Linguistics & film
Lincom Studies in Chinese Linguistics 8, Munich: Lincom Europa, 2010
"The vignettes are compact and composed with welcome attention to readability, often a gross obstacle in historical linguistics ...
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This is altogether fun reading for any student of graphic structure and pre-medieval phonology, and we need more books like it. I would also like to recommend Button’s proto-Chin study, which displays the same distinctive style of prose and organization, although the going is harder.
[Chris Button] is now an executive in a gigantic multinational corporation—one which, bafflingly, has no interests in Chinese paleography or proto-Sino-Tibetan, or even regional Burmese languages. Our fields can ill afford such losses, and in Button’s case one hopes that if he cannot teach, then at least he will eventually find time to continue his research."
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— excerpt from a review in the Journal of the American Oriental Society vol. 134, no. 4, 2014
STEDT monograph 10, Berkeley: University of California, 2011
"This impressive book originated as a doctoral dissertation ...
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Throughout this book, Button demonstrates a deep familiarity with the scholarly literature on the various branches of STB [Sino-Tibeto-Burman]. In his discussions of particular etymologies, he painstakingly assembles the opinions of various scholars, comparing and evaluating them in order to come up with his own judgments as to their relative plausibility. As we all know, there is much guesswork involved in historical reconstruction, even when some of the languages involved have long literary traditions. In particular, there are now several competing systems of reconstructions for Old Chinese, and individual scholars frequently change their minds on certain points. Button negotiates his way through this minefield with aplomb ...
We are proud to make Christopher Button’s highly original work available in the STEDT Monograph Series."
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— excerpt from the STEDT series editor's introduction
Cinema Retro, vol. 13, issue 37, 2017
"Did Sergio Leone 'ghost direct' the cult Italian Western My Name is Nobody? Chris Button examines the case for and against this theory."
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— publisher's description