Textual perversion

One topic on Talk of the Nation today was David Crystal's study of texting and its effect(?) on language. Not surprisingly Crystal isn't too concerned. Rational study tends to give you that comfort.

A friend let me know about the show just in time for me to listen.

His text message was telling.

Talk of the Nation on NPR now debating about whether texting corrupts the language with a linguist. Is that an ambiguous construction? Im driving.

See how texting licensed the deletion of a copula verb in that first sentence? And as if that's not bad enough he then leaves out an apostrophe in Im driving! This is what texting is doing to us, people. This guy's a professor and he can't even write complete Standard English sentences with pristine punctuation. And while he takes the time to wonder if his construction is ambiguous he doesn't bother to go back and disambiguate his meaning with a careful rewrite. Oh how our standards have fallen.

Have red pen. Will travel. (part II)

But that first post was all about ambiguous structure and interpretation. The argument isn't about values and beliefs. What happens when I look at those.

OK. But this is just for fun. Like the TEAL folks, I'm neither looking to blame, nor chastise. (Actually I do chastise a little at the end.)

Issue 1:
On their about page the cruising copyeditors call these typos vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language. I disagree. This language is not delicate -- nor is its fabric. There is no danger here. The language is extremely resilient and relatively stable. And I don't think that typos are vile -- but I really don't care about overstatement.

Issue 2:
On the same page is the following claim: But slowly the once-unassailable foundations of spelling are crumbling. Once-unassailable? Are they serious? Written English has never been free of typos. No written language is. And anyone who has studied the stew-pot era of Middle English has to realize that we've moved towards uniformity not away from it.

Sub-issue 2.1: We believe that only through working together with vigilance and a love of correctness can we achieve the beauty of a typo-free society. It ain't gonna happen. And I happen to like what errors can tell us about the representation of language in the mind.

OK. So I disagree with some details in their statement of purpose. No big deal. But here's a statement I can't forgive -- Deck tells the story of a menu that listed corn beef instead of corned beef. They were going to fix it but on checking his Random House unabridged dictionary he found the alternate form listed. Perhaps, he worries, this is an example of a dictionary being too permissive. Permissive? What are dictionaries supposed to permit? No Mr Deck. This is an example of a dictionary accurately reporting the words people use. What else do you want a dictionary to do?

See Grant Barrett's advice on a dictionary purchase. Nowhere is there a suggestion that you buy a picky dictionary. The best dictionaries will push your boundaries. In all directions.

Think about it -- if dictionaries didn't report usage accurately, where would you go to find out what an unknown word means? Do you really want a dictionary constantly throwing up its hands and saying Sorry -- I don't want to tell you about that word because it's not how my favourite group speaks? We don't need dictionaries to tell us what we already know and to confirm the usage that we are already accustomed too. And how arrogant it is to think that the usage of certain groups doesn't deserve to be represented in a full description of the language. Dictionaries are best when they strive to present a body of the language broader than that which any individual already grasps. Or what's the OED for?

Thou cut'st my tongue off with a golden axe

Every year someone up at Lake Superior State University releases a list of banished words and phrases.

The write-up of the list's history makes it clear that the list is "tongue-in-cheek" and it was all part of "a publicity ploy" for the little school up north. I have no problem with the fact that the PR department puts out the list. They're just as entitled to silly ideas about language as anyone.

Do I have problems with the list? Well the language won't be any better if people 'obey' the ban. And it doesn't really give any good advice to improve writing -- other than the typical 'avoid clichés' advice. And there are some words and phrases on the list that have lost some of the "pop" (banned) they once had. And there are plenty of words and phrases that I'm less likely to use because they just aren't my style. I might think they're trendy or cutesy such as "webinar" or maybe I just don't know how to use a phrase like "it is what it is" meaningfully. But sometimes words start to pop in other directions and some new and clever terms start to work without the trendy baggage. You should hear what people used to say about that awful word, movie.

So why do the LSSU PR folks think they need to stop new words from entering common use? "Webinar" isn't there yet but it might make it. I resisted blog for a while because it seemed too 'nickname-y'. But the word has lost some of its hip tone (to my ear) and now I hear it as a pretty direct and clearly defined word. I guess after several years I can say about the word blog "it is what it is." See! language changes and so do its users. Yay! And if web seminars become a common enough forum they might just take the obvious sobriquet. Scott Lassiter grumbles "Yet another non-word trying to worm its way into the English language due to the Internet." Listen Scott: they all start off as non-words. Even Internet.

The peevologists' arguments are mostly as weak and old as we would expect. And there are occasional hints at language rage too -- "Banish it before I go vigilante" says the feisty Ben Martin from Adelaide, South Australia about the changing meaning of "random". Some more this year's proscriptions:

• PERFECT STORM – “Overused by the pundits on evening TV shows to mean just about any coincidence.” – Lynn Allen, Warren, Michigan.

The meaning as I have seen it used adds an important sense of the coincidence of several necessary factors to bring about a specific and rare result. It works quickly to a specific intention.

• WATERBOARDING

The technique is horrible. And I'd like to ban it from the sanctioned interrogation tactics. But what's wrong with the word? I just don't get this one. Do they simply want people to stop talking about the technique or do they want every speaker to have to go through a description of the repeated and sustained submersion of subjects instead of using the single well-known word?

• WORDSMITH/WORDSMITHING – “I’ve never read anything created by a wordsmith - or via wordsmithing - that was pleasant to read.” – Emily Kissane, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Yeah! And all those damned silversmiths and goldsmiths and gunsmiths and locksmiths that always ruin their work too. If only we'd stopped the word!

• AUTHOR/AUTHORED – “In one of former TV commentator Edwin Newman’s books, he wonders if it would be correct to say that someone ‘paintered’ a picture?” – Dorothy Betzweiser, Cincinnati, Ohio.

What's next? No one can pilot a plain or proctor an exam or police our use of language?

• SURGE – “‘Surge’ has become a reference to a military build-up. Give me the old days, when it referenced storms and electrical power.” – Michael F. Raczko, Swanton, Ohio.
  
  “Do I even have to say it? I can’t be the first one to nominate it…put me in line. From Iraq to Wall Street to the weather forecast – ’surge’ really ought to recede.” – Mike Lara, Colorado.
  
  “This word came out in the context of increasing the number of troops in Iraq. Can be used to explain the expansion of many things (I have a surge in my waist) and it’s use will grow out of control…The new Chevy Surge, just experience the roominess!” – Eric McMillan, Mentor, Ohio.

I don't understand if these people are against the widening or the narrowing or just the phonetics of the word. All silly peeves.

• BACK IN THE DAY – “Back in the day, we used ‘back-in-the-day’ to mean something really historical. Now you hear ridiculous statements such as ‘Back in the day, people used Blackberries without Blue Tooth.’” – Liz Jameson, Tallahassee, Florida.

Next year will feature the horrible misuse of "Oh yeah. That reminds me" when you mean to indicate that you just remembered something.

• RANDOM – Popular with teenagers in many places.
  “Over-used and usually out of context, i.e. ‘You are so random!’ Really? Random is supposed to mean ‘by chance.’ So what I said was by chance, and not by choice?” – Gabriel Brandel, Farmington Hills, Michigan.
  

It's not "out of context" just because it's a context that you don't like. And do you also hate that odd was a numerical designation and it referred to a remainder but now it means 'strange' or 'weird'? And do you hate that 'weird' meant 'supernatural' or 'magical' and is it further frustrating that that adjective was the attributive use of the noun from OE wyrd meaning 'fate' or 'destiny'? You must hate this language.

• SWEET – “Youth lingo overuse, similar to ‘awesome.’ I became sick of this one immediately.” – Gordon Johnson, Minneapolis, Minnesota

The list is a little late on this one. Waye Braver of Manistique, Michigan claims that this "became popular with the advent of the television show ‘South Park’" but I remember it was already huge by 1983 when I moved from Maryland to Michigan. I picked up the use and when I went back to visit some friends in MD and I used 'sweet' meaning 'cool' or 'awesome' they all laughed at me. But they were 5th graders and such intolerance made sense from their limited little minds.

And how about this? A snowclone made the list. ‘BLANK’ is the new ‘BLANK’ or ‘X’ is the new ‘Y’ has been banned.

[See the comments where Waye reminds me that he didn't say the show created the phrase -- just that it popularized it. There is some validity to this distinction and I have responded in a comment to the sense in which I see the distinction. He also provides the correct spelling of his name. LSSU dubs him "Wayne" but his name is Waye.]

(hat tip to DL at Sycamore Review)
_

WWMCD

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.

The discussion of usage will responsibly call attention to the important difference between a mistake and a variant form. And variant forms may or may not belong to different registers. And those forms that belong to different registers can be either conspicuous or inconspicuous. And of course we can investigate to which groups they are and are not conspicuous.

So writing guituar instead of guitar is pretty clearly an error. There may be a jocular or purposeful use of the extra 'u' but I would bet that most people that choose to include it know that it should be recognized as a mistake. And it's not that common anyway. It gets fewer Google™ hits than a lot of other likely mistakes.

And writing kewl instead of cool is rarely a mistake but it is probably a purposeful use of a nonstandard spelling convention meant to capture a pronunciation. Those who use the spelling probably intend it to be noticed but they probably don't intent to appear unaware of the standard spelling, nor do they intend to appear to be pretending to be unaware of the standard.

By the time we get to cord and chord it's hard to know what awareness there is of the standards. Friedman asks in her post "[Does] Michael Covarrubias write vocal chords and free reign?" There's a wonderful nuance to her point with this question. I have spoken flatly and openly about descriptivism as a necessary approach to language analysis but what changes when I move over to language use?

Now I may be somewhat of a smartass with a lot of my writing. I knowingly write 'tho' instead of 'though'--I avoid commas as much as possible (which really frustrates Buffy)--I often switch back and forth between -or and -our in words like colo(u)r hono(u)r humo(u)r--I'll put metre and center into the same sentence and 4 pages later I'll use meter and centre if I can fit them in.

I don't know if Friedman remembers but a few weeks ago she noticed that in a post I had written "vocal chords" when reporting a Jeopardy! clue. She asked if the spellings were now "interchangeable" and I had to admit that I added the 'h' unwittingly. So I changed the spelling to "cord". And I will right now admit that I'm splitting hairs when I argue that even tho the spellings occur with almost identical frequency they are not truly interchangeable. There are people who notice the difference. There is a historical emergence of one form. There is an incongruity between the use of 'cord' as the conventional spelling for a cable or rope or rope-like structure comprising several strands, and the use of 'chord' when that type of structure is described as part of the vocal apparatus in humans. I've long been aware of that incongruity and yet I overlooked it when I chose the latter while writing the post in September.

When Friedman called it to my attention I called it a typo and I changed it. And now the fine folks at OUP have chosen to report and represent the equal occurrence of the two spellings. Will I go ahead and leave the 'h' in there when I notice it before publication? Probably not unless I'm talking specifically about the spelling.

It's not fair to say that I don't judge differences in usage. Let's agree for the sake of my current point that judgment does not equal derision. By being aware of forms there is some judgment going on. I'm certainly not impartial to variations in pronunciation and usage. There are many phenomena of language production that fascinate me and which I admire. Every language and dialect has some impressive phonotactic features and constraints. Whenever I hear about or learn a new one I judge it and then appreciate that the differences exist. That doesn't mean that I consider one language or feature or dialect or phoneme or construction a superior form.

But I also know that choices and variations in spelling, pronunciation, syntax, semantics, volume or font size communicate various things to various groups. So I do have to judge the ability of any word, phrase or passage to communicate what I hope to say.

Friedman asks an important question. "[I]f we can't find [the guidelines] in respected dictionaries, where shall we turn?" A good dictionary that earns your trust by giving as much relevant and reasonable information as possible is a treasure. Find a dictionary that lists variant forms along with information about each form including which is an emerging and which is traditional. Such a dictionary will also include information regarding register and common regard.

And of course there are also style guides. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage may share its view that dichotomy is overused and bifurcation is preferred while most of my favorite dictionaries don't see that as their business. And the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook have interests in affecting usage that Merriam-Webster doesn't have. Style guides are concerned with the language choices made by writers over whom they preside.

A good dictionary is having too much fun trying to figure out what is happening to spend too much time arguing about what should be happening.

Gobbling up the competition

After Tiger Woods won the Bridgestone Invitational by margin of 8 strokes the announcer proclaimed that Woods had "lapped the field." (Yes. I know this was about two weeks ago.) Here's a metaphor that is continuing to move away from its original meaning.

Of course Tiger didn't run one complete extra lap and pass the competition from behind before the race was over. There's really no way for that to happen in golf. But he did beat them easily. Very easily.

What would be a golf analogy to lapping the field? Completing 4 rounds in the same number of strokes that the 2nd place player does 3? That's not going to happen on the PGA. Doing 72 holes in the same number of strokes as the 2nd place player does 71? Close but it's a little too easy. According to the tournament announcer lapping the field is doing 72 holes in the same number of strokes as the 2nd place player does 70. That's about 8 strokes.

I see on the fuzzy horizon a possible shift in the metaphor. Not just a generalization to a sense of winning decisively; I see a new metaphor promising to emerge. If Tiger does this enough we'll start to see some puns on 'lap' becoming more common. 'Lap' will be connected to the way a cat drinks milk from a bowl and 'lap the field' will work as metaphor alongside 'lick' -- tho lick in the context of victory doesn't seem as common as it use to be and the whole thing is actually pretty unlikely. And would it count as an eggcorn if the sound is exactly the same? I think misinterpretations don't count.

The best laid grammars...

Stop that vowel shift! Kill that r-r-r-regionalism!


Around 1:30 into the following clip (~5:50 in the countdown) Martin dreams about being "wondrous wizard of Latin" "a dervish of declension" and a "conjurer of conjugation."

I've heard Buffy mumbling this in her sleep a few times.



Around 1:52 (~5:30 countdown) Groundskeeper Willie says "You've mastered a dead tongue. But can you handle a live one?" I say this question is key to understanding the fears of peevologists/language mavens/grammar police. "We have to kill that language before it spins out of control and strangles us!"

How's this? Peevologists are like George Milton and language is their Lenny. Or is language the little mouse and dialects are Lenny? Or are peevologists Steinbeck and linguists are Lenny and high school English teachers are George? or...

Suggestions?

It's, like, a breath of fresh air

This is just to balance my grumbling from last week. William Safire is still on vacation from his column so this week Patricia T. O'Conner takes the helm. She nicely avoids the icebergs that Safire usually broadsides.

1. She defends a new usage instead of calling language change a degeneration. She writes

   O.K., the new like is hot and it’s useful, but is it legit? Aren’t some rules of grammar or usage being broken here?
   
   Linguists and lexicographers say no. It’s natural, they say, for words to take on new roles. In this case, a "content word" (one that means something) has become a "function word" (one that has a grammatical function but little actual meaning). Academics call the process "grammaticalization." It’s one of the ways language changes.

   
   and she doesn't pull a muscle arguing against the point. Brava.


2. She makes an important distinction between different registers and grammar.


3. She talks to several linguists (Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain Geoffrey Pullum Arnold Zwicky) and gives their observations plenty of attention treating us to extended quotes. Most of the quotations sound characteristic of their rational reasoning.


4. She sagely suggests that most people who complain about usage probably rely on many of the forms they deride.

Towards the end of her piece she identifies parents as the most grumpy prescriptivists. I'll leave you with some of her best thoughts.

Another unfounded assumption about like is that it’s used by the less educated among us. ... I’ve always believed that young people are capable of knowing when to use formal versus informal, written versus spoken English. ... A word to parents: Loosen up.

Got change for that?

I love language change. Several years ago when I was a young and rabid prescriptivist I had some idea in my head that language could not achieve beauty if it didn't sit still long enough to be crafted by the lingual artisans. I really believed that.

Now I get all flustered and excited when I notice a new trend or a construction that doesn't work "logically" but starts taking over speech. I start hoping for quicker change. For new developments. For the same reason that geneticists rely on the mayfly for its short lifespan I yearn to see new generations of language spreading on the petri dish of.../abandoned metaphor/

Explaining change is one of the lovely theoretical areas I hope I can eventually contribute to. There is a wonderful paradox that both Labov and J Milroy examine: If language is a tool developed solely for the sake of communication it would logically follow that stability would be one of the fundamental characteristics. But language constantly changes. What's the free radical? Speakers.

So explaining language change must turn to the people who unwittingly allow such change. And what do such changes reveal about the system?

A late chapter in Lyle Campbell's Historical Linguistics text offers up some of the early theories for language change. The ideas are hilarious. And yet I can imagine some language prudes even today offering up suggestions like these.

Climatic or geographical determinism

In 1900 Harry Sweet wrote that the change from [a:] to [o] in northern European languages (such as Old English) was "doubtless the result of unwillingness to open the mouth widely in the chilly and foggy air of the North."

Nevermind that in England it was the Northumbrian dialect that resisted the rounding of [a:].

'Racial' and anatomical determination

There were unsubstantiated claims that Grimm's Law (*p>f *t>θ *k>h *b>p *d>t *g>k etc) was a result of wax plugging the ears of the Germanic tribes.

"Hey I told you each to pillage and prepare the garrottes"
"Oh we thought you said eat our fill of the free fare and carrots"

Barbarians indeed

Etiquette, social conventions and cultural traits

Wilhelm Wundt claimed that in Iroquoian etiquette is was rude to close ones mouth while speaking. He then used that fact to explain why Iroquoian languages have no labial consonants. What was his evidence that it was rude? Well the absence of labials in the languages of course.

Indolence

Young people don't care enough and are ruining our beautiful language! They're lazy lazy speakers.

Thank goodness such silly ideas are no longer thrown around so glibly.

Semantic tectonics

The commentary from a recent post alights on some very basic (but always interesting) historical linguistics topics.

Textbooks are always sure to provide a list of traditional semantic changes including amelioration and pejoration, and common examples such as knave churl hussy nice...etc. The following list gives some loose examples of amelioration but it's not exactly the type of elevating shift that is intended by the term.

bad sick fierce mad wicked ridiculous crazy insane terrific awesome

Rather than having shifted meaning by undergoing simple amelioration the first eight of these are a type of contranym (or autoantonym, or "janus word" or several other rarely necessary words that few dictionaries list). But those labels usually indicate a word like cleave or peruse that is equally likely to have contradictory meanings without consideration of style or register while the first eight words above typically have clear meanings based on the context. Consider the following pairs of uses:

She is a bad mother.
She's one bad mother!

Trying that stunt was ridiculous.
Dude that 360 nac-nac was ridiculous!

In formal speech the 2nd meaning would be very odd for each word. Like ridiculous in slang usage crazy and insane don't simply mean extremely good. They have a connotation of impressiveness and "hard-to-believability" (that was awkward).

Terrific and awesome are good examples of a complete semantic shift, having abandoned an earlier meaning. Awesome has the interesting tie to awful which has kept its negative meaning. We can trace awe back to OE ege and its cognate in ON agi: fear and terror.

Amelioration and elevation don't quite capture the force on these words. There is an inversion that isn't explained by simple lenition of the semantic force. In fact there is no lenition at all, but an equally forced reversal; there is no significant loss or gain of neutrality in these words.

The common theory that a word must go through polysemy in order to acquire new meanings is probably quite relevant here. For a word like terrific there was clearly a time when the more specific meaning "causing fear" generalized to include other emotions before moving over and settling on "worthy of praise." But what generalization and polysemy was there with bad? In some of these words like insane and mad there is that space where they are used to concurrently indicate positive attributes like bravery and daring while also indicating a lack of good judgment.

How about "that's sick"? Maybe something like "It's sick that anyone should be so talented. I'm jealous of your skill." Wicked? Perhaps an intention like "You must have connections to darker powers to be so successful." Both of these jocular in use. But there always a little truth in any good jest no?

And bad might follow right along with that but with a more basic sense of the fascination we have for those people who break rules and show no fear or remorse. In fact the OED suggests in its very recent draft addition the meaning of "dangerous, menacing, or imposing to a degree which inspires awe or admiration; impressively tough, uncompromising, or combative."

Considering all this we go back to a word like comprise, which when considered alongside a word like apprise is evidence that the mental representation of a word's semantics is much more broad than just to include the intention. Somewhere in that encyclopedic matrix of 'what this word means' is an awareness of what the word does not mean and a sense of the word's opposites and even complements. So when called up, a word like start brings with it a role of opposite of stop. That's pretty clear. What I find fascinating is that the understanding and use of a word like gather comprises not only disperse but also be gathered. And a word like learn travels with be taught and forget and teach in its pocket. These words must have such pockets. Otherwise it'd be hard to understand why we are always finding new meanings in there.

That'll learn ya

Buffy just finished reading a book that her former professor and now friend Chris Blake wrote. Along with the occasional bursts of laughter (because he's quite funny) and the frequent pauses to discuss and investigate his claims (because he's quite provocative) she also pointed out a few mistakes (because he's quite human). There were very few -- such editing oversights as giving a character two different names and giving a quote two different speakers.

Buffy is a close reader. I flinch every time she looks at my writing. She follows arguments well and she catches all inconsistencies. And she remembers from several years ago Blake enlightening his students by informing them that nauseous (causing nausea) is commonly misused when the speaker means nauseated (feeling nausea); and that comprised of is misused when the speaker means composed of.

So there on page 82 of his book Buffy found that her mentor wrote

and the human sanctuaries that comprise the church are free to wonder and probe without fear

A stumble she figured. Surely he remembers his old rule. Then on page 92:

It was a test comprised of one hundred problems

Blake is a fine writer and editor. He uses words knowingly and he expresses himself clearly. And I'm not going to say anything critical about his use of the word comprise in these sentences. When Buffy shook her head on reading them I asked her to temper her distaste. There were certainly other instances of Blake's writing that deserved a some teasing.¹

I will however take issue with his lesson to the students. Perhaps he will temper the very advice he has shown he doesn't always heed.

Here's the usual argument regarding this word: To comprise means to bring together or collect. So a house comprises thousands of bricks. A mall comprises many smaller stores. And a university comprises several schools/colleges. Ergo! (those pedants like to say as much as they can in Latin) it is incorrect to say that a burrito is comprised of lettuce tomatoes beans cheese etc. It is incorrect to say that 88 keys comprise a full piano keyboard. And it is doubly incorrect to say that this nation is comprised of 48 states.

Before I address the fluidity of language I should note that the etymology of the word does go back to a meaning of collecting and gathering. And if we look carefully we find that the word merges with comprehend. According to the OED the -prise ending was probably formed by analogy with several other English words such as enterprise -- the verb derived from the formally identical noun.

To put it simply: nouns that ended in -prendre showed a pattern of becoming verbs ending in -prise. Some verbs ending in -prendre followed suit.

Now some will wail and moan and argue still that comprised of meaning made up of is a recent misunderstanding and misappropriation of the word. That it's a flat mistake: the wrong meaning. This argument will often go to such horrific worst case scenarios as "what if up starts to mean down?" They argue that words so arbitrarily linked to meanings will eventually become meaningless.

Point 1) The very fact that they know a word is being used incorrectly means that the intended meaning is clear. If I say "Two cups comprise a pint" or "I listened to a choir comprised of 32 singers" the meaning of the word is clear. Not arbitrary. We are allowed to use context.

Second point) It's not a recent trend. The OED entry includes the meaning "To constitute, make up, compose" and provides citations as early as 1794. Nine citations are included for this meaning: more quotations than are given for any other use. The passive use meaning "To be composed of, to consist of" gets four citations of its own. The earliest included is from 1874.

Meanings change. And it's mere convention that determines which meanings connect to which forms. This is not to say that those conventions don't serve a purpose. My point is simply that when the currents of language create the occasional polysemy and the occasional complete shift it is not a deterioration. It is merely evidence that language is of the people for the people and yes by the people.

And scoff as you might I'll bet you are okay with this (I now address the skeptics). Let's take a look at the history of apprise. The -prise ending is also derived (by analogy) from a form ending in -prendre. That early form of the word (from the French) had the meaning to grasp or understand. We still have that meaning preserved in the familiar form apprehend. And apprise once had the same meaning. But it went through a very reasonable shift and came to mean inform teach or enlighten.

Where's all the complaining about that shift in meaning?

-----------------------

Take a look at his Union College profile page (link above) and note his use of aerobie as a mass noun. It's like he thinks it's a real sport or something. (This may be related to the aggrandizing effect of mass nouns that I've mentioned before.) Now I agree that "throwing aerobies" sounds like a juggling act. Couldn't he just say "throwing around the ol' aerobie"? Yeah. That sounds more like fun and less like a sanctioned and organized activity.

Standards of linguistic inquiry

The little red-penned devil won't leave me alone. And sometimes it's worse than the tired and baffling arguments against split infinitives and final prepositions. I'm am learning to leave those behind even as style issues. But I'm ashamed to say that sometimes even phonology trips me up.

In a recent ADS-L message thread a contributor offered examples of what he classified as "an attempt at speech sophistication." He claimed this was what was happening when "the adolescent girl (and occasional guy) characteristically distorts the vowel sounds."

I had no idea what further claim he was going to make so I offered a couple of media examples of vowel backing that might be part of the same "attempt." We were immediately pounced upon by learned linguists who called these characterizations "strange" warned against "psychoanalyzing".

It was a fair assessment considering the large amount of recent and well-known research on some of the vowel alternations mentioned. Just look for Northern Cities Shift and you'll find it.

I stepped down from my claim, did a little searching and found that at least one of the speakers I mentioned was raised in a region that would be expected to show the vowel change. Oops.

Why are claims like "she's trying to sound smart" or "he's trying to sound fancy" so vigilantly shot down? Because linguistics has established a method of conclusions based on measurable and observable data. There is certainly theory involved but that theory addresses the data that has been collected and its relevance. Good theory does not seek to introduce new unobserved data or suggestions of possible factors that could explain the collected facts. Good theory may argue about organization and interpretation, but it doesn't add unaccounted-for variables into an equation.

Consider the following skeleton:

- Some people say [Q].
- Who says [Q]?
- In what phonological environment do some people say [Q]?
- Now we know that [people$] say Q when it falls between [x] and [y].
- The phonology of [people$] has undergone change of a type just as we have found in the phonology of every other group of [people] that has ever been studied.


Now imagine that a dolt like me comes in and makes glib comments like "I think [people$] are just trying to..." without any data; without any theory to support the data-less claim. What happens to the value of a field of inquiry if its practitioners do not hold their claims to a higher standard than an impression? "Because that's what I've always thought" is not reliable data.

So this is Halloween too?

Years ago a colleague shared with me his disdain for the "abbreviated" form Xmas for the word Christmas. He doesn't appreciate a spelling that takes "Christ" out of the word. This same concern has become Bill O'Reilly's yearly rant-motive, adopted and amplified by headlines and television reports. The latest focus is on a poll created by Zogby's that claims that people are more offended by the phrase "Happy Holidays" than by the phrase "Merry Christmas." Geoff Nunberg at Language Log posted a nice analysis of the poll to show how its wording and organization has likely contributed to a desired outcome.

Here's my précis of the post: The poll supplies more answers that acknowledge even a slight offense than no offense at all at the phrase "Happy Holidays". The poll loads the questions by implying or claiming a motive for those who use the phrase "Happy Holidays".

Maybe we should start calling them the "H-words". "Holiday" has religious meaning anyway. So there should be no such thing as a government holiday. That's establishmentarian.

Let's take these proto-rhetorical techniques to the extremes to show how they might affect the numbers. Here's a one question poll meant to show how people feel about Merry Christmas -vs- Happy Hol...I mean the H-words.

Q: Which of these statements best describes your opinion?

Possible Answers:

I've been wished a "Merry Christmas" many times and I've never gotten violent when I hear it

There's nothing absolutely evil about saying "Merry Christmas"

I don't get upset when people say "Merry Christmas"

I think saying "Happy Holidays" can sometimes be annoying if the person who says it is only trying to be politically correct and acts superior or snooty

"Merry Christmas" is a traditional greeting and poses not threat to National Security

I don't even always notice when someone says "Merry Christmas"

I think some people who insist on saying "Happy Holidays" can be a tiny bit off-putting

The mere sound of the phrase "Merry Christmas" is offensive and I feel like I have been slapped in the face and spit upon whenever someone says it even if they aren't directing it at me

This poll offers answers that support both "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays".

My guess is that answers that show tolerance for "Merry Christmas" are more likely to be chosen. I would then have to release the findings of my poll with the summary saying "More respondents answered that the phrase Merry Christmas is not at all offensive to them or that Happy Holidays is at least somewhat annoying."

Language history bit:
Typical English vowel changes have led to the pronunciation [ho^wlɪ] from OE hálig. Our pronunciation of holiday has not observed the usual [a:]>[o] change. It has preserved the vowel quality just as northern ME dialects did. This is not likely an effect of a preserved northern pronunciation. In the combined form the vowel retained its pronunciation [halɪdej] even in non-northern ME dialects. There might be several reasons for this--among them is the distinction between holy day with religious denotation and holiday without it. But that's research that I'll have to do later. Right now I'm on holi-... vacation.

Oh yes. Regarding my friend who believes Xmas takes Christ out of Christmas: he's only right as far as the orthography. As I understand his complaint he means that it secularises the day for the sake of a quicker spelling. But the X is probably symbolic of the cross. So the 'X' spelling could serve the pious Christian as a reminder of the birth and significance of the life to follow. Etymology can help us all learn to see past that which at first looks evil. Can I hear an 'amen'? (Or is it 'omen'?)

A Flat Tree Will Get You Nowhere

So Daniel wants to preserve the clarity of some pronunciation distinctions while Buffy would like to support my claims because she loves me and I'm always right.

I'll agree with Buffy. But I'll still address Daniel's issue. It's a fair challenge he poses to my analogy -- as I pose articulation with football.

I bring issue to your analogy. Movement, opening a door, running a football, picking up a saucer, is a personal and individual task. . . . I think speech should be interactive.

And yet we can reconsider the various tenors of the simile and say that in each of those activities there is a goal just as in speech there is the goal of reasonably unimpeded transference of an idea. So now we look at each performance whether in a social setting or in an empty cafe or through a lonely doorway and we again pose the question: "Why would adjustment and continuity be valued in one and derided in another?"

So when we're communicating with another, clarity is important. That awkward [t] might be important when stressing writer or whiter. Yes, there are many ways to effectively communicate, including some "tripping" language, depending on our audience, but efficient speech doesn't mean effective speech.

This is certainly true. The most efficient speech, without regard from the Speaker for the ability of the Hearer to understand, would be something like a *sigh* or an open mouthed "uuhhhh" probably corresponding to exhalation. But this is not what I defend when I use one example from a common American dialect that voices and flaps intervocalic dentals. In that example I defend a particular allophone that is quite clear to all Americans. And lest we say that the flap is at the top of a slippery slope we have to look at the company changes often keep.

American English does elide some sounds. In 'laboratory' many American speakers syncopate the second vowel saying [ˈlæ.brǝ.to.rɪ] while some British dialects would elide the penultimate vowel saying [lǝˈbɔ.rǝ.trɪ]. Any readers who know this to be false about BrE please let me know. This may be my over-eager application of a pre-sonorant/post-schwa elision rule.

If we consider again the words 'rider' and 'writer' we find that the vowel change very ably serves the goal of distinction. So while the purely phonemic underlying form differs only by the voicing of the middle consonant the surface form in AmE differs by vowel quality instead. Here is where I bring back my analogy with a running back. One color commentators will say Man that Emmitt Smith is a hardworking back. Look how he just pushes up the middle and keeps turning his legs when he hits the line and another commentator says But he's nothing like Barry Sanders. Look at how far he runs before he even gets to the line. If they counted lateral yards Sanders would have the rushing record by far! Then the first would argue that Smith did more work by being a receiver as well.

If we consider the pre-sonorant/post-schwa elision rule at work in both BrE and AmE pronunciation of the word 'watery' we see tit-for-tat surface forms. In some BrE dialects 'watery' is pronounced as two syllables because of schwa deletion: [wɔː.trɪ]. Because the schwa will not elide after a flap the AmE surface form remains trisyllabic: [wa.ɾǝ.rɪ]. We find the same comparison of AmE and BrE 'flattery': [flæ.trɪ] & [flæ.ɾǝ.rɪ]. It goes back and forth and becomes an argument about which types of distinctions are the more virtuous to preserve.

There is a larger arbitrating factor. When the allophones and pronunciations in question are part of a dialect (as opposed to an idiolect) the ability of the Hearer to understand is already attested. When a dialect recognizes and favours one distinction we use preposterous logic to say that it is out of consideration for the audience that we discard its phonology.

Okay -- Next time: Buffy's careful efficiency. It's related to this.

Speaking Trippingly

Buffy has a funny habit of pronouncing words both carefully and "efficiently" at the same time (I'll give examples in my next post). I say efficiently because I'm trying to remain neutral on dialectal judgment. One of my professors likes to use the phrase "lazy pronunciation" to describe phonological alternations, but I don't like the implications of "lazy."

Steven Pinker makes an excellent case against the view that speech markers are the result of lazy articulation. In The Language Instinct he first points out that the same people "who are derided for dropping g's in Nothin' Doin' are likely to enunciate the vowels in pó-lice and acci-dént that pointy-headed intellectuals reduce to a neutral "uh" sound" (180).

Add to that the diphthongization of the vowels in "tin can" -- leading the words to become disyllabic instead of monosyllabic -- and how can we call it lazy when some words are pronounced with units that are more marked and others with a greater number of units. Northern [kæn] is more simple than [kæ:jǝn]. So the Southern American accent is doing more work -- quantitatively.

Pinker also makes the argument that assimilative articulation is completely natural. He draws on the analogy that when you reach for a saucer and a coffee cup you grab the edge closest to you and you put your hand in the grasping position before you touch the cup.

Let's look at another example. I'll make the analogy from walking through a door to the post-stress intervocalic voicing in American English [t] > [d,ɾ]. Imagine walking towards a glass door that you know opens by pushing. Imagine further that you are familiar with this door and know that it opens easily without a strong push. When you approach the door you see there is no one on the other side and you put your hand forwards to contact the door and push it aside while your stride continues. In my observation I have seen that even when the door opens towards the "walker" and even when a knob has to turn to unlatch the door there is still often one foot in motion so that the stride of the walker is barely interrupted -- at most it slows just a bit.

Is this continuous movement of the feet evidence of slovenly or slurred motion? Would we say that these people are slaughtering the beauty of graceful and careful walking? On the contrary. By anticipation and adaptation this shows balance and agility. How odd it would look if before every door the walker stopped -- put out a hand -- placed palm against handle -- closed fingers around handle -- pulled door -- stepped through door...etc.

And yet we argue this as the very virtue of a good speaker. When I say "water" with a strict [t] between the vowels I find myself feeling stilted and guilty. That interruption of voice is just as unnecessary as the flat-footed stop in front of a door. In my dialect there is a wonderful allophone corresponding the voiceless and voiced alveolar stop: the alveolar 'tap' or 'flap.' This is not a simple and easy phone. It's a very quick and light lingual articulation. It requires great precision to avoid sounding like the lateral [l] or the voiced fricative usually represented orthographically as 'z' or 'zh'. To argue that this allophone is a product of laziness is like arguing that a running-back is lazy because he runs around a linebacker instead of walking right up to him and trying to push him over.

Oh Give Me a Ham...

Linguistic reconstructionists only look back. It would make little sense to try to predict the form language will take. Language change occurs slowly and too many outside factors will influence its course. Who would have known that in 1066 the Norman Invasion would rattle that island so profoundly - or should we say deeply? And once those foreign boots began to bend the weeds there was no predicting what parts of their strange language would settle in. There was no predicting how politics and geography would cradle the co-bedding with French that would soon take place.

It's a tough task. But we can't call the changes random because we can look back and account for those things that did change - those things that didn't change - and looking back then around we can see many reasonable patterns that prove relevant in more that just our little language.

But I'll not make this that list. Let's give up on predicting for now. (Although I'll say it again: nother will make a comeback from Middle English and once again enter standard usage with a meaning synonymous to different.)

We know from comparing the stages of English from Old to Middle to Present-day (and all that in between) that some vowel and consonant sounds changed predictably. Here are the standard examples of vowel change that many English majors will recognize:

stān > stone
hām > home
scīnan > shine
bed > bed
hūs > house
mūs > mouse
gōd > good
Now we can say etc

Although we can make general claims about which types of words tended to persist from OE and which types tended to be adopted from other languages specifics elude us. We note that a significant kettle-full of words associated with food came from French into Middle English: beef [OFr boef]; poultry [MFr pouleterie little hen]; pork [OFr porc]; venison [OFr veneison]. (The first 3 originally referred to the animals generically. Venison referred to hunting.) And we find that some of the determining forces conflict. For example a language will protect words that are associated with religion. But the religious language that came to the Angles' land alongside (or within) Latin forced a change. So the church that promoted a faith [Anglo Norman fed < Latin fides] in salvation [f Latin salvatus] relied on the power of the Holy [OE hāliġ] Ghost [OE gāst]. Latin introduced religious words - and (Old) English held on to words because of that same religion.

Even when we can say with confidence that it will rain - we still can't say where and when.

Next time - Old English words that I wish were used today.