Subj: April L&SF Online Bulletin Date: 97-04-02 14:42:31 EST From: ocls@ipa.net To: ocls@ipa.net April 1997 L&SF Online Bulletin Greetings -- sorry to be late. Yesterday was one of those days; first a power failure, and then a Macintosh failure. But everything is up and running this morning. Moving right along, therefore..... 1. I've read two books since last contact that I want to strongly recommend if you haven't already read them: Nicola Griffith's "Slow River" (Del Rey 1995) and Terri Windling's "The Wood Wife" (Tor 1996.) Both set up utterly believable worlds, both are hard to put down, both introduce characters that you I immediately cared about. I like "The Wood Wife" best -- except for the ending, which I didn't like, but I enjoyed both very much indeed. More in the print edition... 2. The Great Amygdala Mystery continues: My thanks to all who've sent responses to my question about whether human beings have one amygdala or two. I now have definitive responses from two physicians, both quoting from medical texts -- one says I can relax, there's only one; the other says I can relax, there are two. ??? I will continue to pursue this; it baffles me. I care because it's the amygdala (or the amygdalae) that do the emotional hijackings which land people in the middle of violent arguments over things about which they give not one hoot. 3. Thanks for all your feedback on my attempt to sort the Ebonics tangle; I'm glad you found it useful. You asked for an example of the unacceptable ignorance/arrogance I complained about. I have the *perfect* example (and will repeat it in the next print issue, since many of our Network members aren't online.) Sally Lloyd sent me a clipping from the Oakland Tribune for 2/9/97 titled "Ebonics: back to basics," written by Kathleen Kirkwood. It reports on a lecture by Ernie A. Smith, identified as "a linguist and researcher at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles"; he spoke at a televised forum hosted by the Oakland NAACP and a local group. Talking about the Niger-Congo languages, Smith told the audience that many "have no 'consonant clusters' but instead have alternating vowels and consonants." Now comes the part that matters: He proceeded to tell them that this means that the second of two consonants is often dropped by blacks speaking English; and as his example of the phenomenon he gave "running" becomes "runnin' ". I'm not concerned with his claim that the absence of consonant clusters in some Niger-Congo languages is responsible for Black English speakers often deleting the second of two English consonants; there are alternative explanations for that phenomenon, but that's not my field and I won't argue the point. What matters here is his example. Because although "running" ends with two consonants in print, it is not two consonants. It's a single consonant phoneme of English, the one represented by the phonetic symbol that looks like an "n" with a tail on the right side of the letter. You could no more drop the second half of it than you could drop half of "s" or half of "l". In the same way that English uses the two letters "s" and "h" to write the single English consonant phoneme "sh" -- one consonant, not two -- it uses two letters to write the single English consonant phoneme "ng." The phenomenon of "dropping your G's" is a substitution of a single consonant "n" for the single consonant "ng" when it is part of the "-ing" ending. If what this man said were true -- if "ng" were two consonants, and the second one got dropped because of a rule against consonant clusters -- speakers of Black English would say "rin" for "ring" and "sin" for "sing"..... I hope that's unacceptable enough? There is a remote chance that the reporter didn't hear Smith's example and made up a substitute example of her own which she failed to check with him; if that is actually what happened, I would be overjoyed. I'm very much afraid, however, that that's not the way it was. I read and hear this kind of thing all the time -- and often I hear much worse. This particular example just happens to be one I can handle with a *brief* explanation instead of ten single-spaces pages. 4. The upcoming print issue (which I'll start writing around the 20th of April) is the verbal self-defense issue, if you have things you'd like me to mention. It's usually the issue that has the smallest proportion of science fiction versus linguistics; if you have any good sf examples of verbal self-defense to send me, they'd be very welcome. 5. I've heard from my editor at Thomas Nelson & Sons (world's largest religious publisher); she's happy with the book on verbal self-defense for religious persons -- like, how do you return good for evil and still survive? -- and needs only minor revisions. This is very good news; I was worried about having to start over from scratch, or worse. The book will be out in October. 6. Final item this time is my travel schedule, as requested. I have a book called "How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable" coming out from John Wiley -- it's in the warehouse now, as a matter of fact. I'm going on tour for it (very worried about leaving the house and gardens and greenhouse while I'm away, now that I've no children here any more, but it has to be done.) Schedule is as follows:
And probably we'll go on to Kansas City on May 22 to see family, as long as we're out there; KC isn't part of the tour. I'm told that I have bookstore signings in each of the cities on the route; I'll let you know which bookstores as soon as I know myself. Best to all of you, Suzette PS: About the Touch Dominance Network, for which membership had to be renewed in January.... Only thirteen of our fifty members renewed -- even though I included a note saying that if the problem was financial to advise me of that and we'd work it out. I won't close down the network, and I'll continue to write the TD Quarterly, even if there are only two members, because it matters. But I mention this sorry tale on the off chance that some of you didn't renew because you are as far behind in your reading as I am and you haven't read the "time to renew" announcement in either of the past two issues. The Spring 1997 issue will go out by Friday. If you didn't renew and you plan to, and you'd like to get that issue, please drop me a note so I'll know. Thanks much. ----------------------- Headers --------------------------------
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