Words, words, words are the bread, butter, salt, pepper, meat and potatoes of a small, US-based magazine called Word Ways that has been coming out four times a year since 1968. Dmitri Borgmann, the founding editor, described it as “the journal of recreational linguistics”. Its essence, in a word: wordplay. Borgmann’s obituary, in a 1985 issue of Word […]
Tag: words
Ni phrases (It’s not just knights who say…)
If you thought that a ‘Ni phrase’ was simply an example of finely crafted absurdity from the creators of Monty Python – think again. For linguists, Ni-phrases literally span the globe – performing important functions not only in Japanese and Hindi, but also in Russian. Example publication : Ni-Phrases by Klaus Abels (Journal of Slavic […]
The Zwickys – looking at words
Arnold M. Zwicky is Consulting Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University, and Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Ohio State University. The professor investigates “the interrelationships of syntax, morphology, and phonology, focusing especially on apparent counterexamples to the Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax and the Principle of Morphology-Free Syntax, as well as phenomena (like clitics) that appear […]
‘Most’ — what does it mean, mostly?
On a day-to-day basis, a good many, perhaps even the majority, of those outside academia tend to work with a broad definition of the meaning of the word ‘Most’. Something along the lines of ‘More than half’, but stopping a little short of ‘All’. [see figure 4, from study below]. But some, who study linguistics, […]