Jeet Heer has mastered the art of confidently using pretentious words he doesn't understand, knowing that most people will be too intimidated to challenge him and risk looking stupid. But some of us know what gestalt means, and that ain't it.
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I don't really have an opinion on the first two. The answer to the third one is definitely "no," if "good" involves accurately representing the state of play, including both theory and empirical evidence in contemporary linguistics.
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Okay, put aside Pinker. Find me the most modern up-to-date guide to linguistics and show me where it says that academic words borrowed from other languages cannot take on different vernacular meanings.
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it's not a german word, it's an english loanword from german - he's right, loanwords change meaning in the borrowing language but not the source one all the time
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It doesn't matter TLI is good intro to the whole field of linguistics. After 25 years any science will have moved on. The distinction between descriptivism and prescriptivism in TLI is clear & well-written, though, and that's the relevant part.
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No, it’s not. Because the nature of the description that consistites a semantic theory is important... and that’s what’s at issue. Which conventions governing linguistic use are authoritative? How are they determined? These are basic q’s where TLI’s answers no longer suffice.
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