Language Log

Today's SMBC:

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: "At least we can all agree on the enormity of this usage."

See "Begging the question: We have answers", 4/29/2010.

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: "If you study graphs in which edges can link more than two nodes, you're more properly called a hyperedgelord."

By Allie Brosh:

Update — apparently this is a meme derived from Allie Brosh's art, but not created by her. See the comment below.

The first two panes of today's Non Sequitur:

Today's SMBC starts this way:

From the first panel of the most recent Scenes From a Multiverse, an example of what Wikipedia calls "Type 2 Zeugma" or "semantic syllepsis":

Today's Dumbing of Age features Amber performing a daring physical feat in order to help her friend Walky:

The mouseover title is "let's set realistic limitations for ourselves", and in the last panel, Amber remarks about what she's doing that "It's rough, sure, but it's not impossible, like calling anyone on the phone".

I'm about to head to Poland for Speech Prosody 2018, and then to Helsinki for a CHIST-ERA committee meeting, so today's SMBC is especially meaningful to me:

This strip was recently reposted (colorized) in Danielle Corsetto's webcomic Girls With Slingshots:

A recent SMBC:

Among many other applications, this hypothesis (from the most recent xkcd) may finally offer a quantitative explanation for the generally poor quality of language-related articles in Science and Nature:

Mouseover title: "When comparing hypotheses with Bayesian methods, the similar 'clickbayes factor' can account for some harder-to-quantify priors."

Recently in PHD Comics:

My schedule is merely crowded over the next week or so, rather than insane, so I hope to be able to post a little more often.