Tuesday, September 2, 2008

ambition: write 5 books before 2021

One reason I am going for a PhD is I want to learn to write books. My inspiration is my mother, who once she got her kids out of the house has been publishing 10 books a decade. So now I am targeting to produce 5 books a decade, and to do the first 5 before I turn 60.

I already have ideas for serveral titles: 
  1. one academic publication based on my thesis, 
  2. another a popular book on human language technology (Philippine publisher could be Anvil or Vibal) initially for a Philippine audience (see the posting on Linguistic Exploration). 
  3. another book might target language teachers in the Philippines, it could be a Kim and Sells type description of linguistic analysis tools applied to English, Filipino and Cebuano. It would try to be practical, but also attract them to contribute resources. Another theme would be the language situation in the Philippines, and the need for language development in multiple languages
  4. I would like to write a book in Filipino, probably targeting Filipino teachers (working teachers, and pre-service training) and students. One stylistic effort would be to incorporate some vocabulary that is derived from less common Proto Central Philippine words, and newly loaned Proto-Bisayan words. I would need a co-author or heavily involved editor.
  5. an HPSG description of Cebuano, with emphasis on innovations in lexical semantics. It should cover most of the constructions in Wolff's textbooks.