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The commenters over at Liberman's post Apico-labials in English all clearly prefer the spelling syncing , but I find it just weird look... -
Matt Damon's latest hit movie Elysium has a few linguistic oddities worth pointing out. The film takes place in a dystopian future set i...
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(image from Slate.com ) I tend to avoid Slate.com these days because, frankly, I typically find myself scoffing at some idiot article they...
2 comments:
I haven't read you before now but got a Google Alert this morning that directed me to your most current post. We do agree, it seems. I have long gone against conventional wisdom in linguistics. I was trained right along side Partee and Zwicky and worked with Zwicky for years at Illinois and Ohio State and know some of the rest pretty well. I wouldn't say that in general they represent conventional wisdom -- some might more than others. I see them as a breath of fresh air normally.
However, language death is one of those issues where one senses that one is dealing with a religious issue as much as a linguistic one. I think that most of these folks would agree that it is the death of cultures that is most important with the death of languages being important only to linguists who might learn a great deal from studying them. At least I would hope they thought this.
Thanks for the comment. I agree that the issue of language death typically gets spun into something else, something non-linguistic. I hope to contribute more to this thread.
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