Rick Wojcik

Trump gauges Europe's reaction to Putin's ceasefire offer The White House has held multiple calls in recent days with Ukraine and its European allies to discuss the plan, a White House official said.

Putin agrees to pause the fighting for now so that he can consolidate his gains and prepare for future operations. Trump will likely see himself as entitled to a Nobel Peace Prize. Hope I'm wrong, but I suspect that's the plan. Ukraine needs security guarantees and won't get them.

Appeals court tosses judge's contempt finding against Trump administration in prison deportations An appeals court is tossing out a judge’s contempt finding against President Donald Trump's administration in a case over deportations to an El Salvador prison.

The headline neglects to mention that two Trump-appointed judges trump one Obama-appointed judge. The ruling was tossed, and the contempt remains in place.

Breton is one of my favorite languages. Did research on it in the 1970s. AFAIK, the only language other than English that uses 'do' as a purely tense-bearing auxiliary verb.

Sorry for the repost, but I forgot to add some tags for interested readers. I tried to keep the content simple, but it may still be too technical for those without some linguistic training.
#linguistics #phonology #phoneme #psycholinguistics #language

Thanks. Since I was a linguistics student at ground level near the beginning of the generative era, I very much look forward to this first talk in the series. It's interesting that Cleveland State has a healthy linguistics program. All my degrees are from OSU.

FBI agrees to help chase down quorum-breaking Texas Democrats It is unclear what resources the FBI is investing or how it is approaching the situation as there is no apparent legal breach under its purview.

Blatant misuse of federal power, but no longer surprising in Trumpland. King Donald wants it, and so it shall be. The FBI will help the state of Texas go after legislators who have committed no state or federal crime.
www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

I have posted a new substack about how linguists came to lose the original distinction between phonology and morphophonology.
richardwojcik.substack.com/p/how-lingui...

Republicans remain positive about their party; Democrats are more self-critical - AP-NORC While both parties face criticism, more Democrats are critical than positive about the state of the party.

This latest AP-NORC poll is a snapshot of public opinion about American attitudes towards their parties. It comes as no surprise that Democrats are disappointed in their party, and Republicans are happy with theirs.

Office of Special Counsel says it's opened Hatch Act probe of Jack Smith The U.S. Office of Special Counsel said opened an investigation into former Special Counsel Jack Smith and whether he violated the Hatch Act.

Ironically, Trump is using the OSC to try to build a case for prosecuting a Special Counsel for doing his job. If any public official has ever violated the Hatch Act repeatedly and enthusiastically, it is Donald Trump.

Trump fires BLS commissioner after weak jobs report and baseless claim of 'faked' stats Fresh jobs data showed a major slowdown of hiring in recent months.

The good news is that kings no longer kill messengers, if they don't like the message.

Wall Street slumps and bond yields sink following weak hiring numbers and new tariffs Stocks are slumping on Wall Street and Treasury yields are falling sharply after the government reported a sharp slowdown in hiring last month.

The Fed will soon face two choices: preserve economic activity by lowering interest rates or curb inflation by raising them. This wouldn't be a problem, but for a president who has assumed the power to levy import taxes to serve his whims.

Where there's a will, there's a way. My pessimism tells me that the Republican Supreme Court will find a way. Their way seems to be to stay out of Trump's way.

Triumphant in trade talks, Trump and his tariffs still face a challenge in federal court President Donald Trump may have gotten his way with tariffs on some countries, but his overhaul of American trade policy has not gone unchallenged.

Would a Republican-dominated Supreme Court dare take away Trump's tariff toy? They can just blame Congress and look the other way. The Republican Congress won't dare take it away either. Inflation winter is coming.

All the hype surrounding LLM chatbots makes people ignore the thin line between artificial intelligence and artificial stupidity. They aren't about to replace humans, and they could get humans who trust them in a lot of trouble.

90 Billion Liters of Water Punched Through Greenland's Ice Sheet – And Nobody Noticed A build-up of meltwater under the Greenland ice sheet in 2014 resulted in a flood of such magnitude that it burst upward through tens of meters of solid ice, fracturing the surface and spilling water ...

Nature's wake-up call to a slumbering humanity is a dash of cold water.

What a relief that Trump somehow found a way to cut his totally wackadoodle 30% tariffs down to merely bonehead 15% territory. Who needs a State Department when the president can do it all by himself and still play golf?

This is so obvious, yet so many people are in denial. Nobody wants to admit that such a fool could end up running the most powerful and dangerous country in the world.

Trump says he's shortening the 50-day deadline for Russia to end the war in Ukraine U.S. President Donald Trump says he intends to shorten the 50-day deadline he gave Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach a deal that ends the three-year war in Ukraine.

That ought to wipe the smirk off of Russian faces. Or will it? Putin has set this sucker up for years. Now Trump thinks that he can use tariffs to bully India and China into stop buying Russian oil and gas? Not likely.

It will take a long time for trade partners to trust us again, because every four years we could give them another Trump. Our credibility as a long term force for stability is shot.

It reminds me of the time we stopped overnight in Viveiro, Spain. We woke up to find a sign in the breakfast hall declaring that Viveiro was a sister city with Lannion, France. I had spent much time there doing fieldwork on Breton, the Celtic language native to France. Totally unexpected.

The Art of the Really Stupid Deal What the heck were the Trumpists thinking?

It is not about selling these deals to foreign countries. Those are basically street muggings. It is about selling them to the American public. Half the public was sold on him in 2024. Now we are all forced to pay for these expensive deals in import taxes.

World’s largest olive oil producer warns U.S. consumers of a double whammy from Trump tariffs The European Union is the leading producer, consumer and exporter of olive oil.

Import taxes on American consumers have barely begun to sting so far. When Democrats called Trump's plan a "national sales tax", few people paid attention. Now they are starting to learn what that meant.

Not just phonemes, but all speech sounds, are psychologically real sensorimotor images. Phonemes are a type of speech sound used to store and retrieve words in associative memory. That accounts for the illusion that they are more “real” than other speech sounds.

Texas Republicans aim to redraw House districts at Trump's urging, but there's a risk Texas Republicans are poised to redraw the state’s congressional map during a special session that starts Monday.

Democrats tried the same redistricting tactic in New York state and ended up losing House seats in a swing election. Republicans are usually successful at gerrymandering tactics, but the next election may teach them the same harsh lesson that Democrats learned.

The Psychological Reality of Phonemes Revisited What makes some speech sounds more memorable than others?

For those interested in what makes phonemes more memorable than other speech sounds.
#linguistics #phoneme #phonology
richardwojcik.substack.com/p/the-psycho...

'What a country': Complaint against conductor for speaking French on train in Flanders upheld The conductor broke Belgium's language rules when greeting passengers in both Dutch and French on a train in Vilvoorde – just a few minutes outside Brussels.

www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/1665...

Nobody expects Belgium's Permanent Committee on Language Monitoring! Where will they strike next?

Trump’s New Strategy on Epstein Fallout: Blame the Democrats

What is up with the NY Times headline? This is anything but a "new strategy". Blaming Democrats is just a tired old tactic.

Trump lashes out at ‘weaklings’ who believe Epstein ‘bullsh*t’ amid building GOP pressure to release documents | CNN Politics President Donald Trump is accusing some of his onetime supporters of being “weaklings” who are falling prey to Democratic “bullshit” about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — concluding that he no...

With so much serious corruption, crime, and incompetence in his daily behavior, it is always his sex scandals that get all the traction and grab all the headlines.

Trump needs kangaroo courts to railroad all those people. It's hard to say what the MAGA Supremes will do. They seem really inclined to empower Trump these days.