Why I Will Never Have A Girlfriend

My DSL's been funky for the past week, which means no LJ'ing for me. So, under the cut, a long-due response to mendaxveritas's comment in my last post.

( Response )

It's all the insanely fine distinctions one has to make in order to get the seemingly simplest-looking stuff right. Like, say, the distinction between so-called "present participles" and "gerunds" in English:

• The next showing of the movie is at 8 PM. (Participle)
• The enemy destroying the city was an unexpected development. (Gerund)

What must one ( Read more... )

"A man always has two reasons for doing anything-a good reason and the real reason. " - J. P. Morgan

So true. And succint; I've said similar stuff before, but I'm a long-winded logomaniac.

I really think weeks should be extended from 7 to 9 days. This would mean 6 working days, and 3-day long weekends. I always feel on Fridays like I've not gotten enough work done during the week, and on Sundays I always feel like the weekend was too short ( Read more... )

Is there an obscure and succint word for the idea that there ought to be an obscure and succint word for any random idea one can think up, and that one ought to use that obscure and succint word to convey said idea to an audience that's never heard the word in question?

I like how inflectional morphology is subtle enough of a topic that, when talking about inflectional paradigms (for example, Latin conjugation tables), you really need to have separate technical terms for the boxes in the tables and the words inside them (paradigm cells vs. inflectional forms).

The bias in favor of thinking about the relationship between form and function in language as if it were one-to-one. It's a pervasive and pernicious one, that infects the whole field, and can be found in places as diverse as:

1. Phonologically null items that participate in syntagmatic relationships in syntax or morphology (e.g. zero morphs in in ( Read more... )

I'm the 46,777,565 richest person on earth!


( Read more... )

So this European dude goes on a trip to Africa (yeah, that place). The moment he gets off the plane (can't you believe it, they have airports over there, and even cities!), he can hear unceasing drums beating in the background ( Read more... )