A polyglot is someone who speaks many languages. A linguist is someone who can tell you the difference between a linguist and a polyglot.

That being said, my area of expertise is in the nature, structure, and variation of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics, though my specializations concentrated on morphology, syntactics and language universals. I got my degrees at a time when structualism in the field was giving way to poststructualism and Chomsy's work was beginning to receive a number of challenges. My thesis was an analysis of the universal principles involved in the formation of nominal compounds ...

A polyglot is someone who speaks many languages. A linguist is someone who can tell you the difference between a linguist and a polyglot.

That being said, my area of expertise is in the nature, structure, and variation of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics, though my specializations concentrated on morphology, syntactics and language universals. I got my degrees at a time when structualism in the field was giving way to poststructualism and Chomsy's work was beginning to receive a number of challenges. My thesis was an analysis of the universal principles involved in the formation of nominal compounds in various languages and their relation to phrase structure.

I got sucked into linguistics through my studies in Old English, Old Norse and Gothic. When I was teaching, I had a sign on my office door that read:

“Soli linguæ bonæ sunt linguæ mortuæ”

A linguist is someone who can tell you the difference between a linguist and a polyglot.

Looks like one just did.

I stand corrected, falsely assuming that the dictionary "definition" of "linguist" was correct:

lin·guist (lĭng'gwĭst)
n.
1. A person who speaks several languages fluently.
2. A specialist in linguistics.

You said:

I got my degrees at a time when structualism in the field was giving way to poststructualism

I'm a little confused, Jorjor. Because on all of your posts you are so exact in your spelling, etc., I don't mean to offend but, did you mean "structuralism" and "poststructuralism?"

Also, you mentioned:

Chomsy's work

I must...

A linguist is someone who can tell you the difference between a linguist and a polyglot.

Looks like one just did.

I stand corrected, falsely assuming that the dictionary "definition" of "linguist" was correct:

lin·guist (lĭng'gwĭst)
n.
1. A person who speaks several languages fluently.
2. A specialist in linguistics.

You said:

I got my degrees at a time when structualism in the field was giving way to poststructualism

I'm a little confused, Jorjor. Because on all of your posts you are so exact in your spelling, etc., I don't mean to offend but, did you mean "structuralism" and "poststructuralism?"

Also, you mentioned:

Chomsy's work

I must confess ignorance in that I am not familiar with "Chomsy." Is his work similar to Noam Chomsky, the creator of the theory of generative grammar?

In any case, Jorjor, you appear to have quite an extensive, and impressive, foundation in the study of language.