a small plea

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:33 PM -0500 10/31/03, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 06:37:30PM -0500, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>>
>>Odd that the American Dialact Society should sponsor both of these
>>lists, and odd that linguists/dialectologists should be construed
>>somehow as "half" of what the ADS is about.
>
>Odd too that lexicographers, who have long been an integral
>part of the ADS and who run DARE, certainly the single most
>widely known product of the ADS, are being treated with such
>disdain for the mere fact of actively discussing the history
>of American English on this list.
>
>This is not a very high volume list, and anyone who wants to
>discuss dialectology is more than welcome to do so. I don't
>see any reason why this can't be the case; I'd like to see
>more discussion of other issues of concern to ADS-ers. But
>just because there are other AmE issues going on doesn't
>prevent dialectological ones from being raised. Splitting the
>list would, I think, be disastrous; it's good that we have
>enough traffic as we do, and I wouldn't want to become a
>low-volume list dedicated to the circulation of conference
>announcements.
>

As a card carrying linguist, I cast one vote for keeping the list
united for the reasons Jesse gives.  I can recall a number of my own
postings (and others' postings I've saved over the years) that I'd be
hard-pressed to consign to one of the two categories as opposed to
the other, and it's perhaps the intersection (and not just the union)
of the two classes of message that I find especially interesting.
Into which half, for example, would the WOTY discussions and votes
go?  Let's not split the baby.

larry