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In this essay I shall be implementing an orthografic innovation: at all instances in which the combination “ph” is part of a word and is pronounced as “f,” it shall be spelled as “f.” (For example, “phenomenon” shall become “fenomenon.”) Where the “p” and “h” sounds are actually pronounced, they shall be represented as such (For example, “uphold” shall remain spelled as formerly). This adjustment shall apply to all words other than proper names and components of titles of other men’s written works. Rationally speaking, this reform can dispel considerable confusion. For example, what, in the status quo, can prevent...

At last, a scientific study of the lingo still spoken in an exotic empire is in the offing. "Speech study explores distinctions of Texas twang," said the headline in The New York Times. According to the story under it, a couple of linguists out of San Antone - Guy Bailey and Jan Tillery - are working up a new study of what they call TXE, or Texas English, which they class as a sub-dialect of American Southern English. (It will no doubt surprise Texans to discover that they're sub-anything, even after this year's oh-so-satisfying Arkansas-Texas game, in that 38-28 order.)...

At last, a scientific study of the lingo spoken on the other side of the river (Sabine or Red, as the case may be) is in the offing. "Speech study explores distinctions of Texas twang," said a headline in last Saturday's paper. According to the story under it, a couple of linguists out of San Antone — Guy Bailey and Jan Tillery — are working up a new study of what they call TXE, or Texas English, which they class as a subdialect of American Southern English. (It will no doubt surprise Texans to discover that they're sub-anything, even after...

Michael Stravato for The New York Times John O. Greer is an architecture teacher at Texas A&M University. But when a couple of researchers sat down and talked with him recently, they were less interested in what he said than in how he said it. COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — "Are yew jus' tryin' to git me to talk, is that the ah-deah?" That was the idea. John O. Greer, an architecture teacher at Texas A&M University, sat at his dining table between two interrogators and their tape recorder. They had precisely 258 questions for him. But it waddn what...

PARIS (AFP) - The vast group of languages that dominates Europe and much of Central and South Asia originated around 8,000 years ago among farmers in what is now Anatolia, Turkey. So say a pair of New Zealand academics who have remarkably retraced the family tree of so-called Indo-European languages -- a linguistic classification that covers scores of tongues ranging from Faroese to Hindi by way of English, French, German, Gujarati, Nepalese and Russian. Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson, psychologists at the University of Auckland, built their language tree on the same principles as the theory of genetic evolution. According...

The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or...

The Absurdity of 'Thinking in Language' This paper has been read to the University of Southern California philosophy group and the Boston 1972 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, as well as to the Houston meeting of the Southwestern Philosophical Society. Appeared in The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, IV(1973), pp. 125-132. Numbers in "<>" refer to this journal. Among the principal assumptions of major portions of philosophy in recent decades have been: (1) That philosophy somehow consists of (some sort of) logic, and (2) that logic is a study of and theory about (some sort of) language. There, of...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Listen up, pronunciation fans. This one's for you. Do you say car-ml for "caramel"? Do you say sneakers or tennis shoes? PEE-can or pee-KAHN? Ah-mond or all-mond? For that matter, do you, perhaps, say nook-yoo-ler like our president? Regardless of what you say or how you say it, Bert Vaux, an associate linguistics professor at Harvard University, would like a moment of your time. Vaux (rhymes with hawks) is conducting an online survey to map differences in U.S. speech patterns. The survey, to be used to compile an atlas of the nation's English dialects, has no...

Pariah Against A Prophet By Marc Miyake, Amritas.Com Many conservatives regard Chomsky as a linguist who falters out of his field. Unfortunately, they are giving Chomsky too much credit. Chomsky's linguistics are as warped as his politics. As someone with a PhD in linguistics, I think I am qualified to judge his professional credentials. Prior to Chomsky, linguists engaged in a lot of data collection to understand the diversity of human language. I'm vehemently anti-PC, but in this case, I think the word 'diversity' is justified. There's a lot out there, and someone's got to catalog it. However, Chomsky...

We all know the medicinal value of laughter. A good chuckle clears the air, draws song from silence. In my book, a sense of humor is one of the prime qualities I would look for in a mate. After all, how can we get through life, through this valley of tears, without a healthy bit of hysterics? Sometimes the best satire is the one aimed squarely between our eyes. The one that elicits an ouch. The one that, between hiccups, makes us nod in recognition. The ability to laugh at ourselves is a blessing. A blessing and an affirmation. Nothing...

June 19, 2002 This past Sunday's homicide bus bombing in Jerusalem, which claimed 19 lives and injured an additional 40 persons, has apparently triggered the Israeli leadership to conclude that only the pacification of the Palestinian-held West Bank by Israeli arms will safeguard Israeli citizens. As regards their attitudes toward the Palestinian irredentists and their "authorities," the Israelis have transited from a negotiation-oriented posture to a war-oriented posture. High time. It's difficult to put oneself in the place of a person who might at any time be violently removed from the world by someone who doesn't care about his own...