SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

Scriptominoes II. by Trey Jones & Keith Slater. Traditional Dominosa is a puzzle game that requires you to pair numbers corresponding to the faces of dominoes. You are presented with a rectangular grid of numbers. Each number must be paired with one of its vertical or horizontal neighbors. As in a set of dominoes, each numerical value pairs exactly once with each other numerical value. See the original “Domiphones and Dominasals” (SpecGram CLXXXV.1) for a simple example if you are unfamiliar with the genre. Naturally, SpecGram’s version of the puzzle involves some linguistics-related twists. Rather than boring and obvious numerals, we use elements that linguists can enjoy and feel ... [ more ]

Speech is an Elaborate Cover for Widespread Telepathy. Will Styler, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Vowels. Abstract. This article challenges the long-standing “Speech” theory of language: that humans communicate by flapping around bits of meat in their heads and necks, thus creating minute and highly speaker-specific patterns of vibration in air pressure, and then interpreting these vibrations, via little bones and tiny hair cells, as referent to concepts, entities, and propositions in the greater world. In place of this overly-complex and increasingly implausible theory, the author proposes a far simpler species-wide telepathic link, with “speech” serving primarily ... [ more ]

Allophonia.... by Leonard Conasal. Well she heard it in your vocal cords As phonemes sprayed in a ceaseless horde But you don’t really like acoustics, do ya? Well look at this: F_4^th, F_5^th— The formants fall and the formants lift The baffled tongue exposing allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Well your vowels were long but you needed proof You saw the data was not spoofed Its beauty and the vowel height overthrew ya She could not find a min’mal pair She broke down phones with her new software And from your lips she drew the allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Well ... [ more ]

Special Supplemental Letter from the Editor. Two years ago this month, in October of 2014, the Texas World Cultural Festival and Poetry Recitation Competition was held in Corsicana, Texas. Unbeknownst to the participants, it was the very last time the competition would ever be held. Common decency prevents me from further discussing the well-publicized events that led to the end of the competition’s long and glorious run. Rather than tarnish the memory of those involved and sadden those who witnessed the unfolding of the tragic conclusion of “the incident,” we have chosen to celebrate the Texas World Cultural Festival and Poetry Recitation Competition—which inarguably reached its poetic ... [ more ]

Bilabial Angel of Mwah. Presented by, The Phreeee-Phinkin’ Philosophers of Philologogia, and The SpecGram Encyclopedia of Linguistic Deities . Recent archaeological scrapings around and scrabblings about in the Western Desert of Chx’reeb, New Mexico, have literally unearthed further evidence of the much-discussed and highly controversial¹ Bilabial Angel of Mwah, a spiritual figure who is purported to have played a central role in the development of ritual in and around the area of what is now New Mexico c.5654–5639 BCE. The trove² contains some ~~papyruses~~ ~~papyrae~~ bits of papyrus in the recently deciphered Linear Vitamin C³ include songs, ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear Editors of Speculative Grammarian, I have just finished Trent Slater’s recent article on the impossibility of translation. (Well, to be honest, I read a bootleg Basque translation of it. I was travelling in Spain and couldn’t wait until I got home to read the February issue of SpecGram.) While I agree with both his premise and his conclusion, I have to take issue with the bit in the middle. In particular, he writes: In English ... while farmers raise “pigs,” we eat “pork, bacon, sausages and scratchings.” I’m not sure where Prof. Slater hails from, but here in the civilized parts of the English-speaking world, we most certainly do not eat ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Greetings and Felicitationalizations, Editorializationizingesque Personages! Long time fan, first time letterer. I noted—and both my phone and I support—your recent and ongoing conversion to a more responsive web design. I am also a supporter of more efficient communication, and I have always been intrigued by Huffmenglish, which seems both logical and practical. I sense a deep-rooted conflict of philosophy, however, between these two worthy aims. Yjs, as Huffmenglish is rightly encoded, is devoid of spaces in its most efficient and Platonically optimal form. Does that not conflict with the goal of supporting small, narrow devices? ... [ more ]

The BS Node: Proof That Lines Can Cross, by Knotta Gnome Luvver. P. Friedrich, in his article "On Aspect Theory and Homeric Aspect" in IJAL Memoirs 28, gives us many, many, many sentences like the one diagrammed in example (1). Now, while this diagrammed sentence is indeed not a reflection of the up-to-the-minute Generative Theory, it does have a resemblance to one of its previous incarnations, and will do for our purposes. (1) ... If we consider the semantics of this example sentence, which as we have noted, is representative of many others, we see that many of the words associated with differing categories are in fact all elements of a single category. Indeed, because this one category is so pervasive throughout this ... [ more ]

ADVERTORIAL People for the Ethical Treatment of Wugs. It’s time to stop experimentation on Wugs in Linguistic Labs. The majestic wug (Coturnix neologistica) has long been a favourite of linguists. Its small size, docile nature and remarkable distribution around the world have meant that it has always been easy, if morally indefensible, to pin it to a piece of paper and display it to informants. Yet wugen are much more than mere linguistic curiosities. While previous studies have pointed out their close social structures and life-long mating, few have mentioned their capacity to feel pain. This is, of course, demonstrated by their emission of a long “wuuuuuug” sound. Therefore, we at PETW stand ... [ more ]

On the Sexiness of Linguistics. Ἐ. Ρωτικός & Venerius Effing, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. A recent survey by the journal Incorporated Linguacolonial Anthropogenerativist rated “Linguistics” as the least sexy field, out of one hundred listed, including “Sewer Management,” “Boil and Bunion Studies” and “Deconstructivist Interpretative Liminology”.^* This paper will review the varying reactions to these results from different subfields of linguistics and will delineate the future of the field in this light. After first collating the results and subcategorizing according to distinctive ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear SpecGram, Who is Al? All my life, I fell for the explanation that “al” was just some kind of Latin abbreviation used by scholars too apathetic to learn the names of their collaborators. (It made sense, okay? What else would you expect after years in academia?) However, it was recently brought to my attention that some students believe Al to be a very prolific writer, co-authoring thousands of papers in every discipline imaginable. After consulting with editors of second-rate publications such as Science and The Yale Law Journal, I am only partially convinced by this emerging conspiracy theory, and I am counting on you to provide a definitive answer. Is Al real, or the ... [ more ]

Roll the Random-o-tron of Linguistics Questions!. Ron “The Diceman” McPokertron, Professor of Craps Linguistics. Did you know that “random” rhymes with “fandom”? Now, here at SpecGram we don’t get a whole lot of the latter but, boy, do we do random! Hiring, firing, promotions and remuneration—it’s a study in HR unpredictability. One day you’re the Morphology Department’s Cabin Boy’s Deputy Under Floor Scrubber on $140m plus a bonus and three airplanes and the next day you’re Lead Project Manager for Pun Development and Bun Experiments eking out a miserable existence on a dollar fifty a day. And as for the 5-year strategy, ... [ more ]

Rasmus Rask Puzzle V, Diamonds Are Forever. by Lila Rosa Grau. This is the fifth Rasmus Rask puzzle, devoted to the original Mr. Charming Scandinavian Linguist. The puzzle is similar to a crossword puzzle, in that there is a grid for filling in words and phrases, and clues for the ACROSS and DOWN directions. However, all the squares in a Rasmus Rask puzzle are filled with letters, and the answers to the clues may (but are not required to) overlap. Clues for a particular row or column are given together, in the order they appear in the grid. No indication of the amount of overlap between clues is given. Letters spelling out RASMUS RASK in a diamond shape are given to provide a framework for filling in the ... [ more ]

A Look Back: Linguistics Headlines of 2016. The SpecGram Newshounds™. We must admit that 2016 was a rough year for everyone, with more downs than ups for most—and the world of linguistics was no exception. Honestly, it was just too much, so we took January off to let everyone recuperate. Now that we’ve recovered a bit, let’s take a look back at the most important and surprising headlines from 2016: Syntactician Gives Up Alcohol, Pronounces Himself an Ex-Bar Linguist Rich Typologist Buys Verbs Referring to Transactions, Insists “Money is No Object” Linguistics Department Sees Office Space Doubled. Profs to Get 1m² Offices! Man Hospitalized After Generative Grammar ... [ more ]

Linguimericks, Etc. Book ३५. Kenneth Lee Pike Ne’er met a language he didn’t like. Lauded creator of etic and emic, & a “demonstrably monolingual” acadēmic —Κόμμα Ο᾿Κῶλον Epitaph for SpecGram Spurious etymologies, Puns included, Extraordinary analyses that just might be right, Choose your own career (though it makes you sad), Government and binding in a liguisticky light, Reviews of non-existent books that send up fads, Aimless rantings, just like real papers, Much like The Onion but with nerdy capers —Col. O. Nihilist, Rubāʿī Concerning Discourse Come, chart a ... [ more ]

Phonemic Color. by Tong Shunming. As we all know, language is a "système où tout se tient," in which meaning is encoded by sequences of contrastive units. In spoken language, contrast is based on acoustic features; in written language, contrast is based on spatial features. However, it is likely that until very recently color has never been used in written languages to encode differences in meaning, as opposed to discourse functions (e.g. Faulkner's intention to indicate different speakers by ink color in The Sound and the Fury). Times have changed, however, and a new dimension of phonemicity has been introduced into English. A well-known store in Bloomington is named: ITALIANSTILE, It is, of ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian is proud to present yet another installment of indeterminate regularity in the Linguistic Anthropologic Monograph Endowment’s Bizarre Grammars of the World Series. Shhhhhhh! Don’t Tell Anyone. An Anthropological Linguistic Study of the Hallucinogenic Language of the Noyd⁰. Bizarre Grammars of the World, Vol. 62, Introduction. Located somewhere in the world, in a large city whose name I really shouldn’t reveal, is a small band of urban nomads who call themselves the Noyd. The Noyd have an interesting ritualistic language which they only use when they partake of certain hallucinogenic substances that they consider to be sacred. They are also very ... [ more ]

Mix & Match #. by Max & Mitch Ninelette. The goal of this Mix & Match puzzle is to reconstitute a set of nine 9-letter words that have each had two quadgrams removed. Below are two separate puzzles. Each includes a table to fill out and a set of quadgrams with which to fill it up. Using each quadgram once, fill the blanks in the table to form various nine-letter words. When you are done, three additional words will be revealed in the vertical direction for each puzzle. If you think you’ve figured out all the answers—that’s 24 nine-letter words!—submit your solution to the editors of SpecGram by January 15, 2020, and you could win a prize. Solutions and winners will ... [ more ]

Just Friend?. Helga Langenase & R. Lola Rennt, Universität zu Ausland. “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was a separate word like me?” —The Possessive Cat-Dolls’ Criticizing or, in our overly sensitive times, merely even pointing out that there is some residual sexism inherent in various European languages has very much fallen out of favor among practitioners of linguistics and language science since the advent of the Political Correctness movement in the 1980’s (see Sharpe 2008 for recent, potentially disturbing developments in international policy concerning linguistic castigation on politically correct grounds). Early pioneers in the field ... [ more ]

The Compleat Encyclopaedia of Compendious Historical Lexicons of Obscure and Archaic Vernacular and Nomenclature. Welcome to Online Selections from The Compleat Encyclopaedia of Compendious Historical Lexicons of Obscure and Archaic Vernacular and Nomenclature, researched, compiled, and edited by the lexicographers, etymologists, and philologists of Speculative Grammarian. The editors of Speculative Grammarian are delighted to present selections of the fifty-volume lexicographic opus, The Compleat Encyclopaedia of Compendious Historical Lexicons of Obscure and Archaic Vernacular and Nomenclature, online for the first time ever. The Compleat Encyclopaedia is a one-of-a-kind resource, compiled ... [ more ]

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