Jaywalking

[Jim Rader]

Eric Hamp's middle name is "Pratt," not "Peter."  He's a man who
likes precise detail, so I feel bound to stick my nose in and correct
this one.  Eric's parents were British--I believe they emigrated when
he was a small child--and he used to sprinkle his speech with
carefully preserved Briticisms, one of them being his pronunciation
of _schedule_.

JIm Rader

> Dear Ron:
>
> I'm glad to be in company with you and Eric Hamp on this one.
>
> It's lucky my memory of our family's folk etymology for "jaywalk"
> antedates, by some years, the first course I took in linguistics back in
> 1955.  The professor was . . .  Eric Peter Hamp.
>
> By 1955, I no longer had much opportunity to discuss word derivations
> with my parents, and Eric didn't happen to mention "his" etymology of
> jaywalking back then.
>
> I was not aware of your comments, or Eric's, in COMMENTS ON ETYMOLOGY
> (1955) until you cited them in your message.
>
> That's just to point out that you now have evidence for *three*
> independent inventions of the J-curve etymology for jaywalking.
>
> --  mike salovesh             <salovesh at niu.edu>        PEACE !!!
>
> P.S.:  Early in that Intro to Linguistics course, I was impressed by
> Eric's citation of variations in Latin "centum" (the lines dividing
> kentum, sentum,
> chentum) in support of his pronunciation of Celtic, beginning with /k/.
> I would have taken him as a model for all things etymological if it
> weren't for his way of saying "schedule".  His initial sh directly
> contradicted the initial /k/ he claimed as the only proper way to
> pronounce Celtic.
>
> I decided to stick to my own sprachgefuhl from then on.  When anyone
> objects, I irrelevantly refer to Chomsky's (later !) dictum about the
> native speaker being the only dependable judge of the grammaticality of
> a sentence.
>
> I may get things wrong, but at least I don't feel uncomfortable about
> it.
>
>