PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release Contact: Tom Sumner, Managing Editor Office: 503-682-7668 or 1-800-322-2665 · Email: tsumner@fbeedle.com WILLIAM, JAMES & CO. PUBLISHES FAR FROM THE MADDING GERUND, BOOK VERSION OF POPULAR ONLINE LANGUAGE MAGAZINE April 24, 2006 - WILSONVILLE, OR - William, James & Co. presents Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log, a book based on the popular online magazine Language Log. The 376-page trade paperback book is available through major booksellers and the William, James & Co. web site (www.wjasco.com). The authors examine language-related items in the news, evolving patterns of everyday speech, and language choices of everyone from major political figures and celebrities to people having audible cell phone conversations in shopping malls. Often the authors' musings on language meander through warm stories from their lives, such as learning the value of political pluralism among fiery young GI's in 1969 Vietnam, and being moved at hearing Ray Charles sing America the Beautiful in Santa Cruz County just a month before he died. As the Chicago Tribune explained about Language Log, "What you won't find are rants about the sorry state of proper standard English in America. Linguists tend to be more interested in observing how words are used than in complaining about what they hear." The book champions linguistic descriptivism for readers who needn't know the term. Far from the Madding Gerund contains 139 of the best Liberman & Pullum posts from Language Log (www.languagelog.com), a popular online magazine written in weblog format by professional linguists. Geoffrey Pullum (The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, 2002); The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language, 1990) is Professor of Linguistics and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of California and current Constance E. Smith Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard University; and Mark Liberman is Trustee Professor of Phonetics in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Additional contributors to the site include 14 other linguistics professors, and two posts featured in the book are by Benjamin Zimmer, research associate at the University of Pennsylvania. From the introduction of Far from the Madding Gerund: "As you read this book, you may (we hope) find yourself thinking, "I never knew that!" or "I always thought that was bad grammar!" or "Was that really the origin?" or "Did they really write that?" And while these thoughts are occurring to you, it may be that you will come to see the English language somewhat differently on some points. You will have fun, but your opinions about language will shift. You might even begin to think you'd like to know a bit more about linguistics than you know right now." For further information, contact book editor Tom Sumner at 503-682-7668, 1-800-322-2665 or tsumner@fbeedle.com.