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- Badri on Letting My Spit Do the Talking
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- Janice on DNA Test Reveals White Girl Is White
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Category Archives: Science
Book Review — The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
Author: David W. Anthony Publisher: Princeton University Press My first love in linguistics is probably the historical variety. But no one will pay me money to do that so I do all this computational stuff instead. Still, historical linguistics and … Continue reading
Posted in Books, History, Language, Science
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On Linguistics and Public Outreach
Earlier in the week A couple weeks ago, I posted three questions about science communication in the field of linguistics: Who is the Carl Sagan or Neil DeGrasse Tyson of linguistics? In other words, who do we have in linguistics … Continue reading
Posted in Language, Media, Science
Tagged communication, cosmos, linguistics, pr, science
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Statistics Aren’t Enough
There’s a cute quip: statistics don’t lie. There’s an accurate quip: statistics don’t lie, given a well-trained model and a large enough sample. With statistics on your side, you can be 99% sure that you’re right. Unfortunately, people who are … Continue reading
Posted in Language, Science
Tagged computational linguistics, linguistics, statistics, translation
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DNA Test Reveals White Girl Is White
Previously, I’d done some analysis on the results of the DNA test I’d completed recently. That can be found here: (Background | Results). My fiancée asked if I could do a write-up about her results too, so I did, and … Continue reading
Letting My Spit Do the Talking, part II
Previously on Hapax Legomenon… I ordered a test from 23andMe.com, spit in a tube and sent it back. Six weeks later, I have results in my browser. I had made some educated guesses about what I might find. We’ll see … Continue reading
Letting My Spit Do the Talking
My recorded family history doesn’t go back more than four or five generations. For thousands of years, Indians didn’t really keep records on genealogy unless you were a king. My family were priests, so most records were transmitted orally… until … Continue reading
The Language of Science: it’s OK to be prescriptivist
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Tumblr lately (I also post a lot of these blog posts on Tumblr, so yay!—built-in audience). To my surprise, I’ve discovered a not insignificant number of linguistically-oriented people on there. We talk … Continue reading
Posted in Language, Science
Tagged language, linguistics, prescriptivism, science, semantics
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U guize u guize i found the gratest thing!!!11
To paraphrase the dad from My Big Fat Greek Wedding: give me a word, any word, and I show you how the root of that word is… Hebrew? Enter creationist linguistics. It hasn’t been a thing since Noah Webster in … Continue reading
Posted in Language, Religion, Science
Tagged creationism, fail, language, linguistics
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Research update #3: RESULTS!!!!!11!…?
I scienced all last weekend. Except for a few hours when my fiancée and I watched The Hobbit on DVD, I scienced almost nonstop, and I actually have something to show for it.
Posted in Language, Research, Science
Tagged computational linguistics, for science, research, results
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Like God, the “God Particle” could destroy the universe
Unlike God, the Higgs Boson is probably real.
Posted in Science
Tagged end of the universe, higgs boson, particle physics, physics
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