SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

How Do I Love Thee?, Let Me Draw a Tree Diagram. Alex Savoy. [Author’s Note: Quite in fitting with the approach of Valentine’s Day, I submit this love poem, which, surprisingly, actually worked—though alas I am no longer dating said person anymore, which is why I am bitterly prostituting this former declaration of love, which I have suitably altered for the occasion.] How do I love thee? Let me draw a tree diagram— I was maundering, lonely as a bilabial trill, When I first heard your voice—(some breathy strange tongue), I was love-struck at once—(after all, I was young), How rounded your mouth, And iotally perfect your skin. Your eyes are like geminates, plosive and clear, ... [ more ]

Draw Me a Linguist. Aster E. O’Gnosis and Margo Llicso. Much has been made recently in certain circles of the stereotypical views children have of scientists, and how those views are changed after paying a visit to CERN—all reflected in the drawings of the children. (Drollette, 2010) The cliché says that children are our future, and the humanizing effect of the CERN visit on children’s perceptions may eventually be parlayed into an increase in the number of young people who choose to pursue science as a profession, which of course results in better enrollment in college courses, and thus more funding for science departments. We figured linguistics could probably use some of that action, too. ... [ more ]

EtymGeo™—U.S. Edition. by the SpecGram Puzzle Elves™. Below are clues to the names of a number of cities. The name of each city is a homograph of an English word. The clues provided are vaguely etymological, and probably not sufficiently helpful. Some knowledge of geography will provide assistance, but possibly not enough. Our puzzles are hard. Life is hard. Get over it. These cities are all in the United States, and have populations over 100,000 according to one or more random reference works. ???, Alabama via Anglo-French and Old French, from Latin, going back to the PIE root *meuə- ???, Alaska with a root, via Old English and Latin, from a Greek word meaning “to ... [ 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 ]

An April Fool. A Letter from the Managing Editor. Fake. It is all fake. I’ve spent over a decade believing all of this crap, and I’ve devoted the last few years of my life to perpetuating it, working my fingers to the bone. I have recently discovered that much of the supposed history of SpecGram is made up. There have been clues, which I have, perhaps willfully, ignored. Even the letter from the editor, which I wrote, in the last issue, is full of clues. Iunthinkingly, merely passed on this clap-trap I’ve had drilled into my own head. Somewhere between a million and a million and a half issues of SpecGram from 1888 and not one copy survived? Eighteen mudslides is ... [ more ]

Endnotes. Chomsky, N. (1982), Syntactic Structures II: The Wrath of PRO, Berklee College of Music Press (Boston, MA), p. 180. When asked about it, he claimed that he had taken a wrong turn out of the Infinite Corridor. This excuse became less plausible as successive volumes were published at ever greater distances from campus. Chomsky, N. (1984), Syntactic Structures III: The Search for Spec-CP, Bunker Hill Community College Press (Boston, MA), p. 306. Halle, M. & Lujah, I. (1972), Songs of Praise, International Phonological Association Press (Milton Keynes, UK), p. 155. Occasionally, the endnotes are more valuable than the main text. A certain sociolinguist (who shall remain nameless for his own ... [ more ]

University News. Fab Neogram Studies Prog Smashes Enrollment Records. by Ruthlessly Roving Reporter Miss Deakina Andrea Kirkhamia Faculty in the tiny Central Asian country of Fabkhazia are celebrating tonight after a new linguistics graduate programme broke all enrollment records. The one-year Taught Masters in Neogrammarian Studies offered by Fabkhazia Central University boasts a cohort of 450,675 for next academic year with a number of these made up of individuals who have left their programmes in other universities to attend. ‘That we’re pleasantly surprised would be an understatement,’ gibbered Dr Teznan Kim, Convener of the Neogrammarian Studies programme, as ... [ 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 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 ]

Be a Linguistics Survivor, Out-Think. Out-Publish. ... Out Cold.. J. Probst and X. Pedition Robinson, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. As a public service, we have decided to put together an extensive list of heuristics useful for anyone wishing to pursue a career in linguistics and related fields. This, at least, should reduce the chance of readers falling foul of that dread disease: academicus expatriatus.¹ No area with the prefix post- or the suffix –ism was ever useful. And having both is a serious red flag. Never give data to a theorist. If you study a language no one else speaks, all your conclusions are automatically correct. If no one ... [ more ]

Poetry Corner. Philologer’s Kvetchwhinge 32. by Athanasious Schadenpoodle Eldsprung, earthbound utterance—grown, articulate, rich, particulate— did frolic, prolix, fore and aft. Now lie, not various (nevermore to harry us), stand patterned, matter’d, flat, and staid: Still. From entities, an identity—if one entangled, sore, a-frayed— of our inquisitions, adpositions be blended, blanded, blunted: Made. O Socio, Socio! Wherefore art thou Socio?. by Thomas Basil Callan Bernstein-Hodson All alone on the fourth floor, Unsure I can take much more. My sense of self come undone— Aware of my many tongues. I observe my sociolect— paradoxic’ly ... [ more ]

A New Study of Linguistic Synesthesia. by Ott Harfondle, Independent Scholar¹. Synesthesia is a peculiar psychological phenomenon in which one sensory stimulus causes a response of a different sense. A prototypical example of synesthesia is sensing color when hearing certain tones. Thus, the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff recalled an occasion when he and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff encountered Alexander Scriabin, who associated colors with musical keys. To Rachmaninoff’s surprise, Rimsky-Korsakoff agreed with Scriabin in general, though they disagreed on several of the associations. The two agreed on the key of D major as yellow, but when Rachmaninoff expressed his disbelief, Rimsky-Korsakoff ... [ more ]

Introducing.. The SpecGram ⅔ Ellipsis™©. More than a Comma.. Less than a Semicolon!℠®. A recent report by a Dutch company that studies printers found that switching from a “bold” or “black” font to a “light” or “narrow” one could save up to 30% on the cost of ink used in printing. That’s great! But why stop there? You can further reduce your elliptical printing and transmission costs by 33%! Here’s how! The editors of Speculative Grammarian are pleased to introduce the SpecGram ⅔ Ellipsis™㊋: .. We use it all the time in our internal emails.. it pleasantly conveys the rambling, ... [ more ]

ODE TO ALCUIN. ALCUIN, O ALCUIN, YOU RENAIS-, SANCE-Y CAROLINGIAN BASTARD, YOU HAVE GONE AND NEARLY DOUBLED, THE COUNT OF LETTERS TO BE MASTERED. FIRST AND SECOND GRADERS ALL OVER, SHOULD REVILE YOUR WICKED NAME; EVEN THEY KNOW THAT BIG AND LITTLE , LETTERS SHOULD REALLY LOOK THE SAME. A PAN-EUROPEAN ALPHABET , WAS ONCE PERHAPS A POSSIBILITY, BUT NOW WITH β, b, AND в, IT QUITE CLEARLY CANNOT COME TO B. THE DREAM OF THAT SINGLE SCRIPT IS, NO MORE, A PARADISE WISHED, BUT LOST; MERE DUST AND ASHES, THE FOOD OF WORMS, , BLOOMS SLAIN, BY YOUR MINUSCULE FROST. O ALCUIN, YOU “LOVER OF WISDOM”, FULL OF PIETY, HUMBLE AND MEEK, I BLAME YOU FOR StUdLy CaPs, AND , CamelCase, AND WORDS TOO l33t TO ... [ more ]

Allophonia.... by Leonard Conasal. Well she heard it in your vocal cords As phonemes sprayed in a ceaseless horde But you don’t really like acoustics, do ya? Well look at this: F_4^th, F_5^th— The formants fall and the formants lift The baffled tongue exposing allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Well your vowels were long but you needed proof You saw the data was not spoofed Its beauty and the vowel height overthrew ya She could not find a min’mal pair She broke down phones with her new software And from your lips she drew the allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Allophonia... Well ... [ 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 ]

Βέκος I Say So. C. Nobody and Ina Cave, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. Panelist #1: If the Poverty of Stimulus argument is correct, shouldn’t we all be speaking Phrygian? Panelist #2: The word Phrygian is, of course, the result of the Ancient Greeks’ being unable to pronounce the /f/ in the original ethnonym, Frygian, which is itself derived from the root fryg-. Frygian was so called because its ancestor, Proto-Frygian, consisted entirely of (sometimes explicit) interjections. This not only supports the Pooh-Pooh theory of language origin, but also provides strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis that ... [ more ]

It’s the Independent Scholar’s Life for Me, Boyo!. Artemus Zebulon Pratt, PhD, Editor-on-the-Lam. An irksome nibble in the side of a cheese sandwich recently put Your Editorship in mind of the hallowed days of his callow youth, and more particularly of a lunch partaken one day of yore with the other churls and girls apprenticed to his guild. After a spell of experimental Aristotelianism pondering the metaphysical status of essence of turtle soup, one of our strapping, as yet undimmed fellow spirits shocked us with a Platonocartesiochomskyan speculation: “You do realize, do you not, that all knowledge and every philosophical truth have already been stated in the works of Plato?” Quoth our fellow ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear SpecGram Editors: One cannot help but notice that the ⅔ ellipsis your journal has pioneered is not experiencing the exponential wave of adoption that you doubtless wish it would have, and which it no doubt deserves. We here at Spinnemics Marketing, as a gesture of goodwill that has nothing whatsoever to do with getting a free mention in your journal, would like to suggest that the problem lies—as is usually the case—not so much in the concept as in the packaging. People see two dots, and think, “But that is not an ellipsis! Part is missing!” They view the ⅔ ellipsis as an attack on the integrity of the ellipsis, rather than as a different ... [ 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 ]

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