How to Speak to Foreigners—An Anthropological Linguistic Study of the ʔɪɯnkʈlɳɪɞʃt—Claude Searsplainpockets & Helga von Helganschtein y Searsplainpockets SpecGram Vol CLXII, No 1 Contents SpecGram Dialect Expertise Services—Advertisement

THE MINIMAL THOUGHT LECTURE SERIES PRESENTS

RATICAL MINIMALISM
DERIVATION AND EXPLANATION IN A BEHAVIORIST PARADIGM

[image of a rat in a maze, reading a syntax book]

The self-esteem­ed Dr. S. Mor­gen­stern has, in his own words, “out­done [him­self]” this year with the de­vel­op­ment of a ground-break­ing new area of ex­per­i­ment­al work for the­o­ret­i­cal lin­guis­tics: a be­hav­ior­al im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Min­i­mal­ist Pro­gram. “High­ly sci­en­ti­fic maze-run­ning ex­per­i­ments have re­veal­ed start­ling ca­pa­bil­i­ties once be­liev­ed to be the sole do­main of Yu­mans.” Rats can be stim­u­lat­ed to MERGE small piles of food into larg­er piles. They can al­so be made to MOVE these piles from one place to an­other. Cru­cial­ly, these be­hav­iors were pre­dict­ab­ly used to com­mun­i­cate com­plex mean­ings, e.g.: “I want both of these piles”, “these are mine”, or “I am go­ing to eat all of this (and you rats over there can­not).” Ap­pro­pr­i­ate foot­wear is par­tic­u­lar­ly re­com­mend­ed for this talk.
“This new abil­it­y to pre­dict and con­trol the syn­tac­tic be­hav­iors of Rat­tus rat­tus should fi­nal­ly bring lin­guis­tics to its pro­per place among the le­git­i­mate sci­ences.”
Collaborator: Dr. Alan Smithee
Dr. Mor­gen­stern wish­es to ex­tend sin­cere thanks to Dr. Al­an Smith­ee whose of­fice pro­vid­ed the pop­u­la­tion of rats used in this study. 		Com­ing soon to a lec­ture hall near you!

How to Speak to Foreigners—An Anthropological Linguistic Study of the ʔɪɯnkʈlɳɪɞʃt—Claude Searsplainpockets & Helga von Helganschtein y Searsplainpockets
SpecGram Dialect Expertise Services—Advertisement
SpecGram Vol CLXII, No 1 Contents