How to Spot Fabricated Data--Tim Pulju SpecGram Vol CXLVII, No 3 Contents The Etymology of Timothy--Eura U. Pertú
Speculative Grammarian is proud to present yet another irregular installment in the Linguistic Anthropologic Monograph Endowment's Bizarre Grammars of the World Series.

Eidetic Pronouns: An Anthropological
Linguistic Study of the Winodanugai0
Bizarre Grammars of the World, Vol. 53


History
On a small island, located in the Pacific Ocean, there lives a fairly small population of mixed Polynesian and European stock, whose language appears to be related to the Austronesian language family. This determination is difficult to make for certain because of the strange history of the people who speak this language. On January 17, 1834 (the accuracy of this and other dates will become obvious below) a ship, blown off course on its way to Australia from Europe, wrecked on the reef surrounding this island. On board was an unusual collection of criminals who were being sent from Britain. A large portion of these individuals were eidetics who had used their extraordinary memory abilities to cheat in local gambling establishments. Another, smaller, percentage of the ship's human cargo was comprised of musicians who had murdered their patron and his whole family. The population indigenous to the island was quite small, and like today, everyone was closely related to everyone else. The criminals bred with the native population, beginning on March 18, 1834. Oddly, they also managed to wield a certain amount of cultural influence, and within two generations children who had neither perfect pitch nor an eidetic memory were effectively second class citizens. Today, all but one of the residents of the island are eidetic ('the idiot'), and all but two (a pair of twins) have perfect pitch ('the deaf twins'). The linguistic result of this strange happening is even stranger: basically, in Winodanugaian pronoun reference is forever.

Winodanugaian Phonology and Morphology
Vowels in Winodanugaian have six different values for frontness, thirteen values for height, three degrees of rounding and four length distinctions. There are seven tone levels and vowels may have as many as six tonemes associated with each. It is therefore impossible in this preliminary report to give a full description of Winodanugaian phonology. However, we can note a few simple generalizations: the consonantal system of Winodanugaian is very simple, having only eight consonants (w, d, g, p, t, n, m, ŋ); vowels are the only tone bearing units, and consecutive tonemes associated with a single vowel may not be identical.

We can also see the effects of this plethora of vowels (936 vowels, each able to bear one of 65317 logically possible tones, giving over 61 million possible vowels (with tone)) on the morphology of Winodanugaian. All personal pronouns are of the shape /mV/, a shape which only pronouns have. These pronouns refer to arbitrary groups of individuals. Note that we are not talking about an arbitrary number of individuals, but an arbitrary group. My consultant was able to think of, in under a minute, over fifty pronouns that refer to groups of exactly fourteen individuals. My consultant was also able to list two hundred pronouns which include herself in the group referred to.

Pronoun Acquisition
A typical pronoun acquisition exchange goes something like this (translated into English, as I have not yet worked out a transcription system for Winodanugaian):

A: Tonight PRO3,792 will be coming to visit.
B: Who is PRO3,792?
A: Juan, Maria, and all of their children but Pedro.

After this exchange, the pronoun I have arbitrarily catalogued as PRO3,792 will be effortlessly associated with the group mentioned by Speaker B in the future. I have been able to catalogue over 23,700 such pronouns, by recording them and analyzing the recordings digitally. Otherwise I would be helpless, like the idiot who can hear but not remember, or the deaf twins who can remember but are unable to make more than a few hundred vowel distinctions (including tones).

Finally, it is stranger still, but true, that in Winodanugai, these multitudinous vowel differences are found only in the personal pronouns. The rest of the language seems to be atonal, using only about 15 vowel qualities, which have predictable rounding, and distinguish only two lengths.


Tentative Conclusions
More research is necessary to unravel the intricacies of this system. Said research will require more and abundant funding.

Claude Searsplainpockets Somewhere in the Pacific

0 This paper was made possible by LAME grant #47H4J58F5D8E5-S4D7D4S558W547-8-96-5 / 4G-78-5C4V5C8V-4V55C / 88X-996X / 4CC*8S9A / 9A6-54 // V5B, and the letter Q.

How to Spot Fabricated Data--Tim Pulju
The Etymology of Timothy--Eura U. Pertú
SpecGram Vol CXLVII, No 3 Contents