Alan's Linguistics Page

I created a homophone sentence as a challenge back in May of 1997: Hughes, youse use U's ewes' hues! Click for how to parse it. Click here to see it in Wikipedia.

Rantings and Other Thoughts:

• The Wrong-Headedness of Linguistic Self-Righteousness: In late 1999, I was asked to write an article for the Vocabula Review, a zine that promotes better language. I generally abhor anything that smacks of prescriptivism and Linguistic Ludditism but was convinced by the very intelligent, open-minded, and gracious editor there, Robert Hartwell Fiske. The article appeared in the December, 1999 issue and is now in the archives at: http://www.vocabula.com/TVRrevisited/VRPagliere.htm.
• An e-mail message I sent to the Derek McGinty show (on NPR) on August 11, 1997. I listen very often and love the show. I think Mr. McGinty 99.9% of the time covers important topics and covers them extremely well. However, on August 10, 1997, he was temporarily gone from the show and there was a guest host. For some reason, perhaps because there was a guest host, they decided to do another rendition of the always annoying, never useful and ultimately moot topic of ... Here's a new book about the "right" way to write and speak / the current state of English is a disaster / why do people say things like "hopefully" when they mean "it is hoped that" and "lie" when they 'really mean' "lay" and so on. Ugh. Here is my reply (e-mail rant) to that program.
• The issue of Ebonics. There is no reason to get hysterical. There is no reason to condescend. If the average person knew as much about how language really works as they do about chemistry (and I know they don't know much - but at least they know that basic units like molecules and atoms exist; they don't know about morphemes, phonemes, the very fact that very few things are universal among languages and cultures, that much of language is arbitrary), then all these discussions would just go away, poof. Trying to make language be the way you want it to be (yes, I mean you, Mr. Safire along with all the other members of the Self-Appointed, Self-Righteous Linguistic Police (SASRLP)) is like trying to say that people should stop wearing hats, or mini-skirts, or baggy pants, or that the weather should just behave the way you want it to, not the way it does. People will wear the clothes they wear when it suits their needs, because of practicality or fashion; they won't when it doesn't. The weather behaves the way it does because it follows certain complex, interrelated principles. Language is like this too: a mix of complex natural laws and fashion. Get over it. Check the LSA resolution on Ebonics.
• An e-mail response, 9/23/97, to a posting on the LINGUIST List about Chinese, English and linguistic "universals."
• An e-mail response, 10/8/97, to a posting on the LINGUIST List about verbs that "mean" HAVE cross-linguistically.
• An e-mail response, 1/5/98, to a posting on the LINGUIST List about prescriptive grammar and the ignorant views that keep it alive. Similar to the first item on this list, above.
  

Other links:

• From the Linguistics Society of America, a web page with a general introduction to linguistics, its concepts, its raisons d'etre. Good. Fields of Linguistics?
• Also from the LSA, a resolution it passed about Ebonics. It says pretty much what I have been saying all along, but with none of my usual ranting tone.