Comments on: Prof. Joshua Whatmough — Linguistics 120

By: WHATMOUGH AND THE VALUE OF PHILOLOGY. | Everyone Read It!

WHATMOUGH AND THE VALUE OF PHILOLOGY. | Everyone Read It! — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:34:31 +0000

[...] me at Mark Liberman’s Joshua Whatmough and the donkey, which sent me to Steve Cotler’s Prof. Joshua Whatmough — Linguistics 120, a lively reminiscence of a hapless Harvard chemistry major in 1962 plunged into the dark and [...]

By: Etl World News | WHATMOUGH AND THE VALUE OF PHILOLOGY.

Etl World News | WHATMOUGH AND THE VALUE OF PHILOLOGY. — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:14:33 +0000

By: Eu-philo-logy « Glossographia

Eu-philo-logy « Glossographia — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:43:49 +0000

[...] College, who unfortunately passed away earlier this year at the age of 83. (I found it through this interesting reminiscence from Steve Cotler, linked yesterday by Mark Liberman on Language Log, and then all those articles were mentioned [...]

By: Theophylact

Theophylact — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:08:52 +0000

I was a sophomore Chemistry major in 1960 when I took Whatmough’s Linguistics 120. Other than having had high school French and Latin as my languages, my experience was much the same as yours. I still can’t figure out how I got an A in that course; I did my best to annoy Whatmough on the final exam by dismissing one of his pet theories as numerological rubbish.

What a weird old man he was.

By: Ray

Ray — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:08:55 +0000

It brought back memories of my undergrad days, the anxiety and exhilaration of launching one’s intellectual life.

My thoughts too. I went to the other Cambridge, and remember the first lecture in metallurgy. I had good A- and S- Levels in Physics, but was completely thrown (as was everyone else) by the very first question the lecturer asked: “How thick would a steel pressure vessel have to be to hold 10 atmospheres?”

He then proceeded to derive this from scratch using known observations to obtain a rough figure for the tensile strength of steel (how you could easily bend a steel paperclip, how you could bend a steel wire coathanger fairly easily, how you could just about bend a steel coatpeg by hanging from it); then using calculus and an analogy with a balloon to derive what pressure would make a steel “bubble” burst. All with rigorous error limits.

School physics had all been about conducting standard experiments to derive known results. Error limits were, frankly, largely made up to justify the difference between your result and the textbook’s.

The idea of applying a mixture of observation and analysis to a completely unknown problem was strange and terrifying, and I never got fully into the mindset. I got a Third.

By: Steve Cotler

Steve Cotler — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:11:16 +0000

A fascinating comment from Scanderbeg that probably has Prof. Whatmough spinning. While I would like to think that my connecting Illyrian to Albanian was prescient, and that my pronouncement will ultimately be validated by the Vienna study, I cannot deny the memory of intellectual panic that befogged my mind in the instant just before I answered the white-maned linguist’s question.

By: Scanderbeg

Scanderbeg — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:51:43 +0000

A direct connection between Albanian and Illyrian is difficult to establish due to the dearth of Illyrian writing preserved from ancient times.

Most historians do believe that modern Albanians are the descendants of the Illyrians, however because of Albania’s affiliation with the Ottoman Empire and it’s conversion to Islam during that period (today Albania is mostly secular and has many religious communities living in peace), it became the fashion in Greek and Serbian Orthodox circles to attempt to write the Albanians out of history as a way to make them pay for adopting the religion of the Ottomans.

Today, in 2008, the University of Vienna has begun the largest ever study on the Albanian language which has already yielded results that prove an ancient linguistic roots in the region.

As Albania is re-introduced into Europe after a period of epic isolation under the dictator Hoxha, the world will get to know again the people of the eagle and learn to respect her for all she has given Europe since pre-Hellenic times.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:18:05 +0000

Steve,
I never read blogs, but made a first exception to look at yours. I thoroughly enjoyed your description of your linguistics course. It brought back memories of my undergrad days, the anxiety and exhilaration of launching one’s intellectual life.
Best wishes.
Oliver