o1mnikent

I checked Language Log yesterday (thrice) and found a post confirming what Nathan had already told me: the best of Language Log will soon be published in book form. Coming soon to a retailer near you… Far From the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log by Mark Liberman and Geoffrey K. Pullum. If you have a remote interest in linguistics, you’ll want to put this on your summer reading list. If you find yourself regularly saying things like, “[friend/enemy], that’s not grammatically correct” or “George Bush does talk like an idiot” or “Kent was right after all – again!”, then this book is for you. This book will soon join the ranks of Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax in the area of totally awesome/rad books about linguistics. Make sure it’s on your bookshelf or in your hands at all times.

(I’d also like to point out that among the considered [and eventually rejected] titles was Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and Language Log is from a Whole Nother Galaxy.)