Talk:Robert A. Hall Jr.

right wing progressive linguist
Hall was a great polemicist, in linguistics, but also against communism and the spirit of the 60s. In various books he has a lot to say against european arrogance and french antiamericanism in linguistics (Martinet), he makes devastating remarks against the usual ways of language learning (in schools it is a wonder kids learn to read at all), puts Nabokov (whom he must have had rows with) and Lolita (this piece of trash!) down ("good ridance to trash" he says when Nabokov leaves the university) and is also merciless about the Chomskyite revolution. (His angry farewell with Nabokov is in Stormy Petrel in Linguistics). He was a great defender of the amazingly successful WW2 Spoken Language method of language learning, for which he wrote Spoken French (with some french guy). Spoken Italian (1940?) and his wonderful book Italian for Modern Living (1959, repr. 1974).--Radh (talk) 21:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Quote
The quotation given seems obscure. If Hall is most famous for saying this, explain. If not, it should be removed/replaced with something meaningful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.185.249.234 (talk) 22:45, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

literature
Not listed are a number of his books, all of his essays, his autobiography in 2 Vols, there are also "Notes from Puerto Rico" (see WorldCat) by him and his wife, most of his work in romance, the Bloomfield book he edited, his (spanish titled) Festschrift.--Radh (talk) 01:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Haitian Creole monograph
Haitian Creole was published in 1953 as No. 74 of the "Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association''--Radh (talk) 06:32, 17 October 2009 (UTC)