silence of the lambs

[H.M.Hubey]

Johanna Laakso wrote:
>
>
> 3. Uralists are not accustomed to list discussions. Things happen and
> develop at a slow pace, people meet their most important discussion
> partners daily at the coffeeroom table - or, in any case, every 5th year
> at the "Congressus Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum" ;-). Or: things can
> be discussed on paper, just by sending a letter (or a copy of your recent
> publication) to some of your friends.

Historical linguistics is dominated by and controlled by
Indo-Europeanists.

That means that everyone else learns early on to live on the periphery
of
IE and accept the crumbs. Nobody who has common sense and expects to
make
a living as a linguist can challenge them.

The fact is that they even control the mailing lists, and the moderators
are all each others' friends. Even if the most obnoxious, pompous and
ignorant things are written they will get them published in journals and
they will easily get them past moderators of lists. The simple fact is
that
there are those who still cannot fathom what is taught to freshman and
sophomore computer science students every day and yet have the temerity
to
get PhDs, give PhDs, write books and have their similarly intellectually
crippled friends shower them with accolades and censor posts by others.

That is the reality in linguistics today, and probably will be for the
near
future. The day when all PhDs in linguistics will be required to take
2 calculus courses, and one probability theory course, the emperor's
nakedness will be revealed but at the rate things are going, the
dinosaurs
have a long way to go before they become extinct.

--
Best Regards,
Mark
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hubeyh at montclair.edu =-=-=-= http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey
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