What Happens When Linguists Meet?

Harry Burns and Sally Albright
X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies

Linguists are not exactly known for their social graces, so we thought we’d help out our follow linguists by identifying the interactional schemata most commonly followed among the various tribes of linguists. Admittedly, this comes dangerously close to anthropology—but it is for a good cause!

• When Algonquianists meet, they have to choose the right themes to direct all their actions.
• When Altaicists meet, they turn out not to have much in common.
• When Celticists meet, they mind their Ps and Qs.
• When Hungarian linguists meet, they stick together, in perfect harmony.
• When Mongolists meet, they calm a coy rat, shilling all orders, while they caulk a dagger and bury it in a hard shin, barring chalk or a whore chin.
• When Nostraticists meet, they ford the river of time to the dwelling of those who have gone ahead.
• When Old English scholars meet, things can get pretty thorny.
• When Esperantists meet, everyone speaks the same language.
• Hispanicists won’t meet until mañana.
• When Semitic morphologists meet, there’s a clear template for the discussion.
• When sign linguists meet, they j5a|j5a/w,.,. .
• When Sinologists meet, they get a tan. Just cos.
• When Xhosianists meet, they just click.
• Students of endangered languages rarely meet: they’re a dying breed.


• When phoneticists /miːt/, the vegetarians stay home.
• When phonologists meet, they sound each other out.
• When morphophonologists meet, everyone is changed.
• When morphologists meet, they make change by rubbing a pair of dimes together.
• ...Or, in free variation, they can create a meaningful unit.
• When allolinguists meet, they purr, bark, hoot, squeak, and chirp.
• When lexicographers meet, they encounter, make acquaintance, assemble, touch, join.
• When syntacticians meet, they check each other’s features and probe each other’s roles before merging.
• When transformational syntacticians meet, they leave t.
• When generative linguists meet, they mark traces on each other’s trees to see who is specified [α male].
• When pragmaticists meet, it’s what they don’t say that’s interesting.
• When semioticists meet, it signifies something.
• When sociolinguists meet, they wave and go to the fourth floor.
• When psycholinguists meet, they have scary shower scenes.
• When Chomskyan acquisitionists meet, the conversation develops naturally.
• When historical linguists meet, they Grimmly eat PIE.
• When etymologists meet, they don’t discuss insects.
• When field linguists meet, they have an elicit encounter.
• When computational linguists meet, the vodka is good but the meat is rotten.
• When extroverted computational linguists meet, they stare at each other’s shoes.
• When structuralists meet, they distinguish themselves by signifying on each other.
• When systemic functionalists meet, they systematically network.
• When interpreters meet, somebody has to tell them what to say.
• When idiolinguists meet, only one person tends to turn up.
• When conlangers meet, everybody wonders what the heck they’re talking about. Even if if they say it in English.
• 
  

  1	A	When interactional	[ linguists	]
  2	B		[ yeah, lin-	]	-guists I would say	[ m- m-	]
  3	A					[ meet	]	they just talk.

  1	A	When interactional	[ linguists	]
  2	B		[ yeah, lin-	]	-guists

  3		I would say	[ m- m-	]
  4	A		[ meet	]	they just talk.

  1	A	When interactional
  2		[ linguists	]
  3	B	[ yeah, lin-	]	-guists

  4		I would say	[ m- m-	]
  5	A		[ meet	]
  6		they just talk.




• Contact linguists don’t need to meet, because they’re always converging.

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	SpecGram Vol CLXXXIII, No 3 Contents