“Linguistics relies on intuition and analytic insight, but intuition in linguistics is the ultimate source of knowledge. The competence-performance division means that speakers may not always produce perfect, well-formed utterances in practice but they can always judge well-formedness using their intuition. Since linguistics is interested in modeling linguistic competence, intuition is a weird blackbox that we can draw on for empirical information, but ultimately we want to reverse-engineer and understand the intuition-blackbox and this is where ingenuity comes into play. The confluence of intuition and ingenuity is what makes the field so elegantly robust and pleasantly difficult.”
![newsweek:thedailywhat:
Retrofuturistic Thing of the Day: French illustrator Stéphane Massa-Bidal, AKA Rétrofuturs, has designed a set of sweet vintage-style covers for nonexistent books on popular web services.
Check them out here.
[via.]](http://23.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kug6ypzbHd1qzpwi0o1_500.png)
Shaun Tan :: TALES FROM OUTER SUBURBIA
New York Times’ Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009
via libraryland
Photography Exhibit at ArtSpace on Sixth to Showcase Scottsdale Community College Student Images – December 21 through January 2
via scottsdalecc
photo by William C. Kaesche II
South Mountain Community College presents
Stella Pope Duarte
“SHORT DAYS, LONG NIGHTS AND REWRITES”
A Free Workshop for Writers
Saturday, December 12, 9am-12pm
SU100ABC
In a magical burst of creative energy, participants will be treated to a panoramic view of the writing process. In her own indomitable style, Stella Pope Duarte will draw on story, humor, memoir, and tall tales to boldly breathe life into the maddening world of words. Bring notebooks and pens. Writers of all levels are welcome.
Join in this exhilarating experience!
South Mountain Community College/Student Union
7050 S. 24th Street, Phoenix
RSVP to SMCC English Dept.
(602) 305-5771
Admission is free!
image via www.stellapopeduarte.com
Struggling to find just the right words for your final essay? Try using Visuwords, an online graphical dictionary that allows you to discover the meanings of words and find related terms. The program allows you to move individual nodes to clarify relationships between words and even color codes terms according to parts of speech.
Now there’s no excuse for a boring research paper.
Add a little Chomsky charm to your lawn.
“Garden Noam Chomsky
Featured in The Nation’s charity auction, this Garden Noam Chomsky sculpture, of a run ‘probably limited to less than 100.’”
Via Boing Boing
Dickens understood the importance of revision. Do you?
The New York Times has posted a high-resolution copy of the manuscript for A Christmas Carol. By clicking on a toggle button, you can compare the handwritten and typed versions of this classic.
via New York Times
A tumblr about language,
communication
and The Valley of the Sun
From The Writing Center
at
Scottsdale Community College
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and bad puns
(for which we apologize in advance).
