SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

Reviews in Linguistic Historiography: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. by, Хөөмийн Гийлгүүлэгч Associate Professor, Department of the History of Science. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been famous ever since its publication in 1818 as a vividly related medical-scientific case study, so much so that its significance in the history of medicine has far overshadowed its importance in linguistics. Indeed, its crucial role in medical history has led to its extremely wide currency in popular portrayals of medical research,¹ while its neglect by linguistic historiographers is only matched by its ... [ more ]

Psammeticus Press, www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, NEW BOOK Gee, Your Name Looks Funny!, A semi-autobiographical account of socio-onomastic and, ethno-linguistic issues around mixed ethnicity patronymics, by Jeanne Jónsdottir, Jón Giannakos, Gianna Jenstochter and Jens Jeanneson, Published 2009. Paperback, cdxliv + 17 pages. Price: 4449 krónur This deeply personal and insightfully revelatory book recounts the personal and professional experiences of its four authors, who together represent four generations of a uniquely named mixed-ethnicity family. “You Ain’t From Around Here” Beginning with the clan patriarch, ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear SpecGram, My semi-French-speaking step-great-uncle-in-law recently visited some members of our extended family in Montréal. Upon his return, he commented on the fact that several of my wife’s second-step-cousins, once removed (Uncle’s great-grand kids) have acquired the local Québécois French accent, which he found to be very much not to his liking. I asked how bad it could really be, and he showed me some home video he had taken on the trip. My first comment was that he needed a better digital camcorder, because there was a terrible buzzing noise, and that a wind filter would clear that up. He pointed out that the ... [ more ]

Diacritics and Dire Critics, Recognising the Cultural and Indexing Role of Acçèntéd Chårâctërs. Horace Hemingway, Professor of Pointillism in Linguistics, The Δίς Λεγόμενον Centre for Endeepened Ideation. As dogs return to their own philosophies of linguistics, so do linguists return to the publishing enterprise, hoping that the internecine struggle against the vicissitudes of the critical arm will result in the Bacchanalian frenzy of the realisation that one’s words will appear in print in a publication whose cost is in inverse proportion to its readership. This Iliadic and Sisyphean interface between the frugal ... [ more ]

Discontinuities. Deedles D’Dee. A line of lexemes—that’s syntactic! ‘Cat sees dog’ and ‘dog sees cat’ But don’t forget: that line’s elastic— And syntacticians think ’bout that. ‘What the dog sees is the cat’ Is a fine example of just that. So now, Let’s go And see what other syntax rabbits we can pull from the lingua hat. Often lexemes line up neatly One-by-one and in a row: ‘[I [eat [frogs legs]] [two times weekly]]’ With the brackets we can show That lexemes gather into phrases Which are subparts of the clause as Bits Which fit In a nice, neat ordered line of lexemes senza gaps or traces. Is all syntax ... [ more ]

Q Continuum Reaches Solomon Islands¹. Brenda H. Boerger. I propose early, pre-24^th century contact between the Q Continuum (Q-contact) and speakers of Earth languages in Solomon Islands, South Pacific, as evidenced by the presence of <q> in the orthographies of 24 of the 68 languages there, spanning the country from west to east. I describe the sounds that <q> represents in these orthographies, using these correspondences as evidence for five separate Q-contacts. The evidence suggests Q-contact elsewhere in Oceanic, as well as in other language families, as diverse as Indo-European, multiple American Indian families, and Turkic, but that this important contact factor has heretofore been ... [ more ]

A Sociolinguistic Study of Bilingualism, in the Rio Grande Valley. 1. Introduction. The Rio Grande Valley, on the border between Mexico and the United States, is a well-known area of language contact. The present study considers a number of parameters--specifically age, socioeconomic status, citizenship, nation of residence, and gender--in examining the extent to which bilingualism is exhibited by members of the Rio Grande Sprachbund. 2. Data. The data were collected from a wide range of speakers on both sides of the border. The results are presented in summary form in Table 1, below. Percent Bilingual German-English Speakers Percent Speakers of German but not English Percent Speakers of English but not German Percent ... [ 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 ]

— http://SpecGram.com/PaniniPress Welcome to the online home of Panini Press, an academic publishing house formerly dedicated to the proposition that Linguistics is the noblest of the academic fields, but now with a focus on Subjects of more relevance to the Working Linguist’s everyday life and career. ❦पा Important announcements from Panini Press: ❧ Word Problems for Linguists (November 2025): Linguists, we here at Panini Press know you thought that you’d never again have to do anything more mathematically complicated than figure out the tip on your dinner bill. However, the real world often has other plans, so, for your own good, Dr. Barbara Millicent Roberts’s new book, Word ... [ 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 ]

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 ]

I U Linguistics Club. Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. June 1978. ... i u linguistics club, edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... [ more ]

Son of Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. IULC. November 1979. ... edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Son of, ^ Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... i u linguistics club, ... [ 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 ]

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! ... Your Royal SLACness, Since you have previously offered such useful advice on English plurals, I have a query of my own: what is the plural of haggis? Having recently relocated to the land of tartan and bagpipes, I would find it quite useful to know. And speaking of which, where can I find one of those “wild ... [ more ]

Vinegar Valentines. As Valentine’s Day rolls around once again, we at SpecGram recognize that not everyone has a special someone to spend the day with. Some people have no one; pity unto them. But the real losers on Valentine’s Day are those who have someone, just not someone who is particularly special. Whether it’s a creeper, a stalker, a jilted ex, or just a poor misguided soul who is a little too thick to take a hint, these Vinegar Valentines—a genre which rose to popularity in the late 19th century—will help you let them down, albeit none too gently. Click an image for higher resolution. ... [ 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 ]

I Heard It Through the Grapevine— Part I, A Survey of Current and Historical Evidentials, Reportedly of Interest to Linguists. G. O’ßip & Scutt LeButt, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. To hear one of the authors (O’ßip) tell it, she’s been excited by evidentials her whole life, a statement confirmed by her mother. The other author (LeButt) only claims a similar level of excitement since the first year of graduate school, but has better evidence (notarized emails provided upon request). All that excitement pales in comparison to the excitement the authors feel (they claim) in being able to share with you, dear reader, their collective collection of ... [ more ]

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