Inspired by the Internet tradition of gathering and gawping at oddly odd and occasionally prescient predictions of would-be futurists, we sent our interns into the archives to dig out some of the most interesting predictions of the future of linguistics that were made in the past. Take a look!
(Take a look at Part I, too!)
Nobody will miss the ⟨u⟩ from colour and honour. Finally there will be a single standard orthography for the whole English-—Noah Webster
Well, the end approaches, the light dims etc, etc. But death brings clarity. I see now that those linguistics courses I’ve been giving in Geneva are rather poorly thought through. Far too many dichotomies and far too inattentive to the cognitive and social. Well, thank goodness I never compiled them into book form. And I can’t think that anyone’s going to bother collecting them after I’ve gone. Uuuuuuuuurgh.
Hey, Tim, let’s have another go at that linguistics satire thing they did at Indiana in the 70s. With modern typewriting techniques and some scissors and glue I reckon we bring out one a week at least for years and years to come. What’s more, I reckon we’ll have tens of contributors and hundreds of readers.
I think the influence of the Prague School’s work in linguistics cannot but continue to make itself felt. Through the development of methods that situates language studies alongside poetics, literature, music and film and visual arts, there can now be no return to either conceptualizing or teaching linguistics as discrete, structuralist and a-contextual.
This spesmilo thing is gonna change international finance forever!
Sorry, son, I burnt that manuscript of yours. Silly idea, it seemed to me. Anyway, you’ll forget all about it. Just focus on your medical studies.
Bird, bird, big eye, snake. Utter nonsense! Stop picking up every stone with old pictures on them, you idiot! Nobody’s ever going to be able to read them.
To solve the problem of automatic speech recognition, we must hire all the linguists we can find.
Okay, I’ll get involved with your kooky satirical journal. It’s not going to take much time.
The komunumo is gripped with an almost overwhelming sense of excitement as the 130th anniversary of the publikigo of Esperanto approaches. What a variety of internet and other hi-tech avenues into Esperanto are now available, and various informative and amusing Facebook pages—Many Esperantists, c.2015
With his fourth book, Noam Chomsky introduces into linguistic parlance yet another phrase—A (very) early reviewer of Chomsky’s (1966) Cartesian Linguistics
The approachability and readability of The Minimalist Program, not to mention the elegance and simplicity of its core concepts, mean that it will quickly supplant P&P/GB, etc., in undergraduate linguistics teaching in the Anglo-—A (very) early reviewer of Chomsky’s (1995) The Minimalist Program
Right, that’s done then. Shame we’re out of a job now, eh?
A syllable is a syllable is a syllable.
My insightful observations on the development of Indo-—Rasmus Rask, 1818
Game of Thrones has opened the floodgates! We’ll all be rich!
I should send an article to these people. It’ll be a fun little project and then I can get on with the rest of my life.
Forget Angoroj. This is the film that is going to make Esperanto into a worldwide phenomenon! But, oof, the lead is terrible. He has no future in acting!
I think Selinker’s seminal formulation of the concept of interlanguage could well place second language studies at the forefront of linguistics, perhaps even dethroning syntax and phonology.
If we can just tighten up this written work correction code a touch more, I’m fairly certain that the learners’ grammatical competence will soar.
Defining the mora as “something of which a long syllable consists of two and a short syllable consists of one” is a sufficiently clean definition for the concept to enter readily into linguistic parlance and for it have practical and relatively uncontroversial application cross-—James D. McCawley, 1968
OK, now let’s kill all of the prisoners who can pronounce those obnoxious throaty sounds.
One day there will be a paper shortage and we’ll need all our grammars to be as dense as possible.
I’ll write this grammar using the most complex terminology and most abstract wording I can find. Future language learners will love me.
Nobody will ever notice that we’re just making it up about split infinitives.
I am certain that, in centuries to come, none shall violate the precepts we have set, concerning Prepositions and the Infinitive.
In the beginning was the Word. And that was it. An invariant and syntactically blind mono-—First draft of the opening Logos Hymn of the Gospel of John,
Ioannes Uios Zebedee (attrib.), 92 AD