Archive for June, 2008

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

De Bellis Grammaticæ

or, On the Grammar Wars1 Over the weekend, and extending into the week thus far, a debate has been steadily growing in the blogosphere, both here and in the US, about a controversial set of guidelines for teaching English published last year by the English Teacher’s Association of Queensland (ETAQ). Before I go on, I [...]

6 Comments » - Posted in Education,English,Linguistics,Media,Prescriptivism,Syntax by jangari

Friday, June 13th, 2008

Google translate strikes again

I occasionally find myself amused to see in my blog stats that someone has translated my blog into another language. Being so inquisitive, I often follow their lead. Yesterday morning, I noticed that one of the referring pages was a Google translation of this post into Korean. Naturally, I had a look to see what [...]

10 Comments » - Posted in Google,Korean,Languages,Translation by jangari

Friday, June 6th, 2008

ABC needs Grice

In checking out some of the news this morning, I noticed the following as one of the ABC’s main headlines: Petrol rise to limit emissions unsustainable: economist Before I go on, I think it’s worth explaining how I interpret this headline, and why. The noun phrase petrol rise need not refer to a policy decision [...]

No Comments » - Posted in Conversational Implicature,Energy,English,Environment,Languages,Linguistics,Media by jangari