Wow, it has been over a month since I made a post with some language-related content here. I should really remedy that! Two things:

1) Yesterday I got my first mention in Language Log, largely because I had never bothered to email any of the linguists who blog there before.

2) Arthur has learned the word 'skedaddle'. curtana was mentioning this fact to our friend owldaughter the other day in range of Arthur's hearing, at which point he interjected, "I call it skedabble". He's right about that; this is actually how he pronounces it. But his statement shows evidence of metalinguistic thought: he is aware that his pronunciation is not the standard - he's not just mishearing it or not producing it correctly, but he actually has given thought to the difference between the way that we pronounce it and the way he does. Fascinating.

Tags: arthur, language