λ♥[love] is written and sung by Christine Collins, a writer and self-described time traveller [Doctor Who fan] from the U.S. She describes it as “a convenient, terminology-dropping, non-gender-specific love song for all your linguist-seducing needs”.

The song will be of particular interest to linguists, but its winning melody and sweet delivery give it broad appeal. The lyrics offer a similar strain of ambiguity as my Grammar Day haiku, but it’s a far more laudable use of the technique.

Lyrics are below the fold, with a few explanatory links. I’ve changed the breaks between some lines / in order to enhance the rhymes.

Let me have your heart and I will give you love

The denotation of my soul is the above

If there’s anything I lack, it’s

you as my double brackets

You make me mean things

I can’t say enough.

Consider me your anaphor, I’m bound to you

There’s no one else that I could be referring to

Your features all attract me

We’re such a perfect match, please

Agree with me

I need to be with you.

Well I don’t know how to say exactly how I feel about you

‘Cos it seems my Broca’s area stops working right around you

Forgive me my disfluency –

There’s nothing I can do, you see,

You speak to me, linguistically I’m yours.

Now I know you tend to isolate, and that’s all right

Like free morphemes you and I could lead our separate lives

But if we were to agglutinate

Together we would do so great

and I’d hate to miss the words we could derive.

Well I don’t know how to say exactly how I feel about you

‘Cos it seems my Broca’s area stops working right around you

Forgive me my disfluency –

There’s nothing I can do, you see,

You speak to me, and linguistically I’m yours

So please don’t be my allophone and disappear

really awkwardly whenever I start getting near

Let’s be a minimal pair

‘Cos I’m totally cool with us both being there

My environment is better when you’re here

My environment is better when you’re here

Yeah, my environment is better when you’re here.

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λ♥[love] (Linguistics Love Song) © Christine Collins

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Update: Mark Liberman at Language Log has written a short and helpful explanation of the title notation, i.e., lambda calculus. Thanks, Mark!