[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

[David Gil]

Just a historical anecdote.

back in the late '70, R.B. Lees was instrumental in setting up a 
generatively-oriented linguistics department at Tel Aviv University.  
Although he spoke fluent Hebrew, he insisted that he and his colleagues 
teach only in English (contrary to all other subjects at the same 
university that were being taught in Hebrew).  When I (then a beginning 
TA) took him to task on this, his response was that modern linguistics 
could not be taught in Hebrew because there were no equivalents for 
crucial methodological turns of phrase such as "account for".  To which 
my response was Well then coin a new expression, and if that doesn't 
work then maybe there is something incoherent in an expression that 
resists translation into another language.  I lost the argument of course.

David

-- 
David Gil
  
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
  
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-556825895
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091