anguage inks and eferences

As a part of a linguistic class taught by Prof. Vamarasi at  Northeastern Illinois University  in the spring of 2001, I did a term paper that involved some research in prescriptive and descriptive resources on the web.  Since I find the study of linguistics of particular interest (although I'm not sure I'd want to make a career of it!) here is a list of resources that I've used, that I continue to use, and which anyone might find useful or interesting.

The list is in no particular order.

Dictionaries:

The Merriam Webster dictionary:   http://www.m-w.com/home.htm
Lexico LLC is an internet provider of language tools:   http://www.dictionary.com
The Oxford English Dictionary (look up)  http://dictionary.oed.com/entrance.dtl
    The OED Home Page:   http://www.oed.com
Random House also has a nice site,  http://www.randomhouse.com/words/ , and offers a Word-A-Day email as well.

(Hint: when reading text on-line, open up a NEW browser, and point this at one of dictionaries above.  Continue reading in one browser, but cut-and-paste unfamiliar words to look them up in the other browser.  This is much more convenient and faster than trying to manipulate a single browser window between the text you're interested in and the dictionary.)

Word-A-Day services:
By email, subscribe to at:
    Merriam Webster:   http://www.Merriam-Webster.com/service/subinst.htm
Not available by email, the OED has a word-a-day program at:
                  http://www.oed.com/cgi/display/wotd
The Maven's Word of the Day, from Random House  http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/

A Guide to Writing Research Papers (based on, though not endorsed by) the Modern Language Association  can be seen at  http://webster.commnet.edu/mla.htm. A guide similarly based on the American Psychological Association recommendations is available from  http://webster.commnet.edu/apa/apa_index.htm.

Fun and Games

Lexico's Fun site:   http://www.dictionary.com/fun/
Merriam-Websters Game site:   http://www.m-w.com/game/

Good Reading

William Safire's On Language column appeared weekly in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.  It's interesting reading, and thought provoking as well.  Go to the NY Times web site,   http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/william_safire/index.html   but you may need to subscribe.  It's free, but you'll need a name and password to access the newspaper, as well as the Sunday Magazine, which is available all week. Safire dies in 2009, and a direct link to his archived columns is at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/magazine/columns/on_language/index.html

For the academically inclined

From the University of Michigan, the Virtual Library of Linguistics,  http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/www-vl.html

There's more, of course, that I have discovered and if you have something particularly interesting or worthwhile,  drop me a note

ack to the Home Page of Bob Kastigar

 April 2001