SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

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, 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 ]

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 ]

Linguistic Contributions To The Formal Theory Of Big-Game Hunting¹. R. Mathiesen, Brown University. The Mathematical Theory of Big-Game Hunting must surely be ranked among the major scientific achievements of the twentieth century. That this is so is largely the work of one man, H. Pétard, in whose fundamental paper (1938) certain recent advances in mathematics and physics were employed with great skill to create a theory of unmatched—not to say unmatchable!—power and elegance. One must not, of course, dismiss Pétard’s predecessors totally out of hand: the field had a long and distinguished history as a technology, was raised to the rank of a science by the ... [ 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 ]

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 ]

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 ]

The Sorno Script. As is glaringly obvious to the merest twit, a human utterance, objectively and dispassionately considered, consists chiefly of a series of vowels, interrupted occasionally by heterogeneous and evanescent perturbations of formant patterns, called consonants. Nothing could be clearer, than that speech is essentially a matter of vowels. It might even be said that a consonant is nothing but a gleam in the eye of a vowel. Nonetheless, certain ancient peoples, innocent as the driven snow of the above fact, converged with one mind upon systems of writing in which only consonants were, for the most part, written. This perversity was so widely imitated, that all ancient writing systems, with the exception of the ... [ 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 ]

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 ]

LingDoku—Like SuDoku, But For Linguists. Trey Jones, l’École de SpecGram, Washington D.C.. The Japanese number/logic game SuDoku ... has become all the rage around the globe of late, and in a shameless attempt to cash in on that popularity, Speculative Grammarian is pleased to concoct a SuDoku-like activity for Linguists. Traditional SuDoku requires a certain amount of logical reasoning and subtle consideration of the evidence which many linguists probably find time-consuming, labor-intensive, and boring. LingDoku simplifies the logical components of SuDoku, and introduces a thin veneer of linguistics which confuses outsiders while making linguists feel superior. The rules of ... [ more ]

Reconstructing the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Joseph Paul Stemberger. In the recent years, much attention has been given to the vocabulary of Proto-Indo-European (PIE). What words the PIE-ans did and did not have can tell us much. Benveniste (1973) discusses PIE kinship systems, economy and ways of life. In these studies, however, there is one very important area of the lexicon that has been neglected. No one has yet analyzed the terms for body parts to determine what the PIE-ans actually looked like. Most have probably assumed that they looked much like their descendants do today, but there is no empirical evidence supporting this assumption, and we really must attempt to verify or discredit it. At first ... [ more ]

My Love is Like a Colorless Green Simile. by Rasmus Burns. O my love’s like a colorless green simile, That’s newly sprung from your lips. O my love’s like the rhythmic prosody, That gently sways your hips. As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in love am I. And I will love thee still my Dear, Tho’ all languages should die. Tho’ all languages should die, my Dear, And ev’ry speaker calm his tongue: I will love thee still, my Dear, Even tho’ the words have gone. And fare thee well, my Love, And fare thee well, a while!, And I will speak again, my Love, Tho’ it be only grunts and sighs. ... [ more ]

IPA-to-ILPS Transcriber. by Daniel Swanson. Type International Phonetic Alphabet^* into the input box and get the corresponding Inter-Lingual Personal Script below. Or, handcraft individual consonants and vowels. See “Inter-Lingual Personal Script” (SpecGram CLXXXIX.2) for more information. Scale, Add IPA string Add Consonant Add Vowel — ^* Suprasegmentals and tones are not currently implemented. Some other parts of the IPA may also not be supported. ... [ more ]

In this study we explore how the linguist interacts with a wide range of structural variability by simulating not only the behavior of the trees themselves but also the behavior of the linguist. ... [ more ]

Verity Stob and the Super Subjunction. Excuse me, Miss, but your pronouns need upgrading. by Verity Stob. [SpecGram editors’ note: We are pleased to reprint, with permission of the author, Verity Stob’s excellent review of English V3.31, originally published in The Register, on June 1st, 2011 —Eds.] Just downloaded the beta version of English V3.31, and I have to say I am very excited about it. This is definitely going to be a feather in the cap of Anglophones everywhere, and way better than the notorious V2.99 release of French (or the ‘deux point neufty-neuf’ as it has become known). There’s a ton of new features to talk about, so let me dive ... [ more ]

CLASSIFIEDS. Lloyds of London solicits predictive wagers of the most gentlemanly sort (based only on coherent theoretical assumptions, naturally) regarding events of historical significance in the stately and majestic Field of Linguistics. SECOND-HAND BOOKS for the busy linguist. Never had time to actually read Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures, but ashamed to admit it? Our roughly used copies of Important Books come with ready-made underlinings, coffee stains, and torn pages. One look around your office and the tenure-review board will assume you’ve read them all thoroughly. If they didn’t ask, then you didn’t lie, did you? Call Second Hand Success at ... [ more ]

Psammeticus Press www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, Chiasmus of the Month Awards ... This somewhat irregular award is a sign of our recognition of and deep appreciation for the authors’ contribution to the upholding of decent writing standards in academic literature and to the dissemination of the finest of speech figures. Winners are selected for ~~each~~ ~~most~~ many issues by our Chiastic Editor and Editorial Chiasturge. The honorees to date are listed below. Chiasmus of the Month; November 2025, Todd Copeland, 2024, “A Figure of Speech and a Speechless Figure: Determinations of Identity in George Sand’s Indiana and Edith Wharton’s The House of ... [ more ]

The SpecGram Quiz to End All Quizzes. ... Everyone makes Internet quizzes—even your three richest widowed aunts use their mite, if not their might, to bedazzle the gullible and amass those sweet, sweet clicks. So stand aside, ladies, SpecGram is on the ~~make~~ move! There’s a new quiz powerhouse in town, and since we don’t believe in planned obsolescence, you’ll never need nor want another!, Just answer these 17 handy-dandy mutually orthogonal questions to get the answers to all (or at least the 7 most important) of your burning questions. ... [ more ]

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