the other day i was reading ("reading") a linguistics article to see if it was relevant to my dissertation, and was reminded, once again, why i didn't become a linguist. it's the jargon. and the pompous use of obscure latin phrases, like salva analyticitate.

then, just now, i was reading harriet's entry on cello porn (i am a cellist and a sometime harpist--perhaps i have a thing for instruments between my legs?) and lo! and behold! right in the middle there is a bit about how overjargonized academic writing is! (kisses, harriet).

so here's why i didn't become a linguist:

presupposition first emerged in the Western tradition among exponibilia, syncategorematic terms that can be decomposed into two or more meaning components combining to yield the meaning contribution of the term in question. On Peter of Spain's thirteenth century investigation of 'reduplicative' expressions like inquantum 'insofar as,' such a particle presupposes (proesupponit) that a given predicate inheres in the subject and denotes ( denotat) that the term to which it is attached causes that inherence.

-from a paper by yale linguist larry horn.

though i gotta give the man props for referencing ***peter of spain*** (whoever he was). i so do not have references that cool. (sigh... reference envy)