🚀 go-pugleaf

In <31pdcu$mhn@tardis.trl.OZ.AU>, jbm@newsserver.trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) writes:
>Precisely so. What I was taught delayed by perhaps as much as six
>months my understanding the phonology of the language of my PhD
>thesis. Paying lip service to dogma resulted in the phonological
>description still being a gross misrepresentation of the true
>workings of that language -- but I had to pander to my supervisors'
>whims. Thankfully, they were all away on fieldwork when I was 
>writing up the morphology and syntax part, and I had my own way
>there.
William Labov's new book ("Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 1")
contains an interesting and very a propos anecdote by David de Camp
(pp.369-70).  His Ph.D. supervisors required him to revise his analysis 
of the San Francisco English vowel system because his data suggested 
that speakers produced a distinction that they couldn't perceive, which
went against his supervisor's basic assumptions about the symmetry of
production and perception.  He only managed to get it passed by hedging
the controversial point and toning it down with disclaimers.

James
--------------------------------------------------------------
James Walker, Information Development, IBM Canada, Toronto
"...it seems that your fiends always laugh in syllables, and always in
three syllables, never more or less, which is a remarkable property
in such gentry, and one worthy of remembrance."  -- Charles Dickens
The opinions in this post are mine, all mine, not those of IBM.