Category Archives: Self-referentiality

Corpora and the Second Amendment: Changing my mind about a change of mind

After initially declaring that I wouldn’t be posting about the phrase keep arms because I had nothing interesting to say about it, and then declaring that upon further reflection I did have something interesting to say, I’ve realized after drafting a post discussing the phrase that I was right the first time.

So when “Corpora and the Second Amendment: ‘keep arms’” doesn’t appear, that’s why.

Watch this space

We seem to be getting higher-than-usual traffic today, which I assume is do the mention in Language Log today of my brief in FCC v. AT&T. So this seems like a good time to say that although I’ve been shamefully delinquent in carrying out my duty as blogger to post new material here (a process technically known as “feeding the motherfucker”), I repent of my slothful ways and hope to start posting again more frequently.

Update: I guess it didn’t quite work out that way.

“AT&T slips into the Supreme Court chamber this morning…”

“…moments before arguments are set to start. He feels slightly affronted that nobody seems to notice him. (AT&T is a very emotional guy.)”

Read the whole thing.

Opening statement

A number of years ago, I read Steven Pinker’s book The Language Instinct and decided I wanted to major in linguistics in college. Unfortunately, I’d already finished to college by then (majoring in American Studies, the last refuge of the indecisive). In fact, I’d gone to law school and was a practicing lawyer.

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