A question for Fritz

[Frederick J Newmeyer]

John,

That's a fair enough question. I was asked to provide commentary on a target article whose basic premise is that the field of linguistics enjoys 'tremendous prestige' among those in the humanities, social sciences, and cognitive sciences. My immediate reaction was that such has not been true since the 1960s. Since everything in the target article follows from the premise, I thought that I might wrap my commentary around whether linguistics really does enjoy 'tremendous prestige'. Hence my question to the List. And then I decided to expand my commentary to a separate survey article.

--fritz

ps: The authors of the target article tacitly equate linguistics with generative grammar, though I am not aware of other approaches to linguistics enjoying tremendous prestige among those in the humanities, social sciences, and cognitive sciences.


Frederick J. Newmeyer
Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University
[for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]

On Sat, 23 Oct 2010, john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:

> Particularly in view of the response which Fritz' posting has generated, I'd
> like to ask him: Why are you looking particular for quotes from people in
> theoretical rather than applied fields? What sort of a survey article is this?
> Was this distinction made by the person who asked you to write the article or
> is it your own idea?
> Best wishes,
> John
>
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