Castle, Geordie, and the lows of American prime time TV

Mar 2, 2016 by

Castle, Geordie, and the lows of American prime time TV

One of my current students drew my attention to the latest episode of Castle (aired on ABC on February 29, 2016). So I figured, hey, it fits with the content of my class, I should watch it. I used to really like this show some years...

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Mother Tongue One Never Forgets

Jan 7, 2016 by

Mother Tongue One Never Forgets

[Many thanks to Leni Silberman for drawing my attention to the ScienceAlert article that describes the study discussed below!]   A growing body of linguistic literature, to which I have made a modest contribution (cf. Pereltsvaig...

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Ekaterina Lyutikova on Syntax Models (Or “Syntax for Laypeople&#...

Dec 24, 2015 by

Ekaterina Lyutikova on Syntax Models (Or “Syntax for Laypeople” in under 15 Minutes)

[Note to Readers: the following is my translation from Russian of Ekaterina Lyutikova’s video lecture posted on PostNauka.ru, posted here with her permission. Some Russian examples have been replaced by corresponding English...

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Why Are There Different Languages?—Response to Vyvyan Evans (Part 4, C...

Dec 3, 2015 by

Why Are There Different Languages?—Response to Vyvyan Evans (Part 4, Conclusion)

[Many thanks to Martin W. Lewis and Johanna Nichols for insightful discussions of some of the issues considered in this post.]   As discussed in the previous post, Vyvyan Evans advocates an alternative to the so-called saltationist...

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Universal Grammar, Neanderthals, and the Evolution of Language—Respons...

Dec 1, 2015 by

Universal Grammar, Neanderthals, and the Evolution of Language—Response to Vyvyan Evans (Part 3)

[Many thanks to Martin W. Lewis and Matthew Jobin for insightful discussions of some of the issues considered in this post.]   The next set of objections to the Universal Grammar (UG) theory raised by Vyvyan Evans concerns its...

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