LINGUIST List 5.1129

Sun 16 Oct 1994

Disc: "linguistician"

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1. Mike McHale, linguistician
2. Karl Teeter, English terms in -ician
3. Sheila Embleton, Re: "linguistician"

As far as "linguistician" identifying us with beautician, morticians, and
the like, there are things much worse - such as politician :-)

Actually my dictionary had 40 such nouns including academician, acoustician,
dialectician, logician, mathematician, musician, obstetrician, pediatrician,
phonetician, physician, rhetorician, statistician, theoretician, and
zendician. I, myself, don't find linguistician a comfortable mouthful, but
then again I consider myself a computational linguist.


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 Michael L. Mc Hale |
 Rome Laboratory |
 525 Brooks Road, Suite 10 |Email: mchaleai.rl.af.mil
 Griffiss AFB, NY 13441-4505 |
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Areas of Interest: NLP, GB, MRDs, EIEIO
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Thanks to Robert J. Pensalfini for setting me straight on these. I am
too lazy to look up references these days, and was quoting from my
65-year old memory of a discussion on the matter about thirty years ago in,
I think, Studies in Linguistics, where Robert A. Hall proposed the term
"linguistician" and Einar Haugen didn't like it. I don't either, and
surely usage makes "linguist" in our use correct by now! Yours,
Karl (=Karl V. Teeter, Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus, Harvard
University)

The Concise OED cites "linguistician", meaning "one who is versed in
linguistics", from 1897, in The Classical Review, giving the quote
"The earliest linguisticians regarded vl in the words for twenty as a
by-form of dvl". This pre-dates Robert Hall's birth. The term
"linguistician" is more common in British usage than North American,
even if it is definitely archaic now (although I know some people who
regularly use it). Thus, Robert Hall could not have invented the
term, although perhaps he was an advocate of it (cf. Karl Teeter's
statement that "it was first proposed in print years ago by Robert A.
Hall". Somehow this all implies to me that there was an earlier debate
amongst linguists (/linguisticians...) as to what term to use, and I
would be interested in hearing about that earlier debate. Perhaps, as
a beginning, Karl Teeter could provide us with more information about
when/where Hall first proposed this in print?

Sheila Embleton (embletonvm1.yorku.ca; embletonvm2.yorku.ca)