Degrammaticalization of ish

Back in the winter, even before the political fires scorched Madison, some of us were talking about the famous case of 'ish' as degrammaticalization. That is, what has traditionally been a garden variety suffix forming adjectives (green > greenish) has been liberated to become a free word. So, to give the example from the post linked above, younger speakers can have this exchange (and even old people understand it):

Q: Is he rich?
A: Ish.

Now, in considering just how free ish now is, a really bright grad student and one local linguist came up, through various intermediate discussions, with the question of whether you could actually get the ish without something that it is meant to be attached recoverable in the context. That is, in the example above, the idea is that the answer is 'richish'. We've been looking around for examples where this connection isn't so clear, which would point to a more liberated form.

The other day, while in a VW dealership, the missus pointed out this:

So, some questions: (1) To speakers who have this form, is this a good sentence? (2) If so, the answer would be 'anyone-ish', right? Does anyone-ish work for anybody as a word?

Bilingualism research in the news

Nice piece in Science Times on Ellen Bialystok, a psychologist who's contributed massively to our understanding of bilingualism, here.

After complaining so often about science journalism dealing with language and linguistics (well, who hasn't?), I have to note that the Q&A structure of this piece is really nice.

Image is of a Pet Shop Boys album cover, from here.

Lingodroid

With that title, does the post even need content? This is all over a bunch of tech blogs, but I haven't seen it among the linguabloggers. Amar Toor probably gets it right (here) with:

Lingodroid robots develop their own language, quietly begin plotting against mankind

Hey, I live in Wisconsin. That's less scary than most state elected officials. And no, I'm not bothered in the least by whether or not this could reasonably be considered 'language'. I might have been until I read the word robotapocalypse. Game over.

Image from übergizmo.

Accent Discrimination

I guess Amy Dickinson is the new Ann Landers - who knew? Anyway today's column has the headline "'Fargo' Accent Bothers Her", and the advice-seeker says she's met a man online and he seems wonderful, but he has this dreadful northern Michigan accent: "And it really is a discordant note to my ears." The most interesting part of her letter, though, is where she says "I came from a rural area in Wisconsin, and the first thing I worked on when I went off to college was the sloppy diction, etc., that I grew up with. Now, no one would guess where I was born." How sad that she didn't get to go to UW and participate in the wonderful Wisconsin Englishes project! [Shameless plug]
I was pleasantly surprised, though, that Amy responds with "I fail to see what is so awful about this," and goes on to say "when everyone in North America starts to sound like an anchorman, we will have lost something important, not to mention charming." We need to let her know there's no danger of that, and we also need to work harder on PR for knowledge of basic linguistics!