Russian racehorses, Cooter Brown, fast foxes, theft

[Dennis R. Preston]

Arnold,

Yes, I slipped and left out the solidary "ole" ("Damn ole Arnold"), making
me as stylistically clumsy as any other. Of course, my imputation was
impudent.

All along my use of "real people" (in contrast to linguists) has been
firmly tongue-in-cheek, but I like it for its shock value in guiding people
to undrstanding the deep-seated differences between linguists' views of
language (at the most basic philosophical levels) and those held by
everybody else.

Although I have written about these differences here and there, I might
drop in a little advertising for the most recent full exposition of these
ideas - Nancy Niedzielski and Dennis R. Preston, Folk LInguistics, Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter (1999).

dInIs

PS: Please Arnold, let's make up. Won't you address me as "dInIs, you ole
idiot"?



>dInIs: Damn Arnold stole it from me.  I call them "real people"
>(even in print),
>
>dInis, you idiot, we're talking about "ordinary people", not "real
>people".  if you want "real people", you've got it.
>
>but i don't think i can claim "ordinary people".  novelist judith
>guest, screenwriter alvin sargent, and director robert redford have
>a prior claim, and two of *them* won academy awards under that
>title.
>
>oh, dInIs, did you intend a comma after "Damn"?  i'd still resent the
>imputation of theft, but i'd have held back some on the name-calling.
>(would you have found "you ignorant slut" more decorative than "you
>idiot", or more insulting, or merely more ridiculous?  i considered
>them both.  it's so hard, getting the hang of this style thing.)
>
>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)


Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736