Ask Grammaticality Brown SpecGram Vol CLXXXIX, No 4 Contents Tileni Revisited—Tom Patterson

Little Known Facts About Famous Linguists

The SpecGram Paparazzi Elves™

Syntactico-semantics; historical morphophonology; the neurolinguistics of third language derivational morpheme retrieval and online activationthe names of the subdisciplines of linguistics trip from our tongues as easily as the Eton-educated, scholarship-winning, soon-to-be undergraduate Oxford student of Greats rattles off his amabo, amabas, amabat while frolicking his carefree way down Broad Street on the first sunlit day of the new academic year.

Yes, linguistics and its myriad of subdisciplines are our familiar friends: we know them, we love them, we study them, we teach them. But what do we know of linguists, the flesh-and-blood women and men who give life and breath to these ologies of language science. Their names may be familiar of course; but their lives, their loves, their favorite pair of socks, and what they had for breakfastthese often remain hidden mysteries lurking in the cool grey water beneath a never-to-be-upturned stone.

With this in mind, SpecGram has recently undertaken to research the comings and goings of well-known linguists. Our aim, ambition and aspiration was to dress the back-cover-blurb bones of these abstract names with the blood-red everyday flesh incidental of quotidian normality. We met with success and are proud to present our list of Little Known Facts About Famous Linguists, at least one of which is actually true.

Ask Grammaticality Brown
Tileni RevisitedTom Patterson
SpecGram Vol CLXXXIX, No 4 Contents