SpecGram Vol CLXVII, No 1 Contents Letters to the Editor

To the Fools1 and Sages of April

A Letter from April Associate Editor Mikael Thompson

Frank Jablonka, 2012, “La Romania en terre arabe et l’arabe dans la Romania: trames d’échanges complémen­taires” in Vers une socio-sémiotique variationniste du contact postcolonial: le Maghreb et la Romania européenne, Praesens Verlag.

Chiasmus of the Month
April 2013

It is often said that Valentine’s Day is a commercialized monstrosity created by the Frankensteins of the greeting card industry to make a few extra bucks as people celebrate once a year what they should celebrate every day. Similarly, Mother’s Day is a sop to the consciences of unfilial children everywhere, Elvis’s birthday is a one-off observation of the spiritual power in all of us, and Labor Day is inherently contradictory. To which we can only say, Thank Elvis Arbor Day’s just one day a year!

By the same token, we at SpecGram abhor the very concept of April Fools’ Day, which is an effort of those bereft of wit and zest to limit to one day the trade we ply year-round. The concomitant commercialization of the leading holiday of western civilization, however, we view as a feature, not a bug. And so, enjoy; and if you do, please tip your server generously.


1 Managing Editor’s Note: For those who may feel the sting of embarrassment at falling for any of our false article titles... well, so you should; all the signs were there. Mangghuer doesn’t even have any personal pronouns beginning with f-, so even if you grant *p- as a reasonable reconstruction for proto-Altaic (which we don’t), this is irrelevant to the pronouns. Existing CYK parsing algorithms are Θ(n3 · |G|). Evenki doesn’t have front rounded vowels. Nasal resonance in whistles makes no sense. There is no turn taking in simultaneous interpreting. There is no present passive participle in Latin. Etc., etc., etc.

Letters to the Editor
SpecGram Vol CLXVII, No 1 Contents