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SpecGram Archives. A word from our Senior Archivist, Holger Delbrück: While bringing aging media to the web and hence the world is truly a labor of love, SpecGram tries the passion of even the most ardent admirer. Needless to say, we’ve fallen behind schedule. At every turn, the authors found in the pages of this hallowed journal stretch credibility with their gratuitous font mongering—first it was the IPA, then a few non-standard transcription systems, then Greek, and not just the alphabet, but the entire diacritical mess, and now I’ve got some god-forsaken Old Church Slavonic glyph sitting on my desk that no one can even name, and which would give the Unicode Consortium ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Merchandise. Introduction. In order to lend a hand to our good friends and steadfast supporters over at the Linguist List during their 2006 fund drive, we prepared a small selection of limited edition SpecGram merchandise, including T-shirts, stickers and magnets. Originally these items were only available as prizes awarded as part of the Linguist List fund drive. In 2012, several of the SpecGram editors suffered from a rare form of collective frontal lobe damage, which made it seem like a good idea to put together a SpecGram book. The result in 2013 was The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics. In 2014, Editor Mikael Thompson entered a deep fugue ... [ more ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Volume CLXV, Number 4; October 2012, MANAGING EDITOR Trey Jones SENIOR EDITOR Keith Slater EDITOR EMERITUS Tim Pulju Speculative Grammarian, Vol CLXV, No 4 CONSULTING EDITORS David J. Peterson Bill Spruiell, ASSOCIATE EDITORS Madalena Cruz-Ferreira Daniela Müller Mikael Thompson, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES Cem Bozsahin Florian Breit Jonathan Downie Adam Graham Tel Monks Mary Pearce Callum Robson Mary Shapiro Sheri Wells-Jensen, COMPTROLLER GENERAL Joey Whitford Stop Voicing Now! ... [ more ]

The C-Rhyme and Pun-ish-ment of St. Alvin. by Jerry Fyodor & Josef Dobrovskýevsky. It is now commonly accepted that St. Alvin was always accompanied by an assistant called Theodorus. Theodorus was a budding philosopher, with interests in Kant, Hegel and innateness in generative grammar. He was however, very rotund and was therefore known as the Deep Fat Friar. As a young monk, St Alvin left his first monastery, where he had taken a vow of silence, to found an order that believed that people were best served by creating attractive paper to put around Christmas gifts. It is for this reason that his autobiography was entitled “From Trappist to Wrappist.” The members of that order were noted for their ... [ more ]

The SpecGram Ministry of Propaganda. Welcome to the SpecGram Ministry of Propaganda. The SpecGram Archive Elves™ have undertaken a project to digitize and share a sheaf of early 20th century SpecGram propaganda posters, which were used during the Great Linguistic War and the Second Linguistic War to encourage linguists everywhere to keep a stiff upper lip and a sense of humor during those trying times. We provide the digitized posters here for you to enjoy, retrospect on, and share. Select a poster to see a higher quality image, and for links to share on social media, to email friends, and to view or download the highest quality version of the image. ... Read SpecGram Every Month! ... [ more ]

Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome . Are you looking for a book about ancient Roman history that’s interesting, informative, and amusing? No? Oh. Well, all the same, as long as you’re on this webpage already, we’d like to recommend that you buy Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome. Easy to read, full of genuine historical facts, and adorned with amateurish hand-drawn pictures, The History of Rome is so good that even Girolamo Savonarola might hesitate to cast it into the flames. And best of all, it’s only $6.99! Buy one now! Interested, but wary of being burned by a slick advertising campaign for a product that fails to live up to the hype? Then download the free preview and read ... [ more ]

Prevent Sad Holiday Linguists—Get Them a Copy of The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . Every holiday season, countless linguists have their celebrations ruined by thoughtless gifts given by clueless loved ones. They say it’s the thought that counts, but we know that’s only true if that thought is accompanied by at least some tiny semblance of awareness of a linguist’s hopes, dreams, and aspirations. We could try to explain those hopes and dreams and aspirations to you—but we’d have to give you a mini course on phonetics, phonology, and voice onset time first. Instead, we can assure you that SpecGram has the right gift for your linguist loved ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CXCV, Number 2 Penultimate Issue Editor-in-Chief: Trey Jones; Executive Editors: Keith Slater, Mikael Thompson; Senior Editors: Jonathan Downie, Deak Kirkham, Vincent Fish; Contributing Editors: Pete Bleackley, Luca Dinu; Associate Editors: Yuval Wigderson, Daniel Swanson; Editorial Associates: Kenny Baclawski, Emily Davis, Gabriel Lanyi, Mark Mandel, Tel Monks; Comptroller General: Joey Whitford; All the Noise That’s Fit to Print; November 2025, ... [ more ]

Psammeticus Press, www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, NEW PUZZLE, This puzzle is worth 250 points. Critical Readings in Linguistics Crossword Puzzle, By H.D. Onesimus and his underlings, Presented by Psammeticus Press. Price: Free In honor of this SpecGram puzzle issue, H.D. Onesimus presents this crossword puzzle. The clues are all based on essential works in Linguistics. Prize! Anyone who submits a correct solution to this puzzle will receive a certificate for a 2.5% discount on one book from Psammeticus Press. Across, 1. Word #15 on page 234 of Linguistics for Lazy People, 4. Word #220 on page 8 of An Interpreter’s Dictionary of Linguistic ... [ more ]

Bonus 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 14th 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. Choose two of the bolded words in the following text and explain how you can assign word classes to each of them: ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All ... [ 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 ]

PAID ADVERTISEMENT Plagiarism Uncovered in SpecGram Pages. The Linguistic Inquirer. Pursuant to the terms of the pre-litigious resolution of Grammar Entelechy v. Speculative Grammarian¹ the editors of SpecGram have recently disclosed the truth about the academically distasteful practices by which the allegedly “esteemed”² journal foists its linguistic and paralinguistic agenda on the profession. Of particular concern is Speculative Grammarian³’s long-running, recurring, and well-documented theme that languages, dialects, and grammars can be or become degenerate.^{4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, ...} [ more ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Volume CXCV, Number 3; February 2026, C HIEF C AT H ERDER &, A RBITER OF THE L AST W ORD, Trey Jones, O RDER OF THE, S PECULATIVE P SAMMETICOI, Keith Slater, Mikael Thompson, Tim Pulju, Bill Spruiell, Speculative Grammarian, Vol CXCV, No 3, H EAD OF L EARNING, L INGUISTICS T HROUGH, S ATIRE AND P UNS, Jonathan Downie, S YNTACTICO- P OET &, U NDER- E DITOR OF, U NDER- E DITING, Deak Kirkham, S ENIOR P UZZLING, T EST P ILOT, Vincent Fish, K EEPER OF THE, E DITORIAL T EA C ADDY, Pete Bleackley, A SSOCIATE D EPUTY, A SSISTANT S UB- M ANAGER, OF S ATIRICAL S UCCESS, Luca Dinu, O RTHOGRAPHER- A T- L ARGE, Daniel Swanson, D ILETTANTE E MERITUS, Tel ... [ 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 ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CXCIII, Number 2 Editor-in-Chief: Trey Jones; Executive Editors: Keith Slater, Mikael Thompson; Senior Editors: Jonathan Downie, Deak Kirkham; Contributing Editors: Pete Bleackley, Vincent Fish; Associate Editors: Luca Dinu, Yuval Wigderson, Daniel Swanson; Editorial Associates: Emily Davis, Guillaume Jacques, Andrew Lamont, Gabriel Lanyi, Mark Mandel, Joshua Nash, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Comptroller General: Joey Whitford; One More Tier in the Phonology Hierarchy ; October 2023 ... [ more ]

Linguistic Topology. I. Juana Pelota-Grande, Centre den Geometrik Linguistiken . That many groups of human languages are sprung from some common source is obvious to any student of the subject, whether linguist, philologist, or polyglot. However, the detailed nature of these genetic relationships is often difficult to unambiguously determine--and likely the subject of heated debate. The impressive array of analytic methods brought to bear on the problem is a testament to the inherent difficulty of the task. However, one of the human species' most amazing tools for analysis--vision--has never been fully and properly applied to the problem. Language and vision are two towering pillars of ... [ more ]

Why Linguistics is Not a Science. The SpecGram Editorial Board. In a couple of recent editorials we have answered several of the questions most frequently submitted by SpecGram readers. Since the publication of those editorials, by far the most common question received in our offices has been, “Could please furnish us with your bank account number so we can transfer payment to you?” We cannot in good conscience accede to this request, as it violates a number of constraints and therefore suffers from what we like to call “fatal infelicity.” Another frequent question, though, is more worthy of our attention, (though only due to its being fifth on the frequency list) and it is to that more ... [ more ]

English is the Original Language. Modern linguistics has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt what many of the ancients, especially Plato, already had surmised: language is inherent in the human from before birth, and the so-called “learning of language” is actually the application of the principles of Universal Grammar (UG) to the limited and faulty performance data of adult speakers in such a way as to make sense of the data. A natural question now arises. What if the child is not exposed to any data? Since UG is inherent, will the child develop language anyway, and if so, which language? My colleagues and I at Stammbaum University became interested in these questions several years ago. Because of the current ... [ more ]

The Priority of Written Language. One of the principle tenets of modern American linguistics is the priority of spoken as opposed to written language. This priority is understood both as importance as an object of study and as temporal precedence. Temporal precedence is further taken to include both ontogenetic and historical precedence; that is, as students in introductory linguistics classes are repeatedly told, children learn to understand speech and to speak themselves before they learn to read and to write, while historically (more properly prehistorically), the story goes, humanity had already been speaking for tens of thousands of years by the time writing was invented. It is this last conclusion, that speech ... [ more ]

Natural Phonological Processes in Adult and Child Speech. David Ingram, University of British Columbia. In this brief note, I would like to lay out some of the theoretical issues involved in the examination of phonological processes in synchronic language study and the search for these processes in children’s speech. First, the nature of phonological processes (PPs) in children’s speech (CS) has been pursued in several works, especially Stampe (1969). PPs in adult synchronic languages (AL), on the other hand, are spread across a variety of studies, both taxonomic (TP) and generative (GP), although they have been a major focus of Stampe’s theory of natural phonology (SNP) and the version discussed as natural ... [ more ]

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