LINGUIST List 4.825

Tue 12 Oct 1993

Disc: Last Word On Legends

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Barbara Need, Re: 4.777 Natural Phonology, Linguistic Science
2. Randy Allen Harris, Haj = Quang, not
3. , Haj
4. John Goldsmith, Re: Haj Ross, Jim McCawley and Quang Phuc Dong

Message 1: Re: 4.777 Natural Phonology, Linguistic Science

With respect to the the discussion of Haj Ross' nickname,
Mark Mandel comments about Quang Phoc Dong's reference
to this as his "Black Muslim" name--and then identifies
Quang as a psuedonym of Ross'. Just to set the record
straight, as is noted in _The Lingustic Wars_, this is
NOT a Ross pseudonym, but a McCawley pseudonym.

Barbara Need
(a proud student of the master)
University of Chicago--Linguistics
(we have the best parties!)

A recent posting on the etymology of "Haj" included the following:

>... in a paper under the name of Quang Phuc Dong
>of the South Hanoi Institute of Technology: one of Ross's
>pseudonyms for his essays in scato- and pornolinguistics. ...
(LINGUIST 4.777)

"Quang Phuc Dong" is a nom de guerre (linguistique) not of Ross
but of James D. McCawley, who "created the interdisciplinary field
of pornolinguistics and scatolinguistics virtually on his own" (Zwicky, viii).

Ross, under the name "E. Clifton Gamahuche", took the first and only steps
towards developing metapornolinguistics, with his "Conjunctive Ordering"
(where, among other observations, he notes that in the absence of Copula
agreement, the only option is Reflexivization).

Quang's, Gamahuche's, and similarly minded people's research can be found
in the recently reissued _Studies out in left field: Defamatory essays
presented to James D. McCawley on his 33rd or 34th birthday_, introduced
by Arnold Zwicky (whence the above quotation), and edited by him et al.
The reissue is by John Benjamins (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 1992),
for about $15 U.S., and, like the original (1971), is not for the squeamish.

Randy Allen Harris rahawatarts.uwaterloo.ca
Rhetoric and Professional Writing 519 885-1211, x5362
English, U of Waterloo FAX: 519 884-8995
Waterloo ON, CANADA, N2L 3G1

Fascinating how much discussion the question of Haj's name has
generated, without a definitive answer to date. As I recall, he used
to say that the nickname was given him as a little kid, after his
favorite character in his favorite children's book about the Arabian
Nights.
Now back to whether linguistics is a "science" or not....

 --Steve Anderson

Please bear in mind, colleagues, that Quang Phuc Dong
was the nom de plume of Jim McCawley -- not Haj! The
festschrift to Quang was reissued last year by John
Benjamins. Rush out and buy it.
John Goldsmith