Category Archives: Language

Arithmetic Depends on Grammar

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Ed Battistella

If you get all of the presents in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” how many presents do you get? 364 (because of the AND) Here’s the formula: ((1 x 12)+ (2 x 11)+(3 x 10)+(4 x 9)+(5 x … Continue reading →

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Deep (structure) thoughts

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Ed Battistella

It’s Noam Chomsky’s birthday, and through a combination of serendipity and procrastination I’ve just finished a mini-review of Chomsky’s Linguistics (ed. by Peter Graff and Coppe van Urk and published by the MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. It’s a 700 … Continue reading →

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What does “clean” mean?

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Ed Battistella

Over the summer, my wife and I visited Don Aslett’s Museum of Clean in Pocatello, Idaho. It’s a six-floor 75,000 square foot museum devoted to the art of cleaning. The Museum is the brainchild of Don Aslett, the founder and … Continue reading →

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Deregulating English

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Ed Battistella

I’ve finished up my summer session class on the History of the English Language (hence my blogging hiatus). In the last class meeting though, a student introduced a new metaphor I need to think more about. Jamey Strathman talked about … Continue reading →

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