Handbook of WHAT?

Eli Anne Eiesland reports from Oslo:

I was accessing the Handbook of Morphology (edited by you and Andrew Spencer), in its electronic version on NetLibrary, and found a bizarre misprint. The thumbnail image of the book says “handbook of mythology”.

Oh dear. I hope this isn’t an accusation that Andy and I made up the data in the Handbook.

(I hadn’t realized that the volume was available on-line. But, apparently, only through a library that’s affiliated with NetLibrary.)

6 Responses to “Handbook of WHAT?”

  1. Eli Anne Eiesland Says:

    Heh. I blogged it too: http://lingvisme.blogspot.com/2009/04/handbook-of-what-now.html

  2. Jens Fiederer Says:

    Perhaps because you’ve been known to deal with Strunk&White?

  3. Andrew Says:

    I’ve read some syntax papers that seemed like the authors just made up their data. Or collected grammaticality judgments by asking informants while showing them cue cards.

  4. arnoldzwicky Says:

    I’m guessing that Jens Fiederer’s comment — “Perhaps because you’ve been known to deal with Strunk&White?” — is a tentative answer to the unasked question, “Why should morphology have been turned into mythology?”

  5. Kem Luther Says:

    Perhaps it is an egg freckle (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=9506), a silicism generated by OCR + dictionary lookup.

  6. arnoldzwicky Says:

    To Kem Luther: my first idea. But take a look at the actual photo on Eli Anne Eiesland’s blog (linked to above).

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