Re: Sumerian Lexicon

Roger Mills wrote:
> This appeared in another list:
> http://www.sumerian.org/sumerlex.htm
>
> Quite interesting. But I'm more curious about:
>
> --Does anyone know anything about the author? (he says he was a student at
> UCSB at some point)
>
> --It seems to be legit scholarship, but is it actually? i.e. not wacked-out
> ravings
>
> Comments?
Well, if I may contrast the more thoughtful comments of others, who have actually
glanced though the pages, with my own first impression, based entirely on intuition:
He's unreliable. As Damien says, the lexicon might be reliable. But the rest screams
wacked-out(*) raver to me. As someone commented on Language Hat a while back, "centred
text: the sign of a deranged mind" :). Ok, it's only a centred title, but what really
go my attention was the author's name writ large, as well as the blushing reference
to "The author...", and the first line "... is being reviewed by other scholars".
They all make me a bit wary, crazed loonies with such identifiable plumage having
been(**) publishing websites for as long as I've been online. *But* I must admit
that this chap is fairly restrained as far as overt kookiness goes, and it's even
possible  that his site is useful (it's probably interesting, either way). Still,
caveat lector :)

--
s.


(*) ObYAEPT: Can't help but think that this word would be better represented as "whacked
out". But I use a [W]-using variety of English, so the difference might be more important
for me. I'm not necessarily claiming that this *whack is the same as the usual English
word "whack", though!

PS to ObYAEPT: Just after writing the above paragraph, my brother, who's still at school,
appeared and told me a piece of pedagogical doggerel, which I can't reproduce, that a
teacher had recited to his class. The purpose of it was to remind pupils to pronounce
"wh" as [W]! I guess I must have been cursing audibly about the [W]-less masses...

(**) I swear, mostly literate reader of books and writer of standard English though I be,
I no longer trust myself on whether to use "been" or "being" in this construction.
I make no distinction in speech, to the point of not being (aha!) able to tell even
what the underlying form is. My guess why this particular construction is so fragile is
that it's essentially a written form, that I'd rarely have used in speech before my
adolescent years. It's possible I haven't forgotten the rule, but that I've never known
it, too :).