Guess the quote

Seriously, guess who wrote it. Linguist, well known one, writing in a major publication.

as in all surgery performed with Occam's scalpel, there is the constant danger of severing an artery. I believe we can and should avoid that.

Universal grammar and aliens

In a post called "Alien Language: Not human" over at I like a little science in my fiction (now, there's a good blog title), Anassa Rheinisch argues at some length on how the communication systems of space aliens may and may not be like human language.

The only part of the piece I might have anticipated is the conclusion, a plea for creation of non-human languages:

It’s my hope that by delineating what humans will recognize in alien languages, I’ll inspire a completely non-human language. If we’re not limiting ourselves to human-like biologies, why stick to human-like languages?

That aside, I now humbly confess: There are aspects of language that I had never really considered.

Image from here (check out the link).

Breaking news: Chomsky to take it easy

The Onion is ahead of the curve, here:

Exhausted Noam Chomsky Just Going To Try And Enjoy The Day For Once

It's wonderful, even by Onion standards. I suspect that somebody on the staff knows a fair bit about Chomsky, because there are what read like inside jokes: Various mainstream media stories about him report that he watches pretty 'regular' TV shows and likes fast food, maybe even specifically hamburgers/cheeseburgers. The article raises both topics.

So, which phonologist ARE you?

There's a new facebook (can I safely start writing 'FB' at this point?) application called "Which phonologist are you?" developed by Dániel Szeredi. Here's a direct link. When I saw the first question (see image above), I yelled out 'Run screaming from the room!', which confirms that I'm no phonologist.

Now I know for sure all that the local sound people (well, maybe not ALL) are taking it. Results I know of are the following, in alphabetical order: Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, Juliette Blevins, Paul Boersma, Joan Bybee, Jonathan Kaye, and Paul Kiparsky.*

If you're a theoretical linguist, you can probably match those to the answers for one of the questions:

After you chuckle at the questions and answers, you can't read anything into such a creation. Still, that's a pretty interesting snapshot of the current landscape in phonological theory. No McCarthy or Hayes or Steriade? Maybe that's yesterday? Does Kaye count as a Toronto School connection? I know, I know, it's just another FB quiz, but ...

* With six answers and the template of a FB quiz, this should be exhaustive, in fact. But four B's and two K's? Now, that's an odd distribution.