Most English speakers know the vowels as “a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y”. The reason for y’s ambivalent status is because it is often used as a consonant, as in “yes”, “you”, “kayak”, and “player”. It can also be used as a vowel, as in “sky”, “psychology”, “byte”, and “city”. Less often considered…
Tag: linguistics
Which side of the quotation mark does it go on?
I’m not a prescriptivist, I swear. As someone who is math-oriented (and maybe has some neurodivergent features), I like formal rules. I enjoy treating English grammar like a math problem; and, due to the circumstances of my upbringing, I am highly proficient at “standard” English. When I was younger I understood this to be a…
The conspiracy theory that revolves around wordplay
So-called “sovereign citizens” make up a collection of people with vaguely similar beliefs about government and the law. I say so-called not to deride people for calling themselves that, but rather because they often do not call themselves that. Instead, it has become a label that people in the mainstream use to describe individuals with…
Stories in the history of written language (part 6)
Writing systems in fiction Back in part 2, we looked at some writing systems that were invented rather than developing naturally over a long time. There are many more invented writing systems, namely those invented for fictional languages. J. R. R. Tolkien was a pioneer of fictional languages, being a real-world language expert himself. His…
Video share: The Genius of Weak Forms
For and four aren’t pronounced the same.
AI as an archive of human language
This is a fascinating example of an application of AI. The current discourse around AI can be pretty negative as many of the downsides are apparent and widespread. However, AI has many good uses as well. Like any technology, its effect on the world depends on its user. We are in a period of mass…
Stories in the history of written language (part 5)
Magic words, mysticism, curses, and prayer A long-held belief within virtually every culture across the world is that language has a special power to affect the physical, mental, or spiritual. There are some prominent examples that are worth looking at in more detail. There are essentially two ways in which a written word can have…
Words don’t have meanings
There is an argument I have heard. It goes like this: “Words have meanings.” The implication is that one cannot just use words to mean whatever they want, the words have defined meanings and these definitions are the only things those words can mean. I have seen this argument used a variety of contexts, from…
Stories in the history of written language (part 3)
In Part 1 and Part 2, we looked at some of the ways in which written languages have developed and creative ways in which they have been used. Here, we’ll look more into the interactions between languages and the relationship between language and speech. Writing another language’s sounds When two language communities come into contact,…
Naïve realism and American folk science
The following post is a critique of a particular class of worldviews and perspectives. What is naïve realism and what do I mean by folk science? Realism is a class of philosophical positions that assert the bona fide existence of certain objects, or that certain objects have certain discernible properties. The definition is vague because…
thoughts on mind 