The Linguist’s Calendar: February 5

Quang Phuc Dong

February 5
 
1835: The French music journal Le Pianiste is delighted about Jean-François Sudre’s creation of Solrésol, an international auxiliary language based on music. In the journal, Sudre is hailed as the Gutenberg of his day.
 
1967: Quang Phuc Dong of the “South Hanoi Institute of Technology” (S H I T), alias Jim McCawley, submits the final version of "English Sentences Without Overt Grammatical Subjects" to a Festschrift devoted to—Jim McCawley. The paper is a study of the syntax of the word "fuck," and includes some memorable example sentences.



2003: The Russian Duma passes a law which outlaws the use of foreign words “where suitable Russian ones exist”.