SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

Speculative Grammarian. Volume CXLVIII, Number 2. January 1998. Speculative Grammarian, Vol CXLVIII, No 2 EDITOR, Tim Pulju ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Trey Jones, Aya Katz, Sérgio Meira, Don Reindl, Mikael Thompson, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATE, John Newell, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea. ... [ more ]

The SpecGram Quiz to End All Quizzes. ... Everyone makes Internet quizzes—even your three richest widowed aunts use their mite, if not their might, to bedazzle the gullible and amass those sweet, sweet clicks. So stand aside, ladies, SpecGram is on the ~~make~~ move! There’s a new quiz powerhouse in town, and since we don’t believe in planned obsolescence, you’ll never need nor want another!, Just answer these 17 handy-dandy mutually orthogonal questions to get the answers to all (or at least the 7 most important) of your burning questions. ... [ 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 ]

Psammeticus Press www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, BOOKS, SERIES, and MORE The following valuable volumes, spectacular series, and interesting items have been released with pride by Psammeticus Press, an academic publishing house founded in honor of the first and purest of linguistic inquirers: one might criticize his methods, but who could quibble with his results? Follow the links below to learn more about these fabulous books and excellent series, each destined to become a classic in the field. Correlations in Linguistics by “Big” Stas T. Stickle & “Lil” Rel E. Vance Published 2024. 318 ± 2.89 pages As *ptooey* statistics *bleurgh* has become an accepted part of ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear Sirs (snort, sneer), In your last issue you addressed Clotilde Fanbourne as ‘Miss Fanbourne.’ She had given no indication whatsoever of her marital status in her correspondence, so where do you get off implying she’s too unstable to attract a husband? Sincerely mine (not yours), Agnes Lamb, Lower Pigeon Croft, Felonious Assault MO ... Dear Miss Lamb, Thank you for your gracious inquiry. Please note for further reference that said term of address is used in our style sheet to indicate quality of argumentation, not marital status —Eds. ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ Editors, I want to offer a word of advice to your readers. After reading about the lovely-sounding ... [ 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 Eds, In your August editorial, “Unmasking Editorializing in Linguistic Articles” the Speculative Grammarian Committee on Preserving Linguistics as a Respectable Discipline wrote: Here at Speculative Grammarian, we maintain a rigorous separation between facts about language and linguistics (to which we devote the bulk of each issue), and the opinions of our contributors (which are relegated to this editorial page or other, clearly-delimited sections of our august publication). What are you talking about? There’s opinion all over the place in SpecGram. I love this journal more than several of my own children, but let’s get serious! XOXO, Siri S ... [ more ]

I U Linguistics Club. Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. June 1978. ... i u linguistics club, edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... [ more ]

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 ]

Linguistic Contributions To The Formal Theory Of Big-Game Hunting¹. R. Mathiesen, Brown University. The Mathematical Theory of Big-Game Hunting must surely be ranked among the major scientific achievements of the twentieth century. That this is so is largely the work of one man, H. Pétard, in whose fundamental paper (1938) certain recent advances in mathematics and physics were employed with great skill to create a theory of unmatched—not to say unmatchable!—power and elegance. One must not, of course, dismiss Pétard’s predecessors totally out of hand: the field had a long and distinguished history as a technology, was raised to the rank of a science by the ... [ more ]

Virtual NLP Dice. The SpecGram Überlinguistaffen. ... [Re-roll.] [Re-roll like you mean it !!] As many successful practitioners of Natural Language Processing know, the surest path to success is to come up with some complicated-looking equation and then rest on your mathematical laurels for the rest of your career—because “Math is hard, and hard things are for smart people, and smart people are just better. QED.” Or so we learned from the original ad for NLP Dice: “Local Linguist Mom Discovers One Weird Trick for Deriving NLP Equations!—Computational Linguists Hate Her!” (SpecGram ... [ more ]

Crossword. by Tim Pulju. Across, 1. Trace amount, 5. PBS docum. series, first episode was American Tongues, 8. MIT’s Dept. of Ling. and ____, 12. Theaters, 13. Mother Tongue speaker?, 14. Spanish trill, 15. Back or raise (homonymy), 16. Kind of obj. 17. Westernmost Indic speakers, 18. What you do to Equi-NP, 20. Himalayan nation, 22. Neither’s partner, 23. Old English letter, 24. President when Vol. 1 of The Handbook of American Indian Languages came out, 27. August Wilhelm or Friedrich, 32. Cope prefix, 33. Anti-pollut. org. 34. Wonder, 35. Certain ... [ more ]

Linguimericks, Book ९२. There once was a teacher from Rome Who spoke poorly of changes at home: “Vetulus non veclus, Oculus non oclus” Much info’s been gleaned from this tome —Arcadia Arcadopoulou, Prescriptivists love nothing fewer Then running over fee held and moo-er To baldly split infinite ifs And getting into endless .tiffs, Descriptivists on th’other hand Are a rather defer-ent band. They will not tell Watt to-do But rather spend thyme watching ewe. Linguists say they are at home With the latter as a rule But twitch when people think it’s cool To play around with homophones —Col. O. Nihilist, The Historical Phonologist All day, the ... [ more ]

IPA-to-ILPS Transcriber. by Daniel Swanson. Type International Phonetic Alphabet^* into the input box and get the corresponding Inter-Lingual Personal Script below. Or, handcraft individual consonants and vowels. See “Inter-Lingual Personal Script” (SpecGram CLXXXIX.2) for more information. Scale, Add IPA string Add Consonant Add Vowel — ^* Suprasegmentals and tones are not currently implemented. Some other parts of the IPA may also not be supported. ... [ 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 ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Volume CLXIV, Number 4; June 2012, MANAGING EDITOR Trey Jones SENIOR EDITOR Keith Slater EDITOR EMERITUS Tim Pulju Speculative Grammarian, Vol CLXIV, No 4 CONSULTING EDITORS David J. Peterson Bill Spruiell, ASSOCIATE EDITORS Madalena Cruz-Ferreira Daniela Müller Mikael Thompson, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES Cem Bozsahin Jonathan Downie Lev Michael Mary Pearce Mary Shapiro, COMPTROLLER GENERAL Joey Whitford Irregular Constructions, Lead to Irregular Thinking! ... [ 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 ]

What is a Morphome?. By David J. Peterson, Consulting Editor of Speculative Grammarian. Hi! This is Consulting Editor David J. Peterson. You know, we have a lot of fun here at Speculative Grammarian, but in devoting an entire issue to the controversial yet provocative term “morphome” we felt it was important to include a straightforward, down-to-Earth explanation of exactly what a “morphome” is. We knew there was bound to be confusion, so we felt it would be a good idea to just head all of it off at the pass, and include this piece right at the beginning of the issue. So! If you don’t know what a morphome is, or if you feel you do but still have questions, read the article ... [ more ]

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