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2016

Cuz it ain’t in the dictionary

This morning in my English composition class, composed mainly of Japanese speakers, I came upon another pitfall of relying on “in the dictionary” as a test of acceptability. The verb ‘ruralize’, which rarely appears in books published after 1940, is nevertheless present in bilingual dictionaries.

Edward Sapir Book Prize 2016

Submissions are now open for the 2016 Edward Sapir Book Prize for a book that makes the most significant contribution to our understanding of language in society, or the ways in which language mediates historical or contemporary sociocultural processes. Submission Deadline: May 15, 2016

Guns in America: Simple solutions are not easy

In this opinion article, Chad Nilep suggests that empathy, informed by cultural relativism is necessary to help gun control advocates and foes understand one another’s positions and to work toward solutions to the problems of mass shootings and gun violence in America.

Oh, pants

If a dog wore pants, would word meaning help us decide what they should look like? Using prototype theory and native speaker judgements, we find no clear, shared definition of the word ‘pants’. The results point to gradient understanding of meaning.

SLA Graduate Essay Contest 2016

The Society for Linguistic Anthropology invites submissions of graduate student papers for the 2016 Graduate Student Essay Prize.

Papers should be submitted by the deadline, Friday March 11, 2016.