Pei; was Re: "Turn on"

[Jonathan Lighter]

"The Story of Language" was beautifully arranged, lucidly presented, full of fascinating observations and very hard to put down.  In retrospect I can see that it influenced me tremendously.

Is there a long story behind Pei's lack of official recognition? I've never heard it. I always assumed Pei "got no respect" because of his extremely outspoken prescriptivism and his obvious enjoyment of linguistic oddities at the seeming expense of method.

It looks as though he got his information on American slang primarily from news features.  (The second edition of "The Story of Language" has especially extensive lists.) Much of the vocabulary he presents as widely known seems to have been utterly ephemeral.

Not having looked at the book in thirty-five years, I don' tpretend to give a definitive judgment. Somebody may want to look at it again in detail and get back to us.

JL





Barbara Need <nee1 at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Barbara Need
Subject: Pei; was Re: "Turn on"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>Wilson Gray writes (responding to Jonathan Lightner's
>post):
>>>>>>
>> Pei's comments on American slang are often unreliable.
>
>Alas! Poor Mario! He just don't get no respect. Everybody puts him
>down. (Long story not worth the telling.)
> <<<<<
>
>I remember his _The Story of Language_ as part of what turned me on to
>linguistics.

Me too! there was stuff that did not make sense until graduate school
(the difference between phonetics and phonology, for instance), but I
found the whole thing fascinating. Also his history of English book,
and one on the development of the Romance languages, with a language
river rather than a tree.

Barbara Need
UChicago--Linguistics


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