Narratophilia (was Occam's tools amd earlier Halls of ivy)

[emckean at ENTERACT.COM]

Can I offer a bounty for this scholarly (or not-so-scholarly) paper? I'd
love to print something on this for VERBATIM!

Under 2400 words, by May 1 or Sept. 1, by email is fine. (We pay, too.)

Erin McKean
editor at verbatimmag.com

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

> Narratophilia is particularly rife in place-name legends. I did a study in
> just a small area of Southern Indiana years ago and turned up wonders for
> Buena Vista, Birdseye, Gnaw Bone, Laconia (the people there are laconic),
> Palmyra (Palmyra is a Shawnee word meaning "big sink" because there are
> lots of sink-holes in those parts, one of which a cow fell through one day
> in plain sight of amazed bystanders), and on and on.
>
> But the best is Paoli. A Swede ran the toll-road that went through there,
> goes the story...
>
> dInIs
>
> >larry horn: "A more positive spin is that humans love explanations,
> >especially elegant ones...I see it as stemming from the same impulse
> >that leads to mythological and...religious "explanation" of the
> >otherwise inexplicable."
> >
> >not to deny this, exactly, but to put a slightly different (but still
> >positive) spin on it: humans love explanations that are *stories*,
> >with *characters* in them.  (mythological and religious explanations
> >largely fall into this category.)
> >
> >hmmm...maybe there's a place for a scholarly paper here.
> >Narratotropism [or for a somewhat sexier title, The Narratophilic
> >Impulse] in Popular Etymology.
> >
> >arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>
>
> Dennis R. Preston
> Department of Linguistics and Languages
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
> preston at pilot.msu.edu
> Office: (517)353-0740
> Fax: (517)432-2736
>