SpecGram—Letters to the Editor

Dear Editors,

In “Uncountable Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know”, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira quotes a student, asked to analyse a child’s utterance “I hammed it all by myself,” as responding

This child needs to be exposed to Universal Grammar and acceptable grammar.

Please could Dr Cruz-Ferreira inform the student in question that I have a PhD scholarship available.

Noah McMosky
Professor of Abstract Syntax
University of Ledworth

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Dear No Ahm... &c.,

Did you mean “inform the child in question”? He/she/it is the one in dire need of Pro hoc Desiderato immersion in syntactic abstractions. The student’s advice clearly shows he/she/it’s already been there, exposed to that.

—Eds.

To the Editor([s|ial staff]):

Perhaps “there is no correct way to pronounce Sadian”, but is there a correct way to pronounce “Sadian”, the exonym? As the word itself is English, I assume that the suffix is pronounced /iən/ and the stress is on the initial syllable. But is the vowel of that syllable /ej/ or /ɑ/, or perhaps /æ/?

Respectfully submitted,
Dr. Whom: Consulting Linguist,
Grammarian, Orthoëpist,
and Philological Busybody

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Dear Doc,

We asked Doc Füller, “Is the vowel of that syllable /ej/ or /ɑ/, or perhaps /æ/?” Her response:

Yes, that is correct.

Make of that what you will.

—Eds.

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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.

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