Linguistic Ecology: Language Change and Linguistic Imperialism in the Pacific Rim (The Politics of Language Series)

In Linguistic Ecology, Peter examines the transformation of the Pacific language region under the impact of colonialization, Westernization and modernization. By focusing on the linguistic and sociohistorical changes of the past 200 years, he brings a new dimension to the study of Pacific linguistics, which up until now has been dominated by questions of historical reconstruction and language typology. Mühlhausler focuses on the cultural and historical forces which drive language change, looking at how language ecologies have functioned in the past to sustain language diversity and discussing what happens when these ecologies are disrupted.

The Balancing Act: Combining Symbolic and Statistical Approaches to Language (Language, Speech, and Communication)

This volume is worth it for the opening paper, Steve Abney's brilliant "Statistical methods and linguistics". Reading this paper in Chris Manning's statistical NLP class at CMU changed the way I think about the field. I believe it should be required reading for *linguists*. In my experience, most computational linguists either don't care about mainstream theoretical linguistics, have evaluated it and dismissed it as useless, or have taken on Abney's arguments; the remainder use logic and formal language theory without statistics. I considered myself in that remainder before reading this paper.

 

The Seminole Wars 1818-58

This volume details the crucial chapter in the history of the Indian Wars. The Seminole of Florida were one of the largest tribes of Native Americans living in peace with settlers. They traded with the Americans, the English and the Spanish, lived in cabins, planted crops and raised cattle. However, by 1815, frontier Americans had grown increasingly envious of their relative wealth and land, and resentful of their harboring of former slaves.

Virtual Vandals

Tom Clancy - Virtual Vandals

A holographic "old-timer's" baseball game turns deadly for Matt Hunter and his fellow Net Force Explorers, when "virtual vandals" in the form of 1930s gangsters suddenly invade the game.

Children's Language: Volume 10: Developing Narrative and Discourse Competence (Children's Language)

These volumes present coherent sets of papers developed along two of the thematic lines that underscored the program of the meeting of the International Association for the Study of Child Language in Istanbul in the summer of 1996. Thoroughly reviewed and updated to reflect the state of child language research and theory--particularly in the domains of discourse and interaction--they convey not only the flavor of that meeting but some of the most exciting trends in the field today.