Re: How about a new lingustic forum?

On Jan 18, 2:26 pm, richard01 <richardparke...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 18 Jan, 15:03, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



In article
<e840e0b3-a6d9-4dae-a941-8d22d3adf...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

richard01 <richardparke...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When I first saw this post, I thought 'Good Idea' - let's dump the
'old fart' cabal that usually comes to dominate groups like this, in
any subject at all.

The 'old farts' always come back with:
. your contributions have largely consisted of uninformed or
underinformed suppositions followed by an indignant defense each time

Mostly because the poor sod has tried an interesting new idea, outside

What makes you think the idea is either interesting or new?
Typically, the "poor sod" has no expertise in the field and is
proposing an idea that is not based on any real research and that is
quite obviously just an inferior version of early ideas experts
already came up with long ago, and through thousands of hours of
research, have definitively rejected, often more than once.

the fossilised expertise of the cabal of resident group members, and
is roundly attacked and denigrated.

Only when the "poor sod" adamantly refuses to do any basic background
research and proudly wears his ignorance on his sleeve.

Seriously, take a look at all of the truly important scientific ideas
that have occurred in modern human history. Proportionally, how many
of them were due to someone with absolutely no training in the
relevant field, no understanding of research in the field at the time,
no knowledge of how and why the field had evolved, and absolutely no
desire to correct the gaps in his knowledge?

People read books and go to schools not to get some sort of nebulous
prestige, but to acquire knowledge, allowing them to progress beyond
the infantile ideas of ignorance, to create ideas that are deeply
informed by the work of their predecessors, and thus, can adequately
challenge and improve the field in truly novel ways.

Do you honestly think that there's any remotely good chance that
someone who hasn't even opened an introductory physics book could hope
to come up with a new idea for improving space flight, an idea that
not one of the multitudes of aerospace engineers throughout history
just somehow never once considered? *Really*?

Why would you think any differently about linguists? Especially given
that linguists as a group are usually much more likely to have a wider
interdisciplinary background than aerospace engineers are, and thus,
much more likely to bring in a larger variety of new perspectives and
viewpoints to the field.

Nearly every single linguist I know of started out in a different
field of study, across the whole spectrum of disciplines, from
economics to computer science to physics to evolutionary biology to
psychology to anthropology to literature. You don't think that in all
those varied backgrounds and totally different academic perspectives,
which have existed throughout the history of linguistics, that
somehow, magically, every single one of them completely failed to come
up with anything remotely similar to the ideas spouted off
(anonymously on the internet, no less!) by an utter neophyte who
stubbornly, and even aggressively, rejects the need for doing research?

*Really*?

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams Collegehttp://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/

Nathan - Maybe I'm being over-sensitive, but I have a certain feeling
that you're directing your diatribe
- "(anonymously on the internet, no less!) by an utter neophyte who
stubbornly, and even aggressively, rejects the need for doing
research?"
at me (or someone like me) directly.

Your feeling is wrong. I take it Nathan is speaking about Darkstar,
who has presented weighty opinions about Armenian language, which he
does not know; who suggested Catalan was a dialect of Spanish but
turned out to be unable to understand Catalan although proficient in
Spanish; and who had ideas of the phonology of the Irish language
which he did not even know was a living language, obviously thinking
that Irish had gone extinct before it had been phonetically recorded.

It is one thing to have novel ideas and come from outside. If you are
a polyglot with an alert mind, you can independently discover a lot by
yourself and even re-enact much of the history of linguistics. If
Darkstar really spoke Armenian and knew the language thoroughly, I
would be willing to take his allegations about Armenian at least half
seriously. But the fact is, that he does not know the lingo and has
seen half a dozen Armenian words somewhere, and he happily and
innocently builds crackpot theories on those words. I don't think any
trained linguist can be bothered to take such theories seriously.
.

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