What you're talking about (phonemic recognition by babies) doesn't happen until a few months after birth (I don't know the exact time, as by book on the topic is currently on loan). Until that time, they will respond equally to phonemic inventories not of their native language.

Assumed by some child language acquisition specialists, yes. Assumed by the ones who are scientific about their research, probably not.

As I understand it, we have a fair amount of information about children responding to other phonetic and phonological aspects of the language(s) spoken around them, but there hasn't been any other research on prenatal language acquisition.

Because vocal fold size determines a range of pitches available to the speaker, whereas phrase-level tone contours are language based and proportionate/relative. You can't genetically determine that any more than you can other aspects of a language's lexicon.

Much as I agree with your argument for contemporary work, I really do have to point out that there is more going on in fantasy than "Orcs, Elves, and stuff".

First, fantasy is a much larger genre then the epic, Tolkien-esque work that is most pushed by publishers. First, mythic fiction, which while not always fantasy in a sense that most people identify with, often has most if not all of the characteristics of fantasy, and is much harder than a great majority of the the current popular SF (I mean, really guys. How many Star Wars books does the world need?)

We also have lovely options for class readings in urban/contemporary/indigenous fantasy. This might even be better, in my opinion, as there are quite a lot of short stories that have a fair bit of analytical meat.

The Endicott Studio used to have some excellent reading lists for both of these subgenres.

Maybe the greater proportion of Slashdotters don't see the need for looking at this kind of fiction. However, they provide many useful insights into how to critically analyze fiction, as their references and tropes tend to be more relevant to high schoolers than monks who live to do math.

That's one solution. Another solution rather than act like rambo and kill a bunch of innocent Koreans..... is to take a measured response, realize the amount of counterfeit dollars is less than 1/100th of a percent, and then accept the fact that it's not really that bad. Nor are all problems solvable.

Besides what Korea is doing is no worse than what the non-government *private* Federal Reserve has been doing - printing bonds, giving these pieces of paper to companies, and then buying them back with dollars. In essence printing money. THAT'S going to cause far more harm (via devaluation of your savings by ~10% per year) than a few counterfeit notes.

That particular rock was supposed to be given not to the Netherlands, but to the Neanderthals who, presumably, would have taken much more than 40 years to discover the truth.

Actually, smiley faces (not emoticons, but the symbol from a Wingdings type font) do manifest in serious work. Optimality Theory, a very popular formalism used in phonology (the linguistics branch dealing with the differences between the spoken and underlying forms of words) uses these to indicate "winning" candidates, typically those actually found in the language in question. They also use bombs, flowers, and a goodly collection of other odd symbols.

For more information, I recommend Rene Kager's book, /Optimality Theory/... or some googling of you don't feel like going to your local college library.

What? As I understand it, a judge's purpose is to decide whether or not an individual (corporate or otherwise) has broken a law, not to legislate from the bench. Your statement makes no sense. This judge stated that her decision was based on the *laws* put in place by the legislature. Take your bitterness to your *elected* local Congressman, not the judge who has to muck around in the horseshit they spew and figure out what to do with it.

Technically speaking, as a linguist, *both* are acceptable plurals of the word 'virus'. They both meet the broad definition of morphological variants, namely that at least some English speakers use both /virii/ and /viruses/ and nearly all speakers of the language can understand the content the speaker is attempting to convey. Furthermore, both use morphological pluralization rules found in other words in the language (for example, /cacti/ and /foxes/. From a linguistic standpoint, it doesn't really matter whether or not this would be correct in Latin, as we are discussing English. The point I'm trying to make is that it may be the case that from a traditional lexicographical standpoint, only one is correct, most modern linguists would accept both as valid plurals, and neither as superior over the other. Remember, the sounds we make are ultimately arbitrary representations. As long as the are consistently intelligible within a community, it doesn't matter what they are.

How do you know you would want immortality to end? Are you admitting to being between 200 and 10,000? What's your secret? Can I have some? You won't be alone if you share your life extending powers!