Everything psychologists wanted to know about linguistics but were afraid to ask

Herr Prof. Dr. Harold Twistenbaum explains:

• Where’s linguistics?

  Linguistics is a branch of psychology, which is a branch of biology, which is a branch of digital electronics.

• What is biolinguistics?

  It’s an overt movement to topple necrocomputers (a.k.a. ex-bios) which move covertly without a trace. Its founding principles are crash, sleuth, deterge and remerge.

• Are linguists psychologists?

  Nope. They draw trees and leave only the leaves to the psychologist (or to giraffes, whoever comes first).

• Are psychologists linguists?

  Nope. They can’t draw trees with their roots up.

• Are psycho-linguists linguists?

  Hard to tell. Names with dashes are headless constructions.

• What on earth is an e-to-t type?

  It’s not from earth. The name’s ET.

• Are words symbols?

  Are we talking day words or night words? The distinction is important to a linguist.

• Can linguists do experiments?

  SPSS means Small Print in Syntactic Structures. You be the judge.

• ‘S → NP VP’? What gives?

  It means Ss repel NPs while they attract VPs, neuronwise.

• What is linguistic computation?

  Sorcery in two acts. I: spell-bound. II: spit-out. Played in one act in Europe. Which one varies.

• What are stems and affixes?

  They are broken parts of a tree. Affixes come in many varieties: suffixes, prefixes, arborixes and idefixes.

• What’s a clitic?

  It comes from Kyril, who kept writing kyryptically, which led to crlitics.

• What is memory to a linguist?

  It’s a six-letter word.

• What is compositionality?

  Everything is a function of ‘-’ and every thing. ‘-’ is empty.

	On a Recent Application of Game Theory to Linguistics Education—Mongo Yalbag
	G.U.I.L.T.y Pleasures—A Complete and Comprehensive Theory of Language, Linguistics, and Everything—Jäger Haumichblau
	SpecGram Vol CLXV, No 3 Contents