My room is a goddamn library by now.

Sorry about the confusion with those last posts, I was attempting to post to a sister tumblog and failed horribly, rabid tumbeasts, et cetera. Carry on.

Anonymous asked: what's with the dead fish... is it supposed to mean something?

In a word, no. I apologize for the grossness of the image, and yes, I agree it’s gross.

LINGCOD: THE ORIGIN STORY

So a couple of months ago, an undergraduate linguistics conference had just ended and many of its participants were making silly linguistics puns left and right. This was right about when the Linguist Llama (http://lingllama.tumblr.com/) was beginning to get popular in our area, and some of the jokes made their way onto that tumblog, until someone asked: just why is it a llama, anyway?

And with that we began searching for L-animals. We played with the idea of a few animals, before hitting upon the ling cod, which is an actual kind of codfish and perfect for linguistics, given its name. Someone found this picture, the expression on the fishface was deemed internet-worthy, and once we had made about fifteen or so it was decided that someone should make a tumblr for it. Since then it’s chugged alongside Linguist Llama and the Linguist Lioness (http://linguistlioness.tumblr.com/), and each of them has developed an individual personality (or maybe that’s just my impression?).

tl;dr
This is all a drawn-out quasi-inside joke from the aftermath of a linguistics conference,
and
the specific picture is unanimously deemed “dead” and/or “gross”.

Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Creek (and other languages) varies the morphological case of the participants in intransitive events by whether they are an agent or a patient in the event. This contrasts with nominative-accusative languages, where intransitive subjects are marked as agents, and ergative-absolutive languages, where they are marked as objects.

I happen to find this extremely cool.

Anonymous asked: Given the exceptionally large oral cavity and gills, is LingCod able to produce any unusual segments?

Yes, pharyngeal and glottal nasals. Also, segments with not only secondary but also tertiary and occasionally quaternary points of coarticulation. Check out my apical dental stop with palatal, uvular and labial coarticulations, yo.

Now if only I, as a fish, had ears. I am missing half of my articulatory-perceptual interface.