Jesuits and linguistics

[Daniel Everett]

Yes, well thanks for the names. Perhaps, though, it would be helpful 
not to assume that others knew immediately the relationship between 
even well-known linguists and Jesuit linguists, e.g. whether or not 
this or that linguist is or was trained by or knew Jesuits. A bit more 
specificity perhaps.

Tangentially related to the matter of Jesuits and linguistics, I am 
sure that some on this list will have read The Sparrow, by Mary Doria 
Russell, about an expedition to contact a population of sentient beings 
on another planet. The leader of the expedition is a Jesuit linguist, 
because the whole world knows (in the novel) that the person to take 
the lead in any such contact between civilizations is a linguist. 
Russell told me that her book helped Jesuit recruitment (she is an 
ex-Catholic, converted to Judaism).

This is not why I asked my initial question, but it is an interesting 
observation. And the linguistic fieldwork on another planet described 
in the book is based on monolingual field research and is quite 
believable.

I think by now I have received plenty of responses to my query. I will 
try to put together a summary of the excellent and useful responses I 
have received and post them to this list.

Thanks very much to all of you who responded.

-- Dan



On Wednesday, Aug 27, 2003, at 19:17 Europe/London, Hartmut Haberland 
wrote:

> Hans Götzsche wrote:
>
>> Wouldn't it be convenient to ask Jacob Mey?
>>
>> Hans Götzsche
>>
> Or Zeno Vendler?
>
> Hartmut Haberland
>
>

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Daniel L. Everett
Professor of Phonetics and Phonology
Postgraduate Admissions Officer and
Postgraduate Tutor
Department of Linguistics
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester, UK M13 9PL
http://ling.man.ac.uk/info/staff/de
Fax: 44-161-275-3187
Office: 44-161-275-3158