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 ]

Linguimericks, Book ५७. ’Tis most strange to behold such a thing, That this journal its praises doth sing Of a friar with spunk Who showed to be bunk All the thought that its namesakes did fling —Pumptilian Perniquity, There once was a Franciscan friar Who cried out, “Your theory is dire! It has so many modes That the meaning implodes. Dispatch it at once to the pyre!” —Pete Bleackley, Occam to Entities “So, entities—don’t wanna phase you But this thing I’ve built here, Occam’s razor, Puts you all to the test And works out who’s best And the rest, well, I’m gonna erase you.” —Emily Deakinson, You theorists had better behave, Or ... [ more ]

Cryptolinguistic Puzzle ڄ. Mary Shapiro, Truman State University. Like other cryptic crosswords, the clues in this puzzle are not straightforward. Unlike most, however, this one focuses mainly on languages and linguistics. For instance, the clue for Zapotec might be “Oto-Manguean variety alters pez coat” (anagram of pez coat), or “Indigenous Mexican language to destroy overtime prior to European Commission” (ZAP + O.T. + E.C.), or “a nice top, a zany blouse conceals retro Oaxacan language” (niCE TOP, A Z~~any~~), or many other combinations of puns, anagrams, or typographic quirks. Punctuation in clues is often misleading. Each clue contains both a ... [ more ]

The Far Side of the Real. Posthumously Published from the Manuscript Files of Paul Cain. - II -, The Ragged Way Some People Live . By 3:30 I had finished reading the papers. Somebody had done a nasty job but good on Boileau. On just the first page of the first article published by Linguistic Enquiry the same sentence appeared three times broken down and glossed as “I shot your dog and hung it from her ceiling,” “I too wish weasels could fly above the clouds,” and something baroquely, obscurely obscene about the reader’s mother, uncle, and dead grandfather. The morph fanŋʷɔ was glossed 28 different ways by my count: ‘cat,’ ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian, in association with the X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies, is proud to present yet another irregular installment in the Linguistic Anthropologic Monograph Endowment’s Bizarre Grammars of the World Series. One Hundred Words for Snowclone. An Anthropological Linguistic Study of Igloovian⁰. Bizarre Grammars of the World, Vol. 70 Prologue. Any linguist worthy of attending SALT knows of the linguistic myth that eskimos have hundreds of words for snow. There was even some sort of vocabulary-related hoax or other about it back in the day. This idea has become so ingrained in our culture, so cliché that there is even a ... [ 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 ]

A SpecGram Crossword for Devoted SpecGram Readers and other Linguists and Researchers. by Lila Rosa Grau. If you are anything like me, you are both an avid reader of SpecGram (I’ve been a subscriber since 1946!), and not a big fan of all those complicated “pseudo-Nihonese” puzzles the Puzzle Elves™ have been cooking up for the last few years. [Though see below for recent puzzle contest winners —Eds.] Unlike me, however, you’ve just been sitting there whining about it; instead of complaining, I’ve cooked up a good old-fashioned crossword puzzle, with lots of linguistics, lots of SpecGrammitude, and lots of clues. You should try it! You could ... [ more ]

The Original Language of Winnie-the-Pooh. Aureliano Buendía, Universidad de Macondo. The text known in English as Winnie-the-Pooh occurs in dozens of different languages. Scholars have long debated the question of what was the original language of composition. One of the most popular hypotheses has been that the original text was written in English. The present paper will use textual evidence to demonstrate the impossibility of that hypothesis and to suggest a more likely candidate. Consider the following lines from the beginning of Chapter I in the English-language version. (1) ...here he is...ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh. When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to ... [ more ]

Quipley’s Don’t Believe It! ... Or Do? Dr. Quipley reports on an interesting phenomenon occurring in southeast Alaska. Faced with a declining number of speakers, the Tlingit people are attempting to revitalize their language. However, some Tlingit youth in remote communities are less interested in their historical roots and more interested in the science fiction shows on television. They have created a hybrid language called Tlingon that borrows liberally from the sci-fi conlang K***.¹ Dr. Quipley interviewed Tlingit speakers on both sides of the divide. “We didn’t work this hard just so they could start wrecking the language,” said one stunned tribal leader. But those in the next generation ... [ more ]

Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part J—Feeding and Bleeding. Erin Taylor¹, Cal State Fullerton. Those unacquainted with the form and purpose of the Cartoon Theories of Linguistics can probably fake it if they are able to locate previous installments of this series. Let us turn our attention to Feeding and Bleeding Rules, as explained by Erin Taylor: Feeding and Bleeding Rules, Next time: Prescriptivism vs. Descriptivism. References, Baron, W. (1983). “Cases of counter-feeding in Fas.” Language and Linguistics in Melanesia. Blumenfeld, L. (2003) “Counterfeeding, derived environment effects, and comparative markedness”. Theoretical Linguistics, Vol. 29, No. ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXVII, Number 2 ... Trey Jones, Managing Editor, Keith Slater, Senior Editor, Bill Spruiell, Consulting Editor, Tim Pulju, Editor Emeritus; Associate Editors: Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Mikael Thompson, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Editorial Associates: Pete Bleackley, Florian Breit, Jonathan Downie, T.B. Geller, Adam Graham, Daniela Müller, David J. Peterson, Callum Robson; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; Data is Optional; May 2013 ... [ more ]

IPA Analogies. by Dr. Watalodabaloni Überwoggle, B.F.E. Waikikamukau Mūūniversity, New Zealand. This puzzle is worth 5 points (for all of them). Complete each of the following IPA analogies. All have a potentially unexpected common thread. 1) close-mid front unrounded vowel : close-mid central unrounded vowel :: open-mid front unrounded vowel : __, 2) alveolar nasal : retroflex nasal :: voiced alveolar plosive : __, 3) close front unrounded vowel : near-close near-front unrounded vowel :: close front rounded vowel : __, 4) voiced labialized velar approximant : voiceless labialized velar fricative :: voiceless glottal fricative : __, 5) close front unrounded vowel : close central unrounded vowel :: close back ... [ 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 ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Black Leather Issue, Volume CL, Number 2; April 2005, Special Interactive 3D content, Speculative Grammarian, Vol CL, No 2, MANAGING EDITOR, Trey Jones, EDITOR EMERITUS, Tim Pulju, SENIOR EDITOR, Keith Slater, ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Bryan Allen, Mark de Vries, Martin Hilpert, Edward Johnson, Steven Lulich, Sheila McCann, Jamin Pelkey, Mikael Thompson, Bill Spruiell, Rob van der Sandt, Joey Whitford, There is no spoon. ... [ more ]

X Marks the Spot, Filling the Empty Quadrant. Yùron Yurōn, Yucatán Yuniversity. In his book, Pasteur’s Quadrant, Donald Stokes lays out a two-dimensional continuum for scientific research. The two axes can be characterized as relevance for immediate application and relevance for the advancement of knowledge. Basic research, like that done by Niels Bohr, focuses on the advancement of knowledge. Applied research, such as Thomas Edison’s work, focuses on relevance for immediate applications. Louis Pasteur is lauded by Stokes for considering both purposes at once. It makes for a lovely diagram. ... However, there is that unsightly empty quadrant, marked here with an X. ... [ more ]

The Necessity of Sound Theoretical, Frameworks in Linguistic Education. Noah McMosky, Professor of Abstract Syntax, University of Ledworth. Theoretical Linguistics has the loftiest of goals, namely the creation of a theoretical framework that can explain the features of all languages. Lamentably, however, the pursuit of this goal is often frustrated by the activities of field linguists, who seem to take perverse delight in presenting data that apparently contradicts whatever theory seems most promising at the time. Sometimes, the data can be reanalysed in a more reasonable fashion, but to this day I remember my bitter disappointment as a young postdoctoral fellow when no amount of analysis would make Welsh and Hebrew yield to ... [ more ]

Virtual NLP Dice. The SpecGram Überlinguistaffen. ... [Re-roll.] [Re-roll like you mean it !!] As many successful practitioners of Natural Language Processing know, the surest path to success is to come up with some complicated-looking equation and then rest on your mathematical laurels for the rest of your career—because “Math is hard, and hard things are for smart people, and smart people are just better. QED.” Or so we learned from the original ad for NLP Dice: “Local Linguist Mom Discovers One Weird Trick for Deriving NLP Equations!—Computational Linguists Hate Her!” (SpecGram ... [ 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, I was recently dumbstruck by the fact that while “Je t’adore” sounds like “Shut the door,” “Fermez la porte” doesn’t sound at all like “I love you.” I’ve asked several linguists why this is, and they’ve all refused to answer. Please ... [ more ]

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