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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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Like God, the “God Particle” could destroy the universe

Unlike God, the Higgs Boson is probably real.

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