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You know, it occurs to me that syntacticians have essentially been playing a form of Mornington Crescent for the past 40 years. Hmm.

Librarian: Hi, how can I help you?
Me: I'm looking for a particular volume of a journal, but I can't seem to find it in the stacks.
Librarian: What's the journal title?
Me: [fə̥'nɛɾɪkə].
Librarian: Uhhh...could you spell that?
Me: P-H-O...
Librarian: Ok...
Me: N-E-T...
Librarian: Yep...
Me: I-C-A.
Librarian: Ok...[fo.'nɛ.tʰɪ.kə]. Oh! "Phonetica ( Read more... )

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Student: There was something from the article I didn't understand. What's a "lexical access failure"?
Me: Oh, ok. Well, it's, uh...it's a, uh...uhm...like, ah...what's the word...it's, er...uhh...well, I'm having one right now, I guess.

One of my students emailed me this afternoon with a question about "Norm Chomsky". Hee hee.

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The latest post on Language Log quotes an article from the New Yorker about Jewish settlers in the West Bank, then says:

And these young Hebrew-speaking men...had taken the trouble to learn enough Arabic to howl their filth in their victims' native language.
I don't think that's exactly what's going on here. From what I understand, modern Hebrew ( Read more... )