Myhill's message

[Joan Bresnan]

Gilles, I think you are wrongly accepting the truth of David's
premise, that John Myhill's msg showed "optimistic anticipation of our
colleague's death".  This is ridiculous.  I certainly didn't interpret
Myhill's comment about the strength of Chomsky's ideas in this way,
and I doubt that Fritz Newmeyer, Martin Maspelmath, Geoff Nathan, Tony
Wright, Brian MacWhinney, or any of the other follow-up posters did,
either.  This is what I meant by "flame bait".  It's not only
ridiculous but deeply insulting to draw this inference from the
substantive discussion about functionalism, OT, etc., that we were
engaging in.

I thought that Myhill was wrong to publicly disparage by name both a
colleague of mine and by implication Stanford's entire linguistics
department, and I directed my reply toward those points, trying to be
good humored and constructive about it.

It appears, though, that our friends at MIT are quite willing to
believe that we all harbor death wishes for their colleague.  That's a
shame, and I find it hard to believe that it could be said in
sincerity.  If it was, then it shows what a long way we have to go to
build some of the intellectual bridges I was talking about.

Joan




>
> Flame-bait or not, it's nothing for any of us to
> be proud of.
>
> Same goes for the post right after that from a
> long-time Chomsky admirer, boasting that he had
> given an entire talk without mentioning the
> Master's name.
>
> Gilles Fauconnier
> Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences
> 75 Alta Road
> Stanford  CA  94305
> USA
>
> tel.  650 - 321 2052
>