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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Replying to @SousPlage @agraybee
I was writing in English, not German. It's fairly common for words to shift meaning as they over time, especially if they move across languages. Would recommend Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct if this confuses you.
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As someone w/ an advanced degree in Ling, I would not necessarily recommend that book. Also, if you read beyond that book, you might realize that linguistic shifts aren’t universally applied between popular language use & more esoteric borrowings from academiapic.twitter.com/hgByak3voL
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The idea that gestalt is an esoteric word reserved for academia is belied by dictionary citation showing use of word in my sense by Pauline Kael, a writer famous for her vernacular style, writing in The New Yorker, a non-academic, popular magazine.
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You are reaching. No one who understands linguistics at all would accept this argument.
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wait, why? that argument sounds persuasive to me.
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Are you joking?
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No. I feel like I understand linguistics more than "at all", and I think
@HeerJeet 's argument is reasonable, and that gestalt is a vernacular, not academic word. (I also think he's got a very skewed worldview if he thinks Chomsky/Pinker have anything valid to say about lx.)2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
I think that Pinker wrote a good popular guide to linguistics that does help explain this, and the fact that Chomsky endorsed the book should make us trust it more as popular guide to linguistics. Not that they are specialists in this matter.
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