Category Archives: admittedly not on prosody

article on language and thought in nyt

By chael | Published: August 27, 2010
Here’s an article by Guy Deutscher on language and how it influences thinking. Mercifully, Deutscher discusses this fascinating topic without trying to further inflate its public appeal by vague claims on how it all devalidates generative linguistics and most of all Chomsky (it sure sounds cool to argue against a big name, and why not [...]
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B E Z, mind it not

By chael | Published: August 24, 2010
In case anyone is still worried that texting abbreviations are a sign that the English language is deteriorating they should have a look at the article in the Guardian a few days ago about an upcoming exhibition on language at the British Library in London, which provides evidence that these abbreviations are actually a time-honored [...]
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endangered languages in urban settings

By chael | Published: April 28, 2010
The NYT features an article on an interesting project on endangered languages spoken in NYC.
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if worst comes to worst

By chael | Published: February 9, 2010
I was about to write if worse comes to worst in an email, and then realized that I’m actually not sure what the correct idiom exactly is. The difference between worse and worst is hard to hear, and it’s not so clear that it has a transparent compositional meaning, so neither sound nor meaning really [...]
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