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 might say [...]

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 my [...]

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 to raise [...]

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