Two queries...

Alexander Gross2 language at sprynet.com
Wed Jun 6 16:22:38 UTC 2007


Am wondering if anyone here can help me with either of the following:

1.  I am quite certain that somewhere, probably in the pages of Varro but perhaps in Quintilian, I have come across something like the following statement:

_People give names to things according to their importance to them.  Thus, since chickens are important to humans, we find a word for the female chicken, hen, and the male, rooster.  But crows are unimportant to us, hence we Romans have only one word, cornix, covering both the male and the female._

Though I have searched through Varro at least twice, I have somehow misplaced the precise place where this notion is expressed.  Can anyone tell me where it can be found?

2.  I am also certain that I have a file somewhere on my computer, downloaded from the web, providing statistics for the number of linguistics professors and instructors working in our universities every ten years or so over the last 50 to 70 years.  Can anyone tell me where I can find that file again? Or failing that, another source for this information?

I look forward to your replies.

all the best!

alex



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