Speculative Grammarian Podcast

Velum, Velum, Little Thing; by Phrançoise Phonétique; From Volume CLXVI, Number 2, of Speculative Grammarian, January 2013 — Velum, velum little thing. / How I wonder where you swing. / Up above the tongue so high, / Like a larynx in the sky. (Read by Les Strabismus.)

ODE TO ALCUIN; by Anonymous; From Volume CLVI, Number 2, of Speculative Grammarian, April 2009 — ALCUIN, O ALCUIN, YOU RENAIS- / SANCE-Y CAROLINGIAN BASTARD, / YOU HAVE GONE AND NEARLY DOUBLED / THE COUNT OF LETTERS TO BE MASTERED. (Read by Trey Jones.)

Spaz Attack in the Corner—Look! Look! I’m flying...; by Don & III; From Volume CXLVII, Number 3, of Speculative Grammarian, March 1993 — Linguistics: “Look! Look! I’m flying...” (Described by Keith Slater.)

Linguistics Nerd Camp—Small Talk; by Bethany Carlson; From Volume CLX, Number 4, of Speculative Grammarian, January 2011 — Surprisingly, Marty found that his small talk skills had actually declined during his summer at linguistics school. (Described by Keith Slater.)

The Dog Days of Summer—A Letter from the Nordic Editor; by Rötmånad Mätäkuu; From Volume CLIV, Number 4, of Speculative Grammarian, August 2008 — Welcome to the time of year when the seas boil, wine turns sour, dogs grow mad, and all creatures become languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies. Here in the Nordic countries, where we all speak English better (and with notably classier accents) than most so-called “native” speakers from North America, linguists fight off the heat-induced phrensies of the rotting months with a tall, cool glass of iced gløgg, and a refreshing, cool new issue of Speculative Grammarian. (Read by James Campbell.)

SpecGram, the Religion; by Margo T. Cip, A. M. Grössten, & Strčprst Kskrzkrk; From Volume CLXI, Number 2, of Speculative Grammarian, March 2011 — Linguists have always had several choices of deity—including Bloduwedda and her lot, or Θωθ, the pre-technological deity of computational linguistics—but there have never been any gods of satirical linguistics. However, on a recent data-diving expedition, we three junior SpecGram archivists have discovered that we are not as theologically lonely as we might have once thought. (Read by Trey Jones.)

New Course Offerings in Linguistics; from l’École de SpecGram, Paris; From Volume CLXVI, Number 3, of Speculative Grammarian, February 2013 — NEW: Degree in Linguodontics / The Paris campus of l’École de SpecGram is pleased to announce the introduction of a new degree program in Linguodontics. (Read by Les Strabismus.)

The Necessity of Sound Theoretical Frameworks in Linguistic Education; by Noah McMosky; From Volume CLXVI, (166) Number 2, of Speculative Grammarian, January 2013 — Theoretical Linguistics has the loftiest of goals, namely the creation of a theoretical framework that can explain the features of all languages. Lamentably, however, the pursuit of this goal is often frustrated by the activities of field linguists, who seem to take perverse delight in presenting data that apparently contradicts whatever theory seems most promising at the time. Sometimes, the data can be reanalysed in a more reasonable fashion, but to this day I remember my bitter disappointment as a young postdoctoral fellow when no amount of analysis would make Welsh and Hebrew yield to the perfectly straightforward prediction of Metasyntactical Heuristics that all VSO languages should be ergative. (Read by Pete Bleackley.)

How They Do It In Linguistics; by James Crippen; From Volume CLV, Number 3, of Speculative Grammarian, December 2008 — Sociolinguists do it with variety. ... (Read by Trey Jones.)

The Prudent Fieldworker’s Guide to Preparation and Packing—Part II; by Athanasious Schadenpoodle; From Volume CLIX, Number 1, of Speculative Grammarian, May 2010 — [Editor’s Note. This is Part II of Professor Schadenpoodle’s authoritative guide to preparing for the vicissitudes of fieldwork.] (Read by Keith Slater.)

The Prudent Fieldworker’s Guide to Preparation and Packing—Part I; by Athanasious Schadenpoodle; From Volume CLVIII, Number 4, of Speculative Grammarian, April 2010 — [Editor’s Note: While Prof. Schadenpoodle has, to our knowledge, only gone on two excursions, he is quite famous in our field for his awareness of, and proactive preparation for, hazards. On six separate occasions, campus security has had to rescue students who inadvertently triggered the defensive perimeter around his office, and two hapless sophomores spent over three days lost in the steam tunnels under the campus trying to find it in the first place.] (Read by Keith Slater.)

On the Meta-Abstractness of the Abstract Abstract; by Métha Maxwell; From Collateral Descendant of Lingua Pranca, October, 2009 — ABSTRACT: Little note has been taken of the linguistically universal logical and empirical implications and consequences that bear crucially on linguistic methodology and meta-processes that arise from E. Maxwell’s 1979 paper, On the Abstractness of Abstractness. (Read by Trey Jones.)

The Abstract Abstract; by Edith Maxwell; From Son of Lingua Pranca, November, 1979 — On the Abstractness of Abstractness / This paper will present new evidence which bears crucially on an empirical question not only directly relevant to the future of generative phonology but also clearly pertinent to the field of linguistics as a whole, as I have shown elsewhere. (Read by Trey Jones.)

Linguistic Deskwork; by H.D. Onesimus; From Volume CL, Number 1, of Speculative Grammarian, January 2005 — Since the so-called ‘discovery’ of endangered languages, much breathless attention in linguistics has been devoted to the topic of methods for linguistic fieldwork. So much breathless attention, in fact, that our field is in danger of losing its foundational and most critical resource: the linguistic deskworker. (Read by Keith Slater.)

Language Made Difficult, Vol. XL — The SpecGram LingNerds are joined yet again by returning guest Madalena Cruz-Ferreira. After some Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics, the LingNerds discuss Twitter Tribes and why biologists shouldn't do corpus linguistics, and then make a number of particularly humorous prescriptivist confessions.