Speculative Grammarian Podcast

Language Made Difficult, Vol. XXVI — The SpecGram LingNerds are joined again by guest Aya Katz. After some Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics, the LingNerds discuss whether English has a perfectly phonetic orthography, and some of the interesting languagey things that linguists notice out in the world. (And in the outtakes Trey insults various programming languages left and right, potentially sparking a future holy war.)

Everything Linguists Ever Wanted To Know About Prime Numbers; by A. Nonymous; From Volume CLXII, Number 1, of Speculative Grammarian, June 2011 — How do various types of linguists go about analyzing, for themselves and their conspecifics, the primality of odd numbers greater than one? The methods vary by discipline, but the results are all equally valid. (Read by Trey Jones.)

Guidelines for the Behavior of Graduate Students of Phonetics; by Felicity ConditionsFrom Volume CLVI, Number 2, of Speculative Grammarian, April 2009 — 1. The IPA symbol for a bilabial click is not called “the cervix,” even if it really looks like one. (Read by Veronika Reeve.)

Whettam’s “Linguistics: an extraordinarily short introduction”; by Reviewed by A. Crostic; From Volume CLI, Number 2, of Speculative Grammarian, April 2006 — “Linguistics: an extraordinarily short introduction”. / H.P. Whettam. Droxfo University Press, 2006. 1p. $137.00 (Read by Keith Slater.)

Handbook for Linguistic Elicitation, Volume 28: Laziness and Inactivity; by Editors of Psammeticus PressFrom Volume CLXVII, Number 2, of Speculative Grammarian, May 2013 — Handbook for Linguistic Elicitation, Volume 28: Laziness and Inactivity / From the Editors of Psammeticus Press / Published 2013. (Read by Cathal Peelo.)

Language Made Difficult, Vol. XXV — The SpecGram LingNerds (including new LingNerd Sheri Wells-Jensen) are joined by guest Aya Katz. After some Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics, the LingNerds discuss the applications of involuntary gripping in response to hand-related verbs, and review a surprisingly large number of language-related books.

Help with the SpecGram Podcast; by Trey Jones

The Γραμματο-Χαοτικον Manifesto; by The Γραμματο-Χαοτικον; From Volume CL, Number 4, of Speculative Grammarian, October 2005 — We are the Γραμματο-Χαοτικον, an underground alliance of linguists, philologists, and polyglots. Our self-appointed role is to encourage arbitrary and capricious change both in Language and among languages, world-wide. (Read by Trey Jones.)

On the Taxonomic Classification of minimalistici; by Athanasious Schadenpoodle; From Volume CLXIII, Number 1, of Speculative Grammarian, October 2011 — To the toiler in the full-furrowed fields of taxonomy, there can be no surprise attendant upon the discovery that a previously well-established classification has been called into question by closer scrutiny of the species involved, or by advances in the analytic mechanisms underlying the distinctions informing the taxonomy itself. The very act of assigning a token to a type bears the potential of alternate assignment, and each move toward greater abstraction does naught but amplify the range of possibilities. When the specific field one is attempting to segment is that of the family *Linguisticus*, even less surprise is possible, both because of the prevailing lack of agreement among zoölogists about the criteria to use, and because of the general sense of enervation any analysis of *Linguisticus* evokes (the latter being, perhaps, one of their defense mechanisms). So it is with a distinct sense of Unüberraschungkeit that this author has noted the recent disagreement—one could almost say a kerfuffle, were it not for the air of fraught excitement the term calls forth—concerning the proper assignment of the group initially classed as (*Neoplatonicus*) *Americoformalisticus minimalistici*. (Read by Keith Slater.)

Términos Lingüísticos Autorreferentes; by T. B. Geller; From Volume CLXVII, Number 3, of Speculative Grammarian, May 2013 — Términos Lingüísticos Autorreferentes / eɫe veɫar / elʲe palʲatalʲ / cponsonante cpoarticulada / consonantse apfricada ... (Read by T. B. Geller.)

Language Made Difficult, Vol. XXIV — The SpecGram LingNerds are joined yet again by Gabe Olsen. After some Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics—with returning guest Jonathan Downie—the LingNerds discuss the unreasonable prestigiousness of mathematics, and review likely comprehensive exam questions and effective answers thereto.

Review of Crystal Gayle’s “Dictionary of Essential Linguistics Vocabulary”; by Jean-Pierre LeBeau; From Volume I, Number 1, of Babel, March 1990 — Seldom does a field so young and controversy-fraught as modern linguistics benefit from disciplined research into its synchronic terminology as much as linguistics will from Crystal Gayle’s “Dictionary of Essential Linguistics Vocabulary”. Students and scholars alike will find Gayle’s work thorough, insightful, careful, and most of all, readable. (Read by Keith Slater.)

An Analysis of easy-Type Adjectives; by A. Word; From Volume CLIII, Number 3, of Speculative Grammarian, January 2008 — In certain academic circles, there is a well-known category of adjectives, often referred to as easy-type adjectives. These include “hard”, “difficult” and others. (Read by Trey Jones.)

Saussure and Bloomfield: The Question of Influence; by Tim Pulju; From Volume I, Number 4 of Gaugauh Kamadugha, The Journal of the Linguistic Society of South-Central New Caledonia, August 1991 — One of the more vexed questions in modern linguistic historiography concerns the extent of Saussure’s influence on Bloomfield and through him on American structuralism as a whole. Rather than add to the discussion of that issue, I intend in this paper to point out the importance of another, related, but hitherto ignored question, to wit, what was the extent of Bloomfield’s influence on Saussure? (Read by Keith Slater.)

Language Made Difficult, Vol. XXIII — The SpecGram LingNerds are joined again by Gabe Olsen, this time for the whole show. After some Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics—with guest Jonathan Downie—the LingNerds discuss whether English is a Scandinavian language, and review a list of the worst words of 2012.