Letters to the Editor SpecGram Vol CLIII, No 4 Contents Shhhhhhh! Don’t Tell Anyone—An Anthropological Linguistic Study of the Hallucinogenic Language of the Noyd—Claude Searsplainpockets

The Derivation Of Moses From Middletown

[Astute readers will notice that this is the second time that our esteemed contributor Metalleus has sought to derive Moses from Middletown. The first such derivation was presented in Lingua Pranca, and differs substantively from the present analysis. Rather than explicitly state, (or, worse, tacitly imply) that this analysis is superior to the former, we invoke Reader-Response theories of literary criticism, thus making the comparable value of the analyses a function of you, the reader’s, interpretation of each. Good luck with that. —Eds.]

I have just been informed that during this last month one Silas O’Toole, a dedicated abstractionist known apparently to his linguistic colleagues as “Rules” O’Toole, in a paper delivered to the Linguistic Circle of Wyoming, proposed deriving Middletown from Moses with “only eighteen ordered processes.”

I will not dignify these “rules” by repeating them here; O’Toole obviously takes us for a bunch of low-watt bulbs. Who, blown by what ghastly winds of theory, is going to believe, outside of Wyoming at any rate, that from five segments you can get eight? Forms do not attract matter to them like black holes in the course of their derivations; rather they lose matter, like shrinking stars.

I have therefore proceeded to invert O’Toole’s analysis and derive instead Moses from Middletown; there are two possibilities. (To be sure, the first alternative leaves the issue of accretion vs. loss somewhat moot.)

I. A naive solution.

   //midltawn//
-idltawn Deletionm
-oziz Insertionmoziz

This solution definitely has the advantage of simplicity, but the rules seem somewhat ad hoc. The second solution posits rules which are or will be well-motivated either (a) now or (b) later:

II. A sophisticated solution.

   //midltawn//
d-Assimilationmilltawn
l-Deletionmiltawn
l-Deletion schon wieder malmitawn
Spirantizationmisawn
Voizingmizawn
Monoflippinphthongizationmizon
Vowel Harmonomozon
Syncopemozn
Anglo-Frisian Brightening<:->
n-Assimilationmozz
Epenthesismoziz

—Metalleus

Letters to the Editor
Shhhhhhh! Don’t Tell Anyone—An Anthropological Linguistic Study of the Hallucinogenic Language of the Noyd—Claude Searsplainpockets
SpecGram Vol CLIII, No 4 Contents