I wonder if there’s a primary education hook here (and a way to promote general Linguistics awareness.) Unless the math is too heavyweight, it sounds like a research program that schoolkids could replicate: taking down each other’s speech, analyzing the data, discovering the grammar of the language as used by their peers. I would have been so stoked by this when I was 9 or 10.

It sounds like a complete primary education program — English, science & math all rolled together. And talking in class!

Of course, a lot of Tom’s ideas are pretty cool.