Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXXXVIII, Number 1 Trey Jones, Editor-in-Chief; Keith Slater, Executive Editor; Mikael Thompson, Senior Editor; Jonathan Downie, Senior Editor, Pete Bleackley, Contributing Editor, Deak Kirkham, Contributing Editor; Associate Editors: Vincent Fish, Mark Mandel; Assistant Editors: Emily Davis, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Luca Dinu, Andrew Lamont, Matthew Lee, Daniela Müller, Josh Nash, Steve Politzer-Ahles, Mary Shapiro, Reed Steiner, Daniel Swanson; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; Promoting the Only, IPA You Can Choke On; August 2020 ... [ 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 ]
Letters to the Editor. Dear Eds— As a marriage guidance counsellor in a deprived area of the north of England (England, near Scotland, UK), I was overjoyed to see an affirmation in the concluding paragraph of your recent article about diacritics of the important social role that diacritics can play. I have been using 8-foot foam tildes in working with quarrelling couples since 1998, finding that the smooth, flowing shape of this particular diacritic offers troubled partnerships both a symbolic and actual bridge: one partner sits on each of the curved arms thus facilitating mutually respectful and attentive dialogue. The judicious deployment of 3-foot question marks and suspension points also supports the smooth flow of ... [ more ]
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 ]
‘Study Ling- mind-your- language-uistics?, Abso- whoops-a- daisy-lutely Not!’ Repealing the Appalling and Remaining Appealing: A Policy Document Approach.A Letter from Editorial Policy Boffin N. Effin Fickes-Achin.[The Editorial Board has received many complaints about the Editor-in-Chief’s unprecedented use of the -bloody- infix in a recent editorial. Though not as many as our mother-infixin’ Linguistics of Tea issue, thank goodness. We’ve asked Dr. Fickes-Achin to address our readers’ concerns, which he may or may not have done below —Eds.]SpecGram is appealing.1 In fact, ... [ more ]
Ten New Commandments for Linguists.Transcribed from the original Stone Tablets by Trey Jones, With much help from the Commandment Clarification Committee, including Joel Boyd, Aya Katz, Jouni Maho, Ken Miner, Daniela Müller, David J. Peterson, and Joey Whitford. As a Linguist, thou art an ambassador for the scientific study of Language and languages in the land of the monolingual naive speaker. Even though the monolingual naive speaker roll their eyes at thee and chastise thee as a word-obsessed fool and exalt their own native speaker competence, thou shalt proselytize the study of “Language with a big-L” whenever and wherever thou mayest do so, spreading the true word of descriptivism and railing ... [ more ]
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 ]
/ nuz baɪts /.Not a wire news service but still more reliable than most newspapers. Press Release on IPA Controversy. Given the ongoing alcohol/phonetics controversy over the meaning of the abbreviation “IPA” the Society for Unnecessary Corrections has published a press release on the subject. In accordance with the norms of news publishing, we print the release below with no comment. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE It has come to our attention that the people are confusing the International Phonetic Alphabet with India Pale Ale. We set out the differences below. * One is an intoxicant, overexposure to which can lead to slurring words, impaired decision-making and a nasty headache. * The other is a ... [ more ]
Things Not to Write on Your Funding Proposals— Part I.G. Reed, A. Varice, & M. Ammon, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. Conscious of the need to improve the positive social impact of our organization, we’ve decided it was time to branch out further into studies that could improve the lot of the average linguistic researcher. We thus had our interns submit 10,000 funding proposals each to different funders around the world. We could have carefully analysed the content of successful and unsuccessful proposals and highlighted specific words, sentences and phrases linked with rejection. Instead, we gave the interns the weekend off and here present part 1 of 2 of a ... [ 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, but no, seriously, we’ve published a large collection of SpecGram articles, along with just enough new material to force obsessive collectors and fans to buy it, regardless of the cost. From the Introduction: The past twenty-five years have witnessed many changes in linguistics, with major developments in linguistic theory, significant expansion in language description, and even ... [ more ]
Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXXXVII, Number 4 Trey Jones, Editor-in-Chief; Keith Slater, Executive Editor; Mikael Thompson, Senior Editor; Jonathan Downie, Senior Editor, Pete Bleackley, Contributing Editor; Associate Editors: Mark Mandel, Deak Kirkham; Assistant Editors: Emily Davis, Vincent Fish, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Abby Crisp, Luca Dinu, Andrew Lamont, Matthew Lee, Joe McAvoy, Josh Nash, Steve Politzer-Ahles, Mary Shapiro; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; Emic, Etic; Put Up in the Attic; June 2020 ... [ more ]
What is SpecGram Doing in Response to COVID-19?.The SpecGram Pandemic Response Team† Interns. As the scourge of COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc in linguistics departments, universities, and elsewhere around the world, the average linguist may feel overwhelmed and helpless. To comfort our readers, we present what are possibly the nine most reassuring words in the English language: “We’re from Speculative Grammarian, and we’re here to help.” Below we outline the steps we are taking internally to slow the spread of COVID-19, followed by recommendations for linguists everywhere. What SpecGram is Doing For Everyone As part of our commitment to ... [ more ]
The Quotta and the Quottiod.Punctuation Designed for Linguists, by Linguists.Vére Çélen, l’École de SpecGram, Cheboksary, Chuvashia. It is not news to linguists that particular forms of punctuation can be problematic. One frequent source of considerable friction in certain circles is the unending debate over whether and when (and, increasingly, why) commas and periods go inside or outside quotation marks—especially when they are not actually part of the material to be quoted. Typically careful linguists usually prefer not to include punctuation in a quoted citation form or gloss, while many punctilious punctuationally prescriptivist publishers demand they be ... [ more ]
Linguimericks, Book ७५. I am a big fan of recursion! If you’re not, then don’t cast aspersions, Rather learn cons and pros From a lim’rick that goes, “I am a big fan of recursion...” —α-Betty Abū Gida, Plato etc. were Greeky, Their writings insightful but creaky; They are all now long dead But are still being read By scholars both stodgy and geeky —Dikocrates of Garthens, An odd linguist with manner censorial Told a fantastic, outlandish story you’ll Prolly not credit— But truly he said it— Of a syntax that’s quite non-arboreal —Pumptilian Perniquity, Hapax Legomena The problem with hapax legomena Is, there’s such a humongous ... [ more ]
Palindromic Passivization.Overcoming the Computational Cost of, So-Called “Center-Embedding” Passives. Albrecht Brechtal, Fortuna de Sadamente, and Jonathan van der Meer, Co-Vice-Presidentials of Biolinguisticity at the, Autonomous Xenobiological Linguistics Entity (AXLE).[Editor’s Note: This is the final installment in the long-running “Center Embedding” saga that has unfolded in the pages of Speculative Grammarian. We believe that Brechtal, de Sadamente, and van der Meer have given the definitive analysis of this phenomenon. On the off chance that we are mistaken, future submissions on this topic will likely be referred to Linguistica ad nauseam, Linguistica ad ... [ more ]
Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome . Are you looking for a book about ancient Roman history that’s interesting, informative, and amusing? No? Oh. Well, all the same, as long as you’re on this webpage already, we’d like to recommend that you buy Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome. Easy to read, full of genuine historical facts, and adorned with amateurish hand-drawn pictures, The History of Rome is so good that even Girolamo Savonarola might hesitate to cast it into the flames. And best of all, it’s only $6.99! Buy one now! Interested, but wary of being burned by a slick advertising campaign for a product that fails to live up to the hype? Then download the free preview and read ... [ more ]
The SpecGram Ministry of Propaganda. Welcome to the SpecGramMinistry of Propaganda. The SpecGram Archive Elves™ have undertaken a project to digitize and share a sheaf of early 20th century SpecGram propaganda posters, which were used during the Great Linguistic War and the Second Linguistic War to encourage linguists everywhere to keep a stiff upper lip and a sense of humor during those trying times. We provide the digitized posters here for you to enjoy, retrospect on, and share. Select a poster to see a higher quality image, and for links to share on social media, to email friends, and to view or download the highest quality version of the image. If you have ideas for other messages that need ... [ more ]
