Dear Log,
So there's media coverage of the cidada swarms. It strikes me as an odd reminder of when I mentioned them in my thesis, years ago:
«Consider this entry from the Internetwebsterversion (Unknown ?1983) of Merriam-Webster (1963):ci.ca.da \s*-'ka-d-*, -'ka.d-\ n [NL, genus name, fr. L, cicada] : any of a family (Cicadidae) of homopterous insects with a stout body, wide blunt head, and large transparent wings.None of the facts in this definition are as salient as as the sound that cicadas make. (In fact, this is an undeniably bad definition because it fails to mention that they make any sound at all.) In an online lexicon, it would be simple to embed a sound clip that would enable users to hear the sound of cicadas, because knowing this sound is a crucial part of the linguistic competence (in the sense Wierzbicka uses this term) necessary to knowing what, in practical real world terms, the word "cicada" means.»
