University Sues Self for Plagiarism—SpecGram Wire Services SpecGram Vol CLXVII, No 4 Contents Linguistic Insults for Every Occasion—Snidely von Särcäästïcüt and Yo Ma-Ma

Unremitting Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know
(because they aren’t actually true)


gathered at great personal risk of
psycholinguistic harm from actual student papers
by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira

This 33rd collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-written papers, demonstrates once again how students new to the study of language speculate about grammar after having imperfectly absorbed what their teachers think they have taught them.

Test Question—Word Formation

Consider the italicized word in this sentence:

Arguing with bigots is pointless.

  1. State the word-formation rule that forms this word.

  2. Give two other examples of English words that follow the same rule.

Answers to Question 1

Answers to Question 2

In alphabetical order: attachment, beginningless, bookmark, breakdown, brotherhood, cloudy, consonantal, clue, commitment, courageous, disappear, dislike, disobey, dreadful, faithful, foolishness, friend, friendly, greedy, handbag, handful, happiness, lovely, meaning, meaningful, mournful, national, point, postgraduate, printable, roomful, seasick, settlement, sharply, sinful, students, teacher, unhappy, unhelpful, use, walkman, washable, yawning.

More to come...

University Sues Self for PlagiarismSpecGram Wire Services
Linguistic Insults for Every OccasionSnidely von Särcäästïcüt and Yo Ma-Ma
SpecGram Vol CLXVII, No 4 Contents