Re: CHAT: _Describing Morphosyntax_

> ------------------------------
>
> Date:    Sat, 28 Aug 2004 18:34:45 -0500 From:    "Mark P. Line"
> <mark@...> Subject: Re: CHAT: _Describing Morphosyntax_
>
>
> What is it exactly that makes you experience these books as 'dry'?
> I'm curious because I can easily imagine that most non-linguists find
> much of what I write 'dry' in the same way. But I wouldn't know where
> to start to make it any wetter...
>
>
> -- Mark
>
> ------------------------------
Well, to a certain extent, I think it's unavoidable.  I mean, there's
all this technical jargon that, frankly, is quite necessary to the work.
  I guess, in the case of _Describing Morphosyntax_ it started off quite
well, but went on and on describing all these different parts of speech
with very, very few examples most of which were quite hard for me to try
and pronounce in my head.  I'm sorry to admit, but I have neither the
IPA nor the X-SAMPA chart memorized, so those references occasionally
overwhelm me.  And, it would have been nice if they at least *mentioned*
the IPA chart in the introduction.  I think the book was written with
the idea that the reader had quite a bit of linguistic education
already.  And, indeed, that may have been the intention of the author.
As I mentioned, I'm about the furthest thing from a linguist or
linguistics student one could imagine.  I've never taken *any* classes
in it at all.  I've slogged my way through several textbooks and other
books, mainly introductory texts, just trying to get a handle on all the
technical jargon that's required to adequately describe even a "simple"
language, if such a thing exists.  So far, I don't think I'm doing too
well, honestly.  But, I'm stubborn, so I keep coming back for more! ^_^

If you'd like more of my stupid, stinking opinion about that sort of
rubbish, feel free to e-mail me directly.  I'd love to help make
linguistics books easier for the poor lay slobs like me, if I can, but
I'd hate to waste anyone's conlang bandwidth with my rantings on the
subject anymore.  That goes for anyone else who wants to grill me about
the subject, too.  I'm pretty much always open to direct mail from you
all.

Thanks,
Jim
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