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schwa The mid-central vowel of e.g. the second syllable of matter: in phonetic notation [ ə ] ([matə ]) . Also spelled 'shwa'. selective listening Selective attention to an individual speaker, e.g. in a crowded room where many people are talking. shifter Jakobson's term for words like I , you and others whose interpretation involves person deixis. speech error An accidental error in speech: cf . slip of the tongue. Definitions from: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, Second edition... Read Full Story

This topic seems to be more controversial than a simple dictionary definition would lead one to believe. At issue: If a man is favoring his right leg because of an injury, which leg was injured, his right leg or his left? Idiomatically speaking, dictionaries seem to favor the interpretation that the the right leg is the injured one. Here are the pertinent entries from merriam-webster.com and dictionary.com respectively: favor verb 1. a : to regard or treat with favor b (1) : to do a kindness... Read Full Story

rhotic A term used in English phonology referring to dialects or accents where /r/ is pronounced following a vowel, as in car and cart . Varieties which do not have this feature are non-rhotic (such as received pronunciation). Vowels which occur after retroflex consonants are sometimes called rhotacized (they display rhotacization). right dislocation In grammatical description, a type of sentence in which one of the constituents appears in final position and its canonical position is filled... Read Full Story

While I don’t agree with the sentiment in the chorus, I love that there is a song named for the Oxford comma. I must admit, the melody is pretty catchy too. Read Full Story

As well as all sports fans and/or language enthusiasts, I present to you a compilation of language-related Super Bowl XLVI links. Macmillan Dictionary the Super Bowl - definition Wordnik Word Soup-er Bowl The Wall Street Journal Words With Giants The Wall Street Journal The NFL Has an 'L' of a Problem The New York Times Fill-In | Super Bowl Ads (similar to Mad Libs) Chicago Tribune A winning strategy for Super Bowl ads: Baby Boomers are the target demographic, experts say. So with that in... Read Full Story

Nuckin Futs Language Log recently brought to my attention a newly trademarked (and Spoonerism ized?) Australian snack food called Nuckin Futs. What I found equally and complementary humorous was that a day or so later Cowbells at tumblr posted the following picture. Read Full Story

quadrisyllabic Having four syllables. A word such as dictatorship is thus a quadrisyllable . quantifier floating Proposed syntactic process by which a quantifier is detached from its phrase. E.g. in Birds can all fly , the quantifier all is seen as having 'floated' from its position as a determiner in All birds can fly . 'queclarative' Coined in the 1970s for an utterance which has the form of an interrogative (or 'question') but the force of a statement (or 'declarative'): e.g. 'What use is... Read Full Story

My teenage boys have a new favorite condiment - Sriracha Chili Sauce. I was unsure about the standard pronunciation, so I looked it up and came across a New York Times article titled " A Chili Sauce to Crow About ". The pronunciation, according to the article is: SIR-rotch-ah . But that is not the only reason I mention Sriracha. My favorite part of the article is the author's alliterative description of the origin of the sauce - "... an American sauce, a polyglot purée with roots in different... Read Full Story

boy , n . Forgive me for the post title; I am addicted to amusing alliterations. Image via Facebook (origin unknown). Thanks to my friend Colleen for sharing. Read Full Story

pandialectal A term used primarily in dialectology and sociolinguistics to characterize any linguistic feature, rule, etc., which is applicable to all the dialects of a language. paronymy A term sometimes used in semantic analysis to refer to the relationship between words derived from the same root. It is especially applied to a word formed from a word in another language with only a slight change: French pont and Latin pons are paronyms and the relationship between them is one of paronymy... Read Full Story