Re: Apologies to Alex Gross

Good, Ross, despite the general offensiveness of your latest, i seem to
detect a 5%, perhaps even a 10%, softening, certainly not yet an apology,
but as though you've become dimly aware of the dysfunctional tendencies that
sometimes crop up here. Now if you can keep up the good work, and if
someone--anyone--can figure out a way to fine-tune PTedious a bit, sci.lang
might actually turn into a less discordant world. Face it, 11,200 messages
per year is not a reasonable number, that's more than 30 messages a day, at
that pace no writer can can keep up quality control.

Now if you go back to my papers again--like a dog to its vomit--you'll find
the answers to the following three questions were there all along, and you
either didn't read them or weren't able to absorb the information, or
perhaps your limited perspective led you to skip extensive passages you
decided could not possibly be of any interest:

>> * the physiology & differential diagnosis of language;

> Sounds like the first one. An example of "diagnosis"?

>> * dynamic linguistic mapping rather than any kind of grammar;

>Example please? I assume you're not just talking about the linguistic
>mapping that already goes on.

>> * the invention of a measuring unit for language as a basis for this;

>Is this something you've done, or you think someone ought to do? What
>exactly would you be measuring? If you want anyone to take you
>seriously you have to at least be able to show how this would lead to
>superior results in some area.

As for Chinese medicine, i never studied it with the intention of
practicing, though i did do some interning. It was entirely the linguistic
part that attracted me. It seemed reasonable to me that if there were two
ways of describing how people work, and not just one as i had believed
before, that a person would be better off by knowing both. And as for my
alleged boasting of various skills--theatre, journalism, radio announcing,
some reasonably developed computer skills, speaking various languages,
etc.--i've always found it likely that a person who posssesses a number of
language and communication skills will know more about both than someone who
has learned only one approach. Or perhaps has learned no approach at all
but merely theory.

So, no, there will be no need for linguistics students to learn Chinese
diagnosis as i did, though i am mapping out a document calling for a vastly
enriched faculty of linguistics. You can find a hint of what it will
contain--though only a hint--in something i first wrote ten years ago:

http://language.home.sprynet.com/lingdex/minimum.htm

As for the allegation that i am a bitter old man, no, not quite yet. Some
ten thousand visitors land on my website each month, about a third of them
gravitate to linguistics, but the rest aim for topics like 'Sixties history
in three countries, a whole gamut of theatre-related topics, various aspects
of translation, and yes, Chinese medicine, and in all these areas I'm
considered some sort of authority. So far some 1500 linguists have made it
to those two papers. I frequently receive queries thanking me or asking for
further information. So not much need to be bitter. And as a seasoned
veteran of the 'Sixties values wars in several nations, i'm aware that some
goals take time to achieve. I also spend a fair amount of time following a
lively but compared to here relatively well-behaved discussion group about
dramaturgy. And there too i am regarded as a respected elder statesman.

Here's an example of a question that came up on that group just last week
and the answer I provided. Though it dealt entirely with language on a very
basic level, i tend to doubt if anyone in this group could have dealt with
it as well--or perhaps handled it at all:

> I need to cut a full-length script for a 90-minute staged reading. Does
> anyone have a handy formula for gauging how long it will take to read a
> certain number of words? Or pages - though obviously that's less
> reliable.

The standard answer one usually sees to this is 120 words per minute, but i
have not found it too accurate. Perhaps an untrained reader will average
120, but professional readers are capable of around 150 or even 180. Read
radio announcers, actors, trained public speakers. That is perhaps because
they have internalized something i call "applied syntax," which permits them
to know which words go with which other words and get all the right accents
on all the right syllables. At least after they have rehearsed it once.
Radio announcers frequently don't get a chance to rehearse what they read,
but radio style and rhetoric become so predictable that they can manage
150-180 anyway.

However, if it's a play, don't forget that pauses are also important. So
for theatre maybe 120 or 130 might be close to right. Now for Beckett...
or for Pinter...:-)

all the best!

and all the best to you as well!

alex


"benlizross" <benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:43A34E30.5569@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Alexander Gross wrote:
>>
>> Your truly stupid reference to Chinese medicine, Horsey Rossy, proves to
>> me
>> beyond any question of a doubt that you have read so little of my two
>> papers
>> that there is no point at in discussing them with you at all. Had you
>> read
>> even the abstract, you would have known that my approach is rooted in
>> Western medicine, not the Chinese variety.
>>
>> Had you read (and understood) even the title, you would have known that
>> this
>> is the case.
>>
>> And had you even glanced at the abstract's first footnote and the two
>> URLs
>> it provided about this subject, you could not possibly have doubted that
>> Western medicine lies at the center of my argument.
>>
>> I conclude that you did not and still do not know what evidence based
>> medicine is about, though you could easily have found out. It is the
>> ruling
>> paradigm in Western medicine today, and I have used it as the foundation
>> for
>> evidence based linguistics.
>
> You've been wasting your breath. I am quite aware that "Evidence-based
> Medicine" is a term in the recent discourse of Western medicine. My
> passing reference to "Chinese medicine" was not à propos of EBM, but
> referred to traditional Chinese medicine, of which (you rarely miss an
> opportunity to remind us) you have a considerable knowledge, and which,
> you have suggested, is in some way relevant to the study of language,
> and will be part of the training of Linguists of the Future.
>
>>
>> That is only one reason why I see no reason to stick around here and
>> spoon-feed complex concepts to dolts like you, who show not the slightest
>> ambition to learn even the basic facts about them by looking at my
>> website.
>
> You never have seen any reason. You've told us so many times. Yet you
> continue to stick around here. Why?
>
>> Your estimate of the good work done by sci.lang is also grossly inflated.
>
> "Good work"? You make it sound like some charitable organization. My
> only point was that your despective comments on sci.lang as a whole had
> to be seen alongside the fact that more than 90% of what takes place on
> sci.lang does so without your participation or, indeed, knowledge.
>
> I
>> have answered most of your other reservations in the past, but it doesn't
>> do
>> any good. I took part in exchanges provoking hundreds of messages in the
>> spring and fall of 2000, but that didn't do any good either.
>
> Now what would "doing some good" consist of? Did you participate only in
> hopes of converting us to your faith?
>
> When i once
>> tried pointing out to you that i was also active for a while shedding
>> light
>> on problems in Spanish and Italian, you made it clear to me that you felt
>> these were not languages of any great concern.
>
> Ah, I "made it clear", did I? So you will not be under any obligation to
> quote the words I said? Yet the unwary reader will get the impression
> that I said something like "Spanish and Italian are not languages of any
> great concern." I said no such nonsense.
>
>> I once told Jacques privately about a message he had just posted that he
>> had
>> in fact contributed almost the same message using almost the same words a
>> few years earlier. I then showed him the earlier message. In other
>> words
>> the same themes get rehashed here over and over again. But no one seems
>> to
>> truly learn anything from the experience. And Jacques is one of the
>> sci.lang members I respect the most.
>>
>> As they say, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Which is
>> certainly what happens here. You just keep on recycling the same tired
>> old
>> knowledge from the past without learning anything new.
>
> This from a man who continues to denounce Chomsky on the basis of
> knowledge that must be at least 30 years out of date by now.
>
>> As for your shrill protests
>
> Oh please. I made a _discreet suggestion_ that credential-flaunting was
> considered bad form on sci.lang, where people with all kinds of
> different qualifications and areas of knowledge manage to have
> interesting discussions about language matters without it.
>
> that I must stop boasting of my credentials, you
>> don't suppose that could have anything to do with repeated accusations
>> over
>> the years by you and others that I am totally lacking in such
>> credentials?
>
> I never made any such accusation.
>
>> There couldn't be any possible connection, could there|?
>>
>> And when these claims escalated into a smear campaign that not only am I
>> utterly lacking in credentials but I am also a liar and a con man who
>> readily resorts to false identities, you don't suppose that could have
>> any
>> bearing on my behavior, do you?
>
> Well, anything that might turn your behaviour in the direction of normal
> ought to be considered.
>
>> Fortunately these claims have just been punctured by Joe Murphy, who was
>> clearly taken in by them.
>
> Dear Joe ("Boy Linguist") may have been momentarily taken in by our
> joke. Or, on the other hand, he may have been joking. :-)
>
> The final exposure of your stupid little game
>> couldn't just possibly be provoking your anger, just by chance now, could
>> it?
>
> But I'm not angry.
>
> However, while waiting for your last reply, I did go looking at the two
> Dartmouth documents, in search of answers to the questions I raised. It
> all seemed oddly familiar, either because I read them (quickly) when
> they first went up, or because I've read a lot of your earlier stuff.
>
> Anyhow, here's what I found regarding a couple of the original points
>
> * dynamic linguistic mapping rather than any kind of grammar;
> * the invention of a measuring unit for language as a basis for this;
>
> Now you do propose a unit called the WITT (Wordlike Increment of
> Terminological Territory), a kind of minimal semantic difference
> (example: the difference between "Thirty-third Street" and
> "Thirty-fourth Street"). You do not attempt to show that this unit is
> constant (e.g. that the above difference is in any sense the same as
> that between "buy" and "sell", or "Los Angeles" and "San Francisco", to
> take two of your other examples). Indeed, you appear to think it is not
> constant, and that this is a virtue (at least that seems the point of
> your disquisition on the Chinese body measure "tsun"). You give further
> examples assigning purely impressionistic numbers of WITTs to various
> differences in cultural knowledge or presupposition, but without any
> indication of how such figures might be arrived at other than
> impressionistically, which is what the term "measure" would seem to
> imply. You also talk about "WITT Planes", which are something like
> lexical fields or networks, defined by a context of use (e.g. terms used
> by locksmiths in talking about their work). But here the WITT does not
> seem to be measuring anything.
>
> So given that this is not obviously a constant unit, and that it is
> quite unclear how (and why) it might actually be used to measure
> anything, the nature of "dynamic linguistic mapping" based on this
> becomes even more remote and obscure. And why this remote and obscure
> procedure would replace "any sort of grammar" is unfathomable.
>
>
> * not the usual prattle about the relationship between language &
> evolution, rather the almost self-evident truth that language IS
> evolution;
>
> Here, having dismissed as "prattle" most of what other people have said
> about language and evolution, you offer us: "Language IS evolution". Now
> on the face of it this is just untrue -- look the words up in the
> dictionary. However, I thought there might be some high-level idea
> behind this stark equation of two abstractions. The reality was
> something of a disappointment. After considerable discussion of your
> idea that there is some significant evolutionary link between language
> and the scent-marking systems of dogs, etc., you apparently conclude
> that this theory is so compelling that it will not only command general
> assent among scientists, but if presented to the mass of the populace,
> it will be so evident that "[the development of] language IS [an
> instance of] evolution" that anti-Darwinism will fade away. Do you
> really believe this?
>
> * language as a bodily function rather than (or more than) a logical or
> philosophical or cognitive one;
>
> To this my question was: Certainly language has a bodily aspect, but
> equally certainly it has a mental aspect as well. Why would you want to
> say that the former was "rather than" or "more than" the latter? To this
> I found no answer in the Dartmouth documents.
>
> Looking forward to your responses.
>
> Ross Clark


.

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