From a story about the recently discovered pyramid in the centre of the Federal District of Mexico.
The Aztecs, a warlike and religious people who built monumental works and are credited with inventing chocolate, ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico.
Recent polls show 'tase' as a front-runner in the ADS WotY race. And by 'polls' I mean 'the blog posts and forum posts out there that I've been reading but which I haven't counted or quantified in any reliable manner but which have left me with an impression that one word is getting a lot of attention.'
And Ben Zimmer mentions on the OUP Blog that tase/taze "always seems to draw comment" in his many WotY interviews. So I'll trust my impression.
A recent boost to the word's chances:
Facebook's SuperPoke application allows users to "do" all sorts of "actions" to other users -- you can "rent a limo with" or "tickle" or "hadouken" (I haven't seen 'tatsu-maki-sen-pyuuuu-kaku' yet) or "grope" or even "spoon" a friend on Facebook. And you saw this coming: you can now "Tase" a friend. The capitalized form is used with a nod to the trademark. (See the comment on capitalization in the AHD4 entry for Mace -- note: David Shepardson was my roommate in college and he's still a good friend. I'm so jealous of his citation in the dictionary).
Elizabeth asks a question over on the Purdue Linguistics Association blog:
I saw this in a Christmas letter I got:
This year will be our hopefully last Christmas in #Exico.
#(place-name changed to protect the innocent)
So, what I want to know is, what is going on with "hopefully" in this sentence? Traditionally it's an adverb, but here it's hopped over into the noun phrase. The sentence sounds grammatical to me if I imagine somebody inserting the "hopefully" at the last minute as if they didn't think of it in time. But then how did an adverb get in that position? There are other adverbs that don't sound like they could do that:
Ah the joys of family and little kids -- and obvious input/output phonological data provided by a 19 month old niece. Some basic early phonological processes.
wipes → peeps: /wəɪps/ → [pips]
chip → pip/peep: /ʧɪp/ → [pʰIp]/[pʰip]
grape → peep: /gɹeɪp/ → [pip]
Blake → Pete: /bleɪk/ → [pit]
cookie → teetee: /kʊki/ → [titi]
TV → beebee: /tivi/ → [bibi]
crayons → crots: /kɹeanz/ → [kɹats]
santa → tahta: /sæntə/ → [tʰãta]
michael → cocku: /məɪkl̩ /→ [kʰaku]
buffy → fuffy: /bʌfi/ → [ɸʌfi]/[fʌfi]
sock → cock:/sak/ → [kak]
Mark → cock: /maɹk/ → [kak]
(And she would probably not say [dadada] for 'potato'. Maybe [tito] because she's stuck on 1 and 2 syllable words. And 'tomato' comes out [mimo].)
Of course these pronunciations are changing. She's getting closer and closer to some of the expected phones in her pronunciation. And there's of course a lot of room for variation since her articulation isn't precise.
The aspiration on some of the voiceless stops isn't always clear but I transcribe it where I see it most regularly. I like that altho the /t/ stop of the affricate in 'chip' becomes [p] the release in the affricate is performed as an aspirated release.
There's clear favouring of reduplication in the output and it's almost always regressive. There are a few words that don't pattern like the rest. I would expect her to say [kik] as the output for "Blake" but she introduces two sounds that aren't in the input. Perhaps everyone around here produces a glottal stop in [bleIʔ] and she has learned it as an allophone of /t/.
She says "Santa" with a nasalized [a] but no alveolar nasal as the coda. She is able to articulate the nasal in a coda -- as in corn which she pronounces [kɔn] -- but it might be tougher before a C (given how much more natural the CVCV syllable structure is in early language development).
There are some vowels that show something about the way these adults around here speak. Nobody says kɹænz here altho that's a common pronunciation of crayons. The [a] gets drawn out and thats the sound that she holds onto.
And of course everyone's favourite is when she points at Mark and starts calling him names. He's a nice guy but she apparently thinks he's a bit of a jerk.
So I'm not going to make any claim about how many words they have for snow. But on the drive through Wisconsin last night I came up with about two-dozen words for the %#!@*$# white stuff.
I'm really doubting that whole no-two-snowflakes-are-alike claim.
But we're back online now.
It's unfortunate that some women are given the brunt of the blame for the failings of a man. Desdemona certainly was not the cause. Lady MacBeth might have been. So what about Jessica Simpson? Her on screen appearances during the Dallas/Philadelphia game have elicited a lot of vitriol. Some people are arguing that Tony Romo was distracted and that's why he played so badly.
I love Bettyboo's comment on this OMG!/Yahoo! piece: "From the start I knew that Jessica (the air head) was going to cause the Cowboys the game."
That looks like an eggcorn in there. To cause the game is an obvious mishearing of to cost the game. Is there a reasonable semantic reanalysis? Well first let's see if there's enough of this going on. First I'm going to go with 'caused us the game' in my initial search.
[...sound of tapping on computer keyboard...]
Wow. Yeah it's out there. A Google™ search for "Caused us the game" brings up 6720 hits. And the first five are all what I was hoping to find.
"Any fool can see that is what caused us the game" source
"h3po4 did an really nice \kill on map16, almost caused us the game" source
"Ultimately, this is what caused us the game." source
"but we were unable to capitalize on their mistakes and it caused us the game." source
"'It was not the untimely timeout that caused us the game ' explained Cuban" source
Bettyboo uses a form that makes it look like she has heard 'cost the game' and interpreted it as 'caused the game' so she changes the verb according to a standard grammar when she chooses the phrase "going to cause" instead of 'caused the game' in her comment.
This morphology is out there too. A search for "cause them the game" gets 12,300 hits. How many of them relevant? Enough.
"which will cause them the game in the end." source
"one little mistake done by a teammate can cause them the game" source
"He threw two late interceptions which cause them the game." source
(this one doesn't follow the standard rules of verb tense. It could be an 'eary' spelling. You know--one of those errors that makes me type throw when I meant to type throat just because they sound so similar.)
"This decision may cause them the game which is unfortunate" source
One result looks like a gapped construction.
"however lack of focus could cause them the game and loose ground to Inter Milan." source
The coordination with that second phrase that doesn't have a subject makes me think the writer might have intended to say 'could cause them to lose the game and lose ground to Inter Milan.' In that case it would have nothing to do with the cost→caused eggcorn.
But it could still be a relevant example if the writer meant to produce something like 'lack of focus could cause them the game and to lose ground' -- which would be sweet. Zeugma and an eggcorn relying on each other.
That might be too much to ask.
The cost→caused construction has been mentioned and discussed already on The Eggcorn Database. I didn't mention it here but one the EcDb forum I noted that one necessary condition of an eggcorn (the semantic reanalysis) was unclear to me. What exactly would 'caused the game' mean? The last example above looks like a possible effect of a blend and that might be just what's going on in these examples. But it's not a clear failure. If a clear meaning and semantic motivation can be found for 'caused the X' this would work as an eggcorn.]
Tenser, said the Tensor posted a couple weeks back on the BBC presentation of How the Edwardians Spoke. His post does a fine job of going over some of the laughable claims made by program host Joan Washington.
It's an hour long so if you have the time you should watch it. And just for the record: it is an enjoyable hour even tho Ms Washington peppers it with ridiculous conjecture and baffling superstitions. The recordings are fascinating. And occasionally touching.
Watch the Google™ video or the GUBA video (better quality). Both are downloadable.
A few parts that stuck with me:
◊ At about 15:00 when told that the Germans made these tapes with the intention of using the data to learn native British dialects she reacts with what strikes me as an incredibly patronizing "Do you...Do you...Do you surmise that? Do you guess that? Or do you know that?"
Her disfluency strikes me as indicative of a sudden discomfort. I don't think she believes Jürgen-Kornelius Mahrenholz. She has been leaning in towards him and as soon as she starts asking she backs away. My instinct tells me that she's aware that there's aggression in her question and she's padding it by her slight retreat. Notice that when he tells her that there is documentation of the fact her cheeky smile fades slightly. (She might not be used to people being able to actually back up their claims.) But I'm no Jack Byrnes. It's just an impression.
◊ Her claims regarding terrain and sinuses and temperature affecting the phonetics of dialects remind of the hokum I mentioned this past summer. But take a look at the IMDb page. At least one viewer thinks those are interesting claims. The stuff sells. Fallacies are the best opiate.
◊ Washington's label of Major and Minor keys in accents is particularly interesting. I can't imagine how the intonations of dialects would be bound to a major or minor key. They're really just full of accidentals. And given the relatively narrow range of pitches and the great variation in tones from phrase to phrase and sentence to sentence it's much more likely that we're looking at a chromatic scale.
This major/minor distinction is a tough one for the untrained. People really know as little about music as they do about linguistics. Earlier today a rerun of My Wife and Kids featured a guest appearance by the wonderful Betty White. In one scene she plays a difficult passage on the piano and remarks "Did you hear that? ... Your C-major is a quarter tone off." C major could be a quarter tone off. Sure. But that wouldn't be a helpful observation because it could really only mean that one note in the C major chord or scale is off. And that same note could be in the A minor scale (It would have to be really) or the C harmonic minor or the C minor or the A major...as long as it's a white key. But back to the dialect stuff:
Washington makes the distinction between major and minor keys by saying that in a major key the speaker sounds self assured and confident and in a minor key the phrases and sentences don't end on any clear and definite note. Notes are all just as definite in every key. She seems to be talking about phrase ending intonation which is sometimes a rising or falling tone and sometimes not. But that has nothing to do with keys. Each key is as definite as the rest.
The best example of the difference between a major and minor key that I can think of (and that people are likely to recognize) is the Gracie Films fanfare best known from the closing credits for The Simpsons. The normal ditty is in a major key but the Halloween Treehouse of Horror episodes feature a little shift into a minor key.
The Ridger tagged me a while ago. The rules of this one are pretty simple. I have to respond to seven simple prompts.
Instead of Secret Santa parties linguistics programs should hold Contextually Neutralized Santa parties.
But I missed out on the fun that several colleagues had this year. Dangit. I could have received a card like this to put on the coffee table. Dangit.
I'm watching the Thank You for Smoking with the audio track playing the commentary of Jason Reitman Aaron Eckhart and David Koechner.
In a comment on one scene Koechner praises Reitman for including a small but effective detail. "It's impactful" he says.
Impactful gets 93,200 hits on Google™. The first hit: Paul Brians' entry from his huge list of common errors. His entry's are short and clear. About impactful he says "this term does not appear in most dictionaries and is not well thought of by traditionalists." He suggests using 'influential' or 'effective' instead.
The second hit is Dictionary.com's entry culled from Webster's New Millenium. (Dictionary.com is not a true dictionary; But it does provide entries taken from dictionaries)
The third hit is Michael Quinion's discussion of why such words are disliked by some. Nice piece. Read it when you're done here.
The fourth hit is the Urban Dictionary entry.
The fifth hit is an ABC NewsRadio rant "Presented by Kel Richards" about the word. He writes:
Well, I’m always happy to cheerfully deride ugly new words that we don’t need – and the word is question here is impactful – and it’s certainly ugly, and certainly unnecessary (the two words 'with impact' will do the same job).
I had a chance recently to go back and look over the Beowulf translation I completed a year ago. On the second day of class I was given the five or so lines ending with the memorable exclamation regarding Scyld Sheafson: "Þæt wæs god cyning" -- translated by Seamus heaney as "That was one good king."
When I got to the line I read it as "That's a good king" -- the professor just looked up at me and said "Well that doesn't help us out any." *sigh*
His contention was that because Þæt is neuter and cyning is masculine it just doesn't make sense grammatically to say that they were both referring to the same good king. His suggested translation? Something along the lines of "Thusly (he) was a good king." "That" had to serve an adverbial function not a nominative -- perhaps like that or in that way.
It made sense so I lowered my head with a quiet yessir and ceded to floor to the next trembling classmate.
Looking at my translation again it occurs to me that my first attempt might work. Think of "That's a good king" as All that behavior adds up to a good king.
Or let's look at another language.
I say of my wife 'That is my wife' and I repeat it in Spanish: 'Ésa es mi esposa.' The demonstrative agrees with the gender of the predicate nominative.
And if I use the definite article saying 'That is the best wife' my Spanish echo would say 'Ésa es la mejor esposa.'
But if I change the sentiment slightly and say 'That is a good wife' I would say it in Spanish: 'Eso es una buena esposa.' The determiner on the nominative NP constrains the demonstrative.
A possessive forces agreement:
Ésa es mi amiga.
Ése es mi padre.
Ésa es mi casa.
(I have a sense that perhaps a flippant phrase like 'that's my friend' delivered with a sigh meaning 'what more can we expect from her/him?' could take the neuter. I'll have to look into that.)
But an indefinite article is fine with the neuter demonstrative.
Eso es un padre.
Eso es una casa.
Eso es una mujer.
If we use an intensifying quantifier in English: 'That is one big house' -- the Spanish counter would be 'Ésa es una casa grande' -- The quantifier looks identical to the determiner but each functions with a distinct demonstrative.
English: That is a big dog.
Spanish: Eso es un perro grande.
English: That is one big dog.
Spanish: Ése es un perro grande.
Even tho the article forms are identical in Spanish the sharper semantic focus is evident from the demonstrative. Perhaps one≠one. (This may be further evidence that dividing determiners and quantifiers into definite and indefinite determiners is problematic.)
For the sake of analogy (but not argument) I suggest that similar constraints on agreement might work in OE. When the demonstrative might indicate an collection of behaviors or qualities more than an individual or an item a neuter can function even when equated with a masculine or feminine noun.
The line in Beowulf doesn't have an article. OE didn't have true articles. But because we have neuter þæt and not masculine se a translation into Modern English could easily be That was a good king distinct from He was a good king. If we accept this analogy we then have to reject Heaney's translation: "That was one good king."
But I'm loath to criticise any decision Seamus Heaney makes regarding poetry. He's earned his license.
(Yes--the line from the MS was cropped and reorganized to fit the space.)
Shannon Brownlee is perhaps a smarter and more reasonable version of Kevin Trudeau. Trudeau has made millions as the sultan of snake oil. He claims that doctors and the pharmaceutical industry are evil. Brownlee believes that medicine and treatment are good when administered sufficiently and necessarily. But she knows there are problems with the system. We all know that.
She was just on Book TV talking about her book Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer.
It was an interesting presentation. I wish I had started watching from the beginning. And I wish had been paying closer attention when one fellow in the crowd asked her a question (I think it was about managed care) and he relied on the premise that some part of the system "has always been behind the progressive 8-ball."
"Two topics: medical assistance in Maryland, and mental health. Medical assistance in Maryland has always been behind the progressive 8-ball. Have you done any looking into programs in other states...? What have you seen in other states that makes medical assistance models look good?"
And by medical assistance he means programs like Medicaid.]
I think he was trying to accomplish more than this image is accustomed to.
It makes sense that by saying its behind the 8-ball he means the system is in trouble. It finds itself stymied while facing an important task. Some people will throw in the word "proverbial" to make sure that we dense listeners catch the metaphorical intention.
They're playing snooker ol' boy?
No no. It's a proverbial 8-ball ol' chap
Ah. But of course!
Well since he was arguing for the importance of change I'm guessing that he meant the health care system is lagging in its response to the need for improvement and evolution. So the system is behind in its task of progress. And it's a tough situation. But instead of a proverbial 8-ball this is a progressive 8-ball.
So here we find it behindblocked and behindlagging.
So this blend seems to be functioning on the idea that "the 8-ball" is both a hindrance to progress and the model of progress. Awesome.
This looks like a wonderful instance of several necessary influences interacting at the right time to create this phrase. The standard term --proverbial-- being close enough to another word --progressive-- so that because of an implication of the argument (we need progress) an idiomatic blending occurs maybe even influenced by several other 'behind the X' phrases taken to be sports/gaming idioms even if they're not all from the world of sports.
Behind in the count
Behind the curve
Behind in points
And I've found a few sites that use the phrase "behind the curve ball" meaning running late or in a difficult situation. see here see here.
Apparently some people do see "behind the curve" as a baseball image.
(BTW: Within a span of only a few minutes I heard Brownlee use Isis formation a couple of times. Loverly.)
I have just made some minor changes to the list of links on the right sidebar. I visit most of the links regularly and I was noticing that several of them had not been updated in a long time.
Some of them are not only stale -- they're defunct. Many old friends have chosen to move on. So shall we. I hope you fare well Q-majiner and Truth Spelunker. Keep in touch Buppy.
I moved some links to a different list. Some friends have moved away from Purdue but are still blogging. So they are now in a more general links list.
And I've added a few links. On the Purdue list there are some new links a classmates blogs that I've recently uncovered.
And please note the addition of the Grant Barrett's Double-Tongued Dictionary and Mark Peters' Wordlustitude. Slang deserves our attention too no?
Three's the charm. One more syntactical ambiguity example then no more posts like this until after the new year.
A recent post at languagehat.com provides...well a sentence fragment. A noun phrase really:
"A perfect encapsulation of the asininity of the usual simplistic 'if you come here, you should speak English' attitude at xkcd."
That's fine. I like fragments. I like using them. Sometimes they're necessary. For instance now. But the fragmentation...fragmentalism...fragmentality... well none of those is the theme of this post.
My first time thru the line I read it this way (roughly): [here is] a perfect encapsulation of the asininity of the usual simplistic 'if you come here, you should speak English' attitude that we often find at xkcd.
So I thought Really? xkcd is usually not too bad. I followed the link. I read the cartoon. And I thought hmmm...I must have misread languagehat's post.
It makes sense now read (roughly): [here is] a perfect encapsulation of the asininity of the usual simplistic 'if you come here, you should speak English' attitude presented satirically by the fine folks at xkcd.
It's a tough one to restructure. Even in the short comment I left at languagehat the distinction is tricky. There's a semantic waviness on this one because even if xkcd provided the encapsulation and did it knowingly it would still be possible to read the sentence with the implication xkcd believes this argument and it's clearly a dumb one. Syntactically there's a clear difference between these two structures:
Why all my recent confusion with phrases? Here are a couple more. While some clues are present in these headlines they can still baffle a slow reader such as I am.
Man charged after Santa gets pie in face
1. Why was he chasing Santa? And did the pie stop him? Oh no. That would require some sort of colon or semi-colon after "Santa". Now it's clear.
2. So why did they wait till after Santa got the pie before they charged the fellow? And why did they charge him anyway? Well of course he must have thrown the pie. See--headlines are easy.
3. O wait. The guy got the pie in his face. So why were he and Santa charged? And why was Santa charged first?
You've gotta know when to walk away.
Yeah yeah it's been eight months and now Don Imus is back on the air. We all knew he would be eventually.
OK. Just because he used a label doesn't immediately mean that he thinks it's an accurate depiction; he probably thought it was just a safe joke. Still--his comment was insensitive. Such cheap derogation is a weak way to entertain. He was a goat for the industry's expiation. And a safe one because CBS doesn't look like a bully canning a rich white man. At least that's what I'm convinced his banishment was.
There's a point where the use of a phrase is the issue--not the opinions or intentions of the speaker. Humor blurs the line between using a term and referring to a term. And so a joke at the wrong time can be viewed as too dangerous a game to play. Those who decry such jokes often don't care that the performer might not actually see things the way the joke says. The problem they say is that the words and opinions are put out there without condemnation.
Then why are so many reports and stories so eager to simply reprint the phrase unnecessarily? We all remember the phrase don't we?
I would put up links to all the stories but what's the point?
A friend recently put up a very simple post suggesting a great movie title. That is -- a movie title that would be great (even if the movie is not).
Bride of Frankenstein's Monster's Ghost!!!
Why is it so great? Well I can't be sure that he loves the ambiguity as much as I do but he did complete his M.A. in linguistics (now working on a PhD in classics) and he's a true student of language--so I'm sure the several readings didn't escape him.
Who is the main character of this movie?
Is it the ghost of the bride (which bride is married to Frankenstein's Monster)?[Bride of [[Frankenstein]'s Monster]]'s Ghost
Is it the ghost of the Monster (which monster belongs to Frankenstein's Bride)?[[Bride of [Frankenstein]]'s Monster]'s Ghost
Is it the bride (who is married to the ghost of Frankenstein's Monster)?Bride of [[[Frankenstein]'s Monster]'s Ghost]
Nice title Dave. I would like to be given the script of the film's writing's consultancy.
I don't follow slang and coinages as closely as some others do, so I'm often pleasantly surprised to come across a word for the first time that has a fairly well-establish role in the lexicon.
So there's a Church of Stop Shopping out there and it's headed by the flailing and annoying Reverend Billy who says of his credentials as a minister: "Well I didn't go to the Yale divinity school...But we've got a church. And we do...perform weddings and baptisms and funerals". And like every good evangelist he's using fear to change minds and inspire souls. What is the catastrophe he warns against? Well this one is new to me: shopocalypse.
Okay so he's doing it tongue-in-cheek...I hope. You never know. It is a nice nod to the perils of consumerism that many acknowledge. But that discussion isn't so interesting to my linguistic self. The word has potential. That's somewhat interesting. Here's what else I notice.
I'd likely pronounce shop as either [ʃap] or [ʃɑp]. In the word shopocalypse the first syllable is unstressed. Vowels in unstressed syllables like to neutralize -- so instead of shop ([ʃap]) + apocalypse ([əpɑkəlɪps]) = [ʃaˈpɑkəlɪps] we get a neutralization of [a] to [ə] for [ʃəpɑkəlɪps].
And such a vowel change is predictable and expected. This might make the portmanteau sound less like shop+ocalypse and more like sh+apocalypse but the spelling (and some common sense) indicates that shop is intended.
Well I can still wonder if the [p] which has now become an onset consonant is the [p] taken from the coda of shop or if it's the [p] taken from the second syllable onset of apocalypse? I'll say it's the [p] of apocalypse only because it's aspirated.
Now the coda /p/ is certainly allowed to change and this could be simple allophonic variation. But I have this weird obsession with portmanteau balance. There's this tiny part of my brain that attaches theories of justice and equality to issues that make me seem crazy if I say too much about them. (Those of you who know my "balance and symmetry" issues might recognize this.) I don't like it when two words are combined and only one of them loses a segment.
I could write about 6 pages on what shopocalypse has going for it and against it in this regard. Phonemically there's some equality but phonetically apocalypse has an unfair advantage. The spelling favours shop because its entire bank is represented even if we grant that the [p] is 'taken' from apocalypse. It's not a great portmanteau on the 'balance' regard. A word like 'liger' (lion+tiger) is pretty good because neither word is completely present. But it's not perfect because lion loses at least 50% of it's letters--maybe 75%; and tiger loses at most 40% of its bank--as little as 20%.
Maybe I've said too much. And I can see some of you slowly backing away.
One of the nice features of Google™ is the spelling suggestion given when a search term looks like a likely misspelling. Above the search results a helpful line in red letters alerts you to a more common spelling for what your search term appears to be.
Type in 'winndows' and you get Did you mean: windows
Type in 'johnny carsen' and you're asked Did you mean: johnny carson
Type in 'conen o'brian' and you see Did you mean: conan o'brian (tho his last name is spelled O'Brien...and misspelling only his last name doesn't offer the correct spelling.)
Note that the misspelled word gets the italic emphasis. That's nicely intuitive.
You've probably also noticed the Sponsored Links in the peach shaded box above search results when the search terms scream I might spend money! Search for 'books' and Amazon jumps up begging for attention. Type in 'stereos' and Circuit City elbows its way in. But these are sponsored and not necessary suggested by Google™.
I recently did an image search for Christopher Dodd and Google™ saw it fit to make the following suggestion
Also try: john edwards
At first I thought the search engine was just throwing out the names of other candidates -- an equal time thing. So I did image searches for all the candidates I could think of.
Am I allowed to say that some language choices annoy me? How about if I promise not to call them pet peeves?
A while ago Mxrk posted about Paul Brians' list of non-errors that are commonly called errors. It's a decent list full of forms that occur regularly and which function within many constraints of standard English grammar.
But I take partial issue with one point Brians makes. Regarding the ongoing argument that attributive woman is incorrect and female should be used because it is an adjective while woman is a noun Brians explains
It may be inconsistent, but the pattern of referring to females as women performers, professionals, etc. is very traditional, dating back at least to the 14th century. People who do this cannot be accused of committing an error.
And then will this →
I just finished watching the finale of NBC's magician edition of Star Search: Phenomenon. I haven't seen any of the previous episodes because I'm not that impressed by big magic acts. I like close-up magic -- the type of good ol' prestidigitation that's impressive even when you know that the cards are palmed, the quarters are held by the knuckles and the cups are switched deliberately. It's impressive because you see the skill on display.
But besides being mostly bored by the big magic acts I would have been annoyed by this show because the whole show was full of announcements like on the next...Phenomenon!; or who will be...the next...Phenomenon? or find out on the series finale of...Phenomenon! or a phenomenon that will blow your mind...on tonight's...Phenomenon!
...and I'm almost absolutely certain that if I had been watching the whole season I would have been singing this for the last month.
Please believe me -- two posts in a row mentioning Katie Couric shouldn't be taken as a sign of a new direction for this blog.
In the last post I mentioned the Ridger's bewilderment regarding a recent statement made by Couric. And the perplexity is reasonable. Couric mentioned a problem that "could affect every one of us - and our loved ones." -- which leads the Ridger to pose the reasonable question: "Our loved ones aren't 'one of us'?"
Well are they? It might depend on what Couric what trying to say. Here's how her comment doesn't make sense:
"[this problem] could affect every one of us -- and our loved ones." ...because it's possible that each of us will be affected in manner.1 by the problem. And it's also possible that the people we love will be affected in manner.1 by this problem.
So because Couric says "every one of us" this reading runs into the problematic hedging by "and our loved ones" disrupting what "every one" means or who "us" includes. The use of the first person plural inclusive us might seem to include everyone including those who are not watching the show. If that's the case why does Couric add "loved ones" as a necessary 'other' not covered by the previous statement?
Here's how the statement might make sense:
"[this problem] could affect every one of us -- and our loved ones." ...because it's possible that each of us producing or watching this broadcast will be affected in manner.1 by the problem. And it's also possible that the people we love (who are not producing or watching this broadcast) will be affected in manner.1 by this problem.
Couric's use of "us" isn't then universal. Nor do we always expect it to be. It's inclusive but we're still able to draw a line between us and them. There's exclusivity in this one. It draws the line between viewers/producers and those loved ones who are not viewing or producing the show. It sounds a little elitist. Why draw the line? And where exactly is it drawn? This explanation -- tho it might work -- doesn't work for me. And considering that there is undoubtedly a circle of people who are neither watching/producing the show nor have any loved ones watching/producing the show...are they safe?
Another way it might make sense:
"[this problem] could affect every one of us -- and our loved ones." ...because every person can possibly be affected in manner.1 by the problem. And it would then happen that the people they love will be affected in manner.2 by this problem.
This requires a switch. If I'm the viewer I've just been told that I could be affected in a primary way by this problem -- say I'll stub my toe and cry out in pain. That first hand experience is manner.1. And of course because I'm such a crybaby Buffy has to put up with my whining. She's affected in manner.2 -- the secondhand effect. And if Couric's "every one of us" is truly a universally inclusive group that means that even tho I'm the one watching the show it's also possible that Buffy will stub her toe and cry out in pain manner.1 and I will have to put up with her soft and adorable whimpering manner.2.
This one makes the most sense to me because of Courics use of "and" coordinating the two claims. That it could affect every one of us - and our loved ones. If the effect was the same for both us and our loved ones I would expect or to coordinate the possibilities. That would be a complementary coordination that indicates the same effect going in either place -- the "and" might indicate a simultaneous coordination of people being affected at the same time -- but not necessarily in the same way.
So within this claim I the viewer am at once one of us AND a loved one.
That's one way to double their Nielsen ratings.
The Ridger's recent post about Katie Couric is not based on a prescriptivist argument or a peevish opposition to language change. It's an honest question about why Couric structures her claim the way she does. I'll get back to it in my next post. But for now it sent me down memory lane to a 2005 interview with Kofi Annan.
In that interview with the then UN Secretary General, Couric said to him "you literally have the weight of the world on your shoulders." This was picked-up and bemoaned by bloggers and defenders of literal purity everywhere. It can't be literal they claim. Literal means there is no metaphoric sense to my claim. It means the claim happened in actuality. It means that there is no exaggeration.
Well except that that's not true. Literally has been changing use.
But Couric's claim to Annan is a fun one because she apparently intends to use literal just as the peevologists would have her use it. She is claiming that the entire world is literally Annan's concern. Saying to others 'you have the weight of the world on your shoulders' is usually an observation that their duties are onerous. That they feel great pressure. And we exaggerate the scope of their concerns. When someone is worried about everyone in the office or every problem at the school or every crime reported on the local news we call the reach of their cares 'the world': even tho it's not it might as well be because it's beyond their control.
So I'm going to give Couric a pass on this one (as if passes are mine to give and withhold). When she added "literally" she signaled that the scope she mentioned was not an exaggeration. Yes -- there was still some synechdoche: calling all the people on earth "the world" -- there was still some metaphorical figuring: political concerns being "weight"; and his "his shoulders" used as an image of his awareness of those concerns -- but not everything in the statement has to be free of metaphor. There is a literal sense still at work in the claim worth calling literal: his concerns were global in nature. He had within his job description the responsibility for decisions and policies that affected every nation on this planet.
'Literalness' is a problematic claim. Metaphors can be live or dead. A word can have a persistent implication of proper and extended usage. But metaphors will often settle in and become part of a word's commonly assumed meaning in ways that used to be merely figurative. To "handle stress" no longer sounds like much of a metaphor because 'handle' has broken away from a strict meaning of 'to manipulate and manage with one's palm and phalanges.'
Literally on cloud 9 - Probably not actually up there. But very clearly and unambiguously elated.
Literally climbing up the walls - Mr Parker perhaps. Everyone else would probably mean that the agitation was enough to cause excessive movement and frantic motion.
Literally losing his mind - If he's mentally ill some would say this works. Others will hold it accountable to a second level of literalness claiming that there is still gray matter in the skull and activity in the brain. so...
Literally going crazy - Fine right? The drudges will point out that 'going' means moving somewhere so he might be becoming crazy but he's not actually moving anywhere in a crazy manner. (Really. Those people are out there.)
Literally strong as an ox - Unlikely but possible. Certainly could be stronger than some ox. A weak and anemic little baby ox? So the pedants will demand proof.
Literally ran out of gas - Another one that might encourage some to find levels of literalness. It's story time:
If someone is working on a task and gets tired and she says 'I literally just ran out of gas' she might mean that she really had to stop.
So Peevy-1 comes along and says 'Nonono--you don't run on an internal combustion engine so you couldn't run out of the same fuel that allows an automobile to run.'
The next week Peevy-1 is on the highway and his car sputters. Telling the story he says 'I literally just ran out of gas' and Peevy-2 says 'Nonono--your car ran out of gas. You don't run on gas.' Peevy-1 thinks about it and loves the correction. (They're all grammar masochists.)
Peevy-2 is bragging about this to the English class she teaches so she instructs her students 'If you say literally you have to say my car literally ran out of gas.'
A hand shoots up from the front row and and Peevy-3 (a promising young student) says 'but was the car "inside" a bunch of fuel and did the car actually "run" with two legs "out" of that body of fuel? It didn't "literally" "run" "out of" gas.' (The student uses 'air quotes'.)
Does peevy-2 realize that this is spinning out of control? Or does peevy-2 say 'You are going to make a great English teacher one day.'
----
image from here
The announcement just came out.
"Oxford has announced its WOTY and it is.....LOCAVORE!"
You can read more about the New Oxford American Dictionary WOTY finishers at the OUP Blog.
There you will find that
The 'locavore' movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers' markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better.
Posting on the fly:
about 27 seconds ago the commentator for the Arizona State versus UCLA said of the ASU quarterback: "He's playing with such [vəɻæsɪɾi] today..."
Why did I transcribe it in IPA? Because that's how he pronounced the word that could have been "veracity" -- and that would be an odd claim. He played with truthfulness?
It could also have been "voracity" which would make sense given that he was talking about the players persistence and intensity.
The subtitles (obviously produced 'live') chose the former: veracity.
And why not? It's the more common word. And tho it's an incorrect use (see -- I can say that too) the use is out there:
We don't know who the people are, what motivates them, and why they continue to fight with such veracity. HERE
This type of spam is not uncommon, however, this is the first time we have seen political spam sent at this scale, and with such veracity. qtd HERE
This next one isn't clear. The speaker might be using the word discriminatingly:
The aggressive campaigners against animal dissections put up convincing arguments to the orthodox zoology educators and higher education planners with such veracity that the arguments cannot be ignored. cached HERE
OK it was about 4 minutes ago now.
I just came across the phrase "which is going to be oftly hard" during my daily perusal of the worldwide net. It's going to be hard often? I thought. Then I caught the eggcorn possibility. I searched for "oftly" before various adjectives and adverbs. Here are some of the phrases I found:
Jeopardy! is being coy with it's clues. It sounds like the clue writers have chosen to temper the popular claim of how many dozens or hundreds of Eskimo words there are for snow. Tonight's Tournament of Champions round included the following clue:
"Eskimos have words for different varieties of this. Api is when it's on the ground."
They just can't let go of the implication that the language is remarkable in this regard. But they've managed to be reasonable about how remarkable it is. The claim is exactly what you could say about English words for snow. There's more than one.
I first grew suspicious of this little Big Ten town when I realized that there's no dedicated NPR FM station. Every morning at 8:00 the soothing liberal voices were shoved aside to make way for classical music. I love classical music but I need about 20 minutes of safely faceless voices in the morning before I can stand to make eye contact with anyone. Thank goodness I found an AM station hidden away.
I was pleased to fire up the radio late last week and find a rerun of a Terry Gross interview with Patton Oswalt and Brad Bird. I love Patton Oswalt's comedy.
Responding to one of Oswalt's bits about the recent trend in Black Angus restaurant commercials Gross asks Bird why the bit led him to cast the comedian as a rat with a refined palatte in the animated movie Ratatouille. (This segment begins around 5:20 into conversation.)
Bird: Uh you know I don't know. I think it was the passion that I (laughs) ...that I was responding to more than anything else. The fact that he could get so wound up about the food...you know...because...uh...you know Patton also talked about how he just loves steak...you know and...and
Oswalt: Yeah...
Bird: The weird thing is is I didn't really grok that Patton was a foody that was just one of many routines I...
Oswalt: Did you just say grok?--He just said...
Bird: --Grok. Yeah that's a Steve Jobs word by the way.
Oswalt: You call me a nerd and you said grok?
Gross: It precedes...
Bird: Hey that's a Steve Jobs word and I learned it from Steve Jobs
Gross: It precedes Steve Jobs. Isn't that...isn't that from like from Vonnegut or something? Is it...
Oswalt: I think it's Heinlein.
Bird: I don't know. Steve used it and...
Gross: No...oh it's Heinlein...Heinlein. Robert Heinlein. Yeah.
Oswalt: Oh I just nerded-out again.
Bird: [whiny voice]You out-nerded me. yes...
Oswalt: [whiny voice] It's Heinlein not Vonnegut. Excuse me. No uh...you're wrong.
Bird: [whinier voice] Yes...isn't that Lovecraft? [normal voice] ...yeah. No I actually heard that from Steve Jobs. So...yeah. OK so Steve uses that word.
Oswalt: Oh. OK. Good.
Listen to the podcast. It's hilarious. Some observations:
Penultimate) It's a fun little bit of light antedating. They go back to and settle on the accepted origin of the word in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Interesting that along the way Bird first appeals to Jobs as a reliable legitimizer of the word. As if he's not powerful enough. It's all done tongue in cheek. Good times.
This is a good laugh they have at the expense of the cool reputation lexicographical linguists have been working to establish. (For more thoughts on "lexicographical" and nerdiness see Erin McKean.) Even amongst linguists antedating is getting a little geeky. Just take a look at some of the recent ADS-L discussion.
Ultimate) I didn't mistakenly transcribe an extra is. Bird uses an ISIS formation early in this segment.
This topic came up today in my practicum for teaching intro linguistics. Subtitles convey more than just a simple ongoing transcript of a spoken text. The decision for or against using subtitles carries with it the implication that some accents and pronunciation patterns are more or less likely to be understood by some viewers. But for which viewers are the subtitles intended?
I habitually set the television to display subtitles. No matter what's on. So I often wonder how newscasts documentaries and telezine programs (60 Minutes, 48 Hours, Dateline, Frontline...) rationalize their alternating subtitling choices. I've seen several episodes in which it's clear that the choice involves a lot more than pure phonetics and phonology.
Recognizing the implicit claims made regarding standard forms and mainstream usage helps to identify what lines the editors feel deserve attention. And which viewers are valued/catered to.
Mark Liberman at Language Log recently posted some thoughts about minimalist political slogans. Considering some slogans from both British and the American campaigns he notes that they conspicuously sparse and occasionally unintelligible.
He gathers all the slogans he can find for the Republican and Democratic candidates and concludes that "Among the 9 slogans in both parties, there is not a single verb (leaving out the quasi-adjectival participle forms proven and experienced)." But this conclusion overlooks one unlikely play on words and another that's more likely to be intended--tho I wouldn't argue the point beyond the felicitous possibility.
John McCain's campaign slogan:
Some of the most offensive jokes I know use an implied spoonerism as the punchline. Certain answers to the question 'What's the different between X and Y' easily evoke the same phrase with some inverted onsets. Especially when the words in the punchline aren't too common or are similar to conspicuously offensive words.
And the relative frequency of spoonerisms as a speech error is good evidence that word sounds are organised in a manner that makes onset inversion one of the easier switches.
But similar sounds can easily invert even if one an onset and the other is a coda. Even if the syllable onset is word internal.
In the office the other day Ed our renaissance scholar was admitting the daunting task of submitting writing to our esteemed professors. One professor--last name Ross--is known for speaking his mind and not suffering foolishness. "I definitely feel the presure...pressure with Ross. I do feel the presure."
Buffy looked over at me. I looked up at her. "You're going into his blog" she announced to Ed.
I've chosen "presure" to represent his pronunciation with the alveolar [s] instead of the postalveolar fricative [ʃ]. I was sad to hear that he didn't actually flip the [s] and [ʃ]. He caught himself before he completed the phrase--corrected the pronunciation of pressure--and proceeded to say "Ross" instead of "Rosh" as I was hoping to hear.
But when I told him that he paused and suggested that he might have in fact said "Rosh."
"No" I assured him. "I was hoping you would."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. I was disappointed when I heard you pronounce the [s]."
But he did offer another interesting error. When he repeated pressure it flipped back to the alveolar fricative.
That leads me to the following mysteries:
It's not clear that the first [s] was a result of switched segments. He corrected himself and perhaps it was regressive assimilation (over a long distance) from the [s] in Ross. Maybe he was never going to say Rosh. That's not as fun.
The [s] in the last performance of pressure didn't precede an occurrence of Ross--so progressive assimilation from the already pronounced "Ross" is likely. But it's more exciting to think that it was a partially realized inversion--the other half of which was never going to be pronounced. If so then even tho the second "Ross" wasn't going to make it to performance it was still part of the organization and structure of his sentence. And we saw its ghost by the appearance of the coda [s] in the 2nd syllable onset when he said "presure" [pɻɛsɹ̩ ] instead of "pressure" [pɻɛʃɹ̩ ].
An inversion through phonemic haunting perhaps?
I'm not sure I want to write this post. Ben Zimmer's study of (and commentary on) language is impressive reasonable thorough precise entertaining and...good.
And he has been kind enough to leave a few comments here. For all--our thanks. So I don't want to protest too much.
In his wholly reliable style he recently posted over at Language Log about Victor Washington's case against the NFL. Washington seeks fuller retirement benefits because of his injuries. The NFL doesn't want to pay out so much. Washington's plan offered higher benefits if he suffered "a football injury" and the NFL is sticking to the argument that his several injuries don't entitle him to "Level 1" benefits. (Follow this link to read the story.)
The sentence that caught my attention was the following observation by Zimmer regarding arbitrator Sam Kagel's use of "a" instead of "an" in the phrase "a injury."
"The legal emphasis on the word a would apparently be lost if it underwent the regular addition of the epenthetic consonant /n/ to create an before a word beginning with a vowel like injury."
His suggestion makes sense regarding the rhetoric. I'll buy it. I'm not sure about his analysis of the a/an alternation as epenthesis: the /n/ being an additional letter. It is additional if we say the underlying form of the article is a. But historically the form was an which was realized as a before most consonants. In that case "an" alternates with "a" by deletion of the /n/ coda. So at most this is a pure technicality.
But let's say that for the sake of a clear point Zimmer is using the wording of the retirement/disability plan as the underlying form. Since the plan uses the phrase "a football injury" we'll say our input is "a"; and from that form to its reflex in the phrase "a(n) injury" we would expect that /n/ would be added because the new phrase places the article before [i] instead of [f]. But I'm still not sure I'd call it epenthesis in that case.
And I'm not sure that I wouldn't.
I've started collecting the writings of powerful prescriptivists. Many are familiar. Some are new to me. But among the opinions of both familiar and new writers I keep finding surprising claims that leave me shaking my head.
Many of their arguments are effective. I would have hailed and lauded them several years ago. Then I started to study language and I found many of my ideas foolish. But I don't think I would have ever agreed with something like this statement that Mark Halpern (one of the recurring voices) makes in a footnote to one of his pieces.
Those of us who regard the patois of the Black ghetto as inferior do so not because we think it lacks "internal logic"-if it did, it could not serve as a medium of communication at all-but because it demonstrably lacks the means of expressing many ideas and shades of meaning that standard English possesses.
If prescriptivists were racists, we would want to perpetuate the disadvantages of Blacks, not remove them; cultural elitists we may be, but elitists who want others to share our lofty status.
Flat out acceptance of emerging variant forms is always a little tricky. My last post contained the line (regarding the spelling of vocal chord): "What makes it acceptable? Well ... the fact that it's accepted" and I knew right away it was too broad a statement. Too broad for me even. Perhaps my follow-up line "Sometimes linguistics is just that simple" unfairly overshadowed the fuller claim that there are always complicating issues and linguistically relevant inquiries involved in the discussion of spelling and semantic change.
Nancy Friedman rightly notes:
But teaching, writing, editing, and proofreading are not "that simple." Those of us who ply those trades can't afford to be descriptivists. We need guidelines.
Today was National Dictionary Day. And on ABC news Ben Zimmer was given a chance to agree on national television that vocal c-h-o-r-d is an acceptable spelling.
What makes it acceptable? Well...the fact that it's accepted. Sometimes linguistics is just that simple.
Recently on another blog I read a comment offering a few typical observations and almost interesting comparisons of online networks. Then the commenter alerted the post writer to a spelling error with the following admission: "It's actually the reason I'm writing this now."
It's a shame to see a conversation about interesting ideas turns into a prosaic editing session. And the spelling error in this case is actually an interesting example of a reduplicative coda. The spelling of smorgasbord as smorgasborg is relatively common. Below I list the Google™ hit results for "smorgasbord" and several misspellingssmorgasbord----1,770,000
smorgasborg----40,500
smorgesbord----2,090
smorgasbrod----652
smorgosbord----619
smorgisborg----439
smorgusbord----209
smorgisbord----194
smorgasbort----165
smoorgasbord---64
smorgasbore----6
smorgasborn----3
The 4th spelling above is even attested in the OED as an erroneous spelling--reasonably related to smørrebrød/smørbrød/smorbrodt: Danish and Norwegian for a type of sandwich.
Does the g occur more commonly or naturally as a coda? Certainly -org would not be more common than -ord -ort -orn or -ork. Tho I'm not going to take the time to count right now. The -g spelling even gets almost 40 times as many hits as the pretty obvious and completely homophonous spelling pun smorgasbored. And if a 'fingerslip' typo is at work here a much more common spelling string like -ore would probably show up more than just 6 times. There's even a January 1964 review in Time Magazine the 1963 film The Prize with the headline/title Smorgasbore (less than enthusiastic).
I'll go so far as to say that it isn't really a typo. I've heard this as a pronunciation as well and this pattern in the orthography looks like a reflection of the pattern in the phonology.
An interesting result: schmorgasborg gets 2,210 hits--more than schmorgasbord which gets 1630; and shmorgasborg (522) gets almost as many as shmorgasbord (682).
Is it contamination by the cybernetic organism⇒ cyborg ⇒ borg compression? Not likely.
The best explanation seems to be an echo in the final syllable.
There's some unevenness here.
On one end of the scale: I've been posting on here for almost 2 and a half years. I have a handful of kind readers and a pinch of occasional commenters. I get a lot of accidental browsers and few searchers who are asking a questions that I have specifically set out to answer--I've put up more than 200 posts. The highest comment total on a single post: 12.
On the other end of the scale: Stephen Fry has been posting for just under a month. Highest comment total on a single post: 292 (the other post has 278). He has posted twice.
Of course he has earned the attention with his fine contributions to acting and writing. Tho I'm not sure I can appreciate his recent contribution to writing: He calls his lengthy blog essays blessays.
I wonder if he's purposely going for the effect introduced by 'bless' showing up in the portmanteau. And I'm not sure why he doesn't just go with "post" or "entry"--the subject of my recent "postry". (That's probably worse than "blessay" but it's so close to the Spanish word for dessert that I'm keeping it.)
And what about "blisquisitions"? Bliss + inquisitions?
But his writing is good enough to support these slightly (and only possibly) presumptuous connotations.
Appropriately--his second post is all about being famous. At least he's qualified.
(via The Greenbelt)
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