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There’s not a lot going on today.
We can’t have you getting bored, so here are some more items from the last 7 days that will keep you entertained for now.
Gavagai with Peppers (serves 4) Many tasty gavagai recipes were brought from the jungle by linguists and missionaries in the first half of the 20th century. After the publication of Quine’s Word and Object they gained popularity among philosophers, though the book’s underlying idea was soon attacked from linguistic circles. As an unfortunate consequence, gavagai recipes emanating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tend to be inedible. In most gavagai recipes quantities are vague, as is the exact nature of the meat to be used. Many recipes prescribe sundry undetached rabbit parts as a basic ingredient. The following is an exception. Ingredients 800g of properly detached rabbit parts ... [ more ] 
Dear Sirs: When Mommy fell asleep at the computer during her third straight all-nighter and accidentally erased her doctoral thesis, I wrote this to help her out. She graduated with honors, and so I thought I’d do a paper on it and send it to you, since I’ve heard it’s your kind of thing. Please do not print my full name with this article, because I am not allowed to use Mommy’s computer at all. Thanks, Suzy X. P.S. My little brother Jimmy also contributed to this work, but I only let him touch the computer once. The Effect of Coffee Consumption on Adults’ Average MLU at the Breakfast Table. Jimmy and I have always thought that the way Mommy and Daddy act in the morning has something to do with how ... [ more ]
A Psychosis of the “Framework Psychosis” Framework. by Jonathan van der Meer, Center for Computational Bioinformatics and Linguistics, and Speculative Grammarian Editor-at-Large. The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum —Havelock Ellis, Framework Psychosis, as expertly reified by Dr. Pill (Speculative Grammarian, CLV.2), is a very useful window on the world. It provides an explanatory model of the success of the most successful frameworks, of tribalism in linguistics, and of Chomsky’s successful decades-long trivialization of performance in favor of competence. We even use a Framework Psychosis Model as a way to filter submissions at SpecGram. However, I ... [ more ]
Comestible Morphosyntax: the effects of food intake on grammatical performance 1. H.D. Onesimus, Unified Commission for the Study of Behavior. Abstract, Food intake is shown to correlate with morphosyntactic behavior. 1 Introduction, It has long been observed2 that ingestion of food and other nontoxic comestibles changes linguistic behavior. In order to satisfy the publication criterion for my continued employment, I decided to conduct a systematic investigation of this relationship. 2 Method, The ethnographic method commonly labeled participant observation was employed. Nightly analysis of preliminary field data (my notebooks are available on request) suggested that ... [ more ] 
Moundsbar Connections. On the isle of Dolop, off the coast of Gwap, lies the tiny community of Pif. However, we know nothing about it. Turning to Moundsbar, there are at least three languages related to it, Aro, Sorno and Koro. Aro is spoken by a few hundred souls in an enclave in the “Fan” district of Richmond, Virginia; Sorno has been extinct since the third century but was spoken on Guam and Saipan in the last years of the Roman Empire, though you would never know it from Roman history; no speakers of Koro have been located but a Koro language must be hypothesized to account for certain telegrams received through the years by the Moundsbarians which they were unable to read. Moundsbar /kp/ corresponds to /p/ in Aro, ... [ more ]
The Splendid Words. James S. Pasto. I got them! It took me seven years, three jobs, two marriages, and season tickets to the Red Sox, but I got them. He knew it as soon as he looked up and saw me; knew who I was even though he had never seen me. “You found us,” he said. “How nice.” I noted the ‘us’ and I noted him. He was lean with jet-black hair, hawkish dark eyes, and perfectly straight teeth that smiled shyly. The smile irritated me. I pulled out the gun, an old .45-caliber Webley-Fosbery with a hammer. The smile faded. “Now, now, is there really need for that?” “I’ll decide,” I said. “I’m calling the shots.” The smile ... [ 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 ]
Syntax: Above and Beyond. By Shane van Vansen & Nathan du West. Syntacticians are set to take a step into the unknown next month with the scheduled launch of two satellites which, it is hoped, will attain the hitherto murky Edge of the Sentence (EotS), if not beyond. Modelled on the two Voyager craft of the 1970s, the twin hi-tech devices, named Supra-Sentence Satellite A and B, will take slightly different trajectories: SSSA is designed for low supra-sentence work; SSSB, by contrast, is intended to reach far beyond the sentence into uncharted territory. According to Dr D. Scourse of the Supra-Sentence Satellite project, syntacticians have suspected for decades that there may be some matter or material above ... [ more ]
Polyglot Derivatives— Part I. Paul E. and Polly Glōttidēs, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. The world is a multilingual place. Increasingly, it is filled with multilingual people. And dang it, they just keep becoming more multilingual all the time. Plenty of Europeans speak more than two languages, and a couple of North Americans do, too. But this florescent multilingualism isn’t your grandfather’s old “two languages and a spare”. No, as the richness of humans’ relationships to one another (and to the entire created order) continues to entwickeln, new varieties of multilingualism are constantly arising. No longer can the simple term ... [ more ]
Speculative Grammarian Volume CXC, 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, Luca Dinu, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Egan Chernoff, Joe McAvoy, Tom Patterson, Daniel Swanson; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; From Alpha Subscripts to Alpha Male Mega-Scripts; April 2021 ... [ more ]
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Last updated Apr. 21, 2021.