The Murders of Boise Singh: Robber, Arsonist, Pirate, Mass-Murderer, Vice and Gambling King of Trinidad London: A. Barker, 1962LC classification HV6248.S564 B5
Dynamics of a Creole System Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, April 1975ISBN 052120514X
King of the Sea (fiction) New York: Random House, 1979ISBN 0394505166
Roots of Language Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers, 1981ISBN 0897200446
Language & Species Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990ISBN 0226046109
Language and Human Behavior (The Jessie and John Danz lecture series) Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995ISBN 0295974575
Lingua ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain (with William Calvin) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, February 2000ISBN 0262032732
Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues To our Common Humanity in the World's Lowliest Languages New York: Hill and Wang, 2008ISBN 9780809028177
Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans March 2009ISBN 9780809022816
Biological Foundations and Origin of Syntax (Editor, with Eörs Szathmáry) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009ISBN 9780262013567
The Desert and the City (fiction) Eloquent Books, August 2009ISBN 9781608606023
The Emergence of Protolanguage: Holophrasis vs Compositionality (Editor, with Michael A. Arbib) Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publ. Co., 2010ISBN 9789027222541