Most Popular Pages—Last 7 Days

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1. Vol CXCIII, No 3 (27 visits)

Speculative Grammarian Volume CXCIII, Number 3 Editor-in-Chief: Trey Jones; Executive Editors: Keith Slater, Mikael Thompson; Senior Editors: Jonathan Downie, Deak Kirkham; Contributing Editors: Pete Bleackley, Vincent Fish; Associate Editors: Luca Dinu, Yuval Wigderson, Daniel Swanson; Editorial Associates: Emily Davis, Andrew Lamont, Gabriel Lanyi, Daniela Müller, Steve Politzer-Ahles; Comptroller General: Joey Whitford; January 2024, ... more ]



2. About Us (26 visits)

Speculative Grammarian and SpecGram.com. Our Story. The august journal Speculative Grammarian has a long, rich, and varied history, weaving an intricate and subtle tapestry from disparate strands of linguistics, philology, history, politics, science, technology, botany, pharmacokinetics, computer science, the mathematics of humor, basket weaving, archery, glass blowing, roller coaster design, and bowling, among numerous other, less obvious fields. SpecGram, as it is known to devotees and sworn enemies alike, has for centuries sought to bring together the greatest yet least understood minds of the time, embedding itself firmly in the cultural and psychological matrix of the global society while ... more ] Podcast!



3. Flush Times in Buffet City!Artemus Zebulon Pratt (21 visits)

Flush Times in Buffet City!. by Artemus Zebulon Pratt, Speculative Grammarian Editor-on-the-Lam. Recently I had nearly finished editing an appalling piece of “quantitative” “linguistic” “analysis” submitted to this journal by a self-declared graduate student, my services being declared indispensable and remunerative by the superior editorship.1 After surveying 342 undergraduates, or, more precisely, surveying an undergraduate population for a response rate of 9.2%, on how much they liked each possible syllable-final cluster in English on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = “No way, dude!” to 5 = “Totally way, dude!” ... more ]



4. Archives (21 visits)

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 mongeringfirst 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 ]



5. Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics (16 visits)

Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics. by Trey Jones. As a service to our young and impressionable readers who are considering pursuing a career in linguistics, Speculative Grammarian is pleased to provide the following Gedankenexperiment to help you understand the possibilities and consequences of doing so. For our old and bitter readers who are too far along in their careers to have any real hope of changing the eventual outcome, we provide the following as a cruel reminder of what might have been. Let the adventure begin ... more ] Book!



6. How to Use the Comparative Method for Fun and ProfitAl Tayo-Nostradamus, Esq. (14 visits)

How to Use the Comparative Method for Fun and Profit, Al Tayo-Nostradamus, Esq.. The comparative method is one of the most powerful tools ever developed by historical linguists. With the comparative method, you can take any two languages, determine whether they are related, and reconstruct their common ancestor, thus incontrovertibly cementing your reputation as the discoverer of the Italo-Turkic language family. But enough about me. The point is, the comparative method canbesides helping you further your scientific goals, as well as your academic and professional goals (which may or may not overlap with your scientific goals)elevate you above the masses and make you one of the linguist ... more ]



7. A Love/Hate Relationship: Pesky AntonymsJessie Sams (13 visits)

A Love/Hate Relationship: Pesky Antonyms. Jessie Sams, Stephen F. Austin State University. When students get to college, the majority of them have never thought about antonyms as being anything more than “opposites.” So big is the opposite of small, just like buyer is the opposite of seller. Then, all of a sudden, students are forced into a linguistics course with a professor who tells them that they have to learn to differentiate among different types of antonyms. Student’s minds are nearly exploding with information as they have to learn definitions of terms like ‘converse’ and ‘gradable’ and ‘complementary’ in the world of ... more ]



8. The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics (12 visits)

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 linguisticsand now it is available in book formboth 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 ]



9. New speech disorder linguists contracted discovered!Yreka Bakery (12 visits)

New speech disorder linguists contracted discovered!. An apparently new speech disorder a linguistics department our correspondent visited was affected by has appeared. Those affected our correspondent a local grad student called could hardly understand apparently still speak fluently. The cause experts the LSA sent investigate remains elusive. Frighteningly, linguists linguists linguists sent examined are highly contagious. Physicians neurologists psychologists other linguists called for help called for help called for help didn’t help either. The disorder experts reporters SpecGram sent consulted investigated apparently is a case of pathological center embedding. Yreka Bakery (Egello College). ... more ] Podcast! Book!



10. The Dark Side of Our ABC’sα-Betty Abū Gida (12 visits)

The Dark Side of Our ABC’s, An A-to-Z Guide to Linguo-Musical Noö-Orthographic Propaganda for Kids. A Letter from Conspiratorial Skeptical Editor α-Betty Abū Gida. Ask any child to recite their ABC’s, and immediately a familiar sing-song melody fills the air, invoking associations with youth and innocence. Beyond the oft-unrecognized yet deeply sketchy “musical polysemy” of the ABC song, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and Baa Baa Black Sheepthe ABC song is not at all as innocent as it might seem. Curiously, while this open musical secret is generally known among the intellectually inquisitive, the astounding ancestral link to ... more ]



11. Improving the Plural of SheepTrent Slater (12 visits)

Improving the Plural of Sheep. Trent Slater. English orthography is known throughout the world for its consistency and predictability. Few ever complain about the sound/spelling relationship in the world’s favourite tongue, nor has there ever been any call for spelling reform. Despite this considerable achievement, unique among the languages studied by Western linguistics, one thorn remains in the fly-free ointment. Sheep. While fish has both the count plural fish1 and the typological plural fishes, sheep has only one plural: the disappointing and unclear sheep.2 This is obviously disappointing and unclear and must be resolved. Meeting ... more ]



12. Quotes: What People are Saying (11 visits)

Quotes: What People are Saying. Here are a few of our favorite things people have said about Speculative Grammarian over the years, collected wild on the internet, or domesticated in email — Q1118. C’est sans doute un humour un peu ésotérique mais bon —Sémioticien du bisou — Q1117. Support the addition of the double-dot wide O to the IPA chart by buying some Speculative Grammarian merchandise! No, I’m not being sponsored or getting a commission from them. I just appreciate good geeky humour —Grace Teng — Q1116. Speculative Grammarian ist die erste Zeitschrift für satirische Linguistik. Kostenlos zugänglich, ein ... more ]



13. A New Mechanism For Contact-Induced Change: Evidence From Maritime LanguagesH.D. Onesimus (10 visits)

A New Mechanism For Contact-Induced Change: Evidence From Maritime Languages. H.D. Onesimus, Gobi Institute of Maritime Linguistics, Lanzhou, China. Modern contact linguistics has demonstrated an impressive ability to account for language change and the emergence of new languages with a remarkably small number of mechanisms: bilingualism, creolization, borrowing, and convergence (also known as “smart drift”). However, a few intractable situations of language contact seemingly cannot be accounted for in terms of this elegant system (notable examples include Wutun, Ma’a and Texas English). In this article, I show how the long-standing problem of Penguin and the Cetacean languages reveals a new type of ... more ] Podcast! Book!



14. The C-Rhyme and Pun-ish-ment of St. AlvinJerry Fyodor & Josef Dobrovskýevsky (10 visits)

The C-Rhyme and Pun-ish-ment of St. Alvin. by Jerry Fyodor & Josef Dobrovskýevsky. It is now commonly accepted that St. Alvin was always accompanied by an assistant called Theodorus. Theodorus was a budding philosopher, with interests in Kant, Hegel and innateness in generative grammar. He was however, very rotund and was therefore known as the Deep Fat Friar. As a young monk, St Alvin left his first monastery, where he had taken a vow of silence, to found an order that believed that people were best served by creating attractive paper to put around Christmas gifts. It is for this reason that his autobiography was entitled “From Trappist to Wrappist.” The members of that order were noted for their ... more ]



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Last updated Mar. 28, 2024.