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 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 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 ]

Optimal Divinity and Divine Optimality: Key Points of Difference in DUG and OT. By Athanasious Schadenpoodle. Both Divine Unification Grammar (henceforth DUG; adumbrated by Garcia 1990) and Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993) represent attempts to simultaneously maintain claims for universals and for meaningful language particulars. DUG does so, of course, by positing a language-transcendent pantheon, the members of which are not always in agreement, and the collective judgments of whom, therefore, can vary over specific languages.¹ OT approaches the same problem by positing violable universal constraints, the ranking of importance of which varies from language to language. Essentially (and these ... [ more ]

The SpecGram Linguistic Advice Collective. Are you in a world of linguistic hurt? The SpecGram Linguistic Advice Collective (SLAC) will offer you empirical, empathic, emphatic advice you can use!^* Remember, if you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, then you don’t need advice! So, if you need advice, trust us—and cut yourself some SLAC! ... Dear SLAC, Thanks ever so for the recent advice column on focus. All this while I’ve been pluralising it as feces (pron: [fekes]) on analogy with man~men and ox~oxen. Anyway, as a health conscious diner with an obsession for half-rhymes, the column got me thinking: ... [ more ]

Miff-Conceived, Miff-Guided, and Miff-Executed: Season 1 of Miffy the Selkie Slaughterer . by Margaret Pearl Collier, Lecturer, School of the Communicative Arts and Sciences, University of Even More Northern British Columbia, Atlin. TV programming repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as travesty. This seems to be the motto of Word-TV creative director S.T. Spew-Monty, who never met an original idea he didn’t bronze, stamp with his own image, and hock at a pawnshop for pence on the pound. Certainly he ran true to form in greenlighting this show and gas-lighting his superiors into emitting it. Admittedly, after two decades of vampires, zombies, werewolves, outlaw mutant yeti, and rabid ... [ more ]

Ode to RRG. Deedles D’Dee. In Role and Reference Grammar, the predicate semantics Are first among the theory’s theoretical mechanics; The model’s more than that of course: a rich and radiant prism: Macroroles, the AUH and the linking algorithm. ’Cause RRG’s a theory which is rich and round and real; It’s syntax’ best-kept secret but a massive function deal. Chomsky, Goldberg, Jackendoff, these names need no explainin’! But who tops off the list? Professor Robert D. Van Valin!, So here’s a little ditty on the theme of aspect lexical (Please forgive that little bit of syntax asymmetrical; It’s just to get the scansion), a.k.a. Aktionsart Which is where the ... [ 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 ]

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. Warehouse Moving Sale We’ve lost the lease on our warehouse and anything we can’t sell we have to move—or rent interns from Speculative Grammarian to do it—and that’s expensive! Help us out and buy a ... [ more ]

The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . For decades, Speculative Grammarian has been the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics—and now it is available in book form—both physical and electronic! We wish we were kidding,¹ but no, seriously, we’ve published a large³ collection of SpecGram articles, along with just enough new material to force obsessive collectors and fans to buy it, regardless of the cost.⁴ From the Introduction: The past twenty-five years have witnessed many changes in linguistics, with major developments in linguistic theory, significant expansion ... [ more ]

Reasons Not to Study Linguistics— Part IV. Compiled by Dyspepsia Prater and Cynnie Sizzum, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. Linguists, generally, try to encourage others’ interest in their field with enticements such as, “linguistics helps us understand the human condition” “every language provides a unique view of the mind” “linguistics empowers people” “you can work in translation, interpreting, foreign language teaching, the tech industry, fieldwork, etc.” Blah, blah, blah. You see, no matter how exciting a field seems, there’s someone out there who is sick and tired of putting up with it. Rather than promise nothing but ... [ more ]

Granular Phonology. In a recent work (Phonology Yearbook 1, 1984), Sanford Schane has proposed a new system of representation for phonological systems, which he calls Particle Phonology. In this article, Schane argues for a universal set of three phonological primitives and a large number of basic operations. The primitives represent categories of palatility (symbolized as i), labiality (u) and aperture (a). Combinations of these primitives comprise the various phonetic vowel qualities in a given language. Although Schane’s particular system is extremely elegant, and represents a major step forward beyond other current models (e.g. Fleckenberg’s “gorilla/banana” model), it ... [ more ]

Conversations with the Arch-Linguist. Part One in a Series by Jim Brentley. Note from the Editors: This is the first report from our newly-chartered bureau of investigative reporting, which will, from time to time, supply us with items of linguistic interest which they didn’t want you to know. Assuming, of course, that Jim Brentley is not killed in the line of duty, which is actually quite likely. Note from the Author: I feel a duty to discourage you readers from trying this kind of stuff on your own. You’re likely to get killed, or worse even. The political forces involved in the international linguistic espionage community are always watching and listening, so watch your butt, because on ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian is proud to present yet another irregular semi-installment in the Linguistic Anthropologic Monograph Endowment’s Bizarre Grammars of the World Series. ’Trilaas Outside Manila!. An Anthropological Linguistic Followup on Multi-Trill Counting⁰. Bizarre Grammars of the World, Vol. 64½ ... After our recent article describing the melancholy diaspora of the ’Trilaas, we were thrilled to receive a letter from reader Choës Herfjötur, who recognized the counting song as something her grandmother had taught her when she was a child. She showed Grandmama the article, and discovered that the ’Trilaa are actually a lost group of a tribe known ... [ more ]

A Time of Unprecedentedly “Unprecedented Times”. A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief. In these unprecedented times, it is important to not lose our heads; we must remain calm and steadfast in the face of adversity in these unprecedented times, joining together—while maintaining the appropriate social distance in these unprecedented times—for the common good. However, unless the times become even more unprecedented and some virus mutates one of your loved ones into a flesh-eating zombie, or the virus itself grows to the size of a beachball and begins chasing you through your garden,¹ there is no excuse for wildly inaccurate speech,² even in ... [ 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 Morphosyntactic, Semantic, Pragmatic, Sociolinguistic and Literary Investigation into the Psycholinguistic Mechanisms Underlying English Puns. Pete Bleackley, Associate Editor. On her website Lang 101¹ my highly steamed^{2, 3} editorial colleague Madalena Cruz-Ferreira prompts: Try now to think about jokes involving structural ambiguity (morphological structure, syntactic form or syntactic function). As before, explain the source of the humour, in an unambiguous manner! While the answer I gave on her website correctly explained the structural ambiguity present in the joke, it was far from an exhaustive analysis of the source of the humour. I here expand on it to present a more ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear SpecGram, Your “University News” piece, “Goofy Geeks Grumble, Gripe ’Gainst Gossipy Greek Glyph Goofs” [which discusses the brawl that broke out in the Greek Department of Greek at the Greco-Hellenic University for Greek Studies in Grimsby, UK, over the pronunciation of the names of Greek letters —Eds], once again shows the parochialism of your narrow focus on linguistics. You failed entirely to mention that the altercation spilled over into the maths department, who were debating whether to replace π the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, with τ the ratio of its circumference to its radius, the English literature ... [ 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 ]

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