Dear Editors:

Wow! I’ve got to hand it to you. I can only imagine what that must have been like pulling the alien syntax tree out of the satchel. I remember seeing one of those back in ’69 amongst some orange trees along the Elberton Highway around 2:00 in the morning. First the oranges started glowing, then it slowly came right at me.

Have you got any more of that stuff?

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Dear Ms. Knoff,

By “that stuff” we assume you mean more items from the archives, as opposed to any illicit substances that might evoke a similar senso-linguistical experience. In that case, yes we do, in this very issue.

On the other hand, if you were referring to substances of a certain type, then see Phreddy down in the Phonology Department—though you didn’t hear it from us.

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Speculative Grammarian accepts well-written letters commenting on specific articles that appear in this journal or discussing the field of linguistics in general. We also accept poorly-written letters that ramble pointlessly. We reserve the right to ridicule the poorly-written ones and publish the well-written ones... or vice versa, at our discretion.

Dear Editor(e)(s),

I am confused. I was told that yours was an august journal and at the leading edge of linguistic science, yet all I see here is a mass of worn-out in-jokes, silly cartoons, advertisements for books, and naughty pokes at the academic establishment. Is this all linguistics is?

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Dear Coln,

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to write. Your lack of academic affiliation tells us that you obviously do not have a job where sending meaningless nonsense to journals counts as work. We apologise profusely for that and suggest you join your local literary theory department forthwith.

On your specific point, we also wish to clear up two misunderstandings. First, this is only an August journal once a year, in the month of, well, August. Aside from that chronological confusion, we also believe that you have misunderstood our mission and aims. Firstly, we do far more than offer “naughty pokes at the academic establishment.” We also proffer well-aimed kicks, poisoned barbs and a few respectful sighs. In fact, the book you welcome is a strong statement of our value, being as it is the most valuable book in Linguistics since Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures, and some would say even more valuable than that. What other book contains such a wealth of viewpoints, a richness of theory and a surplus of sage wisdom? If you can name one, we will buy it... and then mercilessly mock it.