Befitting names redux

[Laurence Horn]

For an essay on negation I wrote awhile back as an introduction to a
reissue of my _Natural History of Negation_, I had occasion to cite a
New York Times article about Ms. Prophet that dealt with her
contributions to the study of negation; cf.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/24/us/guru-s-bomb-shelter-hits-legal-snag.html.
The relevant passage, constituting what *may* be (but of course may
not be) the only discussion of Ms. Prophet's work in a linguistics
publication, reads as follows:


On April 23, 1990, just over a year after the first release of NHN,
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, a.k.a. Guru Ma, speaking on behalf of God,
prepared her disciples for "twelve years of intense negative karma"
to begin that day, a spell that would culminate with an unwelcome
visit by the four horsemen of the apocalypse, probably in the form of
a nuclear holocaust (Egan 1990).  While the leader of the Church
Universal and Triumphant opted to meet this threat by leading her 750
disciples into an immense underground shelter in Paradise Valley,
Montana that she described as "Noah's Ark in the earth" my own sense
of the upcoming dozen years of intense negative karma was much more
sanguine.  I am pleased to say in retrospect that we have indeed
emerged relatively unscathed from this twelve-year reign, and I trust
that the future of negative karma will be equally positive.

(L. Horn, _A Natural History of Negation_, p. xxxii. Reissued by
CSLI, Stanford, CA, 2001.)

At 4:24 PM -0400 10/18/09, Mark Mandel wrote:
>According to Wikipedia
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Clare_Prophet) she married
>into the surname. The article on her husband
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Prophet) is much briefer and says
>nothing about whether it was his original surname.
>
>>>From the article on her:
>
>Prophet was born Elizabeth Clare Wulf in Red Bank, New Jersey to Hans
>and Fridy Wulf.  ...
>
>On April 22, 1961, her [Christian Science] group invited Mark Prophet,
>who claimed to be a messenger for the Ascended masters, to speak in
>Boston. She attended this meeting at which Mark claimed to give a
>message, from the Archangel Michael; afterwards, she asked Mark to
>train her to be a "messenger". Mark and Elizabeth were married in
>1963, had four children, and together administered The Summit
>Lighthouse, which Mark had founded in 1958. ...
>
>On February 26, 1973, Mark Prophet died of a stroke. Elizabeth assumed
>leadership of their organization, which then began its first foray
>into survivalism, based on instructions she said Mark gave her the
>night before his stroke.
>
>m a m
>
>On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>>  Two recent deaths:
>>
>>  Justice (federal district court, Texas) William Wayne Justice.
>>
>>  Prophet (or at least "church founder") Elizabeth Clare
>>  Prophet. ? (According to the NYTimes, she "called on her followers in
>>  the late 1980s to prepare for nuclear Armageddon" -- perhaps merely a
>>  premature prophet.)
>>
>>  Joel
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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