Arnold Zwicky
- Website: http://www.stanford.edu/~zwicky
Posts by Arnold Zwicky:
Benjamin Franklin medal for Labov
Recently announced, a 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal for William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania. The citation:
For establishing the cognitive basis of language variation and change through rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and for the study of non-standard dialects with significant social and cultural implications.
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Thurber and the sexes: the cartoons
(This posting started from an attempt to replace all the links to James Thurber cartoons in Mark's "He bold as a hawk, she soft as a dawn" posting of 9/14/06, here, after the initial Dilbert cartoon, which is still available. All the links are broken, and Mark and I can't figure out which cartoons are supposed to go in which slots. So here's a big compendium of Thurber cartoons on the relations beween the sexes.)
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Get Fuzzy '05
[Background: in inventorying postings with linguistically interesting cartoons, for a Language of Comics project at Stanford (directed by Elizabeth Traugott and me), the project intern has been unearthing postings from Language Log Classic whose image links no longer work. Here's one of Mark Liberman's from 2005 -- "Illustrations" of 8/2/05, with two Get Fuzzy strips. I'm reproducing the posting here, with fresh, working links.
Back in 2005, we didn't have comments open on postings. But I've opened them now. Just remember: This posting is by Mark, not me. I'm just a typist.]
Taboo language in the NYT
Posted on my blog last month, an inventory of postings (on LLog and my blog) on the way the New York Times deals with taboo vocabulary, here.
Three items since then:
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The All Are Belong snowclone
On my blog, here, a survey of the descendants of All your base are belong to us, with a section on the 2004-06 heyday of the snowclone on Language Log.
Serialism and anti-serialism
On my personal blog, an inventory of postings (most from Language Log) on the use vs. avoidance of the Oxford, or serial, comma, here.
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Burlesques, parodies, playful allusions
On my personal blog, here, an inventory of postings on these topics — at the moment, only postings on my blog.
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Annual appeal
The annual begging posting for that admirable resource, the Linguist List. Some details, including the portmanteau metafortress, on my blog, here.
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DARE
Time to celebrate the appearance of the last volume (5) of the Dictionary of American Regional English! Brief account on my blog, here; more extensive account on DARE's site, here.
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It's All Grammar (the inventory)
On my personal blog, an inventory of postings (mostly from Language Log) on IAG (It's All Grammar) — here — with the proposed technical term garmmra.
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50 years of linguistics at MIT
The videos are now out — from the 50th-anniversary celebrations ("a scientific reunion") of the linguistics program at MIT, December 9-11, 2011. The schedule of the talks (with links to slides for them) is available here, with links to other material: a list of attendees, a list of the many poster presentations, videos of the main presentations, personal essays by MIT alumni, photographs from the event, a list of MIT dissertations from 1965 to the present, and a 1974 history of linguistics at MIT (particularly interesting for the years before the first officially registered graduate students entered the program, in 1961).
The eleven YouTube videos (of the introduction and the main presentations) can be accessed directly here.
(Thanks to Sabine Iatridou for the links.)
MIT linguists on Language Log (with dissertation dates): Barbara Partee (6/65), Arnold Zwicky (9/65), Mark Liberman (1975), Bill Poser (1984), Heidi Harley (1995). [David Pesetsky reminds me that although Kai von Fintel's degree is from UMass, he's now on the MIT faculty.]
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Ima
From Levi Self in Nashville, this sighting of a car in a (public) parking lot he uses:
Self wrote: "The first I ever even heard this spoken was in an Akon rap song a couple years ago." Ah, but this is an old friend.
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Sentential overlap portmanteaus
On my blog, here, some commentary on Geoff Pullum's recent posting on life's twists and turns, putting a name (sentential overlap portmanteaus) to the phenomena he talked about, and giving an updated inventory of postings on phrasal overlap portmanteaus.
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Meh again
Today's Zits:
Jeremy expresses indfference, lack of interest, apathy, boredom via the interjection meh, breaking out briefly to use it sarcastically (or cynically) to express enthusiasm.
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An inventory of postings on peeving etc.
A partial inventory of postings on language rage, language peeving, word aversion, and word attraction on Language Log and AZBlog, here. I ran out of steam early this year, so the inventory is reasonably complete only to that point.
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