Editor’s Note: The following contributions, all set to easily deducible music, are culled from years of presentations at the University of Chicago’s Goodspeed Day, an annual celebration of serious linguistic poetry. None of the original manuscripts of the reprints below had authorial attribution, and our efforts to determine who the authors were were unsuccessful. So by reprinting them without permission, we may be in violation of copyright law. Hopefully, we won’t be sued.
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Old Man Chomsky, That Old Man Chomsky, His thoughts keep changin’, And rearrangin’— He just keeps writin’, He keeps on writin’ them books. He don’t know German, Much less Warlpiri, And he won’t learn ’em, Till they fit his theory! He just keeps writin’ He keeps on writin’ them books. You and me must struggle through Government, and binding too. Bind that node! Drop that PRO! I don’t believe it, but Noam says so. I gits tired; My eyes git weary— Some more extensions To Standard Theory! But Old Man Chomsky, He just keeps writin’ them books. |
You get a structure, I’ll get a rule, honey, You get a structure, I’ll get a rule, babe, You get a structure, I’ll get a rule, And we can join the generative school, honey, ba-by mine. Yonder comes a man with a Turing machine, honey (etc...) Yonder comes a man with a Turing machine, Can’t generate language but sure looks keen, honey, ba-by mine. Formulate that transformation, honey (etc...) Formulate that transformation, Just don’t lose any information, honey, ba-by mine. What you gonna do when the output’s starred, honey? (etc...) What you gonna do when the output’s starred, Run it through again, this time X-barred, honey, ba-by mine. |
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Your glottal stop will make you hoarse. You’ll click and click with all your force, But ejectives won’t come the whole day through, Your native tongue will tell on you. |
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Androcentrism in Linguistics—Angela Dworkin |
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On The Indexico-Relational Inductivity Hypothesis—Ed Goff |
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Better Words and Morphemes — JLSSCNC Vol I, No 3 Contents |