the frustrations of crossing disciplines

[fox]

me, in my paper's draft introduction: "Assuming that adult speakers have a preference for the minimal and maximal length in syllables of lexical words in their native languages (we may discount function words and grammatical shifters, like articles and pronouns, as these are not carriers of content and are stored differently in the lexicon, assuming they are stored there at all), at what stage do children begin to exhibit this preference?"

psych prof, in the margin next to "stored differently in the lexicon": "Cite?"

argh. argh. i mean, of course grammatical shifters and articles and prepositions and whatnot are different from "real words". of course they are. you mean i have to explain how?

for the professor who's not a linguist, yes. grr. grr.