LINGUIST List 14.1016

Sat Apr 5 2003

All: Important Message from Prof. Paul Fallon

Editor for this issue: Richard John Harvey <richardlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. linguist, Important Message from Prof. Paul Fallon

Please take a moment to read this important message from Paul Fallon.

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On the train ride home from work, I picked up the newspaper and began
reading about Carl Masthay, who compiled over the course of twelve
years a 757-page dictionary "for translating between French and the
Illinois Indian Kaskaskian dialect, a language no one has spoken for
hundreds of years." This item appears in the current "News of the
Weird" column by Chuck Shepherd, under the unfortunate heading "People
Different From Us."

One of the reasons I enjoy reading the LINGUIST List is that it's for
"People Just Like Us" - people who love language and are committed to
exploring its depths in all aspects. LINGUIST List is the place to go
for information on upcoming conferences, job openings, new book
releases, timely book reviews, tips about language in the media, topic
summaries, bibliographies on special topics, and occasionally,
impassioned yet intellectual discussion of various matters. There's
much more to the list, of course, and the website contains a large,
valuable set of links. Need the email address of a colleague? Want to
read the dissertation abstract of a classmate or student? Do a search
through LINGUIST List archives? Browse through on-line dictionaries?
Ask A Linguist? That and much, much more is all there. For you. For
free. Well, not quite.

There's a lot of work behind the scenes to produce the thousands of
LINGUIST List messages each year. Our list is free of spam, and
postings are free of flaming. Each message is properly formatted. Each
message is categorized, and what types of messages you view may be
customized to your needs. Programmers and the grad students behind
the scenes need to pay the rent for the invaluable services they
perform. Computers and servers need updating, too. And that's where
you can help.

Please make a contribution, even a modest one, as a way of
acknowledging how important LINGUIST List is for you. How much do you
pay for your local newspaper each year? I pay around $150 to spend 30
to 60 minutes every day with the paper. Now ask yourself whether you
read LINGUIST List for even 10 minutes a day. LINGUIST List is
certainly worth some fraction of what you pay for getting the
information you need--from newspapers, cable news, and so on. Now, in
the last days of our fund drive, is the time to take the step between
being an active consumer of the List to an active SUPPORTER of
LINGUIST List.

- Paul Fallon, LINGUIST List Advisory Board Member
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Howard University
Washington, DC

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