of the more computational and neurological aspects of linguistics)
is that it provides indexing of articles that have cited other articles
or books. I.e., you can not just search for articles on a topic, but for
documents that have cited a particular article (or book) that is central
to your concern, under the theory that research by other scholars who cite
that source will also be of interest to you. (DeMiller 92)
Current Contents.
Coverage: 1993-present.
A keyword or author (i.e., no subject headings or descriptors) index to
6500 scholarly journals. As with some other CDL-hosted databases, holdings
of UCSD and the other UC libraries are indicated below the citation. No
print version. This resource will not be available after December 2004.
ERIC
Coverage: 1966 to present.
A good database for research in foreign language teaching and language acquisition;
also
important for older items treating "exotic" languages. There are
two types of publications indexed in ERIC: journal articles, designated
EJ, and otherwise unpublished documents, designated ED. These documents
are available in the ERIC microfiche collection, housed in Current Periodicals
& Microforms Department on the first floor.
PsychINFO (Psychological Abstracts)
IV. Portal to Web Sites and other Electronic Resources
SAGE. From the SSHL home page, click on SAGE, then on Language and Literature, then Linguistics and Languages. Electronic resources in linguistics available to the UCSD community are grouped in categories, e.g. Web megasites, dictionaries, article databases, journals and other full-text sources, etc. Remember: SAGE lists only electronic resources. It is not—as this guide in brief and DeMiller’s book in much more detail (see above) attempt to be—a guide to all useful resources on linguistics, both print and electronic.
The Library of Congress Classification System
The UCSD Libraries, along with all other UC libraries and the majority of research libraries in the United States, use the classification system adopted by the Library of Congress for books, journals, and some other materials that can be shelved. (At UCSD, we use home-grown systems for housing microfilms, videos, sound recordings, manuscripts, and other materials requiring specialized storage.)
The most relevant call numbers for linguistics and language study are:
| BF | Psychology (especially near BF 723, for cognition) |
| P | Communication
in general, including general linguistics. Specific numbers, or ranges
of numbers, are used to sub-classify, e.g. P 37 psycholinguistics; P
41 sociolinguistics; P 215-240 phonology; P 301 discourse analysis and sylistics. |
| PA | Classical (Western) languages and philology in general, and Latin and Greek; Byzantine and modern Greek; Medieval and modern Latin. |
| PB | Modern languages and philology (in general); Celtic languages |
| PC | Romance languages and philology: 1000-Italian; 2001-3761 French and Provençal; 3801-3976 Catalan; 4000 Spanish; 5000 Portuguese |
| PD | Germanic languages and philology: Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Old Norse. |
| PE | Germanic languages and philology: English. |
| PF | Germanic languages and philology: Dutch, Afrikaans, Flemish, Friesian, German. |
| PG | Slavic languages/philology and literatures. 2000 Russian |
| PH | Finno-Ugrian and Uralic languages/philology and literatures. Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, 5001-Basque |
| PJ | Oriental languages/philology and literatures. (1000-Egyptian & Coptic, 2301-2551 Hamitic, 3001-9293 Semitic). |
| PK | Indo-Iranian languages and literatures, including Vedic, Sanskrit, Pali, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali); 8001-8958 Armenian; 9001-Caucasian and Georgian) |
| PL | Eastern Asian, Africa, and Oceania. 500-700 Japanese; 901-49 Korean, 1000-2239 Chinese, 5001-7511 Oceanic, 8001-8844 African. |
| PM | 1-7356 Native languages of the Americas; 7800-Mixed and Creole languages, 8000-9021 Artificial languages. |
| QP 399 | Neuro-/psychological aspects of language |
| Z 7001-04 | Some bibliography of linguistics. |
Contact Information
Rob Melton
Literature, Linguistics, Theater & Dance
Social Sciences & Humanities Library
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive, 0175R
La Jolla, CA 92093-0175
Phone (858) 534-1264
Fax (858) 534-7548
rmelton@ucsd.edu
