SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

Also Somewat Against Diskarding Symbolz from Anglisist Riting—But in a Kompletely Different Way. Jacqueline Xóchitl Xaviera Concepción Wołoszczak, PhD and, Dzhakalin Sotsheetluh Zaiveeëra Konsepseeyown Vowoshtshak, PeeAitshDee. Dr. Thik W. Trals, in hiz skreed against diskarding symbolz from Anglisist riting—entitled “Against Discarding Symbols from Anglicist Writing”—haz konstrukted a very weak strawman hu nonedheless bested him. Most ridikulously, he defendz ⟨z⟩—haz anywon serious about spelling reform aktshually sugdzhested removing ⟨z⟩ from dhe alfabet? It providez a voist kounterpart to ... [ more ]

Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part ז—Synchronic vs. Diachronic. Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn. If you have fallen behind, try to catch up. For those who are caught up, a simple explanation of the difference between synchronic contrast and diachronic contrast, illustrated with examples from a couple of the beautiful Romance languages—Spanish and its ancestor, Latin: Synchronic ... Diachronic ... Up next: The Trouble with NLP. References, Barðdal, Jóhanna H. (2001). Case in Icelandic: A Synchronic, Diachronic and Comparative Approach. Blevins, Juliette. (2004). Evolutionary Phonology: The Emergence of Sound ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian and SpecGram.com. Our Story. The august journal Speculative Grammarian has a long, rich, and varied history, weaving an intricate and subtle tapestry from disparate strands of linguistics, philology, history, politics, science, technology, botany, pharmacokinetics, computer science, the mathematics of humor, basket weaving, archery, glass blowing, roller coaster design, and bowling, among numerous other, less obvious fields. SpecGram, as it is known to devotees and sworn enemies alike, has for centuries sought to bring together the greatest yet least understood minds of the time, embedding itself firmly in the cultural and psychological matrix of the global society while ... [ more ]

Everything Linguists Ever Wanted To Know About Prime Numbers*. *but really shouldn’t have asked Adapted by A. Nonymous, Linguist, from various primary sources. How do various types of linguists go about analyzing, for themselves and their conspecifics, the primality of odd numbers greater than one? The methods vary by discipline, but the results are all equally valid. The Autosegmental Phonologist Like the other odd numbers, 9 is underlyingly specified for the feature [prime], but 9 surfaces as composite because of an [even] feature spread from 8. The Corpus Linguist 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime, 11 is prime, and 13 is prime. Thus, in our corpus, odd numbers are prime at a probability ... [ more ]

Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part E—Phonetics vs. Phonology. Hilário Parenchyma, C.Phil. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn. We will skip the introduction, as we have been there, done that. Once more into the breach! For this installment in our series on Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, we will turn our attention to Phonetics and Phonology and the difference between the two: Phonetics:, ... Phonology:, ... Thanks to Professor Phlogiston, of the Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn, for the opportunity of a lifetime, as a student, to, on this occasion, share with so many of my fellow linguisticians my views, as illustrated above, concerning matters, which are of such immeasurable import ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXXXIV, Number 1 ... Trey Jones, Editor-in-Chief Keith Slater, Executive Editor Mikael Thompson, Senior Editor Jonathan Downie, Contributing Editor, Associate Editors, Pete Bleackley Mark Mandel, Assistant Editors, Virginia Bouchard Emily Davis Vincent Fish Deak Kirkham Yuval Wigderson, Editorial Associates, Brenda Boerger Bethany Carlson James Pasto Mary Shapiro, Joey Whitford, Comptroller General Insightfully Disingenuous March 2019 ... [ more ]

A Love/Hate Relationship: Pesky Antonyms. Jessie Sams, Stephen F. Austin State University. When students get to college, the majority of them have never thought about antonyms as being anything more than “opposites.” So big is the opposite of small, just like buyer is the opposite of seller. Then, all of a sudden, students are forced into a linguistics course with a professor who tells them that they have to learn to differentiate among different types of antonyms. Student’s minds are nearly exploding with information as they have to learn definitions of terms like ‘converse’ and ‘gradable’ and ‘complementary’ in the world of ... [ more ]

Divine Unification Grammar. Ǣlfgār λ. Garcia, Güthlestan Seminary. One of the most hotly contested aspects of modern syntactic theory is its emphasis on modular subsystems of grammar and, in the case of some authors, its postulation of a genetic basis for these subsystems. In one particularly popular theory, Government and Binding (cf. the Chomsky stack in your local library), linguistic competence is said to be due to the interaction of a number of modular principles which bear no relation to any other cognitive system, and which are ultimately due to genetic encoding. Such an explanation, of course, has numerous problems, among which is the fact the reduction to genetics is, in effect, a ... [ more ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Volume CLXIV, Number 1, February 2012, MANAGING EDITOR, SENIOR EDITOR, EDITOR EMERITUS, Trey Jones, Keith Slater, Tim Pulju, ... CONSULTING EDITORS, David J. Peterson, Bill Spruiell, ASSOCIATE EDITORS, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Daniela Müller, Mikael Thompson, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES, Bryan Allen, Cem Bozsahin, Jonathan Downie, Aya Katz, Jouni Maho, Kevin, McGowan, Tel Monks, Sheri Wells-Jensen, COMPTROLLER GENERAL, Joey Whitford, I Can Has Kasemarker?, ... [ more ]

Google Results Support an Anglo-Genesis Model of Language Degradation. by U. Pendleton Start, Magnavox University. Abstract¹ When a bird flying overhead defecates, the likelihood of a human walking below to be hit by any coprological material decreases the further away he or she is from the epicenter of the avian scatological incident. Recent work suggests that a similar effect may operate on human culture and language. In this paper I show that the number of Google hits for a given language decreases the farther away the home country of that language is from the world’s most important English-speaking country: America. This result, which is not explained by modern theories of linguistic evolution, ... [ more ]

Language Made Difficult, Vol. L — The SpecGram LingNerds are on their own this time. After some Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics, the LingNerds discuss the dangers of mispronouncing the names of Canadian provinces, and then advise students as to what they should *not* do. They also fail to celebrate the 50th episode. Many outtakes are provided. ... [ listen ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Volume CLXIV, Number 2, March 2012, MANAGING EDITOR, SENIOR EDITOR, EDITOR EMERITUS, Trey Jones, Keith Slater, Tim Pulju, ... CONSULTING EDITORS, David J. Peterson, Bill Spruiell, ASSOCIATE EDITORS, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Daniela Müller, Mikael Thompson, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES, Bryan Allen, Cem Bozsahin, Jonathan Downie, Jouni Maho, Tel Monks, Sheri Wells-Jensen, COMPTROLLER GENERAL, Joey Whitford, Quantity, not Quality, ... [ more ]

You Xould be Using ColEctivO X!®™, The Birthifying of an Executive Modal Verb. Atherton Brock Carrington Delancey Eastburn, CEO Farnsworth Godfrey Holden Ingram Jamison, Jr. CFO Keaton Livingston Merriweather Northrup Osborne, III, CIO Peyton Quinn Roane Sinclair Thurston, Jr. COO and, with only mild disdain, Upton Vanderbilt Windsor Xavier Yancy Zimmerman, Sr. CTO Executivized Linguistickish Solutionizers, Inc.. Time is Money. —Benjamin Franklin Of course, it is important that a person as important as the “Chief Executive Officer” have a title that sounds appropriately important. But it can be both tiring and tiresome to have to enunciate and/or listen ... [ more ]

A Preliminary Field Guide to Linguists, Part Two. Athanasious Schadenpoodle, University of Nueva Escranton. Introduction The previous installment, dealing with Neoplatonicus and Functionalisticus, comprised a brief discussion of the less problematic genera in the family--less problematic in the sense that their grouping is not contested among those working in this area. This section will deal with two groups whose taxonomic status is a matter of quite some debate; to a large extent, the groupings presented should be taken as tentative, and done largely for the sake of organized presentation (cf. Gnibbes 1998 and Czechzindemeyl 1999 for representative positions on grouping of these ... [ more ]

The Speculative Grammarian AutoGrammatikon™ Quasi-Universal Translator℠. On several occasions, mention has been made of the AutoGrammatikon™ Quasi-Universal Translator℠ in the pages of SpecGram; in the current epoch, these references date back as early as at least 2004.¹ In the following years there have been denials,² mentions,³ more⁴ mentions,⁵ leaked internal documents,⁶ and even some early oral history⁷ (accompanied as it was by additional denials). Throughout this time the consistent official stance of the Editorial board of SpecGram has been to deny that the AutoGrammatikon™ exists, ... [ more ]

A Primer in, SF Xenolinguistics. - eep opp ork ah-ah -, Justin B. Rye. — - ash nazg durbatulûk -, Table of Contents. Fantasy Exotic Tongues—An Introduction, Let’s Speak Alien—In Ten Easy Lessons, The Unspeakable—And The Unthinkable, Universal Translators—A Buyer’s Guide, CETI for Beginners—Little Green Manuals — - borag thungg -, FANTASY EXOTIC TONGUES—An Introduction. If you’ve reached the online version of this article chasing the search-string “ +fantasy +exotic +tongues ” then I’m afraid you’ve probably come to ... [ more ]

Linguimericks, Book ६०. A grammar purported to show Some data I wanted to know, But I should have heeded, The sentence I needed Said, “Klaatu barada nikto.” —Pete Bleackley, The Brothers Grimm, On a curious whim, Set aside folklore documentation, To reconstruct Proto-Germanic consonant aspiration —Clara Hu, It’s not you A linguist who did Oceanic Had a rep as big as Titanic, With papers and books And dashing good looks, He also was quite the romantic —Terry Tepuke, Prescriptivist hacks have me beat; They keep on their quest to unseat Changes in language. They scream out in anguish When it’s stated that passives are neat! —Col. O. Nihilist, I’m about half thru PhD ... [ more ]

The Linguist Parallel Parking Challenge. Pjerpe N. D’Kular & Oldja Loppy, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. In an attempt to better understand the thought processes of expert linguists, scientists at the University of Shuffleboard set up a challenge of spatial and logical reasoning. Linguists from a variety of subfields were asked to parallel park a small white hatchback between two stationary articulated trucks. Results follow: Three phoneticians were hospitalized after spending four hours next to the exhaust trying to transcribe engine noise. Two Chomskyan linguists spent six hours arguing that parking was innate and so the ideal linguist would be able to do it easily. He looks a lot like ... [ more ]

Оrthоgraрhіc Perрlехer. Welcome to the Speculative Grammarian Оrthοɡrаphіс Ρerplехеr! This not-quite-pointless little tool will munge your text, randomly replacing some characters with homoglyphs that are nearly identical¹—or at least quite reasonably similar to the untrained eye. Why? To make text both very hard and very easy to find via normal search (try to find “οrthoɡrарhіс реrрleхer” on this page, for example); to confuse and amaze your friends and enemies alike;⁶ to pass the time in a ... [ more ]

How Linguistics Got Her Groove Back. Gunnr Guðr Entgegenlächeln, FG Klopstock Universiteit. Common wisdom—an oxymoron if ever there was one—has it that linguistics and linguists themselves have a bit of a reputation problem. Are linguists boring? Incomprehensible? Pointless? Evil? The contention of this paper is—given that perception is nine-tenths of reality—unless we ask, we’ll never know. To that end, I conducted a survey, which took place at a cocktail party, where there were many linguists and many non-linguists who were not particularly well-acquainted with linguistics. I interviewed 3 (±0.15) non-linguist ... [ more ]

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