Is there a name for the following phenomenon? But Siobhan said we have to use those words [Special Needs] because people used to call children like the children at school spaz and crip and mong which were nasty words. But that is stupid too because sometimes the children from the school down the road see […]
Category Archives: Language
Vegan WTF coordination
I saw an example in the wild world of vegan blogging today of what Language Log calls WTF coordination (aka syllepsis): With a dough hook and the mixer running, add remaining flour and knead another 5 minutes. If this sentence doesn’t strike you as strange, note that “a dough hook” and “the mixer running” are […]
Inspiring words
New favorite word: argh-inspiring. And the blog it’s noted in (Wordlustitude), is also my new favorite blog. Courtesy of the wonderful Sars.
Working on a weekend: with wine
I think wine should always accompany weekend work. Loosens up the synapses, and makes one care less that one is not relaxing, because one is relaxed, anyway. I enjoyed this interesting linguistic slipup: “Pullum, however, doesn’t really take Gelernter’s argument seriously, presumably because it’s absurd and ignorant and doesn’t deserve to be.” Parts of this […]
Does justice have anything to do with a disobedient whale?
I can’t resist: Now consider again Skinner’s sentence: Justice is not a frivolous thing, Simpson. It has little if anything to do with a disobedient whale. This seems amenable to a quantificational analysis: the set of situations in which justice has anything to do with a disobedient whale is a subset of the set of […]
Judging Reader
There’s been some kerfuffle around lately after an NYT article on “literary deal-breakers” — that is, what books, or lack of, would make you run away from a date or relationship? Two of the websites I read have a thread devoted to this. Some of the conversation has inspired interesting thoughts about people’s attitude to […]
Stunning insight by Wikipedia
Wikipedia has this to say, in their article titled Daoism-Taoism romanization issue: The history of transcribing spoken Chinese is lengthy and inconsistent. I just have to say “Y’think, really?”