Five linguists—three women (Adele, Chloe, and Emily) and two men (Barney and David)—recently participated in the Forty-Second Annual Linguistics Battle Royale, sponsored by Speculative Grammarian. The five linguists are grad students at the Munich Institute for Technologicality, Harvyard U, Cornhell U, Com Unity College, and Wheat and Rice A&M. Their five areas of expertise are syntax, semantics, phonology, phonetics, and historical linguistics. Their favorite IPA symbols are ə, ʘ, p’, ʃ, and ɔ. The five linguists were ranked 1st through 5th in the competition.

Using the information provided below, you should be able to deduce for each linguist the following: their school affiliation, their area of expertise, their favorite IPA symbol, and their rank in the competition. The chart below the clues may help you work out the answers.

• Barney, from MIT, came in 3 places behind the linguist from Cornhell.
• The linguists from Com Unity and W&R don’t like consonants.
• A woman came in first.
• The syntactician and the semanticist are women.
• Emily came in 2nd.
• The linguist from Harvyard doesn’t like clicks and came in 4th.
• The linguists who like ə and p’ came in the top two spots.
• Neither of the men like vowels.
• The linguist from Com Unity beat the linguist from Cornhell.
• Chloe beat both Adele and Barney.
• The phonologist (who likes ejectives) and the syntactician (who likes vowels, but not schwa), both beat the phonetician.
• A man came in last.
• The historical linguist likes one of the rounder symbols (ə, ʘ, or ɔ).

Solution.

	Akróstichon—Dr. Dr. Fortina Haecceity, M.D., Ph.D.
	Et Al.—Nick Williams
	SpecGram Vol CLVII, No η Contents