Letters to
the Editor
Dear Goody-Goody Editors,
I was eating bonbons after dancing the cancan on a choo-choo train, and paused, pompom in hand, to read your latest versical offering. I was shocked, shocked, I tell you, to notice that your frou-frou “poet” had omitted any reference to the greatest way of forming words, namely reduplication! That’s a no-no which nearly caused me to trip over my yo-yo and get a boo-boo. You are driving me cray-cray and Deedles D’Dee is dumb as a dodo!
Ta-ta,
Jojo Tutu
Bora Bora
PS: Pooh-pooh to you, your mama, and your papa!
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Jeepers creepers, Mojo Jojo!
Your nit-wit argument is all harum-scarum, and your wishy-washy diction is only so-so at best, but the nitty-gritty of your point is valid—of course! of course! No need for any argle-bargle there. You’ve given us the itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny germ of a super-duper idea—it really is the bee’s knees!
We had a quick pow-wow with poet’s poet D. D’D., and sure as eggs is eggs, after a little chit-chat we were able to commission a handy-dandy new poem. We even paid extra to make sure that D didn’t dilly-dally and got to it chop-chop.
Now everything should be ship-shape: “Ode to Reduplication” appears in this issue. Holey-moley it’s good! If you don’t agree, that’s on you! Que será, será.
Bye-bye!
—Eds, Edds n Eddys
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Dear editors,
We were alarmed to see that in your recent editorial, you resorted to a non-linguistic second example for the initialism IPA. While we do not dispute that this is indeed a standard abbreviation for India Pale Ale, we would like to point out two things. Firstly, IPA is an abbreviation for many things both real (the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) and made up (Individualistic Persons [are] Autonomous). Secondly, and more importantly, there are plenty of linguistics-internal concepts that carry the IPA abbreviation. We would like to remind your readers of the well established conversational analysis construct Interactemes per Adjacency Pair first discussed in our groundbreaking 2003 paper. While the abbreviation is strictly IpAP, it’s close enough (which is co-incidentally what the editorial board said of our 2003 paper on its seventh resubmission).
We would ask you to consider using IpAP on any future occasion when you need a second example of what IPA stands for.
Ingrid and Petronius Aggallballaddee
Conversation Analysis Consultants
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Dear CAC,
Your letter was:
- ignorant, puerile, asinine
- insipidly pathetic, alas
- insolent, perhaps aggressive
- ...
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Chers Messieurs,
Further to the so-called ‘poem’ by the so-called Deedles D’Dee on alleged ‘suppletion’ in relation to other apparent ‘morphological mechanisms’, may I refer you to chapter 43 of Moore F, & O’Lee, G’s (2019) edited volume What the M*rph is Morphology in which a conclusive argument is advanced that all ostensible ‘morphology’ is simply syntax other than, of course, phonologically determined allomorphic variation along the lines of i[m]possibly funny, i[ɱ]finite idiocy, i[n]active braincells, and i[ŋ]glorious basterds? To which the poem does not refer!
Please withdraw said poem or least offer a new ode to allomorphy.
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Estimados Señores,
Further to the so-called ‘poem’ by the so-called Deedles D’Dee on alleged ‘suppletion’ in relation to other apparent ‘morphological mechanisms’, may I refer you to chapter 42 of Moore F, & O’Lee, G’s (2019) edited volume What the M*rph is Morphology in which a conclusive argument is advanced that all ostensible ‘morphology’ is simply phonology other than, of course, compounding along the lines of ‘brain-dead idiots’, ‘laughter-lite journal’, ‘satire-poor submission’ and ‘student textbook order delay faculty resolution committee appointee’? To which the poem does not refer!
Please withdraw said poem or least offer a new ode to compounding.
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Dear Last of the Summer Wine,
In the red corner, Compo; in the blue corner, Al. Gentleman, if that is what you are, fight it out!
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Look here, chaps,
In your April issue, you write: “To answer our own question—no, no we should not, and for the same reason we did not use 霸 or hegemone. And why is that? Because clarity.” Really? So if you have never even read your own journal, why do you have the gall to expect any of the rest of us to plow through the persiflage and waltz through the rodomontade?
Sincerely,
Napf Suppenkelle-Brotteller
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Dear No Pfeffer Mit Meiner Suppe Und Brod,
Given the recent gall bladder troubles from which the under editor for photographs has recently been suffering—which have prevented her both from waltzing and rodomontading—we find your letter to be in be in very bland taste.
Add more pepper next time.
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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.
