Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.duke.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!insosf1.infonet.net!internet.spss.com!markrose
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Snow Canards
Message-ID: <D5x542.2HM@spss.com>
Sender: news@spss.com
Organization: SPSS Inc
References: <3kpk88$n04@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 00:24:01 GMT
Lines: 16

In article <3kpk88$n04@agate.berkeley.edu>,
Coby (Jacob) Lubliner <coby@euler.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>In his book "Bilinguisme et contact des langues", W. F. Mackey
>mentions in passing that he *personally* counted 22 different
>words for snow among the natives of Baffin Island.  Surely Prof.
>Mackey, being a world-class linguist, knows how to define
>"different words", even though he doesn't do so in the book.
>It's curious that Mackey is never cited in the debunking
>literature.  Is it because he is primarily a sociolinguist?

This rather misses the point.  If everyone who reproduced this legend
cited Mackey, it wouldn't be a canard, because it would at least be based
on something.  The point is that most people just make up the numbers,
with no basis at all.  And even those that bother to do some research
don't seem to think about how many words English has for snow (hint: it's
more than one).  
