There once was a syntax professor,
Who found teaching class quite a stressor,
So he purchased a sword
And hired a small horde
And became a prescriptive aggressor.
—Morris Swadesh III
“What have humans not already written t?”
A linguist once asked herself t,
Until she found out Ø
This limerick has rhymes Ø
The world ain’t never done seen t.
—Zoë Crater
Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammars
Have to me always seemed quite bananers.
So I learned how they work
And found out that they...work
And with movement I am no longer enamored!
—Zac Smith
Three linguists were left at the rapture
Who somehow escaped divine capture.
“To hell with us guys.
Make sure language survives.”
And they all spoke Cymraeg thereafter.
—Syntactic Ian
Some linguists in Edinburgh say
That postmodernists rarely should stray
Too close to field data—
For sooner or later
They’ll lead statisticians to pray!
—Col. O. Nihilist
Short Southern vowels will get broken,
Down to the very last token:
“The /kæjət/’s a /pɛjət/.”
“The /pɪjəg/ is /wɛjət/.”
Oh, how I wish I were jokin’!
—α-Betty Abū Gida
