LINGUIST List 4.491

Sat 19 Jun 1993

Misc: non-linguist subscribers, Genie

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1. Helen Dry, Non-linguist subscribers
2. Vicki Fromkin, Re: 4.476 FYI: Genie, Thanks

Dave Pesetsky's interesting message on the (non-)democracy of the nets
made reference to "the umpteen-thousand non-linguist readers of LINGUIST."
So I just wanted to mention that these probably are not all that numerous.
LINGUIST isn't on Usenet, so you have to subscribe directly to get the
issues. And what non-linguist would set him/herself up for 1000+
issues a year on topics like "pro-drop" and "The LINGUIST Development
Fund!" :-)

So, whatever we decide to discuss, at least we don't need to feel
inhibited by the thought of a large non-linguist audience. I've just
been scanning the subscriber list (inadvertently--I hit the wrong key);
but my unwilling perusal of 4000 lines did give me the impression that
fewer than 50 of the addresses are clearly not educational institutions.
Here's the analysis of LINGUIST subscribers by country, for those of
you who are interested:

*
* Country Subscribers
* ------- -----------
* Australia 71
* Austria 3
* Belgium 18
* Brazil 15
* Canada 201
* Columbia 1
* Czechoslovakia 4
* Denmark 20
* Ecuador 1
* Egypt 4
* Estonia 2
* Finland 57
* France 43
* Germany 148
* Great Britain 189
* Greece 7
* Hongkong 26
* Hungary 7
* Iceland 3
* India 2
* Ireland 15
* Israel 23
* Italy 20
* Japan 79
* Korea 11
* Malaysia 2
* Mexico 8
* Netherlands 210
* New Zealand 10
* Norway 49
* Poland 7
* Portugal 1
* Saudi-Arabia 1
* Singapore 12
* South Africa 10
* Spain 53
* Sweden 32
* Switzerland 17
* Taiwan 41
* Thailand 6
* Tunisia 1
* Turkey 6
* USA 2111
* USSR 4
* Yugoslavia 1
* Zimbabwe 1
* ??? 17
*
* Total number of users subscribed to the list: 3575
* Total number of countries represented: 47
*
-Helen Dry

Message 2: Re: 4.476 FYI: Genie, Thanks

As our message sent to Linguist earlier said, Susie Curtiss and I,
Vicki Fromkin, also sent a letter to the NY Times re the review of
the Russ Rymer book on Genie in which we tried to show that our findin
lingustic findings support rather than negate Chomsky's view. Ihe
included the letter we sent. So far they haven;t printed it. But we
are pleased David Rigler's letter was printed since he does correct some
of the misinformation.

Incidentally, the book is an improvement over the NYer articles in many
ways. Susie Curtiss's research is treated in a much more serious fashion
and she herself emerges as a warm, compassionate, intelligent, scholar
who made an important scientific contribution (all of which is true).
There is still lots wrong with the book but at least some things were
improved.
Vicki Fromkin