science

Geoffrey Nunberg

Geoffrey Nunberg is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Geoffrey Nunberg rather than just read about it. In short: Geoffrey Nunberg (June 1, 1945 – August 11, 2020) was an American lexical semantician, linguist, and author. In 2001, he received the Linguistics, Language, and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistic Society of America for his contributions to National Public Radio's Fresh Air.

Key takeaways

Geoffrey Nunberg belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Geoffrey Nunberg to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Geoffrey Nunberg from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Geoffrey Nunberg (June 1, 1945 – August 11, 2020) was an American lexical semantician, linguist, and author. In 2001, he received the Linguistics, Language, and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistic Society of America for his contributions to National Public Radio's Fresh Air. Nunberg was the author of a number of popular books, among them Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture in Controversial Times (2004). He is primarily known for his broadcast work interpreting linguistic science for lay audiences, though his contributions to linguistic theory are also well regarded.

Life Nunberg was born on June 1, 1945, into a Jewish family in New York City. His mother, Sally (née Sault) Nunberg was a high school teacher, and his father, Jacob Nunberg, was a commercial real estate broker. He grew up in the New York suburbs; as a teenager he was attracted to the growing beatnik scene in nearby Greenwich Village. Nunberg graduated from Quaker Ridge Junior High School in Scarsdale, New York in 1958, and from Scarsdale High School in 1962. He then enrolled at Columbia University, but left to pursue an art degree at the Art Students League of New York. While in art school, he began writing as a side project, but eventually left art school to re-enroll at Columbia, where he ultimately received his bachelor's degree. Nunberg received his doctorate from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1977 for his dissertation, The Pragmatics of Reference. Prior to his PhD, Nunberg received a bachelor's degree from Columbia College and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied under William Labov. Following his education, Nunberg began working as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Berkeley and visiting professor at Stanford University. In the mid-1980s he moved to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center where he worked until 2001. Following Xerox, he returned to research at universities, returning to appointments at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information and at Berkeley's School of Information. Following a long battle with cancer, Nunberg died August 11, 2020.

Interests and writing

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 also wrote extensively about the cultural and social implications of new technologies. Nunberg's criticisms of the metadata of Google Books ignited a widespread controversy among librarians and scholars. Nunberg was a frequent contributor to the collective blog Language Log. Nunberg commented on language, usage, and society for National Public Radio's Fresh Air program since 1988. His commentaries on language also appeared frequently in The New York Times and other publications. He was 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: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show, and The Years of Talking Dangerously (2009). He was one of the contributors to The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. His last book, Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years, was published in August 2012. The critic Malcolm Jones described Nunberg's method in that book as follows: "His means of studying the problem is utterly fresh: take a word, and the attitudes behind it and see where they came from and what they might say about us."

References

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) 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) Alex Soojung-Kim Pang: The Nunberg Error at the Wayback Machine (archived February 5, 2012) (2006) Geoffrey Nunberg at IMDb 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

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Geoffrey Nunberg

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Geoffrey Nunberg claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Geoffrey Nunberg before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Geoffrey Nunberg ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Geoffrey Nunberg

In research: Geoffrey Nunberg appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Geoffrey Nunberg in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Geoffrey Nunberg is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1945 births, 2020 deaths, 20th-century American lexicographers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Geoffrey Nunberg outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Geoffrey Nunberg in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Geoffrey Nunberg means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Geoffrey Nunberg out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Geoffrey Nunberg in simple terms?

Why does Geoffrey Nunberg matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Geoffrey Nunberg?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Geoffrey Nunberg.