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A Possible Prional Source for Linguistic Degeneration, from Prolonged Ailuric Exposure. B. Bubo, T. Tyto, S. Strix, and A. Asio. Over the past two decades, an increasing number of adult patients have presented for treatment of symptoms associated with linguistic deficits not characteristic of known neurological syndromes. Less severe cases entailed impoverished vocabulary and syntax, while more severe cases resemble a mixture of glossolalia and ludic language in which most sentences had been reduced to two-word combinations characteristic of early stages of language acquisition in infants. Patients’ homes were examined to no avail until it was noticed that all of them owned cats and displayed the aforementioned ... [ more ] 
Speculative Grammarian Volume CXCIII, Number 2 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, Guillaume Jacques, Andrew Lamont, Gabriel Lanyi, Mark Mandel, Joshua Nash, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Comptroller General: Joey Whitford; One More Tier in the Phonology Hierarchy ; October 2023 ... [ 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 ]
L’Ishing du Gwujlang VII—Lusrveer. by Dorothea Dorfman and Theodora Mundorf, with additional assistance from Bob Kinnick and Dee Reed. Heedful readers will already have familiarized themselves with l’ishing from our prior analysis (SpecGram CLXXIV.3, etc.). Though outwardly similar to French verlan, l’ishing couples words that can be made to map onto one another. In earlier installments we have surveyed dialects of l’ishing that are based on moving sounds or letters from one end of a word to the other. We have a short time ago come across another new dialect, called lusrveer, in which paired words are each the phonetic reversal of the other. For ... [ more ]
Speculative Grammarian Volume CXCIV, Number 2 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, Nina Sloan; Comptroller General: Joey Whitford; We Put the [ˌsuʷpɚˈsɪliʲəs] in [ˌsuʷpɚˈsɪliʲəst]; October 2024, ... [ more ]
On Slurping. Alan Daudin. In a little-known squib, Ross (1969) observed that the application of Slurping1 is restricted in somewhat mysterious ways, Cf. (1b). (1), a. Serious consideration indicates that previous debates about the formalizing of Slurping were misguided. b. *, Serious consideration Slurping of formalizing the is likely previous debates about to be misguided. Although some English speakers marginally accept (1b),2 most speakers react to it with a severe fit of vomiting. The purpose of this squib is threefold: (i) clean up the mess; (ii) prove that Slurping is computationally intractable, and (iii) suggest more hygienic avenues for future research. The structure of this squib is as ... [ more ]
The Linguolabial Stops. Deedles D’Dee, SpecGram Poet-in-Residence. When it comes to th’IPA Top of the Pops— Prioritising phones from round the world (From airstream to how much the tongue is curled)— My favorites are the linguolabial stops. Every year the excitement makes me pop: ‘What will be the winning phones this year?’ My mind is frozen, heart on hold in fear Then they win again: the linguolabial stops!, When all the phones are lined up at the rope In all their glory: manner, voice and place, Which ones win our hearts—and win the race?— As ever, it’s the linguolabial stops. To make most sounds the tongue just flips and flops: Any fool can ... [ more ]
On Pseudo-Psiblings*, A Good Start in Need of Significant Linguistic Improvements, Which We Have Undertaken and Are Here to Report On. Fillastre Pèl-Roig,a Belle-Fille Rousse,b Hijastro Pelirrojo,c Rauðaz Khæran Steupa-Kiltham,ab Rotkopf Stiefkind,ac Punatukkainen Tytärpuoli,bc and Vörös Hajú Mostohagyerekabc. with begrudgingly acknowledged & extremely minor input from Trey JoneszΩ ☣ Well That’s Dumb. For the last 19.4 years, those of us with the ... [ more ]
Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXXXIV, Number 3 ... Trey Jones, Editor-in-Chief; Keith Slater, Executive Editor; Mikael Thompson, Senior Editor; Jonathan Downie, Contributing Editor; Associate Editors: Pete Bleackley, Mark Mandel; Assistant Editors: Emily Davis, Vincent Fish, Deak Kirkham, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Joe McAvoy, Mary Shapiro, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; Linguistics: The [-discipline] Discipline; May 2019 ... [ more ]
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 ]
Arguments Against English Spelling Reform. Hermes Trismegistus, Alexandria, Egypt. Advocates of reform—or, to use a more neutral term, reshaping—of the English spelling system are forgetting that the term spell has a meaning outside of linguistics, and that the two meanings are historically and fundamentally related. Just as the word grammar gave rise to derivatives glamour and grimoire, the use of writing in magical rituals gave rise to the noun form spell, meaning a written formula of great mystical power. The writing of spells obviously has great advantages over the memorization of incantations, principal among which is the avoidance of error in the use of ... [ more ]
Christmas Carol Orthography Puzzle. by Mary Pearce. I have just finished heading up an orthography course, so orthography is on my mind. Now I need help with the testing of a new orthography proposal for English. All you need to do is read the proposal and then read the titles of the Christmas carols below. Proposal The orthography is produced from the phonetics of the text spoken by a Brit. So that means fewer ‘r’s than you may be used to. (Sorry, no intrusive ‘r’s in these data.), Only letters in the English alphabet are allowed so that means some digraphs and a bit of creativity that I won’t bore you with. (That should cover any typos.), Vowels and glottal stops are too complicated so ... [ more ]
The Phonetic Clarity Defect in the Drinker’s Speech, The language of cocktails and shooters. By Dr. I.R. Superordinate, Chair of Recently Recovered Research, Department of Futile Linguistics, University of Jealleybeane, Hluhluwe, Republic of South Africa. Research into the field of phonetic clarity has been scant in the history of Linguistics, the infamous linguists1 who practice in this field usually having their field notes (handwritten on various napkins, pieces of paper, etc.) destroyed by housekeepers, university cleaning staff, jealous academics and, of course, bartenders.2 It is therefore my privilege to bring my own research in this field to life in this paper. It has been noticed that the ... [ more ]
Letters to the Editor. Dear BSteamed Editors, Could you please explain to me why people are into procrastination but not concrastination? Why do we have superlatives but not normal-latives? Why is there tomorrow but not from-morrow? Please help, Ivor Question ... Dear Iqqy Pop, Impatient and semiliterate English speakers unschooled in the classics have shortened Latin contrā to con, allowing it to be placed in admittedly pithy but etymologically ambiguous opposition to prō. This can almost be forgiven, as it has given rise to a lovely bon mot of a joke about progress and Congress. Despite attempts—again by ... [ more ]
Blends for Friends—Winning Words for Wise Writers, Worthy Word Wranglers, and other Wanton Wrongdoers, by Blenda Portman-Toe, Published 2020. 84 pages + 943 pages of citations and etymologies As linguistics continues its meteoric ascendance in the academic zeitgeist, scholarly and even not-so-scholarly writers would be well-advised to “get with the [minimalist] program” and take on the trappings of linguists and linguistics—in order to please and appease their soon-to-be intellectual lords and masters. There’s no better way to signal one’s in-group status than with a bit of jargon-heavy wordplay taken a tad too seriously. To that end, ... [ more ]
The Nutritional Value of Phonemes. D. I. E. Titian & Vic Tuals. Research from beyond SpecGram has found some surprising associations between phoneme inventory size, population size, and distance from the likely East African origin of our species (Atkinson 2011). Larger populations tend to speak languages with more phonemes, and phoneme inventory size decreases with distance from East Africa. Subsequent work has confirmed these associations with larger datasets (Daland 2015). Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the most likely explanation of the data, which was given in a SpecGram podcast several years ago (Language Made Difficult, Vol. 5): phonemes have mass, and in order to survive the long ... [ more ]
Ode to Jungftak, et al.. Nihila R. Tikel, SpecGram Institute for Cryptolexicography, Loch Ness, Scotland. Reference works throughout the world contain entries for people, things, and concepts that have never existed. The canonical cryptolexicographic example is the jungftak, a supposedly mythical Persian bird with only one wing. Mated pairs are able to connect by means of a bony hook (male) and eyelet (female), enabling them to fly. While it is biologically implausible in the extreme that such a creature could exist, the myth of such a creature is quite reasonable. The phoenix, also found in Persian mythology, is even less biologically plausible, but that myth is quite well-attested. ... [ more ]
ADVERTISEMENT Davie Dunnit’s Disparaging Dictionary . Practical Prescriptivism at its Finest!. ... Davie Dunnit’s Disparaging Dictionary will help you understand exactly how annoying your tiresome attempts to be “cool” or “hip” or “groovy” are to those around you who have matured, emotionally and mentally, beyond the elementary school level. Some linguists may be tsk-tsking at this point, but they can think of Davie Dunnit’s Practical Prescriptivism as less about dictating usage and more about explaining the sociolinguistic reality of word choice to the lexically inept. Below are a few sample entries. anyhoo—Are you ... [ more ]
The Subaltern Refuses to Cite: An Altermondialist Rebuke of Journal Impact Factors (JIFs) in Linguistics via a Foucauldian Reconfiguration of Semantic Web (SW) in Deep Learning. Beavis Beaujolais, Professor of Post-Postmodernization in Linguistics, The Δίς Λεγόμενον Centre for Endeepened Ideation. Paradigmatically-speaking, the realisation of academic source attribution has self-modified in response to externalities from being the avuncular acknowledgement of ideational ancestry to become the supine, yet hirsute arm of hegemonic realpolitik, vaguely indexing the far-off reality of the accomplishment of tenure. In this ... [ more ]
Old Professor Hockett. Old Professor Hockett came to our school one day, To teach us some linguistics and earn a little pay. More accurately, history was what he taught us all, In 1989, as the leaves began to fall; And all us graduate students, when the clock struck one, We’d gather in the classroom and have the mostest fun, A-listening to the stories that Hockett told about, And the Chomskyans that gets you, If you, Don’t, Watch, Out! Once there was a linguist wasn’t biunique, So when he went out to the field, he was up the creek. His colleagues heard him holler, his informants heard him bawl, And when they tried to find him, he wasn’t there at all!, And they looked at his phonology and found it was a ... [ more ]
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Last updated Oct. 15, 2024.