TOPIC COMMENT Linguistics and English （话题评论语言学和英语）.pdf

T O P I C . . . C O M M E N T The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax Most linguistics deparllnents have an introduction-to-language course in which students other than linguistics majors can be exposed to at least something of the mysteries of language and communication: signing apes and dancing bees; wild children and lateralization; logographic writing and the Rosetta Stone; pit and spit; Sir William Jones and Professor Henry Higgins; isoglosses and Grimms Law; Jabberwocky and colourless green ideas; and of course, without fail, the Eskimos and their multiple words~for snow. Few among us, Im sure, can say with certainty that we never told an awestruck sea of upturned sophomore faces about the multitude of snow descriptors used by these lexically profligate hyperborean nomads, about whom so little information is repeated so often to so many. Linguists have been just as active as schoolteachers or general knowledge columnists in spreading the entrancing story. What a pity the story is unredeemed piffle. Anthropologist Laura Martin of Cleveland State University spent some of her research time during the 1980s attempting to slay the constantly changing, serf-regenerating myth of Eskimo snow terminology, like a Sigourney Weaver fighting alone against the hideous space creature in the movie Alien (a xenomorph, they called it in the sequel Aliens; nice word). You may recall that the creature seemed to spring up everywhere once it got loose on the spaceship, and was very difficult to kill. Martin presented her paper at the annual meetings of the Ame