How To Get A Ph.D. Without Really Trying—Dr. Wolf Kitty, B.S. Ph.D. SpecGram Vol CL, No 4 Contents How to Cheat at Linguistics—Book Announcement from Psammeticus Press
ANNOUNCEMENT

The Γραμματο-Χαοτικον Manifesto

Hurricane Philippe

[Editor’s Note: We received the following at our main offices, wrapped around a fairly old piece of salmon. The accompanying instructions were clearprint the Manifesto in its entirety in the next issue, or suffer the consequencesweekly deliveries of day-old fish wrapped in more screeds and manifestos. We relented, not because we are weak, but because the fish is strong.]

We are the Γραμματο-Χαοτικον, an underground alliance of linguists, philologists, and polyglots. Our self-appointed role is to encourage arbitrary and capricious change both in Language and among languages, world-wide.

Our exploits are legion, and though heretofore anonymous, nonetheless famous. A few examples will illustrate our reach:

Hurricane Rita
Our purposes in these acts are simple and single-minded. We seek to enrich the languages of the world through arbitrary and capricious change in order to: We seek the aid and succor of lovers of Language world-wide who find that these goals resonate with them. From them we ask the continued support of our work in the form of claims of native-speaker familiarity with target constructions and usages; insinuation of the notion of the validity of study of such phenomena in grad student lounges and faculty meetings; and the teaching of such forms to children and adolescents to engender true native-speaker competency.

Our current primary project is the leveling of certain related forms to the syntactic versatility of all, including any, some, and none. Success is defined as the unselfconscious usage of these forms in exact parallel to the usage of all.

Current usage: You can’t fool all the people all the time.
Target usage: You can fool some the people some the time.

Current usage: You can’t win ’em all.
Target usage: Heck, you can’t even win ’em any.

Current usage: The winner takes it all.
Target usage: The loser takes it none.

Regardless of affiliation with a particular school of linguistic thought, you owe it to the grad students of the futureour inheritorsto make this dream a reality.

We’re all in this boat called Linguistics together. We’re none going to make it on our own. We’re any able to contribute to the causeand we’re some able to contribute more than others. Do it!

—Γραμματο-Χαοτικον

How To Get A Ph.D. Without Really Trying—Dr. Wolf Kitty, B.S. Ph.D.
How to Cheat at Linguistics—Book Announcement from Psammeticus Press
SpecGram Vol CL, No 4 Contents