linguistic questions

[hmfaller at umich.edu]

And thank goodness my invocation of snot caused such a flurry of activity.
I actually was thinking about Jakobson in comparison to Chomsky (for all
his good politics) and not being academically self-referential. But, don't
be so sure I haven't told you anything interesting.

Still respectful,

Helen

--On Thursday, April 17, 2003 5:35 PM -0400 Jack Sidnell
<jack.sidnell at utoronto.ca> wrote:

> Further to the wave of comments on "linguistic questions" - I suspect
> that the person who wrote,
>
> "No linguist worth his or her snot can think comparatively without deep
> knowledge of more than one linguistic system."
>
> speaks more than one language and yet has not told us anything
> interesting. Thank goodness she said it "respectfully"!
>
> Jack
>
>
>
>
> At 2:51 PM -0400 4/17/03, hmfaller at umich.edu wrote:
> > I feel compelled to take issue with this statement.
> >
> > No linguist worth his or her snot can think comparatively without
> > deep knowledge of more than one linguistic system. Have you ever
> > tried to teach anything about sociolinguistics to monolinguals? Do
> > monolinguals ever tell us anything of interest about language?
> >
> > Respectfully,
> >
> > Helen Faller
> >
> > --On Thursday, April 17, 2003 1:02 PM -0500 Robert Lawless
> > <robert.lawless at wichita.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> Yes, Richard. Thanks for pointing this out. I was explaining the
> >> difference between a polyglot and a linguist in class a few days ago,
> >> and I said that most of the outstanding American linguists, at least
> >> of a few decades ago, were monolingual. Some smartass student asked,
> >> "Who were they?" Being only a superficial anthropological linguist, I
> >> couldn't answer the question with any authority. Was I, in fact,
> >> correct, and, indeed, who are they? Robert.
> >>
> >> At 10:26 AM 4/17/2003 -0700, you wrote:
> >>>  And in an amusing irony, linguists often don't develop conversational
> >>>  command of a particular language even when they *have* developed a
> >>>  sophisticated linguistic understanding of said language.
>
>
> --
> Jack Sidnell
> Assistant Professor, Anthropology
> University of Toronto
> 100 St. George St.
> Toronto Ontario M5S 3G3
> CANADA
>
> phone: 905-828-3776
> fax: 416-978-3217
>
> email: jack.sidnell at utoronto.ca
> http://briefcase.yahoo.com/sidnell_er
>