A recent short paper by Laurie Bauer ask 6 questions about the morphology of English. Bauer shows that each of them carries unhelpful presuppositions that are ultimately not likely lead to a sustainable theoretical position. 1 What is the plural of mouse? Grammars of English generally say that the plural form of mouse is mice.…… Continue reading Dangerous questions about morphology
Month: June 2024
Spotting essays written by AI
A few weeks ago, the press reported that ‘researchers’ at Cambridge University had complied a list of indications that student essays have been written by AI tools. The source of the press reports was a short article at https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/news/does-chat-gpt-make-the-grade-cambridge-research According to the article, the researchers described ChatGPT’s default writing style as echoing ‘the bland, clipped, and…… Continue reading Spotting essays written by AI
Near miss? Or near hit?
Someone recently directed me to a discussion of a point I have never though about before. If a disaster nearly occurs, we might describe the event as a near disaster. The event is not a species of disaster, it is a species of non-disaster. Yet when one object nearly hits another object, we use logic…… Continue reading Near miss? Or near hit?
The hadted to do it
My grandson (8 years, 11 months) and his brother (6 years, 6 months) both form the past tense of had to in an unusual and interesting way. They have both been doing this consistently and reasonably often for several months, perhaps as long as a year. I don’t know which one started doing this first,…… Continue reading The hadted to do it
Not-gormless again
As I have posted before, gormless is one of those strange inherently negative words with no positive counterpart. In that post, I included a picture of a restaurant at Copenhagen airport called Gorm’s. https://languagemiscellany.com/2021/08/can-you-negate-the-word-gormless/ I’ve recently found out a possible reason for using that name in Denmark. Denmark was ruled from about 936 to 1042…… Continue reading Not-gormless again