Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 10:36:48 -0500

From: "Dennis R. Preston" preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PILOT.MSU.EDU

Subject: Re: ADS-L guidelines, appreciation doubted



I am especially enchanted by the idea that a mail list limited to

professional talk could not 'remain interesting.'



dInIs



On Tue, 27 Jan 1998, Bapopik wrote:

AMERICAN SPEECH has covered "-gate" words not once nor twice, but four

times. See "Among the New Words" 53.3 Fall 1978, 54.4 Winter 1979, 56.4

Winter 1981, and 59.2 Summer 1984.

[...]

Both Tim and Beverly have written or at least strongly hinted in the past

that anyone (me) who posts etymologies is "unprofessional" and shouldn't be

on

ADS-L.



Well, I enjoy the etymologies and the jokey etymologies and just about

everything about words and new coinages. But then I'm a Richard Lederer

fan and have coined many of my own words for my novels. So maybe I

"shouldn't" be on ADS-L to get those things. But the WORDS-L list, the

one I expected to have these kinds of discussions, is nothing but a chat

session made into messages; I've been monitoring that digest, and they

have lots of fun, but they seldom even discuss words at all. So this is

the only place that I see words discussed. I'm here because I'm a

logophile. I'm not sure that a mailing list can be "solely limited to

professional talk" and still remain interesting; even over on

software-testing-L (swtest-discuss), we have side sessions on test

problems and types.



If there are guidelines that direct us only to talk about dialect

(whatever that is), maybe I ought to go over to the Web site and read them

again. I read the welcome message and didn't get this particular bit out

of it.



Dennis R. Preston

Department of Linguistics and Languages

Michigan State University

East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA

preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]pilot.msu.edu

Office: (517)353-0740

Fax: (517)432-2736