It’s terribly exciting, there’s not only a new issue of the Speculative Grammarian out (the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics), but it’s a bumper issue of linguistic puzzles, and there’s one that I can just about finish.
~~~
Each equation contains the initials of words that will make it correct. Find the missing words.
| 3 | = | types of N-P C in the I P A |
| 4 | = | V H in the I P A |
| 8 | = | M of A for P C in the I P A |
| 8 | = | primary C V (made famous by D J) |
| 11 | = | P of A for P C in the I P A |
| 24 | = | L of the G A |
| 26 | = | L of the L A |
| 100 | = | W in the S list |
| ~6000 | = | L in the W |
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I make that 3 types of non-pulmonic consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet, 4 vowel heights, 8 manners of articulation, 8 primary cardinal vowels (Daniel Jones), 11 places of articulation, 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, 26 of the Latin alphabet, and 6000 languages in the world. On 100 W, I’m stuck.
So no SpecGram T-shirt for me.
See also: Everything linguists have always wanted to know about logic, the Self-Defining Puzzle, and Who’s Who in Linguistics.
I Googled “100 words” list linguistics and came up with “Swadesh list”.
I didn’t understand much of that, so I’ll just consider it as the perfect post for Ringo Starr’s 69th birthday, which is today! (How’s that for a non sequitur?)
A splendid non sequitur, keep them coming :)
Swadesh, hmm, i may just have heard of him!
(It is a him, right? — yes, just found him in wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Swadesh
Also somewhat off-topic:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1568