The /tæsḷ/’s
Worth the /hæsḷ/!
You cast wide your career-seeking net.
Graduation—it looms as a threat!
So stand out from the mob,
Or you’ll ne’er find a job,
While still drowning in soul-crushing debt.
—Κόμμα Ο᾿Κῶλον
If language can be considered to be
A case of meta-systematicity
Which flows on out from wherever you begin it
To unbounded variations of forms without limit;
And if writing is considered to be
Another case of meta-systematicity
Which flows on out from any first phrases
To take on a rich multiplicity of faces;
Then writing about linguistics should indubitably be
Meta-meta-systematicity,
Whose possible number of iterations—
As communication about communication—
Will be, I suggest, more innumerable than
What can written in a single lifespan
And certainly more—although I’m a fan—
Of the beginning we’ve made in SpecGram.
—Mattie, Siss, Tam O’Tiszi-Tee
On the Prosodic Correlates of
Weak and Strong
Generative Capacity
buffalo buffalo buffalo
buffalo buffalo buffalo
buffalo buffalo
buffalo buffalo
buffalo buffalo buffalo
—Andrew Lamont
Sapir–Whorf states that what words are said
Can affect what one thinks in one’s head;
In land of gulyás,
We find
vörös and
piros1—So the Magyars see two types of red.
—Madge Orr
1
The last vowels of lines three and four
Do not rhyme in the nyelv of Magyar
But the <s>, in the coda,
Is post-alveolar
I.e. [
ʃ]
—and of that, I am <s>ure.2
2
This isn’t a Magyar nyelv test
Just a note on graphs <sz> and <s>:
So Liszt is liked ‘pissed’
Not like ‘wished’, ‘fished’ and ‘dished’
And with <s> it’s like ‘fre
sh’
—Budapest.3
3
Alas, that last line didn’t rhyme
With lines one and two! Every time
I try to explain
It gets worse. Oh, the pain,
Of this rich, polyphonic grapheme.
