Re: OT: 'Dry' textbooks (was: Re: CHAT: _Describing Morphosyntax_)

Carsten Becker said:
>
> On Sunday 29 August 2004 01:34, Mark P. Line wrote:
>
>  > J. K. Hoffman said:
>  > > But, I'm an almost
>  > > total non-linguist.  I mean, I've never had a formal
>  > > class in linguistics and what tiny bit I know I
>  > > dragged, kicking and screaming, from some of the driest
>  > > textbooks I have ever read.  Unfortunately, _Describing
>  > > Morphosyntax_ is one of those, for me.
>  >
>  > 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...
>
> Well, you could wrap it in a nice little story :þ
So, Phil the Phoneme walked into this bar, see, and ...


> I think it's just the style such things are written in --
> always explanatory, no action, quite densely written so
> that you must think about what you read. Like an entry
> in an encyclopedia. It's a lot more strenuous (sp?) than
> watching TV at least.

Soccer is strenuous, and lots of people do that for *fun*.

Maybe the subject matter of those dry textbooks just isn't fun for some
people.


-- Mark