LINGUIST List 5.1187

Thu 27 Oct 1994

Disc: "linguist"

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Richard M. Alderson III, Re: 5.1176 "linguistician"
2. , RE: 5.1176 "linguistician"
3. Celso Alvarez Caccamo, Linguist / Philologist
4. Roy Dace, Re: 5.1176 "linguistician"
5. Karl Teeter, linguist and linguistician
6. "Philip L. Graber", Re: 5.1176 "linguistician"

Message 1: Re: 5.1176 "linguistician"

In issue 5.1176, William Marslen-Wilson wrote:
>Since we all accept now that linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology
Oh? While this may be true for of the work I've done in phonology and syntax--
and possibly even for some of the phonetics--I am not sure that I would charac-
terize any of the work I've done in my primary area, Indo-European comparative
studies, as cognitive.
But then, maybe it isn't linguistics... ;->
 Rich Alderson

Message 2: RE: 5.1176 "linguistician"

I can't help wondering what William Safire would do with this
discussion after the way he was trashed on LINGUIST for daring to make
[horrors!] value judge- ments about usage! Thank God there are a few
other linguists/linguisticians/ linguistic scientists/Ivan Ivanovich's
out there with a modicum of self- awareness and a sense of humor.
Frankly, I dont mind being associated with people who actually make an
honest living by translating from one language to another, like the
people in the military, or with people who are blessed with the
ability to speak several languages, instead of just talk about them,
or with whatever else the popular imagination wishes to connect with
the term. After all, in the glorious words of H.L.Mencken (the Safire
of his day), in America the word 'professor' signifies the guy who
leads the band at a burlesque show. I suspect that since then the
term has descended in status.
 --Jules Levin, UCR

Enid Wai-Ching Mok <eniduhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> summarizes (LINGUIST
5-1177) equivalents of "linguist" in languages other than English:
 Spanish: (in Spain) filologo
 (in Latin America) linguista
(information apparently provided by JORGE2vms.cis.pitt.edu and
Tamara S. Al-Kasey <talkasey+andrew.cmu.edu>).
I'm sorry, but this is quite absurd. In Spanish "filologo" means
'philologist', and "linguista" means 'linguist'. University
professors are formally adscribed to various areas of knowledge,
one of which is General Linguistics; other areas are Spanish Philology,
Galician-Portuguese Philology, Catalan Philology, Romance Philology,
etc. There is no area called "Spanish Linguistics", nor there is one
called simply "Philology". Within each Philology area, people may
specialize in either language or literature, but no officially
sanctioned subdivision exists at the university system level
as a whole.
In each university, areas are organized and (when needed)
grouped by affinity in departments, such as Dept. of
Spanish Philology and General Linguistics, or Dept. of General
Linguistics and Literary Theory, or Dept. of Galician-Portuguese
Philology, etc.
Of course, there may be linguists adscribed to one of the Philology
areas of knowledge, and philologists (basically historical
linguists) adscribed to the General Linguistics area of knowledge,
because of a number of professional/academic/personal/circumstantial
reasons or what-have-you.
Students may follow majors in Spanish/etc Philology or (in fewer
universities) in Linguistics.
That's all there is to it.
Celso Alvarez-Caccamo
Depto. de Linguistica Geral e Teoria da Literatura
Universidade da Corunha, Galiza (Spain)
lxalvarzudc.es

Message 4: Re: 5.1176 "linguistician"

If we do eventually settle for "linguistician" does that mean we
will also have to accept "psycholinguistician" and
"sociolinguistician"? :-)

Dear Friends: Don't blame me for the "mortician" quote -- it came from my
late lamented colleague Einar Haugen, and at that, from over fifty years
ago. The whole discussion started with somebody pointing out that
"linguist" was "an impossible term in English" and also ambiguous and
therefore suggesting the adoption of "linguistician" My point, and that of
others in the discussion, was simply that since "linguist" is already
well-established in our sense, impossible or not, it is justified by
usage. And the ambiguity is not all that bad: think of all the
opportunities you have been offered to present an introductory
lecture on linguistics in answer to the question "how many languages do
you speak?". And also, as an occupational hazard, the linguist does often
tend to become a polyglot, willy-nilly...then the ambiguity
actually applies, and you can answer, "Oh, 92", as Eric Hamp was once
reputed to do. Yours, Karl (=Karl V. Teeter, Professor of Linguistics,
Emeritus, Harvard University)

Message 6: Re: 5.1176 "linguistician"

> From: NAME William Marslen-Wilson <UBJTA38CCS.BBK.AC.UK>
>
> Since
> we all accept now that linguistics is a branch of cognitive
> psychology, and since professional modesty prevents me from
> suggesting "psycholinguist", surely the appropriate term would be
> "cognitive linguist".
We all really accept this? This message is particularly shocking
coming from the native land of M.A.K. Halliday. In addition to linguists
who are interested in language from a cognitive perspective (I think
Halliday referred to this as "language as knowledge"), there are many who
are interested in language as behavior, represented by the linguistic
tradition which arose within the discipline of anthropology. I think
there are still a few of those around. Some even refer to themselves as
"linguists."
Philip Graber
Emory University