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Re: OT: Good Books?

From:J Y S Czhang <czhang23@...>
Date:Saturday, March 6, 2004, 11:19
In a message dated 2004:03:05 06:32:10 PM, a.rosta@V21.ME.UK writes:

>Jim Hoffman: > >> > And, I think I've heard *Language Universals and >> > Linguistic Typology* recommended before, too. >> > But, something that's more, er, populist, is >> > probably better for a conlang noob like me. > >David Crystal's _Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language_? This >book is good at giving an overview of the subject, and is >full of well chosen snippets of information.
and "edutainment" {fun stuff with educational value} as well.
> Imagine if John Cowan were commissioned to write an encyclopedia of >language, and you'll have a sense of what it is like.
LOL... took the words right outta me mouth... great description. In a message dated 2004:03:05 07:11:02 PM, jcowan writes:
>Wow.
Classic humble John Cowan understatement.
>If you read this book, you would no longer feel intimidated...
Yepyep, I second that. And I speak from direct experience, not just hearsay on this one. --- *DiDJiBuNgA!!* Hang Binary,baby...--- Hanuman "Stitch" Zhang, ManglaLanger (mangle + manga + lang) <A HREF="http://www.boheme-magazine.net">=> boheme-magazine.net</A> Language[s] change[s]: vowels shift, phonologies crash-&-burn, grammars leak, morpho-syntactics implode, lexico-semantics mutate, lexicons explode, orthographies reform, typographies blip-&-beep, slang flashes, stylistics warp... linguistic (R)evolutions mark each-&-every quantum leap... ...languages are "naturally evolved wild systems... So language does not impose order on a chaotic universe, but reflects its own wildness back." - Gary Snyder "Some Languages Are Crushed to Powder but Rise Again as New Ones" - a chapter on pidgins & creoles, John McWhorter, _The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language_ = ¡ gw'araa legooset caacaa ! ¡ reez'arvaa. saalvaa. reecue. scoopaa-goomee en reezijcloo ! = [Fight Linguistic Waste! Save, Salvage, Recover, Scavenge and Recycle!]