Thx for your honest reply. We do not post the link in order to make sure that people don't just "click and try" (one of the disadvantages of web experiments is that people may just want to check out how it looks). Having lots of aborted experiment trials doesn't look good if one has to write up the results.
I assure you that your email address will not be not be given to others or used for anything but emailing you the link to the experiment (like all experiments involving people, we are monitored by the human subject board of our university [as you will see in case you decide to participate]).
Also, you don't HAVE to participate after you send us an email - nobody is monitoring that. We just prefer to know where our participants heard from us (that's why we ask you to email us first before we give you the link).
I hope that answers your questions, which I very much understand (I have similar doubts about most cases where somebody wants my email address),
I once was an over-qualified member of a group called Mensa whose founder said that its members were those who, "wanted to have their heads examined" which they had demonstrated no doubt by the very act of having taken 'IQ' tests. Heh heh.
Well though more modest, this seems similar. They are simply looking for those who wish to have their linguistic intuitions examined. If they can't pay in coin of the realm though, perhaps they could offer a linguistic intuition measure in lieu of payment in filthy lucre.
Are you a native English speaker? I am a Native American English speaker (at least as West Indian as Ward Churchill).
But maybe that was something else. I used to work with a programmer who started to speak only in the first letters of words. He started with simple greetings. The frightening thing is that I grew to understand him over 50 percent of the time!
I was born and raised in Chicago. Dunno if that counts as native English. The particular intialism in question, however, arose from the other side of the Great Pond, in what we like to call Pomerania.
Or at least what *some of us like to call Pomerania.
I've never been able to work out why only Corgis are allowed to be gas fitters. Our Keeshond can out-flatulate any Corgi ever born, and she's not allowed to touch the pipes! Wouldn't let her near the central heating, but.
Wull. Corgis are little squat thangs, only about half as high as keeshonds, mehbe two-thirds at most. Ya gots be little like that if you're gonna go crawling around under the house where all them gas pipes are. Besides, the cleanup on the keeshond after all that crawling around in the dirt would be a real nightmare. The corgi's got mostly relatively short hair. Ya gots ta look at the big picture, Pfranz. Jeesh!
Wouldn't this be an appropriate moment to note that a couple of weeks ago we were in on "flatulopetic"? So I guess that would describe them Corgis (or Keeshonds).
I find it strange that someone who suposedly studies linguistics does not use proper English himself. Look at his abreviations, and the capitolazation is all over the place.
Quote: I find it strange that someone who suposedly studies linguistics does not use proper English himself. Look at his abreviations, and the capitolazation is all over the place.
capitolazation
I find it interesting that an anonymous poster digs up something from a long long time ago. Which was a legitimate post, all CAPS aside.
(Lost but trying not to sound pompous) Was it about the one that had --?:
" NATIVE SPEAKERs of ENGLISH
yup, you have to assume one of two things; either the native is American or the english is American. or that you can ascertain the origin of the post. "
Well, Aramis, you lost me on that one. I did finally catch your change in subject title, but even so I was lost. So I ran scruffy-looking through the Google directory for movies. The first response was for The French Witch Project. As I am of French descent, I am wondering whether I should be insulted. wink e
Certainly not! Shirley, no poster here ever thought 'Jackie' and 'scruffy' belonged in the same sentence, regardless of ancestry. Perhaps looking up "I gotta bad feeling about this" and "Laugh it up, fuzzball" would be more enlightening. Those are pretty old movies now but still have one of the most inspiring characters ever.
My favorite line from that same movie, though, is: "Boring conversation anyway.." Actually that sequence that leads up to it makes that the punchline.
I was there, in 1977, standing on line at the Lowe's Astor Plaza in New York; among the first to see Star Wars . That was long before it became a "sensation". A group of us, who were fans of the director from his earlier work (he was an unknown to the general public) had read about the movie being made in American Cinematographer magazine and made a long drive from Southern New Jersey to see the opening. Not yet a Blockbuster. We stayed in the theater to see it a second time (you were able to do that back in the 70's). And Movie theaters in America were not the shoeboxes of today.
</reminiscing>
"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world" -Michael Crichton
It's also over four years old. I think the study is all done, wrapped up with a pretty pink bow, and moldering somewhere in some locked file cabinet in Inner Academia. The bit bucket the webpage went into was emptied a long time ago.
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