(To access my picture albums, Click here)
| ("Hanlon's Razor") Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity | "Socialism collapsed because it did not allow prices to reflect the economic costs. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow prices to reflect the ecological costs." (Attributed to Øystein Dahle, former president of Exxon for Norway and the North Sea) | “More harm has been done in science by those who make a fetish of skepticism, aborting ideas before they are born, than by those who gullibly accept untested theories.” (V. S. Ramachandran, “Creativity versus Skepticism within Science”. Skeptical Inquirer 30(6); 48-51, 2006 [p. 48]) |
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| The picture on the left shows me in Houaïlou, New Caledonia, in 1955. (My companion's name has strayed into the mists of time).
The picture in the slot at the right will be replaced from time to time. To see an enlargement of either picture, click on its thumbnail. (To access my picture albums, Click here) |
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23 August 2008. Since the "Reflections" portion of this site has kept expanding, I decided to add to the number
(and informativeness?) of the links that appear further down on this page. Click here)
22 August 2008. I’ve added another segment, this one entitled "The 'saying mode'", to the sequence "On the evolution of subject matter".
Although this segment couldn’t be described as being about subject matter in any very strict sense, it is about
features that make human language unique and seems to fit well as a continuation of the discussion of what can be talked about
(or at least to fit as well here as anywhere else I could think of).
(Click here)
18 March 2008. I've added another segment, this one entitled "The outside world" to the sequence "On the evolution of subject matter"
(Click here)
12 May 2008. I've added another album, called "Close-up Flowers to pictures (Click here)
4 May 2008. In the group entitled "Reflections on the evolution of human language" I've added a page
to provide an introduction to the series "The emergence of analytic processing" (Click here).
8 April 2008. I've added another segment, this one entitled "Situations" to the sequence "On the evolution of subject matter" (Click here)
18 March 2008. I've done a little reorganizing in the series "Reflections on the evolution of human
language", and have made a further addition--this one entitled "On the evolution of subject matter" (Click here)
16 February 2008. I've added another album. called "Some Hawaiian Skies" to pictures (Click here).
However, I notice that I'd failed to mention here the last album I posted before this. It's entitled, "Ships at Sea"
(Click here) 16 February 2008. I also notice that I've failed to mention here the last two segments to "Thoughts on reading Heryanto". These are entitled
respectively, "Have we been wrong about the main function of language?", and "The prototypical function of language: Three arguments".
(Click here) 26 September 2007. I've added another segment to "Thoughts on reading Heryanto". This one is entitled "How big a deal is Heryanto’s concern?". (However, this is actually the third segment. I seem to have failed to mention the second one, entitled, "The sense in which this term is currently used in English".) (Click here)
10 September 2007. Having already started a couple of series under the general heading, "Reflections" ("Reflections on the evolution of human language" and "Reflections on knowledge of language"), it seemed reasonable to use the same heading for a third series to be made up of shorter reflections that I'm calling "Miscellaneous Thoughts". The first effort is entitled "Thoughts on reading Heryanto" (Click here). These are thoughts inspired by my actually reading the paper by Ariel Heryanto that contains the often-quoted words "not all people have a language..." 27 August 2007. I've added a history of the University of Hawai'i linguistics department that I wrote last
year (Click here). While this history makes no pretense to being a complete account of the major
activities and accomplishments of the department during its existence, it does seem sufficiently informative to be of some interest. 1 July 2007. I've added another album, called "Fireworks",
to Pictures (Click here) 22 June 2007. I've made some minor changes to the following pages: 13 June 2007. I've made some minor changes to Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 4, number 17, "Voice Quality". (Click here) I think it must have been in the fall of 1995 that I must have first put this site on the Internet. All I originally intended to use it for was to make some of my unpublished Ethnolinguistic Notes (those of “Series 3”, written between 1981 and 1993) more generally available. Previously there had been only a limited number of copies which I'd distributed to colleagues. I thought that putting some of them on the Internet would be an excellent way to make them easily available to anyone who might be interested (while not cluttering the mailboxes of those who weren’t) and at the same time (I'd imagined) giving them a better chance of being preserved. However, it's since been brought to my attention that people don't necessarily think that putting them on the Internet does make them easily accessible.
To complicate matters further, in 1995 I began a new series (Series 4) of these "notes" just for hypertext publication on the Internet. For these, the Internet--since I'm now retired and no longer have access to the resources of an academic department--is the only means of publication that's practically available to me. Therefore, for better or worse, I'm stuck with this as my publication strategy.
In fact, as things have progressed, there's seemed to be reason to add still more things, and the site has now become somewhat complicated.
grace@hawaii.edu 
Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 4, number 16, "The Genetic Hypothesis: Continuity of What?". (Click here)
"Reflections on Knowledge of Language". (Click here)
Reflections on Knowledge of Language: 1. The Role of the Holistic Mode" (Click here)
Reflections on Knowledge of Language: 2. Where does "Knowledge of the World" fit in?" (Click here)
and "Pictures" where I've added a missing link to my "Big Island Waterfalls" album. Click here)
About this site
In 1976 I wrote the first of what has turned out to be a long series (or actually several series)
of what I labeled "notes" on questions that appeared to me to be of linguistic concern, although
most of these questions then received--and still receive--little or no attention within the
linguistics profession. Only a limited number of copies of any of these Notes were ever
distributed. My purpose in putting them on the Web is to make at least some of them more
generally (and, I hope, more permanently) available. Those that were available for Web posting
belonged to Series 3 although I have managed to get a couple from the earlier series on line. I've now started a fourth series for Web posting only.
The head page gives a bit more background; those on the individual series list the Notes
and provide links to those that are online along with other information.
The Ethnolinguistic Notes ----- The first two series of Ethnolinguistic Notes ----- Ethnolinguistic Notes,
Series 3 ----- Ethnolinguistic Notes,
Series 4
ReflectionsReflections on knowledge of Language -----The role of the holistic mode (multiple segments) -----Where does "knowledge of the world" fit in? (multiple segments)
Although I started this website to make the Ethnolinguistic Notes available, I fairly soon got the
idea that it was too cold and forbidding and that I needed to give its author some sort of
personality. These pages are part of what resulted. Personal Page ----- Our wedding ceremony ----- Vita ----- Vignettes
The following group is concerned with how we as a species have gotten ourselves in way beyond
our depth. This has happened in part because we presistently lie to ourselves. Here, I try to
call attention to some of the most damaging lies.
The Human Predicament ----- The Human Predicament ----- Who Should Die First? ----- Our Fiduciary Responsibility ----- On the Unsuitability of our Institutions ----- If a Corporation could Talk
Odds and Ends
This page is mainly for links to the following pages that don’t fit anywhere else. They aren’t
Ethnolinguistic Notes and don’t fit comfortably or at all in the Human Predicament series or on
my personal page.
In the fall of 2000 my wife bought me a digital camera. One thing led to another and in
December 2002 I began displaying some of my pictures on my website.
Pictures
Last updated 2 October 2006
