Geoffrey Nunberg

Geoffrey Nunberg moderating a panel at the UC Berkeley School of Information on 26 April 2006.

Geoffrey Nunberg (born June, 1945) is an American linguist and a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Nunberg has taught at Stanford University and served as a principal scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center from the mid-1980's to 2000. As a linguist, he is best known for his work on lexical semantics, in particular on the phenomena of polysemy, deferred reference and indexicality. He has also written extensively about the cultural and social implications of new technologies. Nunberg is a frequent contributor to the collective blog Language log.

Nunberg has been commenting on language, usage, and society for National Public Radio's Fresh Air program since 1988. His commentaries on language also appear frequently in The New York Times and other publications. He is the emeritus chair of the American Heritage Dictionary usage panel. His books for general audiences include The Way We Talk Now: Commentaries on Language and Culture from NPR's Fresh Air, Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Controversial Times, Talking Right, and most recently The Years of Talking Dangerously (2009).

External links

• Nunberg's website
• The Persistence of English -- an essay by Nunberg regarding the diversity and unity of the English language through its history (PDF)
• Recent radio commentary on NPR
• Wikipedia: Blessing or Curse?, Fresh Air commentary, June 5, 2007 (audio)
• A Wiki's as Good as a Nod, Fresh Air commentary, June 5, 2007 (transcript)
• The Nunberg Error
• Radio interview on Philosophy Talk
• IMDB Entry
• Google Books: The Metadata Mess, a slide presentation from the Google Book Settlement Conf at UC Berkeley on 28 August 2009
• Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars, article in The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Counting on Google Books, article in The Chronicle of Higher Education