Literal-Minded
Linguistic commentary from a guy who takes things too literally
What people are saying
I admire anyone with a PhD in Linguistics who can talk about English usage in such a practical and useful way. (Pat Schwieterman, administrator of the Eggcorn Forum)
The author balances the complexity of formal linguistic analysis by creating a light insightful discourse that is filled with a great sense of humor. (Anna Mikhaylova, on Teach It If You Can)
Literal-Minded takes things, like, way too far. (Nancy Friedman, on Fritinancy)
Oh my stars. Compared to this guy, I'm friggin' normal! (Porter on the Galactic Cactus forum)Follow me on Twitter
- Latest right-mode wrapping, in Cols Dispatch: "Using his personal cell phone to take and send inappropriate photos to a female employee" pB5 3 days ago
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Recent Comments
- viola on Mayonnaise and Margarine
- Faldone on Mayonnaise and Margarine
- John Cowan on More Christmas Song Confusion
- Stan on Mayonnaise and Margarine
- Alan Palmer on Mayonnaise and Margarine
Categories
- Christmas-related (16)
- Diachronic (55)
- Folk etymology (9)
- Elementary school linguistics (7)
- Food-related (18)
- Kids' entertainment (33)
- Language learning (3)
- Linkfests (29)
- Morphology (96)
- Acronyms (5)
- Backformation (17)
- Compound words (22)
- Irregular verbs (4)
- Mass and Count Nouns (9)
- Portmanteau words (10)
- Pronouns (6)
- Ohioana (15)
- Phonetics and phonology (61)
- Panphonic Phun (4)
- Vowels (6)
- What the L (13)
- Potty on, dudes! (13)
- Pragmatics (31)
- Prescriptive grammar (25)
- Reviews (17)
- Self-promotion (4)
- Semantics (209)
- Ambiguity (62)
- Ambiguous song lyrics (18)
- Attachment ambiguity (4)
- Scope ambiguity (10)
- Lexical semantics (63)
- Overnegation (8)
- Polysemy (7)
- Ambiguity (62)
- Syntax (191)
- Coordination (85)
- Ellipsis (8)
- Multiple-wh questions (4)
- Passive voice (14)
- Phrasal verbs (6)
- Syntactic blending (5)
- Taboo (10)
- The darndest things (73)
- The Fring Cycle (5)
- Uncategorized (11)
- Variation (14)
- You're so literal! (43)
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Top Posts
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- English, Jack
- Evolving English
- Freeman and McKean's The Word
- Jabal al-Lughat
- Jan Freeman's blog
- Josh Millard’s Language Posts
- Language Miniatures
- Linguism
- Noncompositional
- Phonoloblog
- Polyglot Conspiracy
- The Language Guy
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- Young, Single, Multilingual
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