Your suggestions on books

[IdiotbyDefault]

I am nearing the end of my Japanese major at my college, and I am exploring my options of what I should continue to study if I go into grad school for Japanese. One option is Japanese Linguistics. I have looked into several books on the subject, however, I have never had formal studies on linguistics, so I was wondering if any of you have any books that explain terminology and aspects common in linguistics well or websites that do the same?  

[Koiyuki]

I was also wondering about this, as someone looking to better myself as a language teacher. What book recommendations do you have, for beginners?(most of mine on the Japanese side are kinda lame and don't explain terms too well, and the English side ones are super technical and English specific)  

[IdiotbyDefault]

Koiyuki

I was also wondering about this, as someone looking to better myself as a language teacher. What book recommendations do you have, for beginners?(most of mine on the Japanese side are kinda lame and don't explain terms too well, and the English side ones are super technical and English specific)

Lol, I am just looking for linguistics books in general, a lot of books on a specific language's linguistics utilizes terminology I may not be familiar with (though, a lot of it, from the studying the language for so long, I seem to understand).

Japanese textbooks meant to teach foreigners Japanese in Japanese usually do a better job of saying what a verb or what a phrase does and when you should use the phrase. Of course, to most students, these books would be difficult to understand because of the 'total immersion' the books provide. But, if you are unsure of when to use a phrase when the English Japanese books only explain how it relates to English and how to use it, they can be of great help.

On that note, I am also looking for good books/websites to learn Chinese Mandarin grammar, explained from a semi-English grammar view. The books I have to explain Mandarin are in Japanese, so I am translating the Mandarin sentences into Japanese (as the answers are in Japanese) and translating that into English. It also doesn't make syntactical sense because Mandarin resembles English more than Japanese.  

[Mikagi-sama]

IdiotbyDefault

I am nearing the end of my Japanese major at my college, and I am exploring my options of what I should continue to study if I go into grad school for Japanese. One option is Japanese Linguistics. I have looked into several books on the subject, however, I have never had formal studies on linguistics, so I was wondering if any of you have any books that explain terminology and aspects common in linguistics well or websites that do the same?

Get basic linguistics books. If you're in or near a university or college with a linguistics department, check out the bookstore for texts.

In my first year of linguistics, we used "contemporary linguistic analysis". But there's a lot it doesn't mention, so I suggest you to get a linguistics degree because it will only help you!  

[IdiotbyDefault]

I found this book at my university library and it is basically the book I need to understand the fundamentals of linguistics without being overly too technical or philosophical. I recommend it for beginners in linguistics or want things explained more. It is (supposedly) a good book for people that want to teach ESL as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Language-Structure-Interaction-Variation/dp/0472086863/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285100337&sr=1-1