Proposal: A separate antedatings list

[Alice Faber]

(Resent do to brain cramp that sent this to Ron only)

ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
> I don't understand how an eminent lexicographer can with a straight
face write, "culinary postings seem to me to be not even remotely
lexicographical"--culinary terms are still WORDS (does Oxford not
publish a fine dictionary of food & drink?)! Regional lexis is still
lexis, and the Dictionary of American Regional English is still, "uh," a
dictionary. Moreover, many of the food terms that have been placed in
the archives over the years by our most peripatetic menu reader are not
strictly regional, or even "American."
>
> That said, I'm totally willing to try to deal with this on my own.
> The
technical problem is more with how to deal with this on Blackberry,
where I have to open the items before deleting them. Deleting them on
aol doesn't delete them from Blackberry. I can go to another server for
ADSL, but then they won't appear on Blackberry at all.
>
> Again, my frustration is not just with antedatings or food terms or
eggcorns (which together make up maybe 60% of the postings) but with all
the inane off topic cross-talk.
>
> I started this thread because it troubled me to be losing the likes
> of
Roger Shuy & Michael Montgomery, two of the most important
dialectologists in America. I'm satisfied that this loss is not
important to the members of the list--that most people seem to like it
the way it is--a list serve devoted largely to antedatings, updating the
lexicographical record by listing every variant on every food and drink
term current in the world, posting every might-be-a-eggcorn (even though
Zwicky maintains a separate online list) and every thought that comes
into the heads of two or three of our more gabby contributors. I'm cool
with that, if that is what those who are in the majority want
(especially if this is the best way to get the important data into an
archive), but it seems pretty marginal (to me) to the central interests
of American dialectology--and, on a daily basis, even 10-15 messages of
that sort is tedious and annoying.
>

I share your frustration that some folks are leaving the list (and I
could [but won't] list other things that frustrate me about list
dynamics), but we have to bear in mind that all of us have other things
going on in their lives, professional and personal, that cause them to
cut back. People on an academic calendar aren't participating as much
during registration and exam season, for instance, and we don't know
what other stuff other people have going on. People leave mailing lists
all the time, or simply let a backload of several hundred messages go
unread.

It seems to me that those of us who are bored (or worse) by antedatings
and the like have several options. One, of course, is to fade into the
background. Another is to complain about such posts, in a boring
meta-thread like this. A third is to go out of our way to start threads
on topics we think should be more heavily represented on the ADS-L.

I'll be back later this afternoon with some examples of weird
sports-broadcasterese or athlete-speak, and, perhaps this evening with
some questions about differences between Canadian and US lexicon.

--
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Alice Faber                                       faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                            tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                               fax (203) 865-8963

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org