Helpful Comparisons for the Confused
Simon (Sim) Ile and Mattie Phore
Association for Comparative Associations
New concepts and fields can seem daunting at first, so we at the Association for Comparative Associations have assembled a crack team of comparators to create and compile this guide to a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic concepts and core ideas. We may add to it later as funding and scope allow. Note that some comparisons may seem at odds with others; we welcome a diversity of perspectives and points of view, even if some of them are clearly wrong.
- Linguistics: It’s like mathematics, only nobody agrees about any of the units or operations.
- or, Linguistics: It’s like psychology, only without the methodological rigor.
- Humanities: It’s like social science but without the methodological rigor or the need to cite anyone.
- Descriptivism: It’s like prescriptivism, only with more self-satisfaction.
- Prescriptivism: Like descriptivism, only you can’t take their word for it.
- Phonology: Like phrenology, a study of the workings of the brain, only without the bumps to guide you.
- Generative Phonology: It’s like historical reconstruction, only with more scope for the imagination.
- Morphology: It’s like the intersection of syntax and phonology, only you can ignore the normal procedures of both.
- Syntax: It’s like forensic linguistics, but nobody goes to jail when you’re wrong. We’re working on fixing that.
- Syntax Exercises: They’re like making a lego model but without anything fun to play with at the end.
- Non-L1 Syntax Exercises: They’re like figuring out a foreign language phrasebook but without the holiday.
- Syntactic Analysis: It’s like the secret handshakes for meetings of the Illuminati, only with more hand waving.
- Sentence Diagrams: They’re like physics but without the expensive machines or the grant money or the Nobel Prizes.
- The Minimalist Program: It’s not at all like the Standard Theory, EST, REST, GB or P&P (or indeed LFG or HPSG) and is also much, much better.
- Construction Grammar: It’s like grammar only without the grammar.
- Semantics: Like arguing over what constitutes a sandwich, but with more upside-down letters.
- Formal Semantics of Natural Language: Like formal semantics in logic, only with less taut a logical formulation.
- Polysemy: It’s like so many things but they’re all related.
- Semiotics: It’s like road signs or way-markers but without the road or the way.
- Pragmatics: It’s like semantics only nobody cares what the heck you intended.
- So, a Discourse Marker is, like, um, you know, only, in the end, basically, as I was saying... look, it’s like that.
- Sociolinguistics: It’s like regular linguistics, but in a pub.
- Historical Linguistics: It’s like regular history but with more asterisks.
- Etymology: It’s like historical linguistics without the rigor.
- Contact Linguistics: It’s like spectacles linguistics, only smaller.
- Toponymy: It’s like historical linguistics for people who are obsessed with words that mean “hill”.
- Onomastics: It’s like toponymy but without the geography.
- Lexicography: It’s like historical linguistics, only the people haven’t died yet.
- Text Linguistics: It’s like poetry, only you get points for counting things.
- First Language Acquisition: It’s like dealing with funding organizations, except that it’s you that gets excluded for their fussiness.
- Adult Second Language Learning: It’s like child language acquisition ... no wait, it’s nothing like child language acquisition.
- Communicative Language Learning: It’s like everyday chit-chat in your L1 but with even less learning.
- Immersion Learning: It’s like hacking through the Central American jungle but without finding El Dorado.
- Language Exchange 1–2–1s: They’re like two friends ordering a plate of food each and then swopping bits of each other’s order ... but even messier and more difficult to digest.
- Computational Linguistics: It’s like machine learning but less fashionable.
- Machine Learning: It’s like p-hacking only with wilder claims.
- Cultural Studies: It’s like an actual field of study, only with the ability to call watching Futurama reruns “research”.
- Academia: It’s like snakes and ladders, only with actual snakes.
- Joining the Illuminati: It’s like getting tenure, only with lower barriers to entry.
- The Definite Article: It’s like demonstrative determiners but without pointing.
- Nouns: They’re like individual entities; set and collections of entities; unbounded, fuzzy-edged quantities; abstract values, ideas, notions and concepts; specific individuals and unique entities; and actions. In fact, they’re like a lot of different things.
- Analogy: It’s like comparison only with Greek etymology.
- Dramatic Pause: It’s like........................that.
- Ellipsis: ’S like that.
- Exaggeration: It’s like absolutely everything in whole, wide world, man.
- Cataphora: It’s like anaphora only more forward looking.
- Oxymoron: It’s like itself, only it isn’t.
- Redundancy: It’s like saying something and then repeating it in a similar form except that you don’t add anything new in your follow-up to the first part of what you’ve said.
- Simile is like metaphor, only without the false assertion.
- Metaphor is simile with cojones.
- Proto-Indo-European: It’s like a conlang, only without the possibility of cosplay.
- Ido: It’s like Esperanto but with fewer diacritics and even fewer speakers.
- The Tengwar: They’re like the IPA only curvier.
- Free Verse: It’s like stream-of-consciousness speech only written down and with a title.
- Linguistic Anthropology: It’s like anthropological linguistics, only with more culture.
- Translation Studies: It’s like linguistics and comparative literature and sociology and cognitive psychology all decided to invent something together but forgot to tell each other what they were trying to make.
- Translation: It’s like interpretation only way more relaxed.
- Interpreting: It’s like translation, only you have to like people to do it.
- Lingua: It’s like Glossa but for people who are offended by “Billionaire Tears” mugs.
- Linguistic Inquiry: It’s like Speculative Grammarian, only without the lolz.
- Speculative Grammarian: it’s like a linguistics journal, only... No, wait, it’s exactly like a linguistics journal.
