and baby mobiles, which look like this.
I went home and did some quick googling and found that SYNTAX TREE BABY MOBILES ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE ANYWHERE ONLINE. I was a bit disappointed but also inspired...perhaps the quirky-products-for-the-nerdy-linguist industry was still largely untapped. Even on Etsy I can only find a few magnets/pictures of Chomsky and these adorable schwa earrings.
I could cash in on this! Unfortunately I have no knowledge of metalworking or woodworking or really any -working that is necessary to make stuff. I know that Greg Dean of Real Life Comics's wife runs an Etsy called Seams Geeky where she produces stuff like hand towels and reusable diapers embroidered with stuff from Super Mario, Zelda, and Star Trek. Maybe someone would be interested in an IPA alphabet book? Or some colorless green idea pajamas for your furious sleeping needs? And where is a purchasable compilation of all the great linguistics jokes that are out there?
Not that I'm going to do any of this...I'll probably just end up being a consumer.
Also those bunnies are reaaaaally cute.
"It turns out there is an /i/ in /tim/"
ReplyDelete- My favourite linguistics joke, from the door of one of my tutor's offices.
Hahaha yeah. I'm a fan of this one (though it's a little drawn out):
DeleteThe LSA encourages linguists to use example sentences that do not include such violent (but clearly transitive) verbs as “kill” or “hit.” Therefore, if one is discussing the diagnostics for the covert element PRO, one should avoid using a sentence such as:
John wants [PRO to be killed]
Instead, one should use sentences like:
John wants [PRO to be arrested]
While the LSA’s guidelines are fairly recent, there is a sense in which this harkens back to the sixties, when this sort of thing was fairly common—that is, being arrested as part of a non-violent PRO-test.
Two linguists walk into A′.
Delete(Ah, sorry. That was a notation joke. I've been trying to avoid those since my music jokes started falling ♭)