Reduplication: a typological overview

I was recently asked about my setup for <a href="https://twitch.tv/colingorrie">livestreaming</a> and filming <a href="https://youtube.com/colingorrie">Youtube videos</a>. Since this is something that came about as a result of a good deal of trial and error, I thought it might be nice to spare others the same struggle. So here is a brief explanation of my setup for filming videos as of March 2022. I'll try to keep this reasonably up to date as my technique improves.
In some cases, I've linked to where I bought the products from. These aren't affiliate links – they're merely conveniences and ways to keep track of the particular products.
It can get expensive to set up a studio to produce videos, but chances are that you have some of the equipment already. Also keep in mind that this is a (relatively) mature setup: I've been producing online courses since mid-2020 and streaming since late 2021, and I've gradually upgraded things to the point outlined here. You can certainly get started with a lot less.
I'd also like to note that half of this setup has come about through the help of my producer Lucy. So let's all thank Lucy for helping us make better videos!
<h2>General setup</h2>
The format of the channel is as follows: the source of all videos is a stream which I do every week for 2–4 hours. I break it up over two days or else my voice would give out. If you can stream for longer than 2 hours straight, I doff my hat to you.
I like to break up each streaming session into 2–4 segments. These segments will later be extracted from the stream video and uploaded to Youtube as separate videos. Therefore, Before and after each of these segments, I do a greeting for Youtube.
After the stream is done, I leave up the full stream video (this full stream recording is called a VOD, or video on demand, which I didn't know beforehand) so that people can watch it later.
Then, Lucy takes the stream video, chops it up into segments, does some light post-production on audio and colour, adds a short intro segment, and schedules it to be uploaded according to our upload schedule (currently 3 videos a week).
<h2>Software</h2>
For streaming, I use Streamlabs OBS (requires subscription) to stream simultaneously to Youtube and Twitch. There is a learning curve to this software that I haven't fully ascended yet. But, nevertheless, it is the centrepiece of the whole setup. You will need to look things up when setting up Streamlabs OBS. In some aspects Streamlabs OBS works the same as the free OBS Studio (which Streamlabs OBS is built on), and in others it has its own idiosyncracies. So keep that in mind when looking up solutions – sometimes searching for "obs" works and other times it won't.
Some things I've learned about Streamlabs OBS:
<ul>
 <li>Streamlabs OBS won't automatically show you the combined YouTube/Twitch chat. You need to activate this yourself every time by clicking Multistream.</li>
 <li>If you plan on using stream footage to create other videos, you should record your streams locally rather than relying on downloading them from Youtube. Lucy (my producer) and I have found that Youtube compresses longer streams even when you download the supposed full-quality version.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Computer</h2>
I currently use a Windows desktop to stream. At the time I started in late 2021, my Macbook Pro (2014-era) was showing its age and my Windows desktop was the only machine capable of streaming. I will be testing out streaming from a 2021-era Macbook Pro in the coming months and will report back.
I have found it important to have a wired Ethernet connection when streaming. On a wireless connection, I experienced stuttering and dropped frames. Your mileage may vary here, depending on the particulars of your internet connection.
I use a dual-monitor setup: one monitor is for the content of stream, and the other I use to monitor the chat and hold any notes I'm using. Be mindful that the aspect ratio of a youtube video isn't necessarily going to be the same as your monitor. Streamlabs OBS (or equivalent) will help you set up your windows so that they fit on screen when you stream.
<h2>Audio</h2>
I have two microphones I can recommend. The one I use for streaming is the Behringer XM8500. Note that this microphone requires phantom power, so I also use a mixer (specifically the Behringer XENYX 302USB). This route requires some fiddling with settings, but there are ample tutorials on Youtube.
As a simpler alternative, I can also recommend the Samson Q2U, which connects by USB. I use this on my non-streaming computer and would have no hesitation in using it for streaming as well.
In each case I use a boom scissor arm (<a href="https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B076ZKGZ5X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&#x26;psc=1">example</a>) to hold and position the microphone close to my mouth. This is essential to get good, clean sound.
I also use a <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0002GXF8Q/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&#x26;psc=1">foam windscreen</a> to reduce breath sounds and pops. It's not perfect, but it's unobtrusive, unlike the pop filter I used in earlier videos, which tended to block my view.
Finally, be sure to wear headphones while streaming to minimize any potential for feedback.
<h2>Video</h2>
Right now I am using a simple 1080p webcam as the video source, the Logitech C920. I have tried getting my relatively inexpensive DSLR camera (the Canon EOS Rebel T7) to work for this and the framerate was unacceptable. In general, you will need an expensive camera to use it to stream. I don't think this investment is worth it for my channel right now but I hope to change this in the future.
Note that, for prerecorded videos, the Canon EOS Rebel T7 is perfectly acceptable, and, in fact, looks great. If I ever return to doing prerecorded videos,
<h2>Thumbnails</h2>
The thumbnail production process is more involved than I'd imagined it would be at the outset. At the beginning of the week, I do a photoshoot (Youtube's algorithm likes goofy poses, so be prepared to sacrifice your dignity) in the clothes I'll be wearing for the week's stream.
This is important because scheduling the stream in advance, along with a thumbnail, means that people will see that it's scheduled on their Youtube feeds. Keeping the outfit constant between stream and thumbnail is important because people use the outfit as a signal for whether they want to watch the edited videos: if they've seen the stream with that outfit already, they won't need to watch the excerpt videos where I'm wearing the same thing. Yes, people actually do keep track of this!
My sister Katie acts as photographer, using my Canon EOS Rebel T7.
I then send Lucy the photos and she crops, colour corrects, and decoration to them. We use a plain photo without decoration for the stream thumbnails, and add a frame and text to the excerpt videos.
<h2>Lighting</h2>
Lighting is a difficult topic. I use a <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07MCW8BK5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&#x26;psc=1">45 Watt CFL bulb</a> with 5500K colour temperature mounted on a pole on the other side of my desk. I have set up the light with a white diffuser umbrella in front of it, as is pictured in <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Photography-Portrait-Umbrella-Continuous-Lighting/dp/B018KE5XUO/ref=sr_1_29_sspa">this product listing</a> (I don't use this particular product, but I do use one like it). I do this not only so that the light is more even but also so that I don't have to see a bare bulb.
Along with this, I ensure that all other lights in the room are off when filming and that the blinds are shut. Otherwise, the lighting is just too variable to work with.
<h2>Background</h2>
I had thought a very plain background would be best, but in fact it seems to look better to have some visual interest in the background. I use a folding screen, a bookshelf, paintings, and plants, and it all seems to work. Some people have even asked me if it was a green screen!
One thing that surprised me is that the background started looking even better when I put more distance between me and it. That separation seems to make the subject (yours truly) 'pop' out and avoid getting lost in all the detail. So, if you can, don't film directly with your back to wall if possible. I think I have about a metre between my desk and the wall and this looks good without taking up too much space in the office.
<h2>Psychology</h2>
The only reason I'm able to create so much content is that I do it live. I have perfectionist tendencies, so when I'm left without a deadline, I tend to take ages to create anything.
Livestreaming, by contrast, has forced me to accept imperfection. Instead of treating videos as precious objects that can be perfected, I now treat them as classes, lectures, or workshops which are captured for posterity. They're imperfect but they have a live "energy" that makes up – I think – for the inevitable "ums" and "ahs".
As a result of accepting the imperfection of livestreaming, I am able to create content in great quantity, and have ended up learning a great deal more than I otherwise would have. The <a href="https://austinkleon.com/2020/12/10/quantity-leads-to-quality-the-origin-of-a-parable/">parable of the two pottery classes</a>, I think, is relevant here.
<hr>
I hope this guide helps you! Please let me know on <a href="https://twitter.com/colingorrie">Twitter</a> if you have any questions.

A Walkthrough of My Streaming Setup

This is the third in a series of Old English readings. If you haven't read the previous entries in the series yet, <a href="/articles/old-english-reading-matthew-12">start there</a>.
Like the previous texts, this text is lightly adapted from <a href="https://archive.org/details/ananglosaxonrea00whitgoog/page/n158/mode/2up">Sweet's reader</a>.
I have added explanatory notes for:
<ol>
 <li>All the words that did not appear in the previous reading,</li>
 <li>All words not on the <a href="/articles/old-english-vocabulary">basic vocabulary list</a></li>
 <li>All grammar points that might be tricky for a beginner</li>
</ol>
Happy reading!<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
<h2>Matthew 13:3–8</h2>
Today's reading is from the Gospel of Matthew. Here is the complete text.
<blockquote>
 Sōþlīċe ūt eode se sāwere his sǣd tō sāwenne. And þā þā hē sēow, sume hiġ fēollon wiþ weġ, and fuglas cumon and ǣton þā. Sōþlīċe sume fēollon on stǣnihte, þǣr hit næfde myċle eorþan, and hrædliċe upp sprungon, for þām þe hiġ næfdon eorþan dȳpan; sōþlīċe upp sprungenre sunnan, hiġ ādruwedon and forsċruncon, for þām þe hiġ næfdon wyrtruman. Sōþlīċe sume fēollon on þornas, and þā þornas wēoxon, and forþrysmodon þā. Sume sōþlīċe fēollon on gōde eorþan, and sealdon wæstm, sum hundfealdne, sum sixtiġfealdne, sum þrittiġfealdne.
</blockquote>
Let's break it down into more manageable parts.

 Sōþlīċe ūt eode se sāwere his sǣd tō sāwenne.
 Now out went the sower to sow his seeds.

<ul>
 <li>ūt out.</li>
 <li>eode went. Irregular past tense of gān to go in its 1st/3rd person singular form.</li>
 <li>sāwere sower. From the verb sāwan to sow (seeds).</li>
 <li>sǣd seeds. Accusative plural (or singular) of sǣd seed.<a href="#user-content-fn-3a" id="user-content-fnref-3a" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a></li>
 <li>tō sāwenne to sow. Sāwenne is the inflected infinitive of sāwan to sow. The inflected infinitive is used to express purpose, among other things.</li>
</ul>

 And þā þā hē sēow, sume hiġ fēollon wiþ weġ,
 And when he sowed, some of them fell along the road,

<ul>
 <li>þā þā when.</li>
 <li>sēow sowed. Past tense of sāwan to sow in its 1st/3rd person singular form.</li>
 <li>sume some. Nominative plural neuter strong form of sum one, a certain; some.</li>
 <li>hiġ they. Variant form of hīe they.<a href="#user-content-fn-4a" id="user-content-fnref-4a" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">2</a></li>
 <li>wiþ against; along; with.</li>
 <li>weġ way, road.</li>
</ul>

 and fuglas cumon and ǣton þā.
 and birds came and ate them.

<ul>
 <li>fuglas birds. Nominative plural of fugol bird (> fowl).</li>
 <li>ǣton ate. Past tense of etan to eat, in its plural form.</li>
 <li>þā them. Neuter accusative plural of hīe they.</li>
</ul>

 Sōþlīċe sume fēollon on stǣnihte, þǣr hit næfde myċle eorþan,
 Now some fell on stony (places), where it did not have much earth.

<ul>
 <li>stǣnihte stony (ones). Variant form of stāniht stony. Accusative plural neuter strong form, governed by on onto).</li>
 <li>þǣr where.</li>
 <li>næfde = ne hæfde did not have.<a href="#user-content-fn-4a" id="user-content-fnref-4a-2" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">2</a> Hæfde is the 1st/3rd person singular past tense form of habban to have.</li>
 <li>myċle much. Feminine accusative singular strong form of miċil much, many, agreeing with eorþan earth.</li>
 <li>eorþan earth. Accusative singular of eorþe earth.</li>
</ul>

 and hrædliċe upp sprungon, for þām þe hiġ næfdon eorþan dȳpan;
 And at once they sprang up, because they did not have depth of earth.

<ul>
 <li>hrædliċe promptly, at once.</li>
 <li>upp up. Variant form of ūp.</li>
 <li>sprungon sprang. Past plural form of springan to leap; burst forth; spring.</li>
 <li>for þām þe because.</li>
 <li>eorþan of earth. Genitive singular form of eorþe earth.<a href="#user-content-fn-5a" id="user-content-fnref-5a" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">3</a></li>
 <li>dȳpan depth. Accusative singular form of dȳpe depth (variant of dīepe).</li>
</ul>

 sōþlīċe upp sprungenre sunnan, hiġ ādruwedon and forsċruncon,
 Then the sun having sprung up, they dried up and withered.

<ul>
 <li>sprungenre sprung. Feminine dative singular of (ġe)sprungen, past participle of springan to leap; burst forth; spring. In agreement with sunnan sun</li>
 <li>sunnan sun. Dative singular form of sunne sun. Together sprungenre sunnan is a dative absolute clause,<a href="#user-content-fn-6a" id="user-content-fnref-6a" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">4</a> which expresses the circumstances under which something has taken place. They have the structure X(dative) Y(dative), where X is usually a noun and Y is usually a participle. X and Y can appear in either order. You can translate these constructions as X having Y or with X having Y, as I have here with the sun having sprung up.</li>
 <li>ādruwedon dried up. Past plural form of ādrȳġan to dry up. The textbook past tense form of this verb is ādrȳġdon, but, in Old English as in so many things, real life isn't always like the textbook.</li>
 <li>forsċruncon withered. Past plural form of forsċrincan to shrink up, wither.</li>
</ul>

 for þām þe hiġ næfdon wyrtruman.
 because they did not have roots.

<ul>
 <li>wyrtruman roots. Accusative plural of wyrtruma (var. of wyrttruma root).<a href="#user-content-fn-6b" id="user-content-fnref-6b" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">5</a></li>
</ul>

 Sōþlīċe sume fēollon on þornas,
 Some, however, fell on thorns,

<ul>
 <li>þornas thorns. Accusative plural of þorn thorn.</li>
</ul>

 and þā þornas wēoxon, and forþrysmodon þā.
 and the thorns grew, and choked them.

<ul>
 <li>þā þornas the thorns. Here þornas is nominative plural.</li>
 <li>wēoxon grew. Past plural form of (ġe)weaxan to grow. Compare Present-Day English wax, something the moon does for about half of the month.</li>
 <li>forþrysmodon choked. Past plural form of forþrysmodon to choke.</li>
</ul>

 Sume sōþlīċe fēollon on gōde eorþan, and sealdon wæstm,
 Some, however, fell onto good earth, and gave fruit.

<ul>
 <li>gōde good. Feminine accusative singular form of gōd good. Accusative agreeing with eorþan earth, the phrase as a whole taking accusative due to on in its directional meaning onto.</li>
 <li>sealdon gave. Past plural form of sellan to give; betray.<a href="#user-content-fn-7a" id="user-content-fnref-7a" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">6</a></li>
 <li>wæstm fruit. From the same root as weaxan to grow. No descendant form survives in Present-Day English.</li>
</ul>

 sum hundfealdne, sum sixtiġfealdne, sum þrittiġfealdne.
 some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

<ul>
 <li>hundfealdne hundredfold. Masculine accusative singular form of hundfeald, agreeing with an elided wæstm fruit.</li>
 <li>sixtiġfealdne sixtyfold. Ditto.</li>
 <li>þrittiġfealdne thirtyfold. Ditto.</li>
</ul>
<h2>References</h2>
<ul>
 <li>Sweet, Henry (1879). An Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse. Oxford: Clarendon.</li>
</ul>
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-3a">
 The word sǣd is the same in the singular and plural in the nominative and accusative cases. <a href="#user-content-fnref-3a" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-4a">
 sume hiġ some of them, literally some they. <a href="#user-content-fnref-4a" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#user-content-fnref-4a-2" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩2</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-5a">
 Nouns of this declension (called n-stems, or weak nouns) is sometimes difficult to translate because so many forms take the same ending: -an. <a href="#user-content-fnref-5a" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-6a">
 The dative absolute construction in Old-English is comparable to the Latin ablative absolute construction. <a href="#user-content-fnref-6a" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-6b">
 Etymologically, wyrttruma is a compound of wyrt plant (as in St. John's Wort) and truma troop of soldiers, which does not survive. <a href="#user-content-fnref-6b" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-7a">
 The principal meaning of sellan in Old English was to give, and secondarily to betray, that is, to sell (someone) out. The main modern meaning involving commerce is a later development which only starts appearing at the very end of the Old English period. <a href="#user-content-fnref-7a" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

Old English Graded Reader #3. Matthew 13:3–8

This is the second in a series of Old English readings. If you haven't read the first yet, <a href="/articles/old-english-reading-matthew-12">start there</a>.
Like the previous text, this text is lightly adapted from <a href="https://archive.org/details/ananglosaxonrea00whitgoog/page/n158/mode/2up">Sweet's reader</a>.
I have added explanatory notes for:
<ol>
 <li>All the words that did not appear in the previous reading,</li>
 <li>All words not on the <a href="/articles/old-english-vocabulary">basic vocabulary list</a></li>
 <li>All grammar points that might be tricky for a beginner</li>
</ol>
Happy reading!<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
<h2>Matthew 12:18–21</h2>
Today's reading is from the Gospel of Matthew. Here is the complete text.
<blockquote>
 Hēr is mīn cnapa, þone iċ ġeċēas; mīn ġecorena, on þām wel ġelīcode mīnre sāwle. Iċ āsette mīnne gāst ofer hine, and dōm hē bodaþ þēodum. Ne flīt hē, ne hē ne hrȳmþ; ne nān mann ne ġehȳrþ his stemne on strǣtum. Tōcwȳsed hrēod hē ne forbrȳt, and smēocende fleax hē ne ādwǣsċþ, ǣr þām þe hē āwurpe dōm tō siġe. And on his naman þēoda ġehyhtaþ.
</blockquote>
Let's break it down into more manageable parts.
Hēr is mīn cnapa, þone iċ ġeċēas; Here is my servant, whom I have chosen;
<ul>
 <li>hēr here.</li>
 <li>is is. 3rd person singular present form of wesan to be.</li>
 <li>cnapa boy, young man; servant.<a href="#user-content-fn-18b" id="user-content-fnref-18b" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a></li>
 <li>þone whom. Accusative singular form of the definite article sē he.<a href="#user-content-fn-18a" id="user-content-fnref-18a" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">2</a></li>
 <li>iċ I.</li>
 <li>ġeċēas chose. 1st person singular past form of ġeċēosan to choose.<a href="#user-content-fn-18c" id="user-content-fnref-18c" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">3</a></li>
</ul>
mīn ġecorena, on þām wel ġelīcode mīnre sāwle. my chosen one, in whom my soul has been well pleased.<a href="#user-content-fn-18d" id="user-content-fnref-18d" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">4</a>
<ul>
 <li>ġecorena chosen (one). Nominative singular masculine weak form of ġecoren, the past participle of ġeċēosan to chose</li>
 <li>þām whom. Dative singular form of the definite article sē he.</li>
 <li>wel well.</li>
 <li>ġelīcode it was pleasing. 3rd person past form of ġelīcan/ġelīcian to delight, please.<a href="#user-content-fn-18e" id="user-content-fnref-18e" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">5</a>. Grammatically, an impersonal form: on X ġelīcode Y in X it was pleasing to Y, but best translated in a more idiomatic way, such as X was pleasing to Y.</li>
 <li>mīnre. Dative singular feminine form of mīn my. Agreeing with the feminine noun sāwol soul.</li>
 <li>sāwle soul. Dative singular form of sāwol soul.</li>
</ul>
Iċ āsette mīnne gāst ofer hine, I will place my spirit over him,<a href="#user-content-fn-18f" id="user-content-fnref-18f" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">6</a>
<ul>
 <li>āsette (I) place. 1st person singular present from of āsettan to place, set up.</li>
 <li>minne my. Accusative singular masculine form of mīn my. Agreeing with the masculine noun gāst spirit.</li>
 <li>gāst spirit.</li>
 <li>hine him, accusative singular governed by ofer over.</li>
</ul>
and dōm hē bodaþ þēodum. and judgement he will proclaim to the nations.
<ul>
 <li>dōm judgement; law.</li>
 <li>hē he.</li>
 <li>bodaþ (he) proclaims. 3rd person singular present form of bodian to proclaim, tell; show.</li>
 <li>þēodum to (the) nations. Dative plural form of þēod nation.</li>
</ul>
Ne flīt hē, ne hē ne hrȳmþ,<a href="#user-content-fn-19a" id="user-content-fnref-19a" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">7</a> He will not contend, nor will he shout,
<ul>
 <li>flīt (he) contends. 3rd person singular present form of flītan to contend, strive.</li>
 <li>ne... ne. Multiple negation is used for emphasis, not to negate the negation and thereby make a positive.</li>
 <li>hrȳmþ (he) shouts. 3rd person singular present form of hrȳman/hrīeman to shout, scream.</li>
</ul>
ne nān mann ne ġehȳrþ his stemne on strǣtum nor will any person hear his voice in the streets.
<ul>
 <li>nān not... one; not... any. Ne... ān.</li>
 <li>stemne voice. Accusative singular of stemn/stefn voice.</li>
 <li>strǣtum streets. Dative plural of strǣt street, road, governed by on in.</li>
</ul>
Tōcwȳsed hrēod hē ne forbrȳt, A bruised reed he will not break,
<ul>
 <li>tōcwȳsed bruised. Past participle of tōcwȳsan/tōcwīsan to shatter, crush; bruise.</li>
 <li>hrēod reed.</li>
 <li>forbrȳt (he) breaks. 3rd person singular present form of forbryttan to break, smash, crush.</li>
</ul>
and smēocende fleax hē ne ādwǣsċþ, and smoking flax he shall not extinguish,
<ul>
 <li>smēocende smoking. Present participle of smēocan to (give off) smoke.</li>
 <li>fleax flax.</li>
 <li>ādwǣsċþ (he) extinguishes. 3rd person singular present form of ādwǣsċan to extinguish, quench.</li>
</ul>
ǣr þām þe hē āwurpe dōm tō siġe. until he has sent forth judgement to victory.
<ul>
 <li>ǣr þām þe before, until.</li>
 <li>āwurpe (he) sent forth. Singular past form of āweorpan to cast off, cast away; send forth.</li>
 <li>tō to</li>
 <li>siġe victory</li>
</ul>
And on his naman þēoda ġehyhtaþ. And in his name the nations will trust.
<ul>
 <li>naman name. Dative singular of nama name, governed by on in.</li>
 <li>ġehyhtaþ (they) trust. Plural present form of ġehyhtan to trust.</li>
</ul>
<h2>References</h2>
<ul>
 <li>Sweet, Henry (1879). An Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse. Oxford: Clarendon.</li>
</ul>
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-18b">
 Cnapa servant is related to Present-Day English knave, which is descended from the OE form cnafa servant. <a href="#user-content-fnref-18b" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-18a">
 Recall from the <a href="/articles/old-english-reading-matthew-7">previous reading</a> that the definite article can be used as a relative pronoun, as it is here, referring back to cnapa. <a href="#user-content-fnref-18a" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-18c">
 Sometimes the Present-Day English seems to require a present perfect form have V-ing when translating the Old English simple past. <a href="#user-content-fnref-18c" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-18d">
 Literally, in whom it has been well pleasing to my soul. See the note under ġelīcode for details. <a href="#user-content-fnref-18d" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-18e">
 It is easy to confuse ġelīcian to delight, please with ġelīċian to imitate; to compare, liken, especially in texts which do not mark the palatals. <a href="#user-content-fnref-18e" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-18f">
 Grammatically, the verbs in this sentence (and most of the following lines) are in the present tense. But, as Old English had no separate future tense, the present tense sometimes expressing future meaning. This is also sometims true in Present-Day English: We leave tomorrow. Here we have good reason to translate āsette as will place and bodaþ as will proclaim because the Latin original that this is a translation of has future forms ponam will place and nuntiabit will proclaim. <a href="#user-content-fnref-18f" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-19a">
 Note that the word order with the negative marker ne is often verb-second: hē flīt he contends, but ne flīt hē he does not contend. <a href="#user-content-fnref-19a" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

Old English Graded Reader #2. Matthew 12:18–21

Let's try to solve a linguistic mystery from the 16th century. This mystery concerns the identity and affiliation of the language recorded by Jacques Cartier (or someone who wrote in his name) in his description of his voyages to North America. I will relate the bare historical facts briefly, although the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/jacques-cartier">whole story</a> is an interesting read: between 1534 and 1542, the explorer Jacques Cartier made three voyages to what is now Atlantic Canada and Quebec. On these voyages, Cartier encountered two major indigenous settlements along the Saint Lawrence river: Stadacona (near present-day Quebec City) and Hochelaga (present-day Montreal). By some (possibly villainous) circumstance, Cartier obtained lists of some two hundred words of the language(s) of the Hochelagans and Stadaconans. These wordlists likely represent the first written attestation of any North American language. After Cartier's last voyage ended in disgrace, no further crown-sponsored expeditions occurred from France until those of Samuel de Champlain, which began in 1603. By the time Champlain arrived in the Saint Lawrence valley, Stadacona and Hochelaga were no longer populated.
The fate of the peoples of Stadacona and Hochelaga has been an occasion for debate among scholars who study the period, but I would like to take this opportunity to discuss what we can learn about the language these people spoke from the wordlists collected by Cartier's expedition. I'm taking this discussion for the most part from a paper written by Marianne Mithun (1982) called "The mystery of the vanished Laurentians". Laurentian or Saint Lawrence Iroquoian is the name usually given in the historical and anthropological literature to the Stadaconan and Hochelagan people together: Laurentian from the Saint Lawrence valley where they lived, and Iroquoian from the fact that their language seems clearly to have belonged to the Iroquoian family, which also contains the Mohawk (Kanienʼkéha) and Cherokee (Tsalagi) languages. Let's see why by looking at a familiar cognate, the word for 'town':
<ul>
 <li>Laurentian 1 canada 'une ville' ('town') vs Mohawk kaná:ta' /kanǎːtaʔ/ 'town'.<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a></li>
</ul>
Even without going into detail regarding Cartier's transcription, the affinity between canada and kaná:ta' is clear. Of course, one problem that all of these hypotheses have to deal with is the fact that these wordlists were written down by someone who did have some linguistic sophistication, but without the benefit of modern transcription devices and methods, so a good amount of interpretation is involved in even understanding what the data say. I won't go into that further in this article, but it's something you should keep in mind.
The canada word (yes, this is where the country's name comes from!) is one example of many, which in total leave no doubt that the Laurentians spoke an Iroquoian language of some sort. But what is less clear is where in the Iroquoian family this language belonged. Was the Laurentian language an earlier version of one of the contemporary Iroquoian languages? Some researchers have suggested it was simply 16th century Mohawk, others that it was a form of Huron (Wendat), and still others that it was an early form of the closely related Tuscarora (Skarò˙rə̨ˀ) or Nottoway. Or was it a branch of its own?
Mithun's article, which you can read yourselves <a href="http://mithun.faculty.linguistics.ucsb.edu/pdfs/1982%20Mystery%20of%20Vanished%20Laurentians.pdf">here</a>, examines each of these proposals in turn. To determine the position of a language in a tree model, only shared innovation will do. After all, languages can retain features even after having been separated for thousands of years. So Mithun examined some innovations in the various Iroquoian branches to see where this Laurentian language fit best.
The Laurentian wordlists did not suggest Tuscarora-Nottoway, because it lacked (among other things) the denasalization of *n<a href="#user-content-fn-2" id="user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">2</a> before oral vowels:
<ul>
 <li>Proto-Northern Iroquoian *tekhni > Tuscarora nǽ:kti, vs Laurentian 2 tigneny/tignini 'deux' ('two'), not **tigneti/tigniti<a href="#user-content-fn-3" id="user-content-fnref-3" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">3</a></li>
</ul>
For the most part, the wordlists did not suggest Huron, because they lacked the radical restructuring of the consonant system found in Huron, the details of which are a bit too complex to discuss here. In a few cases, however, the wordlists did show characteristic innovations of Huron.
At the same time, the Laurentian vocabularies did seem to show some innovations characteristic of particular so-called Inner Iroquoian languages (comprising the Susquehannock language and the five languages of the historical League of Five Nations, a group which includes Mohawk). The problem is, it showed mutually inconsistent innovations. Take the case of the fate of Proto-Northern Iroquoian *r. In some Inner Iroquoian languages, it appears as r, and in others as l. The Laurentian wordlists, on the other hand, show l in some words, and r in others, with no apparent difference in environment:
<ul>
 <li>Proto-Northern Iroquoian *wa'tro̜ > Laurentian 2 wadellon/madellon 'neuf' = 'nine'</li>
 <li>Proto-Northern Iroquoian *ka-hrahk-o̜:ni > Laurentian 1 caracomy, Laurentian 2 carraconny 'pain' ('bread')</li>
</ul>
Given this difference in outcome, along with others, Mithun concludes that the Laurentian wordlists in fact represent multiple languages, some of which can be traced to languages ancestral to varieties either spoken today or described in the intervening centuries. Another account holds that the l/r distinction in the French-based orthography represents a sound that varied between something 16th-century French speakers perceived as more r-like and something the French perceived as more l-like, perhaps a retroflex such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_retroflex_lateral_approximant">[ɭ]</a>.<a href="#user-content-fn-4" id="user-content-fnref-4" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">4</a>
In the end, if we believe Mithun's analysis, we're left with a result like an Agatha Christie novel: to the question "What Iroquoian language was Laurentian most closely related to?" we get not just one answer but many. What does this tell us about the historical situation? Were the Laurentians linguistically diverse? Did their language(s) contain lots of loanwords from the many related languages nearby? Or is Mithun's analysis incorrect – as Julian (2010) claims – and does the Laurentian language represent a single entity? Unless new data comes to light, we may never know.
<h2>Works Cited</h2>
<ul>
 <li>Julian, Charles (2010). A History of the Iroquoian Languages. PhD Thesis, University of Manitoba. <a href="https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/bitstream/handle/1993/4175/julian_charles.pdf;jsessionid=C94055538F1DF3564D2259CC9D565F64?sequence=1">pdf</a>​</li>
 <li>Mithun, Marianne (1982). The mystery of the vanished Laurentians. In Anders Ahlqvist, ed. Papers from the 5th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistics Science IV, 230-242. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 21. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. <a href="http://mithun.faculty.linguistics.ucsb.edu/pdfs/1982%20Mystery%20of%20Vanished%20Laurentians.pdf">pdf</a>​</li>
</ul>
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 Note that the two wordlists sometimes differ, so I follow Mithun (1982) in labelling the attested forms as Laurentian 1 and Laurentian 2. <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-2">
 Here, the asterisk means a hypothetical reconstructed form. <a href="#user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-3">
 Here, the double asterisk means a form that is not attested. <a href="#user-content-fnref-3" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-4">
 Julian (2010): 191. <a href="#user-content-fnref-4" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

The Language of the Saint Lawrence Iroquoians: A 500 Year-Old Mystery

This page is currently a stub.
This page is meant to host all of my conlang work over the years. It's currently very incomplete and will be updated as I dig things out of old notebooks and hard drives.
<h3>Sketches from old notebooks</h3>
<ul>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/akinam">Akinam</a> (2018, sketch): A language influenced grammatically by Sumerian, with a limited stock of nominal roots and extensive compounding.</li>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/dara-vai">Dara Vai</a> (2018, sketch): A language influenced grammatically by Hausa and phonologically by Manchu.</li>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/fasik">Fasik</a> (2021, sketch): A lightly inflected conlang influenced grammatically, but not phonologically, by Latin.</li>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/hiskaras">Hiskaras</a> (2015, sketch): A sketch of a language with some influence from Middle Egyptian.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Languages of the Owl-Chicken World</h3>
<h4>Qal family</h4>
<ul>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/proto-qal">Proto-Qal</a> (2021)</li>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/justamija">Justamija</a> (2021)</li>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/lenethailef">Lenethailef</a> (2022)</li>
</ul>
<h4>Sakrat family</h4>
<ul>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/lenethailef">Proto-Sakrat</a> (2022)</li>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/myinh">Myǐnh</a> (2022)</li>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/sasyut">Sasyut</a> (2022)</li>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/kra-nlzor">Kra Nzlor</a> (2022)</li>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/pkwak">Pkwak</a> (2022)</li>
</ul>
<h4>Creoles</h4>
<ul>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/selal-sela">Selal Sela</a> (2022)</li>
</ul>
<h3>Other projects</h3>
<ul>
 <li><a href="/conlangs/zgljak-skp&#x27;waq">Zgljak Skp'waq</a> (2022): A Toki Pona "ruinlex".</li>
</ul>

My conlangs

Old English Vocabulary: Your First 700 Words

Consider the English sentence Cats eat mice. In the situation described by this sentence, there's a clear difference in the role played by cats and that played by mice. One ends up with a full belly, and the other ends up eaten! The sentence Mice eat cats, on the other hand, describes a situation where the roles are reversed: here, the mice have full bellies and the cats end up as dinner. How do we, as speakers of English, tell the difference between these two situations?<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
The only difference between Cats eat mice and Mice eat cats is the order in which the noun phrases<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a> appear in the sentence. In typical sentences like these, we call the first noun phrase the subject and the second noun phrase the object.<a href="#user-content-fn-2" id="user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">2</a> The subject precedes the main verb, and the object follows it. Subject and object are two of the most basic grammatical relations that noun phrases can participate in. In English, the order in which noun phrases appear within the sentence allows us to distinguish between the two.
Let's take a look at another way that English distinguishes between subject and object. Consider the sentence Dogs chase my cat. Here we have the subject dogs and the object my cat. Now let's reverse the roles, and look at the sentence My cat chases dogs. Now dogs is the object, and my cat is the subject. As before, we see that the word order has changed to reflect the new grammatical relations. But something else has changed as well: chase has become chases. Why? Because, in English, verbs must agree with their subjects.<a href="#user-content-fn-3" id="user-content-fnref-3" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">3</a>
Now we have collected two properties typically associated with subjects in English: they occur before the main verb, and the main verb agrees with them. We also have found a property of objects, namely that they follow the verb. These properties are specific to English. In other languages, subjects can be identified in other ways. For example, in Irish, the subject follows the main verb:
<pre><code>Itheann an bhean an t-úll.
eats the woman the apple
The woman eats the apple.
</code></pre>
Let's now think about how the grammatical function of a noun phrase relates to the role played by the referent of the noun phrase<a href="#user-content-fn-4" id="user-content-fnref-4" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">4</a> in the situation the sentence describes. Let's return to Cats eat mice. We might be tempted to say the subject (cats) is the thing that "does the action" and the object (mice) is the thing that gets the action done to it. This description holds for Cats eat mice. But, in fact, there isn't a tidy relationship between the grammatical function of a noun phrase and its semantic role in the sentence.
To prove this, let's look at a passive sentence like Mice are eaten. Here the grammatical relations have changed: now mice is the subject. We know because mice occurs before the main verb, and the main verb are agrees with mice. It's Mice are eaten, not *Mice is eaten. But mice are definitely not the "doers" of the eating. This shows us that the notion of subject is related to, but independent of, any semantic concepts. We need to know what kind of sentence we're dealing with in order to know how to relate the grammatical function of a noun phrase to its semantic role in the sentence. In active sentences like Cats eat mice, the subject noun phrase refers to the thing that performs the action. But in passives, the subject noun phrase refers to the thing that undergoes the action.
To sum up our discussion, subject and object are grammatical relations that noun phrases can participate in. Grammatical relations are not defined semantically, but rather grammatically, by the way they relate to other elements within the sentence. For example, where do they appear? Do they trigger agreement? Finally, the grammatical properties that allow us to identify subjects and objects, such as word order and agreement, vary from language to language.
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 A noun phrase is a group of words that contains at minimum a noun (or pronoun) and functions as a noun. Some examples include Elaine, my friend, the apartment across the hall. <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-2">
 More specifically, the second noun phrase in Cats eat mice and Mice eat cats is the direct object. There are also indirect objects, which represent the beneficiary or recipient of an action. These only occur in sentences which also have a direct object. For example, in the sentence I gave him a book, him is the indirect object while a book is the direct object. <a href="#user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-3">
 The only places where we see this agreement are (a) when the subject is a third-person singular form and the verb is in the present tense; or (b) if the verb is irregular, such as be and have. <a href="#user-content-fnref-3" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-4">
 The referent of a noun phrase is simply the thing that the noun phrase refers to. <a href="#user-content-fnref-4" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

Grammatical Relations: The Difference Between Subject and Object

The goal of this series is to give you an introduction to theoretical linguistics as a cognitive science. Unlike other presentations of the basics of linguistics – and there are many excellent ones – this one takes a definite and unapologetic theoretical stance. This is an introduction to linguistics through the lens of the framework of generative grammar, most famously associated with the work of Noam Chomsky.<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
Although generative grammar is not universally accepted among linguists, it has given birth to such a large and well-articulated body of work that understanding it will lead quickly to understanding the large questions which are at stake in the field. This focus also allows us to go much deeper into big conceptual questions than the typical introductory course can, such as: What does language tell us about human nature? What is the relationship between language and thought? How does linguistics fit into the wider search for understanding the natural world and our place in it?
<ul>
 <li>Module 1: What Is Language?</li>
 <li>Module 2: Linguistics Within Cognitive Science</li>
 <li>Module 3: Alternative Approaches to Language</li>
 <li>Module 4: Formal Grammars</li>
 <li>Module 5: Linguistic Representations</li>
 <li>Module 6: Syntactic Structure</li>
 <li>Module 7: Language Diversity &#x26; Language and Thought</li>
 <li>Module 8: Innate Knowledge</li>
 <li>Module 9: The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition</li>
 <li>Module 10: Language, Society, and History</li>
 <li>Module 11: Linguistics and Philosophy</li>
 <li>Module 12: Formal Linguistics in the History of Ideas</li>
</ul>
If you'd like to study this with me, check out my <a href="https://www.altminster.com/instructors/colin-gorrie">Altminster profile</a>.
<h2>Textbook</h2>
This curriculum currently makes use of extensive reading selections and exercises from a textbook. In the future, I plan to produce more of my own teaching material, but for now, to follow along you'll need access to this book:
<ul>
 <li>Isac, Daniela and Charles Reiss (2008). I-Language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science. Oxford: OUP.</li>
</ul>

Language and Human Nature: A Self-Study Curriculum

One word that comes up all the time, both in everyday discussions of language and among linguists, is grammar. What is grammar? Grammar is a term we use to describe the rules that describe how a language works as a system.<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a> It tells us how words and sentences are constructed. The grammar of English, for example, is what tells you that, in the sentence Dogs chase cats, dogs are doing the chasing and, in the sentence Cats chase dogs, that the tables have turned, and the cats are the ones chasing the dogs.<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
<h4>Prescriptive grammar</h4>
The word "grammar" also has an ordinary, non-technical meaning that many of you may know. Have you ever heard someone tell you that "ending a sentence with a preposition is bad grammar"?
Let's dwell on this for a moment, because it leads to lots of misconceptions about linguistics. For example, in English we have the following two sentences:
<ol>
 <li>Who did you talk to?</li>
 <li>To whom did you talk?</li>
</ol>
Both mean the same thing, in the sense that they're both questions asking you to identify the person you were in a conversation with. And if you're a speaker of English, you can likely just as easily understand either of the two. But the sentence Who did you talk to? and others like it often get criticized as using "bad English grammar".
On the linguistic view, this doesn't make sense. For a linguist, a <a href="/articles/what-is-language-in-linguistics">grammar is a system</a> that lets us associate form and meaning. If an English speaker produces the sentence Who did you talk to?, and an English speaker understands it, how can that sentence be contrary to English grammar? The form and meaning have been successfully linked, have they not?
The everyday use of the word "grammar" refers to something else entirely: the system of rules for one particular, high-prestige variety of English. In this variety of English, To whom did you talk? is the preferred way to express the meaning which might just as well have been expressed with Who did you talk to?. In linguistics, we call this kind of grammar a normative or prescriptive grammar. As linguists, we don't spend a great deal of time worrying about prescriptive grammar.
<h4>Descriptive grammar and grammaticality</h4>
Let's compare this prescriptive dichotomy of "good vs. bad grammar" with a more descriptive one: "grammatical vs ungrammatical".
<ol start="3">
 <li>Who did you talk to? (grammatical)</li>
 <li>*To did you who talk? (ungrammatical)</li>
</ol>
In the grammatical sentence, everything is fine and we can complete the association between form and meaning. Or, in other words, this sentence is part of the English language. In the ungrammatical sentence, we cannot complete the association of form and meaning. It comes out as "word salad". English words jumbled up in an order that makes no sense in the grammar of English.
When we study the grammar of a language, what we're often interested in doing is working out the principles which let us distinguish between these two types of sentences.
This is the descriptive grammar that linguists are interested in. As linguists, we are not trying to judge any form of language as better or worse, just reporting what we find in our investigations. This is a natural consequence of the fact that linguistics is the application of scientific methods to the study of language. Science can tell us what's going on but it can't tell us what we should do.
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 If you're curious about what I mean by "working as a system", read my article on <a href="/articles/what-is-language-in-linguistics">how linguists look at language</a> first. <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

Descriptive vs Prescriptive Grammar: A Simple Explanation

The following text is lightly adapted from <a href="https://archive.org/details/ananglosaxonrea00whitgoog/page/n158/mode/2up">Sweet's reader</a>,<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a> a collection of Old English texts for learners now in the public domain. This is one of the easiest texts in that collection and is a good place to start for students of Old English who are interested in beginning to read.
As this is a beginner-level text, I have glossed all the words and all grammar points that might be tricky to a beginner. Happy reading!<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
<h2>Matthew 7:24–27</h2>
Today's reading is from the Gospel of Matthew.<a href="#user-content-fn-2" id="user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">2</a> Here is the complete text.
<blockquote>
 Ǣlċ þǣra þe þās mīne word ġehȳrþ, and þā wyrcþ, biþ ġelīċ þām wīsan were, se his hūs ofer stān ġetimbrode. Þā cōm þǣr rēn and myċel flōd, and þǣr blēowon windas, and āhruron on þæt hūs, and hit nā ne fēoll: sōþlīċe hit wæs ofer stān ġetimbrod. And ǣlċ þǣra þe ġehȳrþ þās mīne word, and þā ne wyrcþ, se biþ ġelīċ þām dysiġan menn, þe ġetimbrode his hūs ofer sandċeosel. Þā rīnde hit, and þǣr cōm flōd, and blēowon windas, and āhruron on þæt hūs, and þæt hūs fēoll; and his hryre wæs myċel.
</blockquote>
Let's break it down into more manageable parts.
Ǣlċ þǣra þe þās mīne word<a href="#user-content-fn-24a" id="user-content-fnref-24a" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">3</a> ġehȳrþ, and þā wyrcþ, biþ ġelīċ þām wīsan were, Each of them that hears these words of mine, and works them, is like the wise man,
<ul>
 <li>ǣlċ each. Note that ǣlċ takes a genitive, just as its Present-Day English descendant each often takes of, e.g. each of them.</li>
 <li>þǣra of them. This is the genitive plural of the article se/þæt/sēo the. The genitive is required by ǣlċ each. It is often used, as it is here, as a weak demonstrative pronoun them.</li>
 <li>þe which, who, that. Marks a relative clause.</li>
 <li>þās the. This is the accusative plural of þes/þis/þēos this. It is accusative because it is agreeing with word words, the direct object of ġehȳrþ hears.</li>
 <li>mīne my. Accusative plural, agreeing with word words.</li>
 <li>word words. Accusative plural as it is the direct object of ġehȳrþ hears. Don't be fooled by the lack of ending: word is the same in the accusative singular and plural. You can tell word is plural here because of þās mīne.</li>
 <li>ġehȳrþ hears. 3rd person singular of ġehȳran to hear. The singular is used here because the true subject is ǣlċ each (one).</li>
 <li>and and.</li>
 <li>þā them. Accusative plural of se/þæt/sēo the, here being used as a weakly demonstrative pronoun, equivalent to them.</li>
 <li>wyrcþ works. 3rd person singular of wyrċan to make; to work; to do. A more idiomatic translation might be puts into practice.</li>
 <li>biþ is. 3rd person singular of bēon. Bēon is used to express general truths, which makes sense given the context: a parable.</li>
 <li>ġelīċ like. Note that ġelīċ requires a dative.</li>
 <li>þām the. Dative singular masculine of se/þæt/sēo the, agreeing with were man.</li>
 <li>wīsan wise. Dative singular weak form of wīs wise. Dative because it agrees with were man. Weak because it follows the definite article.</li>
 <li>were man. Dative singular of wer man, as required by ġelīċ like.</li>
</ul>
se his hūs ofer stān ġetimbrode.<a href="#user-content-fn-24b" id="user-content-fnref-24b" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">4</a> who built his house on stone.
<ul>
 <li>se who. Here the definite article is being used as a relative pronoun, referring back to were man.</li>
 <li>his his.</li>
 <li>hūs house.</li>
 <li>ofer over, on. Here, governing the accusative.</li>
 <li>stān stone. Accusative singular, governed by ofer.</li>
 <li>ġetimbrode built. 3rd person singular past form of ġetimbran to build.</li>
</ul>
Þā cōm þǣr rēn and myċel flōd, and þǣr blēowon windas, and āhruron on þæt hūs, and hit nā ne fēoll: Then there came rain and a great flood and there blew winds, and fell upon the house, and it did not fall down at all:
<ul>
 <li>þā then.</li>
 <li>cōm came. 3rd person singular past form of cuman to come.</li>
 <li>þǣr there. Here used existentially, as in the Present-Day English there is....</li>
 <li>rēn rain. Var. of reġn rain</li>
 <li>myċel great.</li>
 <li>flōd flowing waters; flood.</li>
 <li>blēowon blew. 3rd person plural past form of blāwan to blow.</li>
 <li>windas winds. Nominative plural of wind wind.</li>
 <li>āhruron fell. 3rd person plural past form of āhrēosan to fall (upon), attack.</li>
 <li>on upon, onto, into. Here taking the accusative case with a verb of motion āhrēosan to fall (upon).</li>
 <li>þæt the. Accusative singular neuter form of se/þæt/sēo.</li>
 <li>hūs house.</li>
 <li>hit it. Neuter because referring back to þæt hūs.</li>
 <li>nā ne not at all.</li>
 <li>fēoll fell down. 3rd person singular past form of feallan to fall (down).</li>
</ul>
sōþlīċe hit wæs ofer stān ġetimbrod. For it was built on stone.
<ul>
 <li>sōþlīċe indeed, for, however</li>
 <li>wæs was. 3rd person singular past form of wesan to be.</li>
 <li>ġetimbrod built. Past participle of ġetimbran to build.</li>
</ul>
And ǣlċ þǣra þe ġehȳrþ þās mīne word, and þā ne wyrcþ, se biþ ġelīċ þām dysiġan menn, þe ġetimbrode his hūs ofer sandċeosel. And each of them that hears these words of mine, and does not work them, he is like the foolish man, who built his house on sand.
<ul>
 <li>ne not.</li>
 <li>dysiġan foolish. Dative singular weak form of dysiġ foolish.<a href="#user-content-fn-24c" id="user-content-fnref-24c" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">5</a> Dative because it agrees with menn man. Weak because it follows the definite article.</li>
 <li>menn man. Dative singular of mann man (hence the umlaut-affected form menn), governed by ġelīċ like.<a href="#user-content-fn-24d" id="user-content-fnref-24d" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">6</a></li>
 <li>sandċeosel sand. Literally sand-gravel.</li>
</ul>
Þā rīnde hit, and þǣr cōm flōd, and blēowon windas, and āhruron on þæt hūs, and þæt hūs fēoll; Then it rained and there came a flood and the winds blew, and rushed into the house, and the house fell;
<ul>
 <li>rīnde rained. 3rd person singular past form of rīnan, var. of riġnan to rain.</li>
 <li>hit it. This is the "dummy" or "pleonastic" it used in equivalent Present-Day English it rained.</li>
</ul>
and his hryre wæs myċel. and its destruction was great.
<ul>
 <li>his its. Note that his can mean his or its, since it is the genitive singular form of both the masculine and neuter pronouns.</li>
 <li>hryre fall, ruin, destruction.</li>
</ul>
<h2>References</h2>
<ul>
 <li>Sweet, Henry (1879). An Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse. Oxford: Clarendon.</li>
</ul>
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 Sweet (1879: 51). The adaptations include marking the palatal pronunciations of &#x3C;g> and &#x3C;c> using the over-dot notation: &#x3C;ġ> and &#x3C;ċ>, marking long vowels with a macron &#x3C;ā> rather than an acute accent &#x3C;á>, and marking the dental fricative with &#x3C;þ>. <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-2">
 The translation dates to the early 11th century but has been normalized for teaching purposes by Sweet (1879). <a href="#user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-24a">
 þās mīne word. Lit. these my words. Unlike in most forms of Present-Day English, possessive pronouns and demonstratives can occur together. You can translate this idiomatically as these words of mine. <a href="#user-content-fnref-24a" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-24b">
 ofer stān ġetimbrode. Usually ofer takes the accusative only with verbs of motion, with the meaning onto, across but here we have an exception. <a href="#user-content-fnref-24b" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-24c">
 Dysiġ foolish gives us, after a semantic shift, the Present-Day English word dizzy. <a href="#user-content-fnref-24c" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-24d">
 The primary sense of mann was person (i.e. a human being), but it could also refer more specifically to adult males as the modern form man has tended to do. Here I have glossed it as man because it is contrasting with wer man, and both are translating the Latin vir man. <a href="#user-content-fnref-24d" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

Old English Graded Reader #1. Matthew 7:24–27

Here is a list of all the free resources I've found helpful or had recommended to me. If you have something to recommend, please send me a message on <a href="https://twitter.com/colingorrie">Twitter</a>.<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
<h2>Textbooks &#x26; Courses</h2>
<ul>
 <li><a href="http://www.csun.edu/~sk36711/WWW/KAG/index.html">King Alfred's Grammar</a>. This is an introductory Old English textbook by Michael C. Drout. It was later revised and published as Drout's Quick and Easy Old English but you can read the entire earlier version online for free. It follows a traditional grammar-translation method, and includes grammatical explanations, vocabulary lists, exercises (with answers), and reading passages.</li>
 <li><a href="https://oldenglish.info/">Old English Online</a> is an introductory digital Old English textbook written by a team led by Victoria Koivisto-Kokko and Tom Birkett. It includes well-written grammar notes, passages for reading (with translation), and exercises (with answers).</li>
 <li><a href="http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net">Old English Aerobics</a> is not really a textbook itself, but rather a companion site to Peter S. Baker's textbook Introduction to Old English. But you don't need the textbook to make good use of this site: it contains grammatical exercises as well as lots of texts for reading. And better yet, the texts are all glossed to varying degrees, so you can get help with unfamiliar vocabulary and grammatical constructions.</li>
 <li><a href="https://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/STELLA/apps/web/eoe/">Essentials of Old English</a>. This is a free digital textbook written by Jeremy J. Smith. It is a fairly "heavy" textbook in the sense that it does not shy away from grammatical terminology, even in the beginning. It includes self-correcting exercises as well as a glossary. If you are using it for self-study, a suggested sequence is given by the author <a href="https://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/STELLA/apps/web/eoe/about/">here</a>.</li>
 <li><a href="https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/engol">Old English Online</a> is a digital textbook offered by UT Austin's Linguistics Research Center. It is organized around a sequence of readings, accompanied by extensive grammatical notes. It is a great resource but it does not take you by the hand at all: for this reason I recommend it mainly for experienced learners of historical languages.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Morphology</h2>
<ul>
 <li>The Magic Sheet of Old English Inflections (<a href="http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net/resources/magic_letter.pdf">Letter</a>/<a href="http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net/resources/magic_A4.pdf">A4</a>). This is a single-page cheat sheet of Old English morphology. It's handy to print out and stick on your wall for reference while you're reading, at least until you've fully internalized all the forms. It comes courtesy of the <a href="http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net">Old English Aerobics</a> site by Peter S. Baker.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Syntax</h2>
<ul>
 <li><a href="http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361oesyntax.htm">Old English Syntax</a>. This is a handout from the course "History and Structure of the English Language I" taught at the University of Toronto.<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a> It covers, in very abbreviated form, many points about the syntactic structure of Old English. But, be warned, you will probably need some linguistic training to decode these notes.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Vocabulary</h2>
<ul>
 <li><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/OldEnglish/comments/eqox1t/old_english_word_frequency_list/">Old English word frequency resources by /u/Deadlyheimlich</a>. This Reddit thread has some good discussion of the state of the art with respect to Old English word frequency lists, as well as links to attempts at creating frequency lists for the Old English poetic and prose corpus. These are probably the best resources we have so far for looking at Old English word frequency.</li>
 <li><a href="http://www.u.arizona.edu/~ctb/wordhord.html">Circolwyde Wordhord</a> (by Carl T. Berkhout) is a glossary of modern<a href="#user-content-fn-2" id="user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">2</a> computer terminology in Old English, in case you want to talk about websites in Old English.</li>
 <li><a href="https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~cr30/vocabulary/">Old English Core Vocabulary</a> by Christine Rauer. This is a list of 500 words that are either especially common or particularly important to a key text. Modern-language cognates are given to ease memorization. For students who know these five hundred words by heart, trips to the dictionary when reading would be relatively infrequent. This makes reading more pleasant, which means you're likely to do more of it, which means you'll learn faster. So if you have the time and inclination to memorize a word list, this is a good one to start with, as is the following one.</li>
 <li>Old English Aerobics Word Frequency List (<a href="http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net/497_words.pdf">Letter</a>/<a href="http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net/resources/497_words_A4.pdf">A4</a>). A vocabulary list ordered by frequency of all words that occur 10 or more times within the <a href="http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net">Old English Aerobics</a> corpus. Since the frequency list is specific to this rather small corpus (32000 words), this frequency list should not be used for research purposes. It is, however, useful for learners as a baseline vocabulary list to ease reading (like the Old English Core Vocabulary list above). Unfortunately the wordlist is stuck inside a PDF, which makes getting the text out and into, say, a spaced-repetition system, rather inconvenient.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Dictionaries</h2>
<ul>
 <li><a href="https://rachelafletcher.wordpress.com/2019/08/15/old-english-dictionaries-a-guide-for-the-mildly-perplexed/">How to Use Old English Dictionaries: A Guide for the Mildly Perplexed</a> by Rachel Fletcher. This superb blog post teaches you how to use Old English dictionaries, from choosing the right dictionary to strategies for finding the word you want,<a href="#user-content-fn-3" id="user-content-fnref-3" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">3</a> to interpreting the results you get. Don't use a dictionary before reading this post! See also the <a href="https://rachelafletcher.wordpress.com/2019/08/19/decoding-abbreviations-examples-from-bosworth-toller/">follow-up post</a>.</li>
 <li><a href="https://bosworthtoller.com/">Bosworth-Toller Dictionary</a>. The classic Bosworth-Toller dictionary of Old English presented online in a beautiful and easy-to-use interface. Note: read the <a href="https://rachelafletcher.wordpress.com/2019/08/15/old-english-dictionaries-a-guide-for-the-mildly-perplexed/">How to Use Old English Dictionaries</a> blog post before attempting to look things up in Bosworth-Toller.</li>
 <li><a href="http://glossary.oldenglishaerobics.net/">Old English Aerobics Glossary</a>. A good mini-dictionary for all the words in the <a href="http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net">Old English Aerobics</a> corpus, with links to where each word appears in context. Covers approximately 4600 unique words.</li>
 <li>Two 19th century dictionaries available on the Internet Archive: <a href="https://archive.org/details/handyanglosaxond00grei">A Handy Anglo-Saxon Dictionary</a> (Harrison and Baskervill 1885) and <a href="https://archive.org/details/studentsdictiona1897swee">The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon</a> (Sweet 1896). I have not used these myself but I will update this text once I have. Thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/ksymil">@ksymil</a> on Twitter for the recommendation.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Thesaurus</h2>
<ul>
 <li><a href="https://oldenglishthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/">A Thesaurus of Old English</a>. A thematically organized thesaurus of Old English vocabulary. I have not used this yet but it looks fantastic. Thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/ksymil">@ksymil</a> on Twitter for the recommendation.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Texts</h2>
<h3>Readers</h3>
<ul>
 <li><a href="https://archive.org/details/ananglosaxonrea00whitgoog/">Sweet's An Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse</a>. A 19th-century graded reader of Old English. It does not give as much help as 20th-century graded readers might, but it is a good place to get level-appropriate readings. It also contains a short student's grammar of Old English which is a handy reference.</li>
 <li><a href="https://archive.org/details/AnAnglo-saxonReader">Bright's An Anglo-Saxon Reader</a>. Bright's reader is very much like Sweet's, to the degree that the similarities raised some eyebrows on its release.<a href="#user-content-fn-45" id="user-content-fnref-45" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">4</a> It can be used in much the same way as Sweet's reader. There is overlap in the texts covered, but not complete overlap.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Beowulf</h3>
<ul>
 <li>
 <a href="https://ebeowulf.uky.edu/">Electronic Beowulf</a> at the University of Kentucky. This is the full text of Beowulf in Old English, side-by-side with the manuscript page. It also has an integrated glossary. This is a truly amazing resource! The only downside is that the user interface is showing its age, and some of the controls were a little fiddly. I also had to open it in incognito mode in order for it to work, so ad-blockers and other quality-of-life tools for the modern web may interfere with its functionality. Nevertheless, it is highly recommended!
 <figure>
 <img src="/ebeowulf.png" alt="Electronic Beowulf user interface">
 <figcaption>Electronic Beowulf</figcaption>
 </figure>
 </li>
 <li>
 <a href="http://www.maldura.unipd.it/dllags/brunetti/OE/TESTI/Beowulf/Trilingue/index.php?lingua=eng">Trilingual Beowulf</a>. The complete text of Beowulf along with interlinear glosses. A monumental achievement! Available in Italian as well as Present-Day English.
 <figure>
 <img src="/trilingual-beowulf.png" alt="Trilingual Beowulf user interface">
 <figcaption>Trilingual Beowulf</figcaption>
 </figure>
 </li>
 <li>
 <a href="https://readbeowulf.herokuapp.com/">Read Beowulf</a>. Thanks to a team led by <a href="https://jtauber.com">James Tauber</a>, we have a setting of Beowulf, along with interlinear glosses (courtesy of the Trilingual Beowulf) in a modern web application. Also highly recommended. Free login required.
 <figure>
 <img src="/read-beowulf.png" alt="Electronic Beowulf user interface">
 <figcaption>Read Beowulf</figcaption>
 </figure>
 </li>
 <li>
 <a href="https://archive.org/details/beowulffightatfi00hall/page/8/mode/2up">Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (Clark Hall translation)</a>. This is a public domain translation of Beowulf into Present-Day English prose. Here is a sample of the style:
 <blockquote>
 LO! We have heard of the glory of the Spear-Danes' warrior-kings in days of yore, —how the princes did valorous deeds! Often Scyld of the Sheaf took mead-benches away from troops of foes, from many tribes. The noble inspired awe from the time that he was first found helpless; for that he met with consolation, increased under the heavens and throve in honours, until each one of those who sojourned near, across the whale's road, had to serve him, and to pay him tribute. A noble king was he!
 </blockquote>
 </li>
 <li>
 <a href="http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net/beowulf.html">Beowulf at Old English Aerobics</a>. Here Beowulf is given the <a href="http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net">Old English Aerobics</a> treatment of glossing and grammatical aid. As of October 2021, this is still a work in progress.
 </li>
</ul>
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 My alma mater! <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-2">
 Since the list has an entry for write-protect notch (gewritwearnhol, if you're curious), something I haven't seen since N*Sync was on the charts, we can date "modern" to the late 1990s. <a href="#user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-3">
 Looking up a word you find in a text in an Old English dictionary is not always a straightforward task. Word inflection and spelling variation mean that you often have to normalize the word before attempting to find it. <a href="#user-content-fnref-3" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-45">
 As <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bright">Wikipedia</a> has it, the book's "similarity to the reader published by the more well-known British philologist Henry Sweet prompted Sweet to remark that Bright's work 'bears a striking resemblance to an earlier version of my Reader.'". <a href="#user-content-fnref-45" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

Free Old English Resources

In this module, you'll start with a very high-level overview of what generative syntactic theory hopes to accomplish. Then you'll proceed down to the nuts and bolts of what theory tries to account for and what a syntactic hypothesis looks like. Along the way, you'll learn about two important components of a theory of grammar: syntactic rules and the lexicon. You'll also get your first taste of analysing real phenomena.<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
<h2>Readings</h2>
I've given multiple reading selections for many of the topics. This is because introductory syntax textbooks sometimes have the unfortunate tendency of introducing their own idiosyncratic nomenclature for particular concepts.<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a> By reading multiple explanations of the same topic, you will (I hope) begin to see what is essential about each. Focus on what is shared by the different sources. You may also prefer one of the styles of explanation over the others. Isac and Reiss (2008) is the most accessible of the three and Haegeman (1994) is the most technical. Carnie (2012) sits in the middle.
Get started by going through the following readings, which largely recapitulate topics from <a href="/articles/linguistic-diversity-uniformity">module 1</a>, but in more formal language.
<ul>
 <li>Universal Grammar (Carnie 2012: 3–27, 29–31; Haegeman 1994: 3–18)</li>
 <li>Comparative syntax (Carnie 2012: 27–29, Haegeman 1994: 18–25)</li>
</ul>
Then, proceed onto the new stuff:
<ul>
 <li>Syntactic categories (Carnie 2012: 43–54, Isac and Reiss 2008: 136–139)</li>
 <li>Syntactic constituents (Carnie 2012: 71–106, Isac and Reiss 2008: 139–154)</li>
 <li>Subcategorization (Haegeman 1994: 33–42, Carnie 2012: 54–61)</li>
</ul>
<h2>Questions</h2>
<ol>
 <li>Do Exercise 1 of Chapter 1 in Haegeman (1994: 26–27). This will be your first problem set: a collection of linguistic data that you'll try to come up with an explanation for. Don't worry about being formal for now. Your hypothesis about what's going on can be written out in plain English.</li>
 <li>Do Exercise GPS6 of Chapter 2 in Carnie (2012: 63–64).</li>
 <li>Do Exercise GPS9 of Chapter 2 in Carnie (2012: 69).</li>
 <li>Do Challenge Problem Set 7 of Chapter 3 in Carnie (2012: 116).</li>
</ol>
<h2>References</h2>
<ul>
 <li>Carnie, Andrew (2012). Syntax: A Generative Introduction. 3rd Edition. Chicester: Wiley-Blackwell.</li>
 <li>Haegeman, Liliane (1994). Introduction to Government &#x26; Binding Theory. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.</li>
 <li>Isac, Daniela and Charles Reiss (2008). I-Language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science. Oxford: OUP.</li>
</ul>
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 Some textbooks, for example, refer to constituents such as the white horse as noun phrases (NPs), while others take a more modern approach and call them determiner phrases (DPs). Although the difference is important, at the beginner level, this introduces unnecessary confusion. <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

Grammar and the Lexicon

This curriculum introduces you to the discipline of phonology, the study of sound patterns in language. You will learn in depth the generative theory of phonology, which seeks to characterize and explain the tacit knowledge of language that allows speakers of a language to produce words and utterances which conform to th<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
You will be introduced to a broad range of the sound patterns that a theory of phonology must explain. You'll also learn the various, often competing, theoretical frameworks which have been developed to account for these patterns. By reading and solving phonological problems, you will become familiar with the debates and proposals that characterize contemporary phonological research.
The curriculum consists of twelve modules, which can be studied at your own pace. But, be warned, each module represents a crucial concept which will likely take time to absorb. When I work with students, we typically spend a month on each.
<ul>
 <li>Module 1: Phonology as a Cognitive Science</li>
 <li>Module 2: Phonological Rules and Representations</li>
 <li>Module 3: Phonological Alternations</li>
 <li>Module 4: Opacity and Rule Ordering</li>
 <li>Module 5: Phonological Constraints</li>
 <li>Module 5: Markedness</li>
 <li>Module 6: Autosegmental Phonology</li>
 <li>Module 7: Underspecification</li>
 <li>Module 8: Tone</li>
 <li>Module 9: Syllable Structure</li>
 <li>Module 10: Metrical Phonology</li>
 <li>Module 11: The Phonetics-Phonology Relationship</li>
 <li>Module 12: Optimality Theory</li>
</ul>
If you'd like to study this with me, check out my <a href="https://www.altminster.com/instructors/colin-gorrie">Altminster profile</a>.

Learn Phonological Theory: A Self-Study Curriculum

Are languages fundamentally similar or different? This question lies at the foundation of some of the biggest controversies in the field of linguistics. In this module, you'll be exposed to some attempts to answer this question. Along the way, you'll be exposed to the big-picture questions of how linguists see language and what the field hopes to accomplish. Since linguists love arguing with each other, this is a very useful topic to examine to get at the big divisions and controversies in the field.
I have placed this module at the beginning of the <a href="/articles/learn-syntax">syntax curriculum</a> so that you will be able to understand the foundational assumptions of the kind of syntax you'll be studying,<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a> as well as some of the reasons why alternative frameworks exist.<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
<h2>Reading</h2>
The first three chapters of The Atoms of Language (Baker 2001: 1–84).
<h2>Questions</h2>
<ol>
 <li>In some ways, all languages appear fundamentally similar to each other. In other ways, they appear fundamentally different. Linguists tend to fall into one of two camps based on which of these facts they consider more important. Which camp does Baker seem to fall into? Does he seem like an extreme partisan or more of a moderate?</li>
 <li>What is a “parameter”? Why is the idea of a parameter appealing for a theory of language? (Some vocabulary that might help here is the distinction between “description" and “explanation”.) Why might someone dislike the approach that Baker takes?</li>
 <li>Contrast “I-Language” and “E-Language”. Which does Baker find more interesting? What do we gain by adopting his notion of language and what do we lose by not adopting the other one?</li>
</ol>
<h2>References</h2>
<ul>
 <li>Baker, Mark C. (2001). The Atoms of Language. New York: Basic Books.</li>
</ul>
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 The self-study curriculum I have created teaches syntax within a generative framework. Some people also refer to this framework as "Chomskyan", because it originates in the work of Noam Chomsky. Linguists who work within the framework, however, tend to prefer the term "generative". <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

Linguistic Diversity and Uniformity

This curriculum introduces you to syntax, the study of sentence structure. Specifically, it introduces you to the generative (i.e. "Chomskyan") tradition of syntax. A generative theory of syntax aims to explain the part of speakers' tacit knowledge of language that allows them to produce and comprehend sentences.
You will spend most of your time examining the facts that a theory of syntax aims to explain, and the various theoretical tools that have been introduced to explain them. Through a combination of readings and problem solving, you'll gain a familiarity with the notation that syntacticians have developed to represent syntactic hypotheses and the ability to evaluate these hypotheses. Towards the end, you will be introduced to some of the more important contemporary topics and ideas in syntax.<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
The curriculum consists of twelve modules, which can be studied at your own pace. But, be warned, each module represents a crucial concept which will likely take time to absorb. When I work with students, we typically spend a month on each.
<ul>
 <li>Module 1: <a href="/articles/linguistic-diversity-uniformity">Linguistic Diversity and Uniformity</a></li>
 <li>Module 2: <a href="/articles/grammar-and-lexicon">Grammar and the Lexicon</a></li>
 <li>Module 3: Theta Theory</li>
 <li>Module 4: Structural Relations</li>
 <li>Module 5: Binding Theory</li>
 <li>Module 6: Case Theory</li>
 <li>Module 7: Empty Categories</li>
 <li>Module 8: Wh-Movement</li>
 <li>Module 9: Logical Form</li>
 <li>Module 10: Head Movement</li>
 <li>Module 11: The Minimalist Program</li>
 <li>Module 12: Biolinguistics</li>
</ul>
If you'd like to study this with me, check out my <a href="https://www.altminster.com/instructors/colin-gorrie">Altminster profile</a>.
<h2>Textbooks</h2>
This curriculum currently makes use of extensive reading selections and exercises from various textbooks. In the future, I plan to produce more of my own teaching material, but for now, to follow along you'll need access to these books:
<ul>
 <li>Baker, Mark C. (2001). The Atoms of Language. New York: Basic Books.</li>
 <li>Carnie, Andrew (2012). Syntax: A Generative Introduction. 3rd Edition. Chicester: Wiley-Blackwell.</li>
 <li>Haegeman, Liliane (1994). Introduction to Government &#x26; Binding Theory. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.</li>
</ul>
There is also an optional textbook:
<ul>
 <li>Isac, Daniela and Charles Reiss (2008). I-Language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science. Oxford: OUP. (optional)</li>
</ul>

Learn Syntactic Theory: A Self-Study Curriculum

Anyone who has studied both Classical Latin and one or more of its descendants<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a> will doubtless have noticed some differences in the stock of words the ancient and modern languages use. Some examples from French and Spanish (the Romance languages I know best): where Classical Latin ager 'field' is replaced by descendants of campus (French champ, Spanish campo), Classical alius 'other' by descendants of alter (French autre, Spanish otro), and Classical lūdēre 'to play' by iocāre (French jouer, Spanish jugar). For these substitutions, it's hard to reconstruct a motivation: sometimes one word survives and another doesn't.<a href="#user-content-fn-2" id="user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">2</a>
But in many other cases, we can make an educated guess as to why a particular form survived where another did not. Some words, for example, belonged to a high register: inquit 'says', nūper 'recently', ōlim 'long ago, some day' may never have been part of the speech of non-elites.<a href="#user-content-fn-3" id="user-content-fnref-3" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">3</a> If indeed the common people of the late Roman Empire didn't ever say these words, it's not surprising that they would have not endured in the Romance languages, which are largely the continuation of the speech of the common people of the late Roman Empire.<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
Another reason that certain words dropped out of use seems to have been irregularity: we see many examples of words with irregular morphology in the classical language which have been replaced by more regular synonyms in the varieties of Latin ancestral to the Romance languages.<a href="#user-content-fn-4" id="user-content-fnref-4" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">4</a> For example:
<ul>
 <li>Classical fārī 'to speak' yielded to forms based on fābula 'story, fable' (hence Spanish hablar 'to speak') or the Greek loan parabola 'parable' (hence French parler 'to speak')</li>
 <li>Classical ferre 'to carry' yielded to portāre (hence French porter, Spanish portar)</li>
 <li>Classical pulcher 'beautiful' (not irregular per se but varying in its stem between pulcher and pulchr-) yielded to bellus (hence French beau/belle, Spanish bello<a href="#user-content-fn-6" id="user-content-fnref-6" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">5</a>)</li>
</ul>
Yet another motivation for the replacement of certain words in the Romance word stock was likely homophony avoidance. For 'to drink', the Romance languages have favoured bibēre over potare: due to the collapse of vowel quality distinctions, pōtāre would have become synonymous with putāre 'to think, deem, consider'.<a href="#user-content-fn-5" id="user-content-fnref-5" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">6</a> Interestingly, in the variety ancestral to Spanish, bibēre was itself homophonous with vīvere 'to live' at an early point, due to the merger of /b/ and /w/ (spelled &#x3C;v>) in this variety.
This merger was remarked on, humorously, in the quip Beātī hispānī quibus vīvere est bibēre, which translates to 'Happy are the Spanish, for whom to live (vīvere) is to drink (bibēre)'. The origins of this saying are shrouded in mystery<a href="#user-content-fn-7" id="user-content-fnref-7" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">7</a> and it is likely of quite late origin, although puns about vīvere and bibēre sounding similar do date to antiquity.
Another instance of homophony avoidance is probably to be found in the replacement of paene 'almost' with quasi (hence Spanish casi). I think I will fall afoul of your spam filters if I explain the reason directly, however. So suffice it to say that the Classical diphthong spelled &#x3C;ae> merged with the simple vowel spelled &#x3C;e>, so paene would have been indistinguishable from pene, the spoken form descending from the Latin word pēnis 'penis'. It's not hard to see why paene fell out of fashion, except in learned compounds such as paenīnsula 'an almost-island'.
<h2>References</h2>
<ul>
 <li>Alkire, Ti and Carol Rosen (2010). Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</li>
 <li>Coromines, Joan and José A. Pascual (1984). Bello. In Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, Volume A-Ca, 562–563. Madrid: Gredos.</li>
</ul>
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 The Romance languages, i.e. French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, etc. <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-2">
 Alkire and Rosen (2010: 288). <a href="#user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-3">
 Alkire and Rosen (2010: 288). <a href="#user-content-fnref-3" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-4">
 Alkire and Rosen (2010: 287–288). <a href="#user-content-fnref-4" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-6">
 According to Coromines and Pascual (1984), Spanish bello likely does not derive directly from Latin bellus, but rather came into Spanish as a loanword from Old Occitan bel/bell. Bello is first attested in Spanish in the 13th century. <a href="#user-content-fnref-6" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-5">
 Alkire and Rosen (2010: 288). <a href="#user-content-fnref-5" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-7">
 See discussion <a href="http://www.antiquitatem.com/felices-hispani-quibus-vivere-est-bibere/">here</a> (Spanish). <a href="#user-content-fnref-7" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

Notes on Latin and the Romance Vocabulary

Creating the vocabulary for a conlang is a never-ending task. To make a conlang which is as expressive as a natural language means creating thousands of words.<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a> And, because <a href="/articles/what-is-language-in-linguistics">language is mostly arbitrary</a>, these could sound like anything that your conlang's phonology allows. So how do you go about choosing the root for any given word?
Some conlangers like to invent these roots themselves, pairing meaning together with sound by hand, with only their inner vision to guide them. Other conlangers prefer to have a little help: that is where conlang word generators come in. These are programs that generate at least the sound component of words or morphemes for you, allowing you to select forms you like and pair them with whatever meaning you like. Many conlangers, myself included, feel this helps relieve some of the pressure of having to create forms out of thin air.
But which word generator to use? There are several out there. Some of them require technical skill, while others are more point-and-click. Some handle only particular kinds of languages well, while others are more open ended. Some are commercial and others are free. I've tried every one I could find. This article presents the results of my testing, so you can find the one that works best for you.<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
<h2>Common features</h2>
All of the tools reviewed here share some core functionality. They all allow you to:
<ul>
 <li>Define phoneme classes: This allows you to group, for example, all the consonants in your language under a symbol C and all the vowels under a symbol V.</li>
 <li>Define possible syllable shapes out of those phoneme classes: This allows you to specify that the language's syllables all have the shape of CV, for example.<a href="#user-content-fn-6" id="user-content-fnref-6" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">2</a></li>
 <li>Control the shape of words to a certain extent: This means that there is some control over how syllables (or in some cases phonemes) are combined to make full words.</li>
 <li>Filter unwanted combinations of phonemes: This allows you to prevent the generation of words which contain a sequence of phonemes you don't want.<a href="#user-content-fn-7" id="user-content-fnref-7" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">3</a></li>
</ul>
Where these tools differ is in their power beyond these core features, as well as their ease of use and their overall aesthetics. Let's take a look at how six of the most popular word generators compare to one another.
<h2>Awkwords</h2>
<a href="http://akana.conlang.org/tools/awkwords/">Awkwords</a> is a simple-seeming tool without a lot of flashy visuals. In fact, it has a decidedly old-school internet feel. It is one of the more basic options on the list but it does have some extra features. One of these is the ability to assign weights to different phonemes, making them appear more or less often in the results. Another is the ability to load and save the language settings so you can return to your work later.
You can find Awkwords <a href="http://akana.conlang.org/tools/awkwords/">here</a>.
<h2>Gen &#x26; GenWord</h2>
I've put these together because <a href="https://jasontank.net/wordgen.html">GenWord</a> is an improved version of <a href="http://www.zompist.com/gen.html">Gen</a>. The look and feel of both Gen and GenWord date back to the classic age of the web. Their functionality is similar to that of Awkwords, including probabilistic phoneme weighting functionality; also feature rewrite rules, which allows you to transform a particular sequence of sounds in the output. This is useful for enforcing phonotactic rules. For instance, if your language obligatorily palatalizes /s/ before /i/, you could enforce that in the generated words by rewriting all <code>si</code> sequences with <code>ʃi</code>. Both tools also offer limited control over word size, with a setting which lets you influence how many monosyllabic words are generated.
You can find Gen <a href="http://www.zompist.com/gen.html">here</a> and GenWord <a href="https://jasontank.net/wordgen.html">here</a>.
<h2>GenGo</h2>
The next tool, <a href="https://collinbrennan.github.io/GenGo/index.html">GenGo</a>, is very much in the same vein as the previous three. But you can think of GenGo as a more modern equivalent to those classics. Like Gen &#x26; GenWord, it has rewrite rules. But it also has more precise control over word length, with the ability to set a minimum and maximum number of syllables. This makes it possible to create languages where all roots are, for example, monosyllabic. One drawback of GenGo, at least as compared to the tools I've mentioned so far, is that it does not support probabilistic phoneme weighting.
You can find GenGo <a href="https://collinbrennan.github.io/GenGo/index.html">here</a>.
<h2>Vulgar</h2>
Next we have <a href="https://www.vulgarlang.com/">Vulgar</a> a tool that is unique among the ones I have surveyed in that it is a commercial product (requiring a one-time payment of USD 30), albeit one with a feature-limited free version. It does, however, do a great deal more than the other options available. I will outline its features here and let you decide whether it is worth the cost for you.
First, the visuals: Vulgar has an attractive, modern interface. It provides you with a lot of options, and, as a result, the interface can be a little hard to understand. It's not always clear what options affect what other options, and where the next button you'll have to press will be. That said, using Vulgar is largely a pleasant experience. One major thing that Vulgar does differently from the alternatives is that it generates a more-or-less complete language for you. This includes things like word meanings, morphological patterns, and word order rules. If you are looking for a language in a box, Vulgar will provide it. Unlike most of the other generators, Vulgar provides many different export options, including to <code>.tex</code>! As for the generator itself, it is full featured, allowing for rewrite rules, fully customizable word patterns, and probabilistic phoneme distribution.
If you'd like something that goes beyond generating phonological forms, and you're willing to pay a bit,<a href="#user-content-fn-9" id="user-content-fnref-9" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">4</a> Vulgar could be for you.
You can find Vulgar <a href="https://www.vulgarlang.com/">here</a>.
<h2>Lexifer</h2>
<a href="https://lingweenie.org/conlang/lexifer.html">Lexifer</a>, a word generator written by <a href="https://lingweenie.org">William S. Annis</a>, was originally a command-line tool only but has recently<a href="#user-content-fn-2" id="user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">5</a> been ported to a <a href="https://lingweenie.org/conlang/lexifer-app.html">web version</a>.
Lexifer is a powerful tool which offers a few features other tools do not. First, it has paid special attention to creating forms in which different phonemes occur with different frequencies, <a href="http://www.skase.sk/Volumes/JTL09/pdf_doc/1.pdf">as they do in natural languages</a>. Although some of the other generators give options for controlling the frequency distribution of phonemes, none uses such a naturalistic model for doing so.
Another feature which sets Lexifer apart is the "cluster table feature", which allows you to represent in a concise way what happens when two segments collide. A cluster table is a table with two axes, the y axis representing the first segment in the cluster and the x axis representing the second segment.
<figure>
 <pre><code>% a i u
a + + o
i - + uu
u - - +
</code></pre>
 <figcaption>A cluster table drawn from the Lexifer documentation.<a href="#user-content-fn-3" id="user-content-fnref-3" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">6</a></figcaption>
</figure>
The same results can be achieved using a variety of filters and rewrite rules, but cluster tables make things a lot easier.
The third unique feature Lexifer offers is its built-in rules for common phonological processes, such as nasal place assimilation (e.g. /an + pa/ → /ampa/) and voicing assimilation in stops (e.g. /ab + ta/ → /apta/). Since these processes occur over and over again, it's a nice time-saver that you can direct Lexifer to apply them out of the box.
The one caveat with Lexifer is that it requires a certain level of technical ability to be able to debug the specifications when things don't come out as you expect.<a href="#user-content-fn-4" id="user-content-fnref-4" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">7</a> To a certain extent, this is true of all the tools I've described, but it is especially true of Lexifer: because Lexifer does more than these other tools, more can go wrong. That said, you don't need to know how to code to use it: you may just need to spend some time poring over the documentation.
You can find Lexifer <a href="https://lingweenie.org/conlang/lexifer.html">here</a>.
<h2>Bonus: Logopoeist</h2>
<a href="https://github.com/conlang-software-dev/Logopoeist/">Logopoeist</a> is really cool: it is the only tool I've seen to implement a full statistical phonotactics system. In other words, it lets you specify the conditional probability of a phoneme given what has come before. This is extremely powerful, which means that you can model things like vowel harmony with relative ease.
The increased power, however, does come along with increased complexity. And, since Logopoeist is only available as a command-line utility, if you're not comfortable with using the command line,<a href="#user-content-fn-8" id="user-content-fnref-8" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">8</a> I recommend checking out one of the web-based options above.
You can find Logopoeist <a href="https://github.com/conlang-software-dev/Logopoeist/">here</a> .
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
In the end, all of these tools do a good job at their core purpose: generating phonological shapes for words and morphemes. It's in other things, such as ease of use, look and feel, and advanced options that you see the differences between the various word generators.
If you're comfortable with the syntax, I recommend <a href="https://lingweenie.org/conlang/lexifer.html">Lexifer</a>, especially if you want to take advantage of its phoneme frequency and cluster resolution rule features. Otherwise, try <a href="https://collinbrennan.github.io/GenGo/index.html">GenGo</a> or, if you're willing to pay a bit of money to unlock the advanced features, <a href="https://www.vulgarlang.com/">Vulgar</a>. Vulgar is also your best bet if you don't have the time or interest to customize the language a lot.
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 More specifically, you need to create thousands of roots and other morphemes to build words out of, as well as methods for building words out of these morphemes. Usually there will be thousands and thousands of these morphemes, but if you are making an oligosynthetic conlang, such as Toki Pona, you can get away with a much smaller number. <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-6">
 A CV syllable is a syllable consisting of any one of the language's consonants followed by any one of the language's vowels. <a href="#user-content-fnref-6" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-7">
 Common sequences on my reject list are /ji/ and /wu/. <a href="#user-content-fnref-7" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-9">
 If you use Vulgar, you'll probably end up wanting to pay for the premium version. The free version is fairly limited in that it only generates 200 words and does not allow you to save the language specification, among other, more minor restrictions. <a href="#user-content-fnref-9" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-2">
 As of July 2021. <a href="#user-content-fnref-2" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-3">
 The <code>+</code> symbols indicate a legal combination and the <code>-</code> symbols an illegal combination. Any other character indicates the result of a change. For example, in the sample table, the combination of /au/ is rewritten as /o/. <a href="#user-content-fnref-3" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-4">
 In my experience, omitting symbols from the <code>letters</code> directive is a common place for errors to occur. <a href="#user-content-fnref-4" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 <li id="user-content-fn-8">
 On a Mac, the command line is accessible through the Terminal app. On Windows, it can be found using the Command Prompt. If you're using Linux, you don't need me to tell you how to access the command line. <a href="#user-content-fnref-8" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

The ultimate guide to conlang word generators

The complete guide to vowel inventories

Like so many fundamental concepts in science, "language" is something that seems easy enough to define until you actually start to look at it closely: but what is language? The answer starts to get hazy: we know English is a language, Hungarian is a language, Classical Tibetan is a language. But is a programming language like C++ a language in the same way? When dogs bark or birds sing, is that language?
The answer you give will depend on your perspective. My perspective is that of a linguist. In linguistics, we have a special perspective on language because a linguist is interested in using scientific methods to examine language as a natural phenomenon. We need a definition that looks at language as a part of the natural world. As a result, we'll leave programming languages to the side to focus on natural language.<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
<h3>Language</h3>
Let's take a cue from one influential linguist of the early 20th century, Edward Sapir. In his 1921 book Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech, Sapir describes languages as "arbitrary systems of symbolism".<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a> Sapir is saying that languages are three things:
<ol>
 <li>Languages are symbolic.</li>
 <li>Languages are systems.</li>
 <li>Languages are arbitrary.</li>
</ol>
Let's examine each of these qualities by taking a particular language, English, as an example.
<h4>Association between form and meaning</h4>
First of all, we might notice that English has certain words: dog, snowman, optimize, empirical, the list goes on. And we might also notice that there are words that aren't part of English: for example, plâge, faoi, 你們. So a language is something that has a set of words in it.
But there's more too. Because we might remark that these English words have meanings associated with them. So when we put the sounds /d/ + /ɑ/ + /g/ together to say dog, we understand that we're referring to the domesticated canine animal. That association, between this sequence of sounds and this meaning, is somehow part of English.
So let's try a first stab at a definition that captures these facts:
Attempt 1: Language is a set of associations between sounds and meanings.
This is a good start, but it has some problems. For one, it leaves out written forms of language. Another issue is that it leaves out sign languages.
So let's broaden our definition a bit. Instead of saying language is a set of associations between sounds and meanings, let's say it's a set of associations between forms and meanings. We'll use forms as a general term for any way or modality of representing meaning, whether that's sound, writing, or sign.
Attempt 2: Language is a set of associations between forms and meanings.
<h4>Systematicity</h4>
But this is not enough either. A language is more than just a set of words with meanings. Take the following English sentences as an example:
<ol>
 <li>Dogs chase cats.</li>
 <li>Cats chase dogs.</li>
</ol>
Both of these sentences are made up of the same words, but the meaning each sentence conveys is totally different. In sentence 1, the animals that should be scared are the cats, but in sentence 2, it's the dogs who should be scared.
Note that the only difference between the two is the order the words come in. So clearly the way in which we combine things makes a difference. How can we update our definition to take this into account?
We can emphasize that language is not just a set of associations, but a system for associating form and meaning. This system is what tells us that, when we say Dogs chase cats, it's dogs that are doing the chasing.
Attempt 3: Language is a system for associating form and meaning.
<h4>Creativity</h4>
Now we're getting somewhere. But let's throw an additional complication into the works. One of the most striking things about language is that it's open-ended.
What do I mean by open-ended? I mean you can say things that have never been said before in a language, and others who speak that language will be able to understand the meaning of what you said.
Let's take an English example:
<ol start="3">
 <li>I used to live in a hot-air balloon but, since the incident, I've contented myself with staying in a small cave deep underground, for reasons which I hope are obvious.</li>
</ol>
I'm pretty sure no one has said that before. But if you speak English, you should have no trouble understanding what that means. Whatever makes that possible is something we want to capture in our definition.
We call this property of language creativity, not in the sense of imaginativeness in making art, but in the sense of being able to create entirely new things to say and have them be understood.
Attempt 4: Language is a creative system for associating form and meaning.
I think this will do for a definition for now. We've established that language deals in associations between form and meaning. We've also established that we're not just interested in the associations between form and meaning, but the system that produces these associations.
<h3>Grammar</h3>
At this point, there's another word you should know, and that word is grammar. What is grammar? Grammar is a term we use to describe the rules that describe how a language works as a system. It tells us how words and sentences are constructed. The grammar of English, for example, is what tells you that dogs are doing the chasing in the sentence Dogs chase cats, and cats are doing the chasing in the sentence Cats chase dogs.
<h4>Prescriptive grammar</h4>
Now, the word grammar also has an ordinary, non-technical meaning that many of you may know. Have you ever heard someone tell you that "ending a sentence with a preposition is bad grammar"?
Let's talk about this for a moment, because it leads to lots of misconceptions about linguistics. For example, in English we have the following two sentences:
<ol start="4">
 <li>Who did you talk to?</li>
 <li>To whom did you talk?</li>
</ol>
Both mean the same thing. And if you're a speaker of English, you can easily understand either. But the sentence Who did you talk to? and others like it often get criticized as "having bad English grammar".
On the linguistic view, this doesn't make sense. Remember that, for a linguist, a grammar is a system that lets us associate form and meaning. If an English speaker produces the sentence Who did you talk to?, and an English speaker understands it, how can that sentence be contrary to English grammar? The form and meaning have been successfully linked, no?
No, this everyday use of the word "grammar" refers to something else entirely: the system of rules for a particular, high-prestige variety of English. In this variety of English, To whom did you talk? is the preferred way to express this meaning.
In linguistics, we call this kind of grammar a normative or prescriptive grammar. As linguists, we don't spend a great deal of time worrying about prescriptive grammar.
<h4>Descriptive grammar and grammaticality</h4>
Let's compare this prescriptive prescriptive of "good vs. bad grammar" with a more descriptive one: "grammatical vs ungrammatical".
<ol start="6">
 <li>Who did you talk to? (grammatical)</li>
 <li>*To did you who talk? (ungrammatical)</li>
</ol>
In the grammatical sentence, everything is fine and we can complete the association between form and meaning. Or, in other words, this sentence is part of the English language.
In the ungrammatical sentence, we cannot complete the association of form and meaning. It comes out as "word salad". English words jumbled up in an order that makes no sense in the grammar of English.
When we study the grammar of a language, what we're often interested in doing is working out the principles which let us distinguish between these two types of sentences.
This is the descriptive grammar that linguists are interested in. As linguists, we are not trying to judge any form of language as better or worse, just reporting what we find in our investigations. This is a natural consequence of the fact that linguistics is the application of scientific methods to the study of language. Science can tell us what's going on but it can't tell us what we should do.
<h3>Communication</h3>
Before we finish, let's turn our attention to something I haven't mentioned yet: communication.
<h4>Communicative function of language</h4>
Depending on your point of view, you may find it odd that I haven't talked about communication at all as I've defined language. After all, isn't language a means of communication? Yes. Some linguists believe that language should be defined in these terms: as a system that has evolved to function as a means of communication. But other linguists believe otherwise. Whether or not human language is to be defined as a communication system, it does serve as a communication system.
<h4>Human language and animal communication</h4>
But human language is not the only system used for communication in the natural world. Other animals have forms of communication that seem to show similarities to human language: for example, bird and whale songs, bee dance, prairie dog calls, etc. But human language has important differences from these forms of animal communication.
The most relevant difference for us is creativity. Remember that creativity of language means that humans can produce and comprehend an infinite number of sentences. This does not occur in any other form of animal communication.
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
To wrap up:
<ol>
 <li>A language is a creative, productive system for associating form and meaning.</li>
 <li>A descriptive grammar of a language is the set of rules governing how sentences in the language are constructed.</li>
 <li>A prescriptive grammar of a language is a set of rules governing how some people wish sentences in the language were constructed. Linguists don't deal much with this.</li>
 <li>Human language's capacity for creativity makes it unique among forms among animal communication.</li>
</ol>
That's it from me for now. Until next time!
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 Sapir (1921: 11). <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

What is language in linguistics?

The adventure of the "Guttural R"

<h2>A manifesto for indie higher education</h2>
One of the most encouraging developments of the past few years is the growth in popularity of long-form educational content, delivered by podcast or video. In the early days of YouTube, the days of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqSTXuJeTks">"Leave Britney Alone"</a>, who would have imagined that a lengthy video on, say, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnu_Ws7Llo4">graph theory</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93ibC1wasGk">Nietzsche (in Spanish)</a>, would ever approach millions of views?<aside class="flex flex-col text-md items-start bg-white dark:bg-black p-8"><h2 class="mt-0 mb-4 text-lg">By the way...</h2>If you find this content interesting, consider subscribing to my newsletter to hear when something new gets published.<div class="not-prose"><a class="button button-primary mt-1 py-2" href="https://colingorrie.substack.com"><svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" class="h-4 w-4 mx-1 inline-block mr-2" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title></title><path d="M22.539 8.242H1.46V5.406h21.08v2.836zM1.46 10.812V24L12 18.11 22.54 24V10.812H1.46zM22.54 0H1.46v2.836h21.08V0z"></path></svg>Read on Substack</a></div></aside>
<h3>The problem of credibility</h3>
But how do we know that what we're reading and listening to is any good? All it takes is a microphone to make a podcast, after all. And the material I'm talking about is not basic stuff: it's higher education, the kind you'd normally get in a university classroom.
I can think of two ways to get around this problem, both imperfect. One way is the doctorate. A doctor, etymologically anyway, is a teacher, nothing more, nothing less. Someone who has a doctorate is someone who has passed a rigorous process of qualification to teach a particular subject at a high level.
Or at least in theory. Sadly, not everyone with a doctorate is good at teaching. In fact, some are downright awful. And of course, so many people without a doctorate can also teach advanced subjects, often very well! So we need another way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
This other way, I propose, is the old-fashioned one: reputation. Reputation isn't just popularity. Popularity alone cannot tell us whose information is trustworthy, although a teacher whose classes are standing room-only is sending a good signal of teaching ability. It's a teacher's reputation among peers that signals the quality of that teacher's information.
But this is hard to ascertain without knowing who these peers are, and how do we judge this? It becomes a chicken-and-egg problem. The solution we relied on was to outsource this whole mess to the university. They could handle these issues of trust for us: they would only employ qualified teachers, and they would evaluate teachers in part based on their skill at teaching and in part based on their output as researchers. All the student needed to do was pay tuition, show up, and work hard. A sound system!
<h3>The strange death of the university</h3>
Unfortunately, if that system ever truly worked, it doesn't anymore.
What happened to universities? The ideal of the postwar research university, where "advancing the frontiers of knowledge" was married to "educating ordinary people" has vanished like a dream upon waking. The problems with the contemporary university are <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/have-elite-us-colleges-lost-their-moral-purpose-altogether">well known</a>, so I won't dwell on them here. I'll merely ask the rhetorical question: If what you want isn't a debt-financed education-flavoured vacation – if what you want is an education, why shouldn't you simply put on a podcast or a YouTube video?
The university of 2020 is a bad deal for students. But it's bad for teachers too:
<ul>
 <li>The end of tenure as a realistic prospect for most PhDs</li>
 <li>Precarious, low-paid employment as the new normal</li>
 <li>Constant need to apply for scarce jobs, a tax on your productive time</li>
 <li>Uprooting one's family to chase postdocs or adjunct positions</li>
</ul>
A newly minted PhD in the humanities or social sciences has a grim employment future ahead. The few jobs that are available pay poorly and offer no prospect for advancement. What is a PhD to do?
<h3>The solution? Teacher, teach!</h3>
At some point, a precariously employed PhD in philosophy is going to realize that, if a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgNt1C72B_4">Hegel video</a> on YouTube can get half a million views, there's hope for them too.
Supply, meet demand! We can solve the problem of the disillusioned academic (how to put food on the table) and the idea-hungry student's problem at once.
<h3>A living wage for teachers, a fair price for students</h3>
If an academic is going to work a precarious job, it may as well be a precarious job with some prospect of advancement. The better a teacher is at marketing, the more students that teacher can reach. And the best kind of marketing is a kind of teaching, so it should come fairly naturally.
And which is truly more precarious: a single employer who may or may not renew your contract next year, or 100 students, each of whom chooses to pay you to teach them something? In the first case, if you lose one source of income, you have none left. In the second, if you lose one source of income, you still have 99 left.
And, unlike the traditional university, the PhD solo practitioner doesn't have a horde of bureaucrats or a new football stadium to pay for. So, at the risk of sounding like a TV furniture salesman, that teacher can pass the savings on to the student.
How does this work for students? For one, it's orders of magnitude cheaper. And, if the teachers are marketing themselves well, the student will likely have "sampled the wares" by reading the teacher's public writing (much like you're doing now, how meta!), listening to the teacher's appearances on podcasts, following the teacher on social media, etc. Since these courses are generally not bundled into programmes (although one day they may be), competition can work in students' favour. One thing the new indie model lacks is credentials. I'm still agnostic as to whether this is a benefit or a drawback.
<h3>This is actually a real thing that is happening</h3>
The most exciting part of this personally is that I've started to put this into practice. In the fall, I taught <a href="https://hyperlink.academy/courses/language-construction-workshop/26">my first online course</a>, guiding a small cohort of students in creating their first constructed language. Along the way, I sneaked in a nice helping of good old-fashioned descriptive linguistics. Call it the Mary Poppins Principle: A spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine go down.
It was an exhilarating experience for me, despite the learning curve presented by teaching via Zoom. I'm very grateful to collaborate with <a href="https://hyperlink.academy">Hyperlink Academy</a>, a company whose <a href="https://hyperlink.academy/library/hyperlink-vision-for-learning-futures">mission</a> aligns with much of what I've described here. They aren't focused specifically on hosting courses taught by disillusioned academics, but their indie model of online education is one that teachers seeking refuge from traditional academia can use.
I've got another course hosted on Hyperlink coming up in January 2021 as well, called <a href="https://hyperlink.academy/courses/meta-skills-for-language-learning/70">Meta-Skills for Language Learning</a>, which provides language learners with a toolkit of knowledge, techniques, and mindsets to make them more confident and effective in their language learning practice. Or, put another way, it's "linguistics for language learners".
And more courses will follow that one. The year 2021 will be all about taking this manifesto and putting it into practice. If you're interested in seeing how this develops, <a href="https://twitter.com/colingorrie">follow me on Twitter</a>.<a href="#user-content-fn-1" id="user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-ref="" aria-describedby="footnote-label">1</a>
<section data-footnotes="" class="footnotes">
 <h2 class="sr-only" id="footnote-label">Footnotes</h2>
 <ol>
 <li id="user-content-fn-1">
 I have made some progress on this idea since writing this essay. See <a href="https://www.altminster.com">Altminster</a>, a platform for connecting independent teachers and students. <a href="#user-content-fnref-1" data-footnote-backref="" class="data-footnote-backref" aria-label="Back to content">↩</a>
 </li>
 </ol>
</section>

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