LINGUIST List 5.127

Thu 03 Feb 1994

FYI: Cornell Publications, Computing, Linguistics in Media

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , announcement (of listserv posting)
2. "Leslie Z. Morgan", book on Foreign Language Computing
3. Joseph P Stemberger-1, linguistics in the media

A catalog of Cornell University's linguistics publications is now
available on the Listserv. It contains details on all of Cornell's
series: linguistics dissertations, working papers, and ESCOL and SALT
Proceedings. For tables of contents that are not listed in the
catalog, send e-mail to: booksplab.dmll.cornell.edu.

This listing is can be obtained from the Listserv by sending the
message:

get cornell lst linguist

to the address:

listservtamvm1.tamu.edu

--Michael Bernstein
 Editor, DMLL Publications

I thought others might be interested in a book mentioned in
the most recent _PC Magazine_ (Feb. 8, 1994), p. 312.
They suggest the book _Multilingual PC Directory_ by
Ian Tresman. It evidently includes "no less than 29 tables of
character sets" as well as profiles of many programs.
Mention is made of Mongolian Fonts for Multi-Lingual
Scholar to give us an idea of how far-reaching the book is.

The book is available from Knowledge Computing, 9 Ashdown Dr.,
Borehamwood, Herts WD6 4LZ, UK; the price is 35 pounds, which
_PC Magazine_ says is approximately $50 currently. The company
also has a fax # and is on CompuServe.

Hope this is of interest to others; I'm going to try to
have our library get it!

Leslie Morgan

In the most recent issue of the New Republic, there's a long article (ca. 5
pages as I recall) written by Steve Pinker and addressing "the language
mavens" like William Safire. It basically presents the standard linguistic
view of prescriptive grammar, including the fact that many prescriptive
rules were never true at any historical stage of English. Nothing
earth-shaking (to us), but I don't recall anyone presenting our view to
the media recently. It will be interesting to watch the
letters-to-the-editor section over the next few weeks. In my experience
teaching intro classes, many non-linguists do not react favorably to
negative comments about prescriptive grammar.

 ---joe stemberger