Language’s Revenge—Terence G. MacNamee Lingua Pranca Contents The Anguish Lenglage II—Tom Ernst

When I Heard the Learn’d Syntactician

W. Kruck

After Whitman,
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”

When I heard the learn’d syntactician,
When the NP’s, the AUX’s, were ranged in trees before me,
When I was shown deep and surface structures, with shift, embedding
     and deletion rules,
When I sitting heard the syntactician where he proved
     and motivated in the lecture-room,
How soon not surprisingly I became confused and bored,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off among friends,
With their musical clear voices, and from time to time,
Listen’d in perfect silence to their talk.



When I Heard the Learn’d Phonologist

When I heard the learn’d phonologist,
When the vowels and diphthongs were ranged in a matrix before me,
When I was shown the distinctive features, to add, delete and
     assimilate them,
When I sitting heard the phonologist where he wrote rules,
     with slash and dash ’fore the lecture room,
How soon so accountably I grew weary and stiff,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical voiced night-air, and from time to time
Listen’d in perfect silence to the sounds.

Language’s Revenge—Terence G. MacNamee
The Anguish Lenglage II—Tom Ernst
Lingua Pranca Contents