5 Linguistics Tunes That Didn't Quite Make It Into The Charts

From the sublime to the ridiculous.

1. λ♥[love] (Linguistics Love Song)

A sweet little tune for all those linguist lovers who just can't find the words.

2. The IPA: A Love Song

This one is about the love that dare not speak its name: the love of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

3. The Linguists - We Are The World

Ever wondered what would happen if the team behind the Budapest ELTE-MTA Theoretical Linguistics Programme produced a linguistics-based cover of the song We Are The World? Funnily enough, me neither. But here it is for your enjoyment.

4. The Dead Tongues - The HPSG Man

Performed by an array of eminent linguists including the inimitable Geoffrey Pullum and the sorely missed Ivan Sag, this tune appears to be about an adherent to everyone's favourite constraint-based syntactic framework. (Sorry, LFG, you know it's true.)

5. Honkies With Attitude - Emergence Of The Unmarked

This one's something of an exception to the rule, in that it did make the charts; the lingBuzz top download charts, that is, fending off Chomsky and other hotshots to retain pole position for quite some time. It's billed as "the world's first syntactic rap".