New Year, New You—A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief SpecGram Vol CLXXXVI, No 3 Contents /nuz baɪts/

Letters to the Editor


Dear Eds—

While we enjoyed reading Eunice Emigre’s paean to the duality of the linguolabial trill, we were disappointed that he did not address the issue of its divergent articulationssome trillers trill their tongue, some their lip, and never the twain shall meet.

Sincerely,
Aktiva & Passiva Artikalatoro

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Dear Achy & Breaky,

“There is also a lot of slobber involved.”

What truth! We encourage readers to discover their own linguolabial tribe and then attempt to visit the other one; it is a journey of great difficulty but great discovery. There is also a lot of slobber involved, so put down some plastic sheeting before you start.

—Eds.

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Dear Eds [comma]

If I may follow up on the recent letter form Prof. DuFou regarding the morphology and syntax of passé [comma] I fear that in the final line of paragraph two [comma] two French phrases are used [comma] immediately adjacent one to the other [comma] and are separated by a comma [comma] which appears to my eyes at least to be italicised [period]

“Please amend and apologise [period]”

This is an error of punctuation [period] While Two Feet is correct to use italics for French-origin phrases [comma] given that the majority of the letter was written in English [comma] the comma which separates the two phrases should be typographised in the text-level [comma] English language [comma] non-italic font [comma] not in italics [comma] as though it belonged to the preceding French phrase [full stop]

Please amend and apologise [period]

Phil Stoppen-D’Quomma
Royal Society for the Protection [comma] Promotion and Promulgation of Precise Punctuation

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Dear Fool,

Your email left us in a [coma]. Please [stop] [fully]

—Eds.

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Dear Eds,

I’m in awe of the recent suggestion by my mentor, Holbrooke MacTinosh, for an onomastic typology for multiple SpecGram authorial identitiesand in agreement with his rationale. However, instead of role, day or mood, might a typology of funniness be a sensible appendage to the Keiths Slater, Treys Jones etc?

“Might a typology of funniness be a sensible appendage?”

I propose a laughometric scale from 1–5, five being high, expressed formally as [1], [2], [3] ... [5]. The bracketed material is appended directly after the name e.g. Deak Kirkham [1]. I have prepared a rough draft of what this may look like (although it contains a rather large percentage of [1]-s and [2]-s), which I would happily email over for a fee of only $650.*

Sincerely,
Holborn Weathervane
Weathervane Quantitative Onomastic Analytics


*Per word; report contains 17,641 words.**

** Excluding appendices of 54,319 words.

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Dear Veiny,

To paraphrase Caesar’s immortal ‘Veni, vidi, vici,’ ‘You wrote (in vain): no thank you’.

—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.

New Year, New YouA Letter from the Editor-in-Chief
/nuz baɪts/
SpecGram Vol CLXXXVI, No 3 Contents