Grammars series

What's this page about?

I often assign students a project that requires them to consult a grammar. These series are generally reputable and serve as a good starting point for choosing a grammar to work with.

(If you're looking for a grammar, also check out the grammars library)

Grammars series

• Routledge Comprehensive Grammars. "[C]lear guides to the entire grammar system of each language." ISSN 2832-1073 (online) 2692-9058 (print).
• Routledge Essential Grammars. "[D]escribe[s] clearly and succinctly the core rules of each language and are up-to-date and practical reference guides to the most important aspects of languages used by contemporary native speakers." ISSN 2831-5367.
• Routledge Descriptive Grammars. "A wide variety of well-known and lesser-known languages are covered and the information is arranged to be readily accessable to linguists working on language universals, language typology, comparative syntax, morphology, or phonology."
• Language Science Press Comprehensive Grammar Library. Open access. "[C]omprehensive reference grammars of less-widely studied languages in any part of the world. ISSN 2749-7798 (online)/2748-971X (print)."
• Language Science Press African Language Grammars and Dictionaries. Open access. "[D]ocumentation of languages within the African continent and contact languages within the African Diaspora." ISSN 2512-4862.
• Mouton Grammar Library. "Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts." ISSN 0933-7636.
• Mouton-CASL Grammar Series. "up-to-date, linguistically sophisticated, and comprehensive language materials, of use to a wide spectrum of users, on major world languages which have hitherto been largely neglected."
• London Oriental and African Language Library. "[A]ims to make available reliable and up-to-date analyses of the grammatical structure of the major Oriental and African languages, in a form readily accessible to the non-specialist." ISSN 1382-3485; https://doi.org/10.1075/loall.
• UCL Grammars of World and Minority Languages. Open access. "[A]ccessible yet thorough open-access grammars... Devoted to less commonly taught, regional, minority and endangered languages."
• Brill Grammars and Sketches of the World's Languages. "[D]escriptions of the world's understudied languages, either as full-fledged grammars or as language sketches." ISSN 2352-9342.
• SIL Publications in Linguistics. Includes some non-grammar linguistics books, but there are many grammars to choose from.
• Sign-Hub Sign Language Grammars. Online grammars for several sign languages. They vary in degree of exhaustiveness and topics of focus.

Phonological descriptions series

• The Phonology of the World's Languages (OUP).
• JIPA Illustrations of the IPA. The Journal of the International Phonetic Association publishes articles with "concise accounts of the phonetic structure of different languages using the Association’s International Phonetic Alphabet, accompanied by audio recordings." These aren't as comprehensive as a book-length source, but are often useful.

Language family descriptions series

These series contain works that describe whole language families, rather than individual languages.

• The World of Linguistics (De Gruyter Mouton).
• Cambridge Language Surveys.
• Oxford Guides to the World's Languages.
• Routledge Language Family Series.

Handbooks

The handbooks in these series have some volumes dedicated to individual languages or groups of languages, mixed in with volumes on theoretical issues

• Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics.
• Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics.
• (Wiley-)Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics.
• Routledge Handbooks in Linguistics.

GrammarWatch open access grammars

• GrammarWatch is a list of open-access grammars maintained by the Association for Linguistic Typology.

Other places to look

NB: Quality of these sources may vary.

• SIL language and Culture Archives. "[P]reserves and disseminates one of the broadest collections of materials developed for and by minority language communities worldwide." Includes many grammars and phonological descriptions, most of which are available to download for free.
• Pacific Linguistics Publications Archive. Grammars and phonological descriptions of Pacific languages. Set "content type" to "gram", "phon", etc. to narrow down the search and exclude other types of resources.