I'm afraid I was a bit premature in announcing my return to posting, since I find my time being taken up by actually doing some science, and being, for the first time, on the sending rather than the receiving end of a qualifying exam. In the meanwhile, let me enthuse about Far from the Madding Gerund, a selection (and annotation) of the best of Mark Liberman's and Geoffrey Pullum's posts from Language Log. Doing a proper review, or even justice to their weblog, is really beyond what I have time for, but this book seems to capture quite perfectly their mixture of whimsy, skepticism, accessible scholarship, and pure good-natured zeal for their subject. If you have been reading them, then you will find these little essays as good as you remembered, if not better, and you'll wonder how you forgot about some; if you have not been reading Language Log, then their book should convince you to start. Either way, reading it will make you better and happier. (Disclaimer: I got an unsolicited review copy of this book this week, which didn't help my productivity any. Also, when I gave a talk at Penn on April Fool's Day last year, Mark was kind enough to let me crash in the hospitality suite at One Language Log Plaza.)
Posted at May 12, 2006 09:40 | permanent link