Google| Subject | Re: Will Tony apologize?? (was: Re: Colonial Photo & Hobby) |
| From | Tony Cooper |
| Date | 05/01/2014 18:56 (05/01/2014 12:56) |
| Message-ID | <kpt4m95etcdmei05e5la6i8ukh13g6cv1m@4ax.com> |
| Client | |
| Newsgroups | rec.photo.digital |
| Follows | Sandman |
| Followups | Sandman (14h & 23m) > Tony Cooper |
On 1 May 2014 15:05:48 GMT, Sandman <mr@sandman.net>wrote:
SandmanInteresting that you should reference Arnold Zwicky. He's a Professor of Linguistics at Stanford. He used to post in the newsgroup sci.lang. I never read sci.lang directly, but did - and do - read a newsgroup in which there was a great deal of cross-posting from sci.lang, so I'm familiar with Arnold.
In article <sdo4m9dcbg7a31nngperdsahce4pum5v5q@4ax.com>, Andreas Skitsnack wrote:SandmanTony CooperSandman
We are denied the use of italics or underlining in newsgroup postings, so we resort to other conventions to emphasize a word or phrase. Some call them "emphasis quotes" and some call them "scare quotes".
Funny link: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002796.html"Emphatic quotation marks are usually mocked as an illiteratism; but in any case, they aren't standard"Ironic :)Tony Cooper
If you actually read the article, the thrust is that bold face, italics, or underlining is the preferable treatment. None of those options are available to us when we post here.
If you actually could read to save your life, you'll see that he wrote:
"The boldfaced words were originally typed inside asterisks, to indicate emphasis in text that sticks to ASCII characters"
You don't have to use caps or asterisks, but using quotation marks is non-standard and mocked as only being used by illiterate people, so having the suggestion come from you is endlessly funny.
Linguists are prickly about certain things, but don't always follow their own advice. At his homepage http://arnoldzwicky.org/about/ Arnold uses quotation marks for emphasis in a format where he could use bold face, underline, or italics. Here's the usage in case you can't find it:
[quote] I’m also doing research on the conceptual foundations of morphology, as well as developing a construction-based framework for syntax and a “realizational” framework for morphology.
More recently (well, since around 1980), I’ve been investigating syntactic variation, paying attention to small details that mostly don’t map easily to large-scale social distinctions like region, sex, class, ethnicity, and so on. As an offshoot of this research, I’ve also become interested in the “advice literature” on English syntax, and more generally, on material about usage and prescriptivism; and I’ve returned to earlier interests in style and in mistakes in language. [/quote]
Also, here's an example of Arnold using quotation marks for emphasis in a post in the newsgroup sci.lang:
http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.lang/2006-04/msg00993.html
where he says: [quote] yes. "idiom" is the term wanted here...[/quote] Not asterisks, you'll note.
Perhaps you should inform Arnold that you are mocking his illiteracy.[
The "Language Log" article, though, was about something in a book by Leslie Savan where there was questionable use of double quotes and single quotes. And, the line you attribute to him is meant ironically. Emphasis quotes are not standard? They why does an eminent professor of linguistics use them?
-- Tony Cooper - Orlando FL
04/14/2014-
