eyes-onthehorizon - Tumblr blog

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A goblin and an elf have decided to defy tradition and get married. Their ceremony will be held in the magical forest in accordance with elven tradition.

[eyes-onthehorizon]

My friend, I apologize for bothering you. I am from Gaza. Can you donate even $5 to me?🙏🙏 You think it is little, but I think it is a lot to save my family’s life.🍉 Please help me with whatever you can. The situation is very dangerous. If you cannot donate, share it on your page

https://gofund.me/56a9a1eb

[eyes-onthehorizon]

What is a ‘wug’?

If you’ve been to linguist tumblr (lingblr), you might have stumbled upon this picture of a funny little bird or read the word ‘wug’ somewhere. But what exactly is a ‘wug’ and where does this come from?

The ‘wug’ is an imaginary creature designed for the so-called ‘wug test’ by Jean Berko Gleason. Here’s an illustration from her test:

“Gleason devised the Wug Test as part of her earliest research (1958), which used nonsense words to gauge children’s acquisition of morphological rules‍—‌for example, the “default” rule that most English plurals are formed by adding an /s/, /z/ or /ɨz/ sound depending on the final consonant, e.g., hat–hats, eye–eyes, witch–witches. A child is shown simple pictures of a fanciful creature or activity, with a nonsense name, and prompted to complete a statement about it:

This is a WUG. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two ________.

Each “target” word was a made-up (but plausible-sounding) pseudoword, so that the child cannot have heard it before. A child who knows that the plural of witch is witches may have heard and memorized that pair, but a child responding that the plural of wug (which the child presumably has never heard) is wugs (/wʌgz/, using the /z/ allomorph since “wug” ends in a voiced consonant) has apparently inferred (perhaps unconsciously) the basic rule for forming plurals.

The Wug Test also includes questions involving verb conjugations, possessives, and other common derivational morphemes such as the agentive -er (e.g. “A man who ‘zibs’ is a ________?”), and requested explanations of common compound words e.g. “Why is a birthday called a birthday?“ Other items included:

This is a dog with QUIRKS on him. He is all covered in QUIRKS. What kind of a dog is he? He is a ________ dog.

This is a man who knows how to SPOW. He is SPOWING. He did the same thing yesterday. What did he do yesterday? Yesterday he ________.

(The expected answers were QUIRKY and SPOWED.)

Gleason’s major finding was that even very young children are able to connect suitable endings‍—‌to produce plurals, past tenses, possessives, and other forms‍—‌to nonsense words they have never heard before, implying that they have internalized systematic aspects of the linguistic system which no one has necessarily tried to teach them. However, she also identified an earlier stage at which children can produce such forms for real words, but not yet for nonsense words‍—‌implying that children start by memorizing singular–plural pairs they hear spoken by others, then eventually extract rules and patterns from these examples which they apply to novel words.

The Wug Test was the first experimental proof that young children have extracted generalizable rules from the language around them, rather than simply memorizing words that they have heard, and it was almost immediately adapted for children speaking languages other than English, to bilingual children, and to children (and adults) with various impairments or from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Its conclusions are viewed as essential to the understanding of when and how children reach major language milestones, and its variations and progeny remain in use worldwide for studies on language acquisition. It is “almost universal” for textbooks in psycholinguistics and language acquisition to include assignments calling for the student to carry out a practical variation of the Wug Test paradigm. The ubiquity of discussion of the wug test has led to the wug being used as a mascot of sorts for linguists and linguistics students.”

Here are some more illustrations from the original wug test:

Sources: 

Wikipedia, All Things Linguistic

[eyes-onthehorizon]

HIGH ON STANDARDS LOW ON SKILL. CREATIVE PROCESS MAKE YOU ILL

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One struggle 🫡

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BIG WIN FOR PALESTINE.

The United Nations General Assembly adopts a Palestinian resolution calling on Israel to end its occupation by an overwhelming majority:

124 states voted in favour, 43 abstained, 14 voted against.

Israel is finished. The world recognises it's apartheid and genocidal regime.

[eyes-onthehorizon]

Celtic football fans raised the Palestinian flag, showcasing their solidarity with Palestine during last night’s Champions League match at Celtic Park.

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Hey you know that song that goes na na na na na na na na na na na na na na

What’s the first song that just came to your mind?

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Did anyone ask for Fem!Armand in a Saree? Oh that's just me

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A circulating video of sisters who bought the same clothes for their husbands 😂❤️

[eyes-onthehorizon]

Please help my girl 🙏🙏

https://gofund.me/0f410220

[eyes-onthehorizon]

Do the American people realize that the taxes they pay are being used to kill us, and are sent to Israel in the form of missiles that killed my father, my mother, and my sisters?

@nabulsi @sar-soor

@miametropolis

@gotchibam s @ragnarozzys

@troythecatfish

@90-ghost

@dimonforever @i-am-aprl

@sayruq

@el-shab-hussein

@humanvoicebox

@faggotfungus @ghost-and-a-half @three-croissants

@fairuzfakhira @ibtisams @ @vakarians-babe @palipunk @palestinecharitycommissionsassoc @vakarian-shepard @northgazaupdates2

[eyes-onthehorizon]

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had a fascinating dream last night where there was a new, virally popular trading card game - it was called MOUNTAIN (stylised in all caps) and the whole gimmick was that you couldn’t buy boosters or anything - you had to find them?

nowhere sold MOUNTAIN - I mean, I expect players did, once cards were in their hands.

but acquiring cards meant noticing a box lying around, and just….nabbing it? they’d be in weird places - in a skip, wedged high up in a fence, nestled in the branches of a tree? nobody ever saw who left them there, and there was a lot of debate about how MOUNTAIN boxes were sometimes hard to acquire without risking one’s physical safety - but then, that was also bragging rights. especially as harder-to-reach boxes seemed to contain more elusive and sought after cards…

no, I don’t remember anything about the actual gameplay, we never played any MOUNTAIN. alas. I know there were “frame cards” that were literally transparent but for a fancy metallic or holographic border, which I guess upgraded the card they were applied to? frames were super rare, my coworker literally ran up to me in the pub purely to show off the frame he’d just found

dream brain gimme the deets on MOUNTAIN’s actual mechanics, I’m invested in this controversial unpurchasable scavenger hunt game

[eyes-onthehorizon]

tell me why u follow me on anon

i am so baffled why y'all follow my shit blog. explain please.

[eyes-onthehorizon]

hey y'all. i was morosely flipping through a sketchbook and found my magnum opus tucked in the back. this is 100% the best thing ive ever made and i gotta share it. behold: baby isopod. may it brighten your day as it did mine.