armchair linguistics

名词 n.

英文释义

名词 n.
  1. Any linguistic enterprise employing introspection rather than empirical methods, such as elicitation. informal,uncountable
    — Armchair linguistics does not have a good name in some linguistics circles. A caricature of the armchair linguist is something like this. He sits in a deep soft comfortable armchair, with his eyes closed and his hands clasped behind his head. Once in a while he opens his eyes, sits up abruptly shouting, "Wow, what a neat fact!", grabs his pencil, and writes something down. Then he paces around for a few hours in the excitement of having come still closer to knowing what language is really like.

词源

Etymology based on the perceived image of a linguist sitting in an armchair and pondering about language phenomena rather than carrying out field work. Compare armchair general, etc.
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