Prescriptivism and terrorism
Today's strip that did not run in papers. Seems harmless to me, but I guess these are sensitive times. pic.twitter.com/mVse54tmEg
— Stephan Pastis (@stephanpastis) July 28, 2016
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Archive for Linguistics in the comics
PolitiFact says
Yesterday's xkcd:
Mouseover title: ""Ok, I lit the smoke bomb and rolled it under the bed. Let's see if it–" ::FWOOOSH:: "Politifact says: PANTS ON FIRE!""
Pictographic English?
Today's xkcd:
Mouseover title: "'Or maybe, because we're suddenly having so many conversations through written text, we'll start relying MORE on altered spelling to indicate meaning!' 'Wat.'"
It's unusual for Randall Munroe to get so many things wrong, starting with the implication that such things as pictographic (as opposed to logographic) writing systems actually exist. But I'll leave the discussion for the comments section.
The Legend of Gnome Ann
Today's xkcd:
Mouseover title: "President Andrew Johnson once said, 'If I am to be shot at, I want Gnome Ann to be in the way of the bullet.'"
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Artificial emotions again
A couple of days ago, Dilbert highlighted a problem with robot emotions, beyond the issue that Zach Wienersmith raised a few weeks ago:
The external evidence of "cognition" is sometimes obscure and ambiguous, but the Turing Test approach is especially problematic in evaluating "emotion".
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Linguistic pranks
Today's xkcd, headlined "Intervocalic Fortition":
Mouseover title: "These pranks happen all the time. English doesn't allow one-syllable words to end in a lax vowel, so writers on The Simpsons decided to mess with future linguists by introducing the word 'meh.'"
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Code critique poetry
Today's xkcd:
Mouseover title: "It's like you tried to define a formal grammar based on fragments of a raw database dump from the QuickBooks file of a company that's about to collapse in an accounting scandal."
Do humans actually understand speech?
Or are they just programmed to act like they do? Today's SMBC asks (and answers) the analogous question about emotions:
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Tudors
Today's Pearls Before Swine explores the consequences of flapping and voicing in American English:
Phonology in the comics
Today's Frazz deals with the phenomenon of flapping/voicing in American English:
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