{"id":50388,"date":"2021-02-24T14:25:33","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T19:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=50388"},"modified":"2021-02-25T15:06:32","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T20:06:32","slug":"laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=50388","title":{"rendered":"Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smbc-comics.com\/comic\/laws\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SMBC<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/SMBC_Laws.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/SMBC_Laws.png\" width=\"490\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The mouseover title: \"'This way of thinking bonds works great everywhere except anywhere in or near the middle of the period table'\"<\/p>\n<p>The aftercomic:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/SMBC_LawsAfter.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In linguistics, the Neogrammarians (and their descendants) invented\/discouvered lots of \"<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Category:Sound_laws\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sound laws<\/a>\": Grimm's Law, Verner's Law, Grassmann's Law, etc. etc. etc.<\/p>\n<p>More recent generalizations in linguistics have generally been called constraints (the \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.glottopedia.org\/index.php\/Coordinate_Structure_Constraint\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">coordinate structure constraint<\/a>\") or generalizations (\"<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Burzio%27s_generalization\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Buzio's generalization<\/a>\") or rules or principles or etc.<\/p>\n<p>I can't think of any recent linguistic \"laws\", but perhaps commenters can fill some in.<\/p>\n<p>Update &#8212; in an adjacent area, there's <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stevens%27s_power_law\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stevens' Power Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Update #2 &#8212; and in biology, contrary to the comic, there's <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kleiber%27s_law\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kleiber's Law<\/a> (among others).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday's SMBC:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linguistics-in-the-funny-papers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50388"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50399,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50388\/revisions\/50399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}