SpecGram Vol CLXXXV, No 1 Contents Letters to the Editor

Festive Arborolatry

The Speculative Grammarian Editorial Board

This journal has in the past dabbled half-heartedly, with interspersions of sudden inexplicable fits of enthusiasm as quickly forgotten1 as they were assumed, with the vexed2 issue of the religiosity of linguists and of linguistics. Generally, of course, this being all in all a markedly secular age, no one3 has really cared about this issue, but it has come up recently in discussions of which holidays should be paid recognized tolerated. We of course recognize all the major holidaysChristmas, New Years’ Day, Thanksgiving,4 Halloween, Hangeul Day, and April 1stas well as the holidays of the major religions among the staff.5 In addition, for them that follow the civic religion of a state or statelike entity, we allow a few minutes of paid coffee break on either July 1st or July 4th, or the corresponding date in other countries or corporations.

Pieter Muysken (ed.), 2008, From Lin­guis­tic Areas to Areal Lin­guis­tics, Stu­dies in Lan­guage Com­pan­ion Ser­ies 90. Ams­ter­dam: John Ben­ja­mins.

Chiasmus of the Month
July 2019

However, it has recently come to our attention that a goodly number of syntactically-minded Speculative Grammarian hangers-on have argued that, contrary to Chomsky’s contrarian claims to the contrary, Ralph Cudworth’s argument that the innateness of human language entails the existence of a divinity is in fact logically impeccable, and thus by the force of his argument have, as it were, seen the light; and that it is only meet and proper that this Divinity be worshipped on the most appropriate day befitting the customs of their religion; which is to say that Arbor Day is the great holy day of their faith. And just as the date of Arbor Day varies from state to state of the Union and province to province of that kind of empty space further north, and even from county to county/census division to census division, in much the same way as there are countless sects of the Chomskyan creed whose precepts vary from publication to publication, and even from paragraph to paragraph, [deep breath] so, to avoid offending any of them, all official Arbor Days recognized and celebrated anywhere at all are to be taken as equally binding paid holidays for all of them.

Now, it is true that this closely resembles a sham as the stalking horse for a scam. It is further true that this latter term closely resembles descriptions current among our staff of the nature of their research program. It is yet further true that the socio-economic results would be tantamount to universal tenurewhich in fact shows, one suspects, the emotional roots of their new faith, erasing the rigid social barriers between those anointed in the Holy River Charles and thus hogging the collegiate trough clogging up the cursus honorum with sclerotic deadwood to the manor or purple born and those not, in much the same way as early Christianity put the patrician and the slave on the same level religiously but not socially or economically. Be that as it may and make of it what you will, it is an issue requiring some delicacy and tact. Thus, after brief discussion we decree that you guys get one day6 like the rest of us, and that day’s the fourth Friday in April since that’s the most common date, so like it or lump it.

So say we, the editorial staff of Speculative Grammarian, in the name of our in-house Holy Trinity: the Bother, the Pun, and the Wholly Gauche.



1 By anyone on staff of any importance.

2 Or caved. It all depends which side you look at it from.

3 Of any importance.

4 The USean one, of course, since we have so much more to be thankful for.

5 Could someone knowledgeable on the matter please confirm the claim of certain staff members that the Cheondo religion of Korea actually calls for every other month to be a fully paid vacation? Somehow this doesn’t seem right, if only because it should be the world’s fastest-growing religion by now if that were true.

6 Zero for interns, of course.

Letters to the Editor
SpecGram Vol CLXXXV, No 1 Contents