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linguistlaura: June 2015

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Sunday, 21 June 2015. Gove's random writing style rules. Michael Gove has been the subject of this blog in the past. These days, he's no longer Education bod and is now Lord Chancellor, if you can believe that. Because this job apparently doesn't involve much actual work, he's got a lot of time on his hands and is spending it complaining about the way people write. And making lists of things his people should do or not do when they respond to letters. Use active voice and present tense. This is a well-wo...

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linguistlaura: January 2015

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Friday, 30 January 2015. As an update to the pronoun post, here. S a good alternative pronoun set from Futurama, brought to my attention by Jonathan Kasstan. However, despite the pronouns shkle. And so on being required because Yivo is gender-neutral, there's a replacement for each of him. Sigh Another silly article. It discusses the perfectly valid point that it would be good to have a gender-neutral pronoun so that people who identify as neither male nor female do not feel excluded, but then it says:.

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linguistlaura: May 2015

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Wednesday, 20 May 2015. You may have noticed the 'cheeky nandos' meme that was travelling the internet. Me and my colleague Mercedes Durham at Cardiff University are interested in how people do (or don't) use 'cheeky'. If you want, you could help us out by completing our survey. Friday, 15 May 2015. Are both used to form nouns meaning 'someone who does X'. Someone on Stack Exchange. Is more general and -ist. More specialist, and this article. By Laurie Bauer notes that -ician. Tuesday, 5 May 2015. On a t...

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linguistlaura: Conference papers

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NB Selected handouts/slideshows can be found at my Academia.edu page. And my ResearchGate page. Questions about questions'. The New Historical Linguistics and the World of Annotated Corpora, 9-13/03/15, UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil. Because X: Syntactic restructuring, ellipsis, or 'internetese'? LAGB 2014, 04/09/2014, University of Oxford. 8216;A case of grammaticalisation: disjunction to question particle’. LAGB 2013, 31/08/13, SOAS, University of London. Training session, 27/03/12, Sunderland University.

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linguistlaura: Explicit instructions

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Wednesday, 8 July 2015. Instruction manuals ought to vary in size and detail with the complexity of the technology in question. Therefore, a car has a very detailed manual because it's a complicated piece of machinery, while a desk lamp has very minimal instruction because it just has one switch and one function. As you can see, it has the following instructions:. Shake off excess water. Place hands in dryer. I expect that these instructions seemed fairly minimal when the thing was made, probably about 2...

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linguistlaura: April 2015

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Sunday, 19 April 2015. Physically the new literally. Usual disclaimer: while I am talking about the language use of actual people, it's in the spirit of interested observation and not at all critical, and the examples used here are made up but based on real ones. You'll have noticed that quite a lot of people get upset about the use of literally. When it's used non-literally (though, as Jesse Sheidlower. Notes (thanks to Stan Carey. For alerting me to this) its literal use is rarely very literal). Where ...

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linguistlaura: December 2014

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Thursday, 11 December 2014. Spelling reformers get wrong end of stick shocker. Crikey. This Guardian article. Seems designed to elicit spluttering apoplexy. I think the author must be trolling. Nevertheless, I shall content myself here with pointing out a few minor quibbles. Throughout, letters within pointy brackets refer to orthography (spelling) and letters within /slash brackets/ refer to sounds and are in the IPA. My statements apply to English only unless otherwise specified. . Money for old rope.

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linguistlaura: Hot water is hot

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Friday, 10 July 2015. Hot water is hot. This sounds like an oxymoron or a tautology or whatever: please note, hot water is very hot. Well, thanks for that. Hot water is hot. Big surprise. It sounds like the 'redundant adjectives are redundant' meme. Which pleasingly derives from the Simpsons: Ralph says 'fun toys are fun'). But it's just a warning telling us that the water coming from the hot tap is hotter than is comfortable, and to be careful. How do we get from one to the other? Hot water is hot.

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linguistlaura: Bumpf

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Wednesday, 5 August 2015. Yesterday, quite coincidentally, two of my colleagues sent me electronic communications and used the word bumf. This is not a reflection of their opinion of my work, of course.) But what was interesting was that both of them mis-spelt it bumpf. Is a 'clipping' or shortening of the word bumfodder. Might come from mixing up the two spellings: it can also be bumph. Galumph, wumph, triumph. Among others. And they're all spelt with a 'ph'. I don't have an explanation of this ...The D...

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linguistlaura: Interests

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I dance with two Cotswold morris sides in Kent: Oyster Morris. And Bower Street Morris. We perform during the summer season so you can sometimes find me dressed in white with bells on outside a pub somewhere. I'm second from the right in this photo of the Oyster women, taken in Deal in May 2015. I love a good quiz, and currently host a monthly quiz night at the Harbour Arms micropub. Me and my team with Paxo. Reading it, watching it, I'm not fussy. Without them I would starve and dehydrate.