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NEW BOOK
How to Cheat at Linguistics
by Geoffrey Sagum
Psammeticus Textbooks in Linguistics
Published 2005. Softcover, 113 pages. Price: $17.95 ($0.00 if you steal it!)
From the practical to the arcane, How to Cheat at Linguistics offers an admirably comprehensive guide to the field’s standard answers. The book is written at a level which should be accessible to both undergraduates and pre-comprehensive graduate students.
In a general introductory chapter, How to Cheat includes description of standard cheating techniques, including testing strategies from the time-honored crib notes to today’s PDAs and text messages. More interesting to linguists-in-training, however, will be the sections aimed specifically at the heart of the discipline. Beginning with answers to over-used problems, such as Turkish vowel harmony, How to Cheat continues on to give summary answers to the exercises presented in most major textbooks in current use. A further stroke of brilliance is an entire chapter devoted to how to invent data for a research paper, complete with a list of spurious and difficult-to-locate references, sure to throw off any but the most dedicated professorial pursuer.
No matter what school of thought one’s examiners might subscribe to, How to Cheat provides a synopsis of what they will ask, and how the clever student can surely get by, with a minimum of effort. Useful to students at just about any level, the book is sure to become a standard reference in the field.
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