A little while ago I mentioned a piece of mine had been published in the June issue of Speculative Grammarian. Well, that linguistics satire piece has prompted a similarly satirical response. In the July issue, “Charlie Saygone” criticizes my theory of the “linguistic big crunch” and argues instead that we are headed for a “linguistic big rip.” In this hilarious article, “Saygone” suggests that I’m off my rocker. Which is probably true.

Block and colleagues at the High-Energy Pronoun Accelerator have, to put it bluntly, gone insane. I would attribute this to living underground in close proximity to attempts at firing fourth person dual reflexive pronouns at dummy pronouns in the illative case.”

In short, this article was terribly amusing. Academic linguistics (and perhaps academics in general) has an unfortunate tendency to engage in theory-wars, where each camp’s primary research consists of attacking the other. The recent satirical skirmish on the fate of the linguistic universe is a nice break from real theory battles.

Check out my article “The Linguistic Big Crunch” here and see “Charlie Saygone’s” response here. [Incidentally, I’ve heard word that a number of other spin-offs from my article are on the way. ] Man, when someone writes the book on satirical linguists I better be remembered as the father of Cosmological Linguistics.