I found out today, via the LinguistList, that the faculty from the University of Arizona Linguistics Department has sent an official statement (pdf) to the Governor and Superintendent of their fair state regarding an apparent “no accent” education policy. Of course, the UA linguists make some good, if obvious (to me) points, for example, there [...]
One of the most disappointing aspects of the Star Wars franchise is the laziness of the approach to language. As background noise, the pastiche of assorted noises and bits and pieces of real languages works reasonably well, but the issues of multilinguality and translation are never addressed. Somehow, Han Solo and Greedo understand one another [...]
The Herald-Times has published a leter to the editor that may well be the apex of the form (with apologies to Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek, who regularly writes cogent, pithy missives to our nations media dinosaurs). Inexplicably, today’s masterwork is only available online if you are a paid subscriber, so I will reproduce it [...]
Where was I? Um. Oh, yes. Latex and Lyx. I’ll get back to that in a moment. In the meantime, here’s a nice illustration of the difference between competence and performance, interpretability and grammaticality, and the stem and stern of a banana: “My whole adult life, I never knew the right way to open a [...]