Linguimericks—Book १०१ SpecGram Vol CXCIV, No 3 Contents Overheard in the Linguistics Student Lounge—Chesterton Wilburfors Gilchrist, IV

Name Dropping ~ Noam Dropping
A Linguistic Symphony In Four-Plus-One
Micro Vowel Bowel Musical Movements

Deedles D’Dee

We’ve all heard of Noam Avram Chomsky (or is it Avram Noam Chomsky—sources seem to differ), a name as familiar in our mouths as household words: the Harrogate Town of football clubs, the Dettol of domestic disinfectants and the Long of islands, it surprises many that NAC, as he is fondly nick-monikered, is actually only one of several tens of people doing syntax today. While the other voices in the field admittedly only account for no more than 3% of all published material in syntax, Deedles D’Dee, the SpecGram poet in residence, thought it an opportune moment to remind the field of one or two of the other names that occasionally offer publications to the field of theoretical syntax.

All(aboard)egro con brio(che and a coffee)
With GG it is never plain sailin’
So if you’re screamin’ and shoutin’ and wailin’
Sail over the sea
To the Isle RRG
And relax on the beach with Van Valin

Ron(alds McDonad and Langacker)do
If GG is a scary old janitor
Whose wild grin sends school kids off panicking
Then come learn with me
At School CCxG
With Croft, Cruse and Goldberg and Langacker

Scherzo(n sale in the women’s wear department)
If you say of GG ‘I’ve just had enough
The theory is simply not good enough!’
Then come walk in park
Through the parallel arch-
-Itecture—with top prof Ray Jackendoff

Pastor(al dente)ale
So GG is a wet, rainy holiday
Where we sit in our tent and say ‘Sod it, eh?’
Over there in the sun
Is some SFL fun
With Fawcett and Hasan and Halliday.

Coda(mol painkillers)
For some, syntactic linguistics
Is a torturous form of gymnastics
Whatever the school.
So do something new:
Logistics, ballistics, patristics.

Study questions

In order to appreciate the symphony in full, Deedles has elicited help from Kippax-famous illiterate literary critic Kreedles von Kray who has kindly offered some study questions to deepen the experience of the above. Kreedles has asked Deedles to point out that these are certainly not copy-pasted from the generic document that was thrown together the last time she was asked to provide some study questions.

  1. Consider three ways in which the poem subtextually either alludes to or arguably plays with the intersectionalities of identity, ‘that which might have been’ and ‘the forever’, making reference to either Auden or Edward Lear.

  2. In terms of its central trope(s), how do(es) any deviation(s) from that/those (trope)s in itself serve to ballast the effect of that/those trope(s) in terms of the tropic deviations?

  3. Theme-wise, how might the poem ‘fail to coNnect’?

  4. Juxtapose stance, reader expectation(s) (and their potential frustrations in the text, intentional or otherwise) and mode (or tenor) with any literary traditions and/or major works of the canon that the text seems to seek to subvert; derive from any resultant analysis a fresh perspective-based reading that sheds light on the underpinning ideological metric of lines 7 and 9a.

  5. What does the poem ‘mean’?

Linguimericks—Book १०१
Overheard in the Linguistics Student Lounge—Chesterton Wilburfors Gilchrist, IV
SpecGram Vol CXCIV, No 3 Contents