 contents/preface/introduction (pdf format) |
MEDIA RESOURCES Edition: Trade Paperback |
read pages 1–20 (pdf format) |
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Word Format Plain Text Hi-Res Cover Art: Tiff File(zipped) Language Log on the Radio: Geoffrey Pullum on "Here and Now Geoffrey Pullum on Talk of the Bay Geoffrey Pullum on Writer’s Voice Geoffrey Pullum on Talk of the Nation |
Language Log in Print Media: “With wit, style, linguists compile words on words” The Philadelphia Inquirer (permalink) “Analyzing eggcorns and snowclones, and challenging Strunk and White” New York Times (permalink) "What do linguists do?" Boston Globe (permalink) “Brown's body of work lies a-smouldering on the Web” Rocky Mountain News (permalink) “Local linguist tilts at the word police” Santa Cruz Sentinel (permalink) “Two potentially bad ideas turn out to be winners,” Chicago Tribune (permalink) “Corpus colossal” in The Economist Nathan Bierma “On Language” Column, Chicago Tribune “Trendsurfing: ‘Snowclone’ journalism” in The Times (of London) Web Site References: SLATE REVIEW BY ROBERT LANE GREENE: “With Madding Gerund and Language Log, descriptivists have finally found articulate, entertaining, and often acerbic champions to reply.” MARK PETERS, CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: “Far From the Madding Gerund[. . .] is a good place to start for teachers who would like to learn more about the field. A little linguistics could be very useful in reminding students (and ourselves) that language does change, mistakes are rarely unique, and today's error-prone student isn't some context-free feral learner scrawling and scratching in the woods.” SHELF AWARENESS REVIEW BY MARILYN DAHL: “Opinionated, clever and intelligent, this assortment of pieces is entertaining and enlightening.” BLOGCRITICS.ORG REVIEW BY WARREN KELLY: “[Liberman and Pullum] make people think and laugh at the same time” REVIEW ON THREE-TOED SLOTH: “[. . .] this book seems to capture quite perfectly their mixture of whimsy, skepticism, accessible scholarship, and pure good-natured zeal for their subject.” CAPSULE REVIEW ON CRITICAL MASS: “Think of it as a bathroom book for wordsmiths and literary gossip hounds.” REVIEW ON LANGUAGEHAT: “[. . .] this is a tremendous pleasure to read” REVIEW ON OOOK BLOG: “Flip it open at random and forget about whatever you were doing before” REVIEW ON PJORGE.COM: “Far from the Madding Gerund conserva todos los elementos que hacen de Language Log una gran bitácora. Está escrito por especialistas que conocen su disciplina y están dispuestos a divulgarla. Y además, lo hacen con grandes cantidades de sentido del humor combinadas con hábiles dosis de autoridad.” HEADSUP: THE BLOG: “By the way -- run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore and demand a copy of "Far from the Madding Gerund," by renowned linguists Mark Liberman and Geoffrey Pullum.” WORLD WIDE WORDS: “[. . .] it does suggest that the old-fashioned ink- on-dead-trees, no-batteries-required, go-anywhere book still has some life in it.” ANNOUNCEMENT ON CROOKED TIMBER ANNOUNCEMENT ON LANGUAGE GEEK THE EGGCORN DATABASE (A SPINOFF SITE) WORLD WIDE WORDS ADDRESSES "EGGCORN" METAFORIX EXPLAINS "EGGCORN" Relevant Wikipedia Pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_log http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Pullum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone Language Log Site: www.languagelog.com About the Book: Mark Liberman and Geoffrey
K. Pullum have collected some of their most insightful and amusing
material from Language Log, the popular web site they
founded. Often irreverent and hilarious, these brief essays take
on many sacred cows, showing us—among many things—why
Strunk & White is useless, how the College Board can’t
identify sentence errors in the SAT, and what makes Dan Brown
one of the worst prose stylists in the business. “What do linguistics professors do for fun? Savage the SAT, defend ‘Bushisms,’ trash Dan Brown, and show why we must split infinitives—all in witty little essays meant not for specialists, but for everyone interested in how English works. Like Language Log, the site that inspired it, FAR FROM THE MADDING GERUND is exuberant, tart, and totally addictive.” —Jan
Freeman, "The Word" columnist, “This is a lively and insightful collection of observations about language, from real language mavens. Anyone interested in how we talk and write, and what difference it makes to our politics, culture, and science, will enjoy these witty and well-thought-out postings.” —Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor, Harvard University, author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and Words and Rules “Any linguist is familiar with one of those glum little moments when someone they are talking with says ‘Oops—I know I better be careful with my grammar around a linguist!’ Read this book and find out that not only is grammar policing not what linguists do, but that what we actually do is a lot more fun.” —John
McWhorter, author of The Power of Babel: A Natural History
of Language and Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth “Whether it takes their professional expertise or just a healthy dose of common sense, Liberman & Pullum cleverly dismantle the sturdiest language myths.” —Nathan
Bierma,
The thing is, Mark and Geoff both believe that |
Mark Liberman (Curriculum Vitae) Geoffrey K. Pullum (short) Geoffrey K. Pullum (long) Author Photos (Tiff/zipped): Mark Liberman (1) (2) Geoff Pullum (1) (2) |