[Ads-l] quote: fire in a wooden box

Tue May 24 19:56:11 UTC 2016

I'm pretty sure it is in the Joos reader. And my memory is that it was not linguistics in general, but rather semantics in particular. He had a number of italicized comments about articles and I think it's one of those.

Unfortunately my copy is in a box in the garage, as we are about to do house renovations.

Joos, Martin (ed), 1966. Readings in Linguistics I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Geoff

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________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2016 3:47 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: quote: fire in a wooden box

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Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
Subject:      quote: fire in a wooden box
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query from David Gold dl.gold at yahoo.com

As a student of linguistics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I remember r=
eading the quip "linguistics [or maybe it was: defining linguistics] is lik=
e making a fire in a wooden box," that is, language is used to describe lan=
guage.

I have a vague recollection that the quipster was Martin Joos or some other=
 American structuralist (Bloomfield? Bolinger?).

Now that I want to cite the quip, I cannot find the exact wording or the au=
thor. Might you know?

....

AMZ: if you respond, please send a copy of your e-mail to David Gold, who's=
 not a subscriber to this list. (i am not a good forwarding service.)

arnold=

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