Date:  Sat, 5 Nov 1994 10:25:04 EST

From:  BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU

Subject: Re: new york city and upstate



From:  NAME: David Bergdahl

    FUNC: English

    TEL: (614) 593-2783          <BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]A1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAX>

To:   MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu"[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MRGATE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAX



On "The City"--I grew up in Valley Stream and taking Sunrise Hwy into Queens

there was a big billboard withe the admonition "THIS IS QUEENS--OBEY THE LAW" so

I can attest to Denis Baron's memory that Queens was a distinct place, separate

from both Brooklyn and Manhattan. Could Brooklyn still have retained its

separate identity because, up until 1900, it was a separate city rather than a

borough, and that manhattan and Brooklyn were "twin cities"? It was the

Brooklyn Bridge that is ultimately responsible for the creation of "The City of

New York" from these two cities.



As far as the 'confusion' between New York State and The City, I remember Raven

McDavid's use of York Staters for what we called citizens of Upstate. I

recommend using New York for both and letting the context disambiguate, much as

Chomsky recommends on grammar as either internalized rules or rules in the data.



The moral of this exchange is, I think, that if we cannot agree on what to call

a city and a state with the same name so as to differentiate them, how are we

goiing to keep a white Rhodesian and a black American apart by labels? I'm

reminded of the wisdom of Stokely Carmichael, "It isn't the bus, it's us." It

isn't the naming which should be the focus.



                        DAVID

David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens OH    BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CaTS.OHIOU.EDU