The Library of
Never-Written Books,
Part I
compiled by
Beebly O’Gnost &
Libby R. Arian
Bibliothēca Obscūra, Novigrad
For the amusement of the readers of Speculative Grammarian, we have compiled a list of the many non-existent, never-written linguistics and linguistics-adjacent books that our patrons have tried to borrow, put on hold, or acquire through interlibrary loan.
We’re not sure what this peek into the collective unconscious of academics and scholars of language says about them—whether these titles are tomes half-forgotten or pranks they fell for—but it must be something deep.
- Universal Grammar: Not a Big Deal
- Why Literary Linguistics Is a Great Career Choice
- Deconstruction in Plain English
- Interpreter Cognition Made Understandable
- The Oxford Comma Doesn’t Matter
- Phonetics Research on People Eating Spicy Food: A Sauce-Covered Field Guide
- Language Acquisition During Pacifier Use for Dummies
- Why Finnish Needs More Cases
- The Last Theory of Syntax
- The Oxford Guide to Careers in Sociolinguistics
- The Great Eskimo Isolating Typology Hoax
- Minimalism Made Simple
- Panini’s Critique of Generative Syntax
- How Syntacticians Have Contributed to Better Dictionaries
- The Uncontroversial Bible Translation
- Semiotics Made Practical
- Why You White Man Have So Much Syntax? Guns, Germs and Typology
- An Instrumental Phonetic Analysis of ASL
- MIT Studies in Stratificational Linguistics
- English Adjective Order Fully Explained
- Studies of Sensible Orthography, Vol. 1: French
- Studies of Sensible Orthography, Vol. 2: English
- Studies of Sensible Orthography, Vol. 3: Gaelic
- Dangling Between a Participle and an Ablative Absolute
- Speak Etruscan Like a Native
- Introduction to Quantitative Linguistics (Pirahã Translation)
- 501 Esperanto Verbs: Fully Conjugated in All the Tenses
- Definitely a Hoax: An Unimpeachable Analysis of the Voynich Manuscript
- A Popular Introduction to Linguistics (By an AI Trained Exclusively on Social Media)
- Speak Sentinelese Like a Native
- Chomsky: A Four-Page Introduction
- Satirical Linguistics: The Royal Road to a Professorship
- Polysynthetic Languages in Generative Grammar: A Guide for Working Single Mothers (Inner-City Manchester Edition)
- Welsh and Korean: Genealogical Relationships and Areal Interfaces
- How to Win Friends and Influence People With and in Esperanto
- Zamenhof: The Biography of a Linguistic Visionary
- Conversation Analysis for Trappists
- Ryan Reynolds’ Guide to Conversational Welsh
- Hip-Hop Lyrics and the Gospel of Mark
- A Grammar of Glossolalia
- World-Speak and UG: Volapük and Its Implications for Government and Binding Theory
- Speak Dolphin Like a Native
- The Historical Linguistics of Bee Dances: An Overview
- Speak Lojban Like a Native
- Spoke English as She Is Native (By Pedro Carolino)
- The New Native Speakers: Large Language Models and Their Fight for Linguistic Equality
- How to Keep a Gerbil in Dyirbal
- The North of England Guide to Positive Politeness Strategies
- Cornish as a Pluricentric Language
- Welsh Language Films at the Oscars
- Deixis for You and Me: Here, There and Everywhere
- Adjacency Pairs for Efficient Marriage Proposals
- 50 Historical Linguists and Their Contributions to the Global Economy
- The Phonetics of the Language of Thought
- Intra-Idiolectal Variation
- Koine Greek: A Contemporary Lingua Franca
- Abjads: A B-to-Z Guide
- Th Prbl f th Gd Smrtn in Samaritan: An Abjad Transliteration
More to come...
