TedEd: How languages evolve

Finally got around to looking at the TedEd thing by Alex Gendler, How Languages Evolve, here.  I could see this being used in school classes. Anybody have experience with using this with, say, high schoolers? It's nothing dramatic or brilliant, but I could see students connecting with it.

Big ol' tip of the hat to CT.

Speculative Grammarian: The book

Shout it from the rooftops. Or just do like me and go stand on a street corner waving a Bible and scream it: 

The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics is out!

We were fortunate enough to get an advance copy back in the summer, all 360 freakin' pages of it, by Trey Jones, Keith W. Slater, Bill Spruiell, Tim Pulju and David J. Peterson. That copy has been closely guarded, and passed from hand to apparently increasingly grimy hand.*

At Team Verb, we're all pretty pumped about this. Or as one colleague put it:

This goes on the new MA reading list. Hell, this IS the new MA reading list.

Given that the old reading list consisted of stuff written between the Rig Veda and Bloomfield's Menominee Grammar, it would be a step forward, but can't you imagine the prelims: please open the Essential Guide to p. 194, and let's discuss "Are Turkish and Amharic Related? Are they ever!"**

And we're not the only ones excited about it. The 'advance praise' up front contains some names:

“Ever wonder why Vikings torched scriptoria? This kind of thing.”
     —E. V. Gordon
“Contains more than 100 basic words.”
     —Morris Swadesh
“Same reference as linguistics; different sense.”
     —Gottlob Frege
“Two uvulas down, way down!”
    —Sapir and Bloomfield, At the Bookstore

Seriously, this volume has not only a real place in the field, it also continues an important tradition. I keep Studies out in left field: Defamatory essays presented to James D. McCawley (originally published in 1971 and republished, as pictured here, by Benjamins in 1992) on my desk at all times. I regularly give students the "supplementary glossary of linguistic terminology" from that. As much fun as wabiawization and haspiration are, you don't forget pheresis and apocop after you see the list. But it needed updating. The Essential Guide has six pages of "self-defining linguistic glossary" ... a bit of overlap with Studies, of course, but tons more stuff and covering a lot of the field:

• It’s a cleft that this sentence is.
• Je puedo Europanto sprechen.
• I can see that eyewitness evidential myself.
• Something’s gonna undergo grammaticalization.
• The Gricean Maxim of Quantity (“Information”) did that thing the other day, with the guy from that place.
• She looked at the zeugma with suspicion and magnifying glass.

And of course "Semantic bleaching is literally terrible."

The bulk of the texts is built around subfields —sets of pieces on typology, syntax, phonetics, whatevs. Richly illustrated even. I'm guessing anybody who reads this will find plenty of nuggets that they can enjoy and use.

I literally just ordered four fresh, clean copies of it and you can too, here, for $12.99 U.S.

* To the one who spilled what was obviously Hopalicious on page 95: I know who you are and disapprove as much of you wasting good beer as defiling this book.

**Actual article on p. 194, by April May June. I think I know a guy who dated her way back when.

Killing education in Wisconsin

If you live in the rapidly deteriorating state of Wisconsin, you know the latest news, namely:

Wisconsin is the only state in the nation that had "statistically significant" job losses over the past 12 months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But now check out this story about the effects of Walker's Act 10 ... slashing teacher pay. Do you really want the pay of any teachers maxing out at 38K?

It's amazing just how wrong Walker's direction is on every count. John Nichols gives a quick summary here.

Walker turned down federal funding for transportation and expansion of broadband communications, effectively opting out of 21st century infrastructure development. He picked fights with public employees and teachers, rather than making them partners in a development push. Then he crafted a low-road budget that made deep cuts in education funding and services — effectively telling businesses that while they would have plenty of support in other states, they would be on their own in Wisconsin.

 Nationally it may be a weak recovery, but I'd prefer that to what we have in Wisconsin.

Dismantling education in Wisconsin, very quickly

Wisconsin readers of this blog probably almost all know about the new budget cuts the University of Wisconsin System is suddenly facing. After a $250,000,000 cut to the System over the biennium, it was announced last week that this would be upped by over $65,000,000 more. Now, that number has risen to more like $111,000,000. The numbers aren't final and official yet, but we're probably looking at cuts of over $360,000,000 to the System over two years. Here's a clear version of what we know at this point, and as usual Sifting & Winnowing is an excellent place to go for info.

At the same time, yesterday on Wisconsin Public Radio, we heard that the governor of this state is backing a proposal that would eliminate English and math requirements for high school graduation, allowing them to be replaced with vocational training. (Here's a good summary of that.) Many of us have long suspected that Walker's promises of job growth were based on the Texas model — minimum wage jobs without benefits, etc., rather than jobs that would truly move Wisconsin forward as an economic power — and this looks thoroughly consistent with that.

Image from here.