In the Cage with the Stochastic Parrot—Pete Bleackley and BLOOM SpecGram Vol CXCII, No 3 Contents Journey to the PIE Heartland—T. Traveller

Overheard* in the Linguistics Student Lounge

Chesterton “Chico” Wilburfors Gilchrist, IV
Grad Student Union Steward, United Linguistics Workers**
Second-Year Grad Student, Dept. of Lexicology and Glottometrics
Devonshire-upon-Glencullen University, Southampton

All names have been changed to protect the guilty innocent.

Jargonisation: Conjecture: The linguists with people skills become interpreters. Those without people skills become translators. Those who are uncomfortable with “people” being used adjectivally become language teachers. Those who were diagramming those sentences and griping about the use of the word “linguist” to describe those other people become, well, linguists.
Preterite: Those who prefer not to talk to people, just read what they wrote (preferably a few centuries after they died) become philologists. Those who prefer machines to people become computational linguists.
MilkCaramel: Those who kept making funny mouth noises after infancy become phoneticians.
Jargonisation: Vampire linguists cannot see their own inflection.
Preterite: They’re experts on Feeding and Bleeding.
MilkCaramel: There’s also counterbleeding and counterfeeding for those vampires who don’t have time for table service.

More to come...


* My Grandpapá—Chesterton Wilburfors Gilchrist, Jr., of “Reanalysis of Spanish by Naïve Linguists” fame—impressed upon me from an early age the potentially career-making value of eavesdropping serendipitous fieldwork. As I am not—yet!—the eavesdropper serendipitous fieldworker my Grandpapá is, and I don’t—yet!—have his ear for finding meaningfully meaningful meaning in overheard conversations, I will keep publishing the data of my informants until I, too, make an important contribution to linguistics!

** This Research is gratefully sponsored by the ULŋW Local #1729.

In the Cage with the Stochastic Parrot—Pete Bleackley and BLOOM
Journey to the PIE Heartland—T. Traveller
SpecGram Vol CXCII, No 3 Contents