Words in English = 1 million

[LanDi Liu]

Speaking of Language Log, Mark Liberman just wrote a fantastic post that's
very related to all of this:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005514.html

Randy

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 9:58 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
wrote:

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> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Words in English = 1 million
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mar 31, 2008, at 6:11 AM, Grant Barrett wrote:
>
> > Payack is a hack with an appetite for inventing numbers and a knack
> > for getting gullible press and public to swallow his rubbish as if it
> > were dessert. He has zero credibility. His methods are imaginary, his
> > results are only specious, and his conclusions baseless. He is no more
> > in touch with what is truly happening in the English language than I
> > am in touch with bug-eyed monsters from a planet circling Aldebaran.
> >
> > If anyone ever needed more evidence that the employment rolls of the
> > popular press are riddled with dim sorts educated beyond their
> > intelligence and empowered beyond their abilities, then that, perhaps,
> > is the only useful thing that Payack has demonstrated by suckering
> > them into reporting on his ridiculous claims.
>
> from Geoff Nunberg:
>
> HACKERY, QUACKERY, SCHLOCK
> With an apparent million entries in his (or his PR person's) Rolodex,
> Paul J. J. Payack has once again managed to get media attention for
> his loopy claim to have determined the exact size of the English
> vocabulary, this in an article by Christine Lagorio at CBSnews.com.
>
> The article does contain criticisms from language experts and
> lexicographers like Jesse Sheidlower, whose more extensive debunking
> of Payack's claims appeared a few days ago in Slate. (See also Ben
> Zimmer's post of a couple of months ago). But the piece is written in
> the "evenhanded" he-said-she-said style that journalists fall back on
> when they're either too lazy or too timorous to check their facts
> (Sheidlower is described as belonging to the "skeptics camp," for
> example, as if there were any other). The effect is to leave the
> reader with the impression that Payack is a participant in a
> legitimate scientific controversy, rather than simply an opportunistic
> charlatan. (As I put the point in a "Fresh Air" piece which I'll post
> after it runs in a week or so, "trying to count the words of the
> English language is as idiotic an exercise as trying to determine
> exactly how many socks Americans lost in 2005.") When the media cover
> stories about global warming or Intelligent Design that way, it's
> accounted a sign of the brainless irresponsibility of modern
> journalism; when the subject is language, nobody seems to care. Cue
> the Bee Gees' "It's Only Words."
>
> [AMZ note: this is from April 12, 2006 (on Language Log).  note the
> "once again" in the first sentence.]
>
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--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China

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