SpecGram Vol CLXIX, No 4 Contents Letters to the Editor

It’s a Doʊɡ-Eat-Doge World

A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

If you don’t know who or what Doge is,1 you are in good company—old, uncool, out-of-touch company, but good company nonetheless.2 But even those who are too cool for school9 may not know of Doʊɡ. Doʊɡ is very different from the better-known16 Doge.

The or­gan­is­ers of the “Wri­ting Re­search Across Bor­ders III” Con­fer­ence, for their Sym­po­si­um “Re­search­ing to Write, Writ­ing to do Re­search: Writ­ing re­search in re­search­ers train­ing in Lat­in Amer­i­ca”, held in Paris, France, Feb­ru­ary 2014.

Chiasmus of the Month
April 2014

For one thing, Doʊɡ speaks with an Irish /bɾoːɡ/—do try to keep that in mind as you read through the pages of this issue. And for obvious reasons, Doʊɡ’s nickname is Doug—though it is always pronounced /doʊɡ/, because Doʊɡ is not a smart /doʊɡ/.18

For another thing, Doʊɡ cares about linguistics19 and language much more than Doge does.20 Animacy, meter, tone, Esperanto,22 syntax, generativity, acronyms, and /bɾoːɡ/s—Doʊɡ does it all.23

For a third thing, Doʊɡ counts “one”, “two”, “many”—so stopping here is pretty much the same to Doʊɡ as listing out a hundred more of Doʊɡ’s finer traits.


1 And if your answer has anything to do with Italian city states during the medieval and renaissance periods, then you don’t know.

2 For example, Rasmus Rask and Holger Pedersen almost certainly don’t know who Doge is. And the Stats Interns put the likelihood that Chomsky knows at 0.030424%.3

3 ±94.731322%4

4 That’s the 38% confidence interval.5

5 That’s good, right?6

6 The Stats Interns said it was good. They wouldn’t lie, would they?7

7 Awww, man! There’s gonna be some serious floggin’ when I get my hands on those good for nothing sons of —8

8 [The rest of this footnote is protected by attorney-client privilege. —The Lawyers]

9 No one is literally10 too cool for school. Stay in school, kids.13

10 And while we appreciate the kind of semantic change that shifts an iron-clad statement of truth to a mere intensifier11 here we mean in the actual literal sense.

11 We really understand. We “very understand.”12

12 That comment was Doʊɡ approved!

13 That’s secondary school and undergrad. Graduate school is a crapshoot nowadays.14

14 Or, for you linguistic degenerates out there, anymore.15

15 Not that I’m a prescriptivist, but, really? Positive anymore? Who does that?

16 Though much less-deservedly so, in my opinion.17

17 And yours, if you know what’s good for you.

18 Though Doʊɡ does appreciate practical orthographic conventions.

19 Chomsky may not know who Doʊɡ is,2 but Doʊɡ knows who Chomsky is!

20 Or so one assumes.21

21 Possibly leading to a state of very ass, so u, many me—but worth the risk.

22 Bilingually, no less. Just you wait and see!

23 And with style.


Letters to the Editor
SpecGram Vol CLXIX, No 4 Contents