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 ]

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 ]

A Student’s Guide to the History of Linguistics, Based on Example Sentences. Franz Neumayer. The following sentences exemplify important concepts in linguistics, and relate them to the linguists whose names are most associated with their development. They are provided as a service to MA students reviewing for comprehensive exams. If you do not understand how each sentence exemplifies its concept, or why these particular names are included, you need to re-read the relevant articles. This list will be expanded in future years. Readers are invited to submit additional examples. Accessibility Hierarchy Keenan and Comrie are the people by whom the accessibility hierarchy was described. Bloomfieldian Linguistics ... [ more ]

Psammeticus Press www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, BOOKS, SERIES, and MORE The following valuable volumes, spectacular series, and interesting items have been released with pride by Psammeticus Press, an academic publishing house founded in honor of the first and purest of linguistic inquirers: one might criticize his methods, but who could quibble with his results? Follow the links below to learn more about these fabulous books and excellent series, each destined to become a classic in the field. Retractions, Rejections and Reconstructions: The Multiply Integrated Lives of Linguistics Texts by Speculative Grammarian Retextualization Editor Reid Rafft Published 2025. 2,328 pages When it comes to texts ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Note: for this letters installment, we’ve limited letters to replies to various poems. That should keep the discussion polite and high-minded, right? —Eds. Sirs, Your ‘linguimerick’ (what’s that?) from Alfie and Ada (your grandfather’s parents?) is only slightly less metrically, lyrically and poetically offensive than it is inaccurate both historico-linguistically and linguistico-historically. Not only was there no such thing as the ‘Latin alphabet’ (instead, various alphabets emerged at different points in the lengthy evolution of the set of lects umbrella-termed ‘Latin’) but crucially, critically and crepuscularly, the ... [ more ]

Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics. by Trey Jones. As a service to our young and impressionable readers who are considering pursuing a career in linguistics, Speculative Grammarian is pleased to provide the following Gedankenexperiment to help you understand the possibilities and consequences of doing so. For our old and bitter readers who are too far along in their careers to have any real hope of changing the eventual outcome, we provide the following as a cruel reminder of what might have been. Let the adventure begin ... [ more ]

Variation in the English Indefinite Article. The problem of variation in the English indefinite article between the forms a and an has long vexed linguists. In his 1933 classic, Language, Bloomfield cited this case as an example of free variation at the morphological level, saying, “There seems to be no principled basis for predicting which form occurs in which contexts.” This solution was accepted by the neo-Bloomfieldians in general. It was Jespersen who first questioned the Bloomfieldian solution. In 1941, he proposed that the syntactic class of the following word determined the form of the indefinite article; specifically, an occurred before adjectives, and a before nouns. He ... [ more ]

Twenty Special Forms of Rhetoric. Rhetoric has been a topic of academic interest for, approximately, forever. Below are detailed a number of special types of rhetorical argument, some of which (eg, (3)) have been observed since the time of Aristotle [Aristotle] and before. Others (eg, (1)) have been clearly recognized only within the last century [eg, Davis and Hersh]. Some of these (eg, (2)) have never been explicitly delineated before. The uses of rhetoric are manifold and many explications of such have been made before, which this paper will not repeat. Proof by Intimidation, A: What do you think about objection X?, B: That's silly!, Proof by Loudness, A: What do you think about objection X?, B: That's VERY ... [ more ]

Linguistic Cocktails Prepared and extensively taste-tested, by the SpecGram Mixologists. Interest in cocktails has had a resurgence lately, with people trying new combinations and reviving forgotten blends. We shouldn’t forget the long history the grand subfield of Mixological Linguistics has. Below is a mix of old favorites and new delights. The Newmeyer 1 martini, dry, with olive 1 gin and tonic ... Disparage the martini vigorously for ten to twenty years, arguing that no real establishment should serve it. Urge everyone to drink gin and tonic (“the one true cocktail”) instead. Redefine “gin and tonic” so that it can refer to lots of things other than a cocktail that has gin in ... [ more ]

Hey Linguists!—Get Them to Get You a Copy of The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . Hey Linguists! Do you know why it is better to give than to receive? Because giving requires a lot more work! You have to know what someone likes, what someone wants, who someone is, to get them a proper, thoughtful gift. That sounds like a lot of work. No, wait. That’s not right. It’s actually more work to be the recipient—if you are going to do it right. You can’t just trust people to know what you like, what you want, who you are. You could try to help your loved ones understand a linguist’s needs and wants and desires—but ... [ more ]

SpecGram Books. A number of books and book-like entities (including various monographs) have come into existence in and around Speculative Grammarian over the years. Here we’ve collected links to all of their digital and corporeal manifestations in one place for your convenience. ... The Splendid Words, by James S. Pasto,; January 2019 The tale of a man obsessed, driven by a hunger and thirst to uncover—he knows not what! Far past reason, he has hunted and hated, been haunted and humiliated. Now his search has borne fruit—discover whether it is bitter or sweet! Available to read online. ... The History of Rome, by Tim Pulju; July 2018 Speculative ... [ 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 ]

The Scrabble Cheaters’ Dictionary. provided as a service to our readers, by Speculative Grammarian. Have you ever backed yourself into a corner, lexicographically speaking—while playing Scrabble, or chatting around the water cooler at work, or telling tall tales at the pub? The story is an unfortunate but familiar one: a linguist, polyglot, or other linguaphile finds themselves in the heady position of declaiming to the untutored masses on the subject of a particular word, only to realize that perhaps they’ve over-reached, and no such word exists. A standard fallback position in such a situation is to claim certainty that the word in question—while the details may ... [ more ]

Fables of Linguistics, The Story of the Weak Vowels. The Tale Teller of Tollerton Town. Whose is that voice in the distance, singing? The Tale Teller of Tollerton Town! But it’s more of a growl than a clear tone ringing— Though admittedly he’s been up dale (and then down). He’s been telling tales since before the beginning, Though he makes it all up and he can’t really spell— And most of his Tales deserve a good binning. But he’s here now! I wonder what Tale he will Tell. Once upon a time in Vowel Town, a wide-open space next door to the busy, noisy, clucking and clicking of Consonant City, there lived a happy community of vowels. Some were quite open and were unafraid to discuss ... [ 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 ]

To Whom It May Concern. A Letter from the Managing Editor. We received a lot of mail in response to the SpecGram senior editor’s column in the last issue. To avoid further legal entanglements, we would like to offer the following clarifications: Although we regularly reject substandard submissions, even those authored by some of the sogenannte “guiding lights” of the field, SpecGram proudly subscribes to basic provision 226 of the Code of the American Association of Linguistics Journals, which states “we solemnly promise never to reject an article submitted by Noam Chomsky.” We hereby affirm that we have never knowingly rejected any Chomskian prose. (Or poetry, either.) We ... [ more ]

Minimal Forests: The Threat Of Linguistic, Devastation As A Result of Deforestation. GOALS:, The purpose of this paper is to explain the subtle but powerful relationship between language and the environment. We will be using the subtle but powerful method of mathematical induction, and examining the subtle but powerful concept of minimal pairs in establishing phonemic contrasts in a language. EVIDENCE:, Consider the following minimal sets from two totally unrelated languages, Sindhi and Thai: (1), Sindhi, pənu 'leaf', p^hənu 'snake hood', bənu 'forest', (2), Thai, pàa 'forest', p^hàa 'to split', bàa 'shoulder', Notice that in both ... [ more ]

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