🚀 go-pugleaf

Jacques Guy (jbm@newsserver.trl.oz.au) wrote:
: 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.

There is no such thing as "the" linguistic dogma. You obviously must
be taught _something_, and it can be right or wrong. In this case you
were taught something that was wrong; at another university it could
have been otherwise.

For every paper unjustly rejected, there are dozens of papers that have
been justly rejected -- because they are simply wrong. If you support
the idea that there is "the" linguistic dogma which blocks the
advancement of science, you are merely encouraging people who think
everybody is a specialist in linguistics if they happen to speak a
language. (There are plenty of examples of _that_ sort in this newsgroup.)

--
Jouko Lindstedt
Department of Slavonic Languages, University of Helsinki
e-mail: Jouko.Lindstedt@Helsinki.Fi or jslindst@cc.helsinki.fi
fax: +358-0-1912974