I also bought this book because it was supposed to be useful for conlangers--which turned out to be true. It is one of my top three book recommendations for new conlangers (the other two are Historical Linguistics by Campbell for insight into historical processes, and The Languages of Native North America by Mithun for real-world examples of the variety of language).

Payne attempts to explain each new linguistic concept, and for the most part he succeeds, but some basic linguistic knowledge will probably be helpful for anyone using this book. There is a lot of information to process.

What works for field linguists also works for conlangers. The most ingenious part of this book is that it contains several questions that ought to be answered in a thorough description of a language.

The questions could have been easier to find, as of now one must scan for them by hand. ( )