Few of us get through a week without asking some version of the question, "What's happening?" There's always a lot going on and there are always a lot of people who want to know about it. Authorities want to know about it too, if what's going on threatens the safety or security of a population that is under their protection. A 21st-century way that authorities try to find out what's going on is called event detection.  Continue reading...

There's a new game in town. Actually, there are a number of new games, all of them about words. They give you an opportunity to test your language skills and aptitude, as well as to advance the cause of science. The games are GWAPs, that is, games with a purpose, and they help researchers develop valuable training data for getting computers to process language the way humans do, only better and faster.  Continue reading...

An article in The New Yorker about forensic linguistics tells the story of how the phrase "devil's strip" in a ransom note pinpointed the writer to Akron, Ohio. The forensic linguist, Roger Shuy, figured that out with the help of The Dictionary of American Regional English. Harvard University Press Blog provides the details here.

When we argue about the "authenticity" of a linguistic representation, be it a holy text or the screenplay of a period drama like Mad Men or Downton Abbey, what are we really arguing about? In this month's Language Lounge, we delve into the knotty question of how "fungible" words and meanings can be.  Continue reading...

In a class for speakers of English as a foreign language, Neal Whitman found himself teaching odd five-verb forms like "will have been being seen" and "would have been being seen." How did we end up with such unusual verb pile-ups?  Continue reading...

Even though National Grammar Day is behind us, that's no reason to stop celebrating grammar — or overturning cherished assumptions about grammar. Every year for NGD, University of California, San Diego linguistics grad student Gabe Doyle compiles a list of grammar myths that require debunking. Here's his latest roundup.  Continue reading...