Mission of the American Dialect Society

[Scott Sadowsky]

On 10/31/2003 08:50 PM, AAllan at AOL.COM wrote the following:

>It is not surprising, therefore, that our discussion list, as well as our
>publications, includes matters lexicographical as well as phonological and
>morphological and syntactical; and the history as well as the present
>status of American English.

I'd love to see a good lexicographical or lexicological discussion
here.  Any discussion related to English would be simply phenomenal.  For
that matter, something as mundane as a lexicographer's musings on the tough
spots faced in his day's work would be pretty darned interesting.

But this unending stream of antedatings is every bit as fascinating as
people writing in to announce that they have noted a particular allophone
being used at the 1:12:49 mark on a tape recording.

This is akin to a watchmakers' list where most of the traffic is dedicated
to letting the world know that someone spotted a mint condition 1912 Rolex
at Biff's Guns and Jewels, 123 Pain St., Kansas City, MO 12345.  Gads...!

There's no way of knowing, but I gotta wonder how many people have been
driven off by this.

I also note that although the original complaint was about the antedating
permaflood, some list members have been portraying the issue as one of
linguistics vs. lexicography, which isn't the case at all.  The real issue,
in my opinion, is one of discussion vs. the continual spewing forth of raw
data.

Discussion is interesting.

Cheers,
Scott