SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

SpecGram, Quarterly. A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief. [Note: Due to a scheduling error⁰ and tight deadline, we were unable to cull a small percentage of the Editor-in-Chief’s extensive and extraneous footnotes. Our usual modus operandi is to allow him to annotate and divagate to his tiny black heart’s approximation of contentment, and then mercilessly cut the dead weight with a red pencil-cum-machete. In this case, we were only able to remove and repair the subsequent rhetorical and narrative damage for approximately 86.7% (by weight) of the Editor-in-Chief’s most egregious footnotery. We apologize for the unavoidable ... [ more ]

False Friends. Episode: “The One with All the Confusion”. by Trey Jones. — (Fade in. Opening credits.), Voiceover: New York City, one of the most polyglot cities in the world, is home to Tiffani—a differently-clued American 20-something who almost speaks 4 or 5 languages—and her group of multilingual friends and acquaintances. Together they work to make their way through life, dealing with the ups and downs of work, friendship, and love, even though at least half the time none of them have any idea what the others are saying — (The scene: a ridiculously large penthouse apartment in New York City, expensively decorated in a style that only a ... [ more ]

A Morphosyntactic, Semantic, Pragmatic, Sociolinguistic and Literary Investigation into the Psycholinguistic Mechanisms Underlying English Puns. Pete Bleackley, Associate Editor. On her website Lang 101¹ my highly steamed^{2, 3} editorial colleague Madalena Cruz-Ferreira prompts: Try now to think about jokes involving structural ambiguity (morphological structure, syntactic form or syntactic function). As before, explain the source of the humour, in an unambiguous manner! While the answer I gave on her website correctly explained the structural ambiguity present in the joke, it was far from an exhaustive analysis of the source of the humour. I here expand on it to present a more ... [ more ]

The Perplexed Linguist’s Guide to English Departments. Now with Footnotes! Athanasious Schadenpoodle. So, Dear Reader, you have completed your Ph.D. in Linguistics (yay you!), run headlong into the grim realities of the modern job market (poor you!), broadened your ideas about possible teaching contexts (smart you!) and landed a gig in an English department (lucky you?). You’ve potentially got the base of the Maslovian pyramid covered for at least a semester, but you’re in a rather alien environment, surrounded by people who talk funny in a way that Dialectology 501 never prepared you for and who have some markedly odd folkways. Some culture shock is inevitable, but a little knowledge can go a long ... [ more ]

Διπλοῦν Ὁρῶσιν Οἱ Μαθόντες Γράμματα. A Letter from the Managing Editor. Fall¹ is in the air. Just as glorious color bursts forth outside our office windows, so do new ideas explode in the brains of our contributors. The astute² reader will have noticed the recrudescence³ of the excellent⁴ series, “Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know” over the last several issues. This is of course a cause for celebration.⁵ In addition to another fine installment of that series, this number contains ... [ more ]

On the Necessity of a Tri-Branching Corpse. by Tirizdi. (Translated from the Original Zhyler¹ by Quentin Popinjay Snodgrass, Ph.D.). In his landmark text Zixÿ Erwilevö (usually translated as On Humanish Language), the great Zhylerian philosopher Tirizdi explains everything from language acquisition to hypothetical phonetics. As the tome itself is rather ponderous (the expanded second edition contains more than two thousand pages of text), Tirizdi published several articles which summarize his points on, for example, phonology, semantics, and the pragmatics of combat. The present article is a condensation of chapter seventeen, regarding the way in which words are put ... [ more ]

Brother, Can You Paradigm?. Written by Harris Risman¹, 1. Show respect to the Gracious Grammarian, Though his foes call him Brutal Barbarian. It takes chutzpah and nerve to ignore the chef-d’oeuvre, Of a hero and humanitarian. 1.1, He is prince without peer. He is hailed as a seer, By disciples from Dover² to Darien³. 2. He never need ask “Can you spare a dime?”⁴, He’s transformed⁵ his whole field with his paradigm.⁶, Though he generates strife, His ideas brought green life, To a dried up and colorless arid time.⁷, ... [ more ]

The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . For decades, Speculative Grammarian has been the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics—and now it is available in book form—both physical and electronic! We wish we were kidding,¹ but no, seriously, we’ve published a large³ collection of SpecGram articles, along with just enough new material to force obsessive collectors and fans to buy it, regardless of the cost.⁴ From the Introduction: The past twenty-five years have witnessed many changes in linguistics, with major developments in linguistic theory, significant expansion ... [ more ]

Towards a Detailed Biochemistry of Innate Mental Structures: Consequences of an OT Approach to the Contemporary Novel. by, Mongo Yalbag, Independent Scholar¹. One of the many innumerable benefits of the Chomskyan revolution is that we can see clearly that everything in the human mind is synthetic a priori, except for the parts that are analytic a priori. As the great man (pax eocum) himself has stated, even the concept of “carburetor” is innate. Besides the fascinating fact that both UG and the concept “UG” are therefore innate,² this has deafening repercussions for the less well-endowed humanities. In particular, it has been stated that there are only seven ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Merchandise. Introduction. In order to lend a hand to our good friends and steadfast supporters over at the Linguist List during their 2006 fund drive, we prepared a small selection of limited edition SpecGram merchandise, including T-shirts, stickers and magnets. Originally these items were only available as prizes awarded as part of the Linguist List fund drive. In 2012, several of the SpecGram editors suffered from a rare form of collective frontal lobe damage, which made it seem like a good idea to put together a SpecGram book. The result in 2013 was The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics. In 2014, Editor Mikael Thompson entered a deep fugue ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear Editors, I was offended, nay, aghasted, by the amount of space you devoted to footnotes in the December editorial. Are you still unaware of the climate impact of footnotes? I expect such ignorance of the Social “Sciences” but Linguistics, as Noam likes to say, is science. Do your research, and stop the insanity! No more footnotes! Nevil Chamber Potts, Shiny College, Ontario ... Dear Weevil, Thank you for the feedback.^{1, 12, 13} —Eds — ¹ Notice that we didn’t say “helpful feedback” or “useful feedback” or even “feedback worthy of printing on toilet paper”.² ² And in case the ... [ more ]

It’s a Doʊɡ -Eat-Doge World. A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief. If you don’t know who or what Doge is,¹ you are in good company—old, uncool, out-of-touch company, but good company nonetheless.² But even those who are too cool for school⁹ may not know of Doʊɡ. Doʊɡ is very different from the better-known¹⁶ Doge. ... The organisers of the “Writing Research Across Borders III” Conference, for their Symposium “Researching to Write, Writing to do Research: Writing research in researchers training in ... [ more ]

Re: Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics. A Letter to the Editor. The Editor, SpecGaram¹ Sir,² Readers should note that the article—Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics in SpecGram CL.α—despite appearances—is not a game, or a mere interactive text adventure! It is a highly sophisticated applied expert system, diligent use of which will enable the user to simulate the actualities at very little personal cost but time. Yet experiencing all of its tracks—albeit virtually rather than in actuality, be it said—will provide the participant with a wonderful, exhilarating experience that may ... [ more ]

PAID ADVERTISEMENT Plagiarism Uncovered in SpecGram Pages. The Linguistic Inquirer. Pursuant to the terms of the pre-litigious resolution of Grammar Entelechy v. Speculative Grammarian¹ the editors of SpecGram have recently disclosed the truth about the academically distasteful practices by which the allegedly “esteemed”² journal foists its linguistic and paralinguistic agenda on the profession. Of particular concern is Speculative Grammarian³’s long-running, recurring, and well-documented theme that languages, dialects, and grammars can be or become degenerate.^{4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, ...} [ more ]

ADVERTISEMENT SpecGram Language Placement Services. As any sociolinguist can tell you, language vitality is all about status. And frankly, most languages don’t have it. Does yours?¹ Most languages haven’t even taken the basic step of hiring a part-time publicist. Nor can most attract a truly talented linguist (or an unscrupulously devious one) whose tireless publication efforts can usher them into international prominence. Fortunately, SpecGram is here to help. SpecGram Language Placement Services offers your language the fame it deserves, at a price for any budget. Available Packages. “Back from the Brink” Language Tune-Up. Script consultation ... [ more ]

Evidence in Defense of the Strong Whorf Hypothesis. Reed Steiner. Abstract. Many critics of the strong Whorf hypothesis argue that the evidence is not strong enough. However, a study conducted using four students and a copy of Deniss Villeneue’s Arrival suggests otherwise. Literature review. While most good scholars accepted the strong Whorf hypothesis as an unquestionable fact,^{1, 2} there is a little bit of light criticism.^{3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22} The predominant argument (it’s not a strawman because I cite a woman) is that Whorf wasn’t a linguist.²³ However, this argument does not stand up to scrutiny. After ... [ more ]

SpecGram Archives. A word from our Senior Archivist, Holger Delbrück: While bringing aging media to the web and hence the world is truly a labor of love, SpecGram tries the passion of even the most ardent admirer. Needless to say, we’ve fallen behind schedule. At every turn, the authors found in the pages of this hallowed journal stretch credibility with their gratuitous font mongering—first it was the IPA, then a few non-standard transcription systems, then Greek, and not just the alphabet, but the entire diacritical mess, and now I’ve got some god-forsaken Old Church Slavonic glyph sitting on my desk that no one can even name, and which would give the Unicode Consortium ... [ more ]

Improving L2 Performance with Pirahã Shigudo_, and Simple English. The effects of syntactic and semantic priming on successful L2 communication. Jeannot Van Tricasse, Jules Verne University, Paris, France. As is well known, students of foreign languages are often frustrated by their lack of ability to express thoughts of normal complexity in the language they are studying.^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10} This frustration can easily turn into a bitterness that leaves the student unable or unwilling to continue their language studies, even after a year or more of study.^{11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20} This is an unfortunate state of affairs for many reasons. Bilingualism has been implicated in ... [ more ]

Shigudo, Reluctantly. Sir Edmund C. Gladstone-Chamberlain, Professor Emeritus of Linguistic Science, Department of Lexicology and Glottometrics, Devonshire-upon-Glencullen University, Southampton. In 1963, at the tender age of 24, I found myself on an expedition deep in the Amazon Basin, up a smallish tributary of the Río Ucayali. There we encountered a well-established tribe of indigenous people, numbering close to 400 and living in relative isolation, who called themselves the Shigudo. Several members of the tribe spoke nearly fluent Spanish,¹ and we were able to communicate quite effectively with them. As our expedition was chiefly anthropological in nature, and the Shigudo were, anthropologically ... [ more ]

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