From danielrr@retemail.es Sun Feb 11 12:31:13 2001 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id MAA101392 for ; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 12:31:11 -0800 Received: from smtp4s.retemail.es (smtp4.iddeo.es [62.81.31.73]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id MAA15894 for ; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 12:31:11 -0800 Received: from [62.174.216.160] by smtp4s.retemail.es (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with ESMTP id <20010211203109.PHQN29101.smtp4s.retemail.es@[62.174.216.160]> for ; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 21:31:09 +0100 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: idd00i7w@pop.iddeo.es (Unverified) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 21:30:41 +0100 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Daniel =?iso-8859-1?Q?Ria=F1o?= Subject: Re: Jacques Barzun on Linguistics & Latin Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >It ends with a reference to Allen Walker Read's dictum: >"No native speaker can make a mistake." Thanks to Christian Kopff for tracing back the source of the (untenable) statement about speakers that can't make mistakes (like native walkers, that can't stumble in their way). Now, even admitting that it is very possible that I missed a lot of the substance of this multi-headed thread, I think that in some of the recent messages we have been talking about *three* different things, as if they are just two. Linguistics and philology are sciences (who doubt it?), they are not just descriptive and they are, of course, non-normative. So-called "normative linguistics" (for lack of a sweeter name) is of course normative, and it is not a science: it is more like an art, that rests upon knowledge of both the above mentioned sciences and, like any other art, a lot of many other abilities difficult to describe, and even more difficult to grasp. By merely saying that something is not a science one is not diminishing its value: men's most valuable things (love, friendship, religion, and a long etc.) are not sciences. To say that "normative linguistics" is not a science means that it pursues a different goal from both linguistics and philology and, in a large measure, it uses different methods and approaches. Both are not incompatible, just like religion and "science" are different but in no way incompatible; and the same person can of course be talented for any (or both) of the above mentioned sciences and the normative side of linguistics, just like the same person can be a great linguist or physic, and a violin virtuoso. And it would be a *terrible mistake* to leave the (absolutely necessary) linguistic normative out of school with the excuse that it is not a science, as if the greatest part of school curriculum is just science!! P.S. I, too, hope that George Thomson is not leaving the list. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Daniel Ria=F1o Rufilanchas Madrid, Espa=F1a .