I wrote an article on the syntax of fuck for The Toast, reviving the classic paper, “English Sentences Without Overt Grammatical Subject”. I also joined Strong Language, a new blog about the language of swearing, and wrote a post about this delightful bilingual sticker that I snapped a photo of in Montreal. The comments on both the original wordpress post and my subsequent cross-post to tumblr are very much worth it for further commentary.
It is forbidden to fuck shit up.
I made a link round-up with resources for how to explain linguistics to your friends and family this holiday season, which was resoundingly popular on facebook (perhaps from linguists hinting to their friends and family!)
I continued my blog series on the linguistic aspects of Cabin Pressure, which ultimately came to the attention of John Finnemore, who writes and acts in the show.
- Formal vocabulary, Spanish, and onomatopoeia in Johannesburg
- Ambiguous compounds in Kuala Lumpur
- Limericks, perfect rhymes, and evil-sounding names in Limerick
- Christmas mondegreens in Molokai
- Ellipsis ambiguity in Newcastle
- Snowclones, irregular plurals, and adjectives in Ottery St Mary
- Diagnostic questions and rhyming phrases in Paris
- Uvular stops, Q, French adverbs in Qikiqtarjuaq
- Dactyls and “DER der der” in Rotterdam
- At-issue content in St Petersburg
- Contrastive focus reduplication in Timbuktu
- Modality in Uskerty
- The NPI “give a hoot” in Vaduz
- Gricean relevance in Wokingham
- Reduplication, truth conditions, and accidental doge speak in Xinzhou
- Swollen speech in Yverdon-les-Bains
For Lexicon Valley highlights, see this list of the top posts of 2014.
Selected blog posts:
- Finding “lost” languages in the brain
- Spread the sign: Multilingual sign language dictionary
- Some speculation about signed magic in Harry Potter
- Linguistics for high schools: What would a syllabus look like?
- Rudolph the Green Idea’d Linguist
Upcoming: Wikipedia editathon and panel about popularizing linguistics online (I’m representing tumblr) at the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting in Portland, Oregon next week.
