Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is

Over at the Spectrum blog Ryan Bell recalls a list of spiritual "one-liners" he heard from Jurgen Moltmann. One of the lines confused me:

At the Lord's Table we do not celebrate our theories about his presence, but his presence.

Why did it confuse me? Because I thought the second half of the coordination was leaving out more than it actually was. What?

Most of what we leave out of sentences, we don't think about. The following sentences are examples of ellipsis in coordinated structures—specifically, elliptical forms that are more common than the corresponding spelled-out alternatives:

1a. Are you more likely to eat a peach or an orange?
1b. Are you more likely to eat a peach or are you more likely to eat an orange?

2a. I don't want mushrooms on my pizza, but sausage.
2b. I don't want mushrooms on my pizza, but I want sausage on my pizza.

3a. Don't run across the road; walk.
3b. Don't run across the road; walk across the road.

4a. I want to hit him, but I know I shouldn't.
4b. I want to hit him, but I know I shouldn't hit him.

Tho punctuation and prosody can help disambiguate some structures, there are some structures that just don't lend themselves to a clear understanding. Sentence 3a for instance, would most likely be understood as an imperative telling you to walk across the road. But it could also be understood as two sentences. One telling you to walk. Take a walk. Walk for fun. Just walk. And another sentence telling you not to run across the road.

Consider 2a. Stressing mushrooms and sausage makes the contrast of two toppings most likely. Stress pizza and sausage and it might seem that I want mushrooms on sausage. Odd. A little awkward syntactically. Another possibility: if mushrooms and pizza get similar stress, and sausage gets the primary stress of the entire utterance, it's possible that sausage isn't a topping, but an independent choice.

Imagine a slightly different form. Tho this one makes sausage's independence easier to see, it's still ambiguous:

I don't want mushrooms on my pizza; I want sausage.

Is there there a silent prepositional phrase — on my pizza — following that banger?

Example 4a remains ambiguous. Most likely understood with hit him as the omitted verb phrase, but just as reasonable with want to hit him understood.

I want to hit him, but I know I shouldn't want to hit him.

The one-liner at the top of this post is confusing if we assume the coordinated phrase has omitted more than just the verb phrase we celebrate. As I first understood the sentence it was structured thus:

At the Lord's Table we do not celebrate our theories about his presence, but we celebrate our theories about his presence.

That makes no sense. It contrasts the complement of the preposition with itself. We would expect one complement of a preposition his presence to be replaced with a different complement of the same preposition: say, his kindness. Instead of celebrating theories about his presence they would be celebrating theories about his kindness.

But what Moltmann almost certainly meant is represented by the following structure:
At the Lord's Table we do not celebrate our theories about his presence, but we celebrate his presence.

The important difference here is that no longer is the complement of any preposition contrasted. The prepositional phrase isn't even a part of the omitted phrase. There is ellipsis in this form, but not the ellipsis that my first reading used in interpretation. Instead, a direct object of the verb is coordinated as a contrast to the noun phrase that happens to include it as a prepositional phrase complement. This could be made clear (and very likely was, as this was a spoken line) by stressing the two items being set in opposition: theories and presence.

• We do not celebrate our theories about his presence, but his presence.

That's hard to capture in writing. One strategy would be to specify presence with something that identifies its suggested actuality:

• We do not celebrate our theories about his presence, but his actual presence.

The ambiguity could also be avoided by completely avoiding ellipsis, and writing out a conspicuously—but not awkwardly—overt verb phrase. Actually, I would suggest leaving out the conjunction and using a lovely semicolon:

At the Lord's Table we do not celebrate our theories about his presence; we celebrate his presence.

But I repeat, if spoken, this would probably be clear with the right emphasis on the contrasted segments.

Yes, you can use the word that way.

I kinda hate it when this happens. But I also kinda like it when this happens. Neal Whitman beats me to the punch.

I had been composing (mentally) a similar post on the somewhat anomalous tense and aspect of Joe Wilson's ejaculation: "You lie!"¹ With most other verbs you'd expect the progressive aspect marker auxiliary are and a progressive participle verb with -ing suffix in this context, where the intention is probably something like You are doing this right now.

Wilson could have been implying that this is something Obama does all the time. Much like You drive so slowly! This of course is usually said when the behaviour is currently … being … done. And the utterer is fed up.

But for some reason lie lends itself to this form with the notionally simpler sense of just you are doing this right now or even you have just done this. Other accusatory phrases of disbelief seem to work this way: you kid, you jest and perhaps you don't say (as mentioned by a commenter over at Neal's place.) Stop by over there and share your thoughts.

---

1. But had I been left to myself I likely would have come up with a bloated and meandering post. Nothing like Neal's sharp work.

Going going gone pro

Think English might be a null-subject language?

Could be.

What have you thought about this?

Have I asked you this before?

How do you parse the line: what do you think i'm stupid?

I've always struggled with this question. It could go a few ways.

a. What? Do you think I'm stupid?
b. What do you think? I'm stupid?

And if we throw away the contraction:
c. What do you think I am? Stupid?

If I hear the last option it's pretty clear. It would indeed be rare for someone to say I am unless it's in that final position. And I'm in turn is never sentence final. So we know that with contracted I'm it has to be one of the first two.

Sometimes the speaker uses a pause, making the parsing more apparent. But sometimes there is no pause. And at such times I have no idea which question I'm answering.

I was reminded of this by a collection of musings on the office blackboard today. All the usual punctuation games and one variation on the old joke:

Woman without Herman is like a fish without a bicycle.

[Update: Buffy reports that she's more accustomed to hearing and using the 'c' question—without the contraction. And if it's with a contraction (which she says she therefore wouldn't likely use) she would hear it as a b-question. But when I propose a-type she says it's fine even tho it hadn't occurred to her.]

The structures I care about

I used to write about and teach literature. I read stories and poetry for a living. Why would anyone leave that?

Probably because I'm a fan of New Criticism. That's a problem because the current trends in poststructuralism and New Historicism are boring and they're powerful. So our break-up was mutual.

Where does a marooned formalist go? Why to linguistics of course.

In honor of National Poetry Month I'll revisit one of the old standards and say a tiny bit about that simple and much taught poem by the the good doctor William Carlos Williams.

        The Red Wheelbarrow
     so much depends
     upon

     a red wheel
     barrow

     glazed with rain
     water

     beside the white
     chickens.

Freshmen: He's just talking poetically because he thinks it sounds cool.
Sophomores: Each line looks like a wheelbarrow!
Juniors: Each line depends on one final word.
Seniors: He's a doctor and he feels powerless. The rain symbolizes his sadness!

Let's look at the Juniors' claim. Each line does depend on a final word. And each dependency is of a different sort. A quick summary:

First stanza: Once upon is uttered the poem must continue. And not because a preposition can't end a sentence. It's because the preposition doesn't yet have an object complement anywhere. The first line could be a complete sentence if we take "depends" in an absolute form. It's not fully standard in formal use but it is common. It's effective as a flat opening statement making a broad claim about life in general. The first line doesn't depend on the preposition upon but the rest of the poem does. Once we have the preposition the rest of the poem has to provide the noun complement or else it's not a full syntactic constituent.



Stanza two: This is a full constituent either way. The first line is just as grammatical with or without barrow. But once we know the intention of the poem (by reading ahead) we realize that there was a semantic dependency because wheel≠wheelbarrow. Only by knowing what the speaker means do we understand how the second line of the stanza is necessary because a word is incomplete. We might call this an accuracy dependency.



Stanza three: Again we have no grammatical dependency. We have also lost semantic dependency because rain and rainwater are pretty much synonymous. Williams has established a pattern by writing two stanzas with a similar form but different development in the structure of the two lines. But the structure of the third stanza mimics neither the developing structure of the first stanza nor the semantic rationale of the second. This is a stanza that follows form for the sake of form only. Now we know it's a poem for the sake of being a poem. It is my favourite stanza.



Stanza four: It's possible that white is a noun but it's not likely. It's reasonable to say that this is the only stanza in which the first line is unambiguously dependent on the second line. As the structure of the first line leaves out a necessary NP it is similar to the dependency introduced by the missing NP of the second line of the first stanza. So we have completion through a structural chiasmus: The first line of the last stanza at first sits as a non-constituent just while the last line of the first stanza becomes part of a non-constituent. And just as the first stanza is completed by the rest of the poem, the poem is completed by the rest of the last stanza.



I could say more about this but according to the rules I'm now required to discussed the hegemonic dynamics and the illusion of an original moment and the negotiation of cultural capital and the communities that will interpret these ambiguities and dependencies differently and what's a construct and what isn't.

I have more interesting things to do.

You talking to me? I'm the only one here...

A few months ago an e-mail scam prompted our trusty IT guardians to send out a warning. The warning included a description of the e-mail, an explanation of the method and danger of the scam, and some words of advice.

Users who receive such a message should immediately delete the e-mail and do not reply.

I expected that first sentence to offer the usual ellipsis on a coordinated structure. Let's consider a simplified form of the sentence:

Users should delete the email and users should not reply.

And I wouldn't have noticed if should was repeated. If instead of ellipsis a pronoun was used the should would of course be necessary.

Users should delete the email and they should not reply.

But there's an ambiguity there because the reason for using the pronoun isn't clear so it might read as an assurance that if you delete the email you won't get a response.

But what did the writer of the warning give us? (again simplified)

Users should delete the e-mail and do not reply.

Where did that do come from? There's no dummy-DO necessary or possible in this form. Is it a typo?

It's possible that the sentence is grammatical. Tho that would be odd. It would require that two declarations be intended:

Users should delete the e-mail.
Users do not reply.

It would be odd to combine a suggestive-declarative and an informative-declarative.

So then is this a mistake? Well it's non-standard but I won't call it a mistake. Take a look at the rest of the warning.

If you have already responded to the email it is highly recommended that you immediately reset your password and run anti-virus and anti-malware scans of your system.

Users are no longer referred to in 3rd person. Now I the reader am the mentioned user. And I became that user a little earlier than I expected: in the middle of the first sentence. So the user in the first sentence is referred to in two persons and that first sentence is both a declarative and an imperative.

Users should delete the e-mail and you do not reply.

So is this allowed? Is it grammatical? Well it'd be OK over two sentences. But in one? Man...I don't know anymore. I just don't know.

Not so grating

Minnesota Public Radio puts out a show called Grammar Grater: with Luke Taylor. It is done weekly.

Each show is a short piece about five minutes long that addresses a simple issue of grammar with radio skits the occasional short interview and a quick sermonette. The arguments aren't always prescriptive. I don't always disagree with them. At times the show even suggests that complainers should just get used to the fact that language is always changing and it's not a bad thing.

Good for them.

But they do stumble. Sometimes egregiously. Sometimes more reasonably. My quibble for the day: the treatment of the Minnesota dialect sentence final '[verb] with' form.

Buffy uses this all the time.

'I think I wanna go with.'
'Are you going to come with?'
'No I just rode with.' (as a response to a question like 'Did you go in the store with them?')

Episode 20: Unfinished Business (listen here]) begins with an analogy using the legend of Constanza Mozart waking up her husband by playing an unfinished C major scale.

"Wolfgang couldn't stand it. His ear was begging for some kind of fulfillment, so he'd leap out of bed, rush to the piano and bang out the final note, much to his relief."

From this little tale the topic switches to language forms that do the same. This is where the '[verb] with' form comes in.

Some sentences have the Constanza Mozart...effect, though—if you can resolve it with a direct object, it's probably best to do so:

'Are you coming with?' sounds better when it's 'Are you coming with us?'

'Mr. Posthumous was planning to take over' is more specific when it becomes 'Mr. Posthumous was planning to take over the balloon factory!'

Let's take a quick look at some of the gaps. First of all the phrase "to take over" is not simply "to take over [X]" with a null object. Take over can be either intransitive or transitive but it's not merely because of the null or expressed object. Each sentence uses the phrase differently. Let's do a quick substitution test to see if take over = take over

Using assume control for take over we have

He is planning to assume control.
*He is planning to assume control the factory.

Using lead for take over we have

He is planning to lead.
He is planning to lead the factory.

What's going on here? The word/phrase forms take over and lead are ambiguously transitive/intransitive. But the form assume control does not show that same ambiguity. So it's not fair to say that the underlying forms of lead^T and lead^I is the same in each sentence simply with a null complement in one and an expressed complement in the other. Is the intransitive use less specific? Maybe. Not really tho. But specificity isn't really a grammatical issue.

Let's look at the other pair of sentences. Is "coming with" simply ellipsis from "coming with us"? Is it basically "Are you coming with ___?"

This is a common analysis of this sentence type. It's used in an almost identical sense. Come with us is almost always an appropriate substitution for come with. But my favorite recent analysis comes from John Spartz here at Purdue who has been investigating the non-complement form as a particle that attaches to verbs of movement.

Just today John was telling me that some analyses suggest a null complement that is always first person. But when I asked Buffy to use a with-final phrase, she came up with the above "rode with" sentence that would have to take a 3rd person complement.

One way to think of the "with" in these sentences is as along. This might not be the perfect substitution. I wonder if John has found any "with with" sentences. John?

With all this in mind: The suggestion that one sentence "sounds better when it's [X]" and another sentence "is more specific when it becomes [Y]" puts too much faith in the premise that the alternate forms are underlyingly identical. But I say they're not. So it's like saying 'Meatloaf tastes better when it's lasagna' or 'Wine is sweeter when it becomes Cola.' Even if the premise is true the judgment might not be.

Now the episode does end with a decent bit of advice: don't let the prescription against ending a sentence with a preposition force you into awkward or "clunky" constructions.

In the name of effective language Taylor actually says "it's okay to have sentences ending in prepositions."

It's a start.

Oh Xbar tree Oh Xbar tree . . .

I was browsing through the links over at Neal Whitman's Literal-Minded and I found a great little syntax resource. I hate using the draw feature on my word processing program to create the sentence trees so I'm very eager to try out phpSyntaxTree instead.

It works by interpreting the keyboard friendly notation of bracketing phrases and sentences. You may have noticed (on this and other linguistics blogs) sentences and phrases that look like this:

[synthetic [buffalo hides]]

And that phrase would likely be contrasted with the following:

[[synthetic buffalo] hides]

The phrase on its own is ambiguous because the structure is underlying and not apparent in normal speech or writing. Just like the old joke about the one eyed one horned flying purple people eater that no one needs to be afraid of -- unless you're a one eyed one horned flying purple person. There are some conventions of writing that can clarify these forms. Hyphens work pretty well to indicate which noun an ambiguous adjective is modifying. So a steel-string guitar is probably going to sound a lot better than a steel string guitar. It'd probably be a lot lighter too.

In the bracket notation (if we want to consider steel-string two words) the difference would be

[[steel string]guitar]
[steel[string guitar]]

plug-in something as simple at those two phrases and the program gives us the corresponding trees:




The program also works with labels for the phrases and accounts for them in the rendering of the lines. I'll borrow a sentence right out of the trusty ol' Radford syntax text to illustrate:



A lovely rendering of the following input form
[TP[PRN He][T'[T does][VP[V enjoy][N syntax]]]]

I've now linked to the program in the resources list in the right sidebar.

Syntactically puzzled

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:

It looks to me like it's still functioning as an adverb on last -- and it sounds fine to me in any adverbial position.

will hopefully be our last Christmas in X.

will be hopefully our last Christmas in X.

will be our hopefully last Christmas in X.

*will be our last hopefully Christmas in X. -- (unless said parenthetically)

So it can't modify an noun as we see also in another sentence type that Elizabeth suggests:

This box will hopefully be the one I need.

This box hopefully will be the one I need.

Hopefully this box will be the one I need. (that old bane of the prescriptivist)

?This box will be hopefully the one I need.

*This box will be the hopefully one I need.

?This box will be the one hopefully I need. (It might only be okay here if it's changed scope to revert again to the prescriptivist's nemesis)

This box will be the one I hopefully need.

Elizabeth importantly points out that surely won't work like hopefully:

This year will surely be our last Christmas in Exico.

?This year will be our surely last Christmas in Exico.

There's almost some hypallage going on here altho that's typically an adjective moving to another noun. In this case 'hopefully' as an adverb wouldn't be starting on any noun but I think it might be. Let's look at it as a special case of transferred epithet moving from "I am hopeful" to the special semantically widened scope that "hopefully" has taken starting off a CP. Because yes -- it's odd that hopefully seems to have some license that other adverbs don't. Perhaps it's because a word like "surely" hasn't earned the legs that "hopefully" has. But has importantly? How do you feel about my sentence above where I displaced important from its place modifying the point that Elizabeth makes and I put it on her method of making the point? Does it look to you like it's freer than 'surely' but not as free as 'hopefully'? That's how I hear it.

Merry X[bar]mas

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 have some ideas for what I should write in my head

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:

1. encapsulation of [the stupidity of [the attitude at xkcd]]


2. encapsulation of [the stupidity of [the attitude]] at xkcd

But semantically both can be criticizing xkcd's ideas. While only the second syntactic structure allows xkcd the possibility of being a fellow derider of the attitude.

The meaning of a sentence you can't pin down

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.

What Isis is is not clear

And the post title is not Isis.

Extris or Isis formation is an incompletely understood phenomenon in English speech. The history of the form and the influencing structures are not yet fully revealed. Further confusion comes from the impression that two adjacent identical copula verbs are sufficient (or necessary) to identify the type.

This latter confusion has been addressed by both Arnold Zwicky and Mark Liberman in the posts I linked to above. (If there was no line break between that last sentence would I have to say "linked to atop"?) To make the distinction quickly I'll just say that the following are examples of Isis formation:

1. "what's funny is, is they're about the same person."


2. "The only thing is, is that nobody has noticed it yet!!"


3. "Now I feel that I must do something to help the cause and I feel the best way is, is to encourage everyone who reads this review to pick up the book and know the truth of the immense suffering of this peace-loving country that China is destroying."


4. "[so] my other question would be is...": (A call-in commenter on C-SPAN's Washington Journal)


5. "But the problem is, Charlie, is the U.S...": (Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach--interviewed by Charlie Rose) Split Isis. Nice.

The following are not Isis, but standard English forms:

1. "They proudly call themselves egotists, when what they are is egomaniacs and megalomaniacs."


2. "But what it is is a rousing good read."


3. "What's weird is, is this new?": the second "is" is part of a question. Think of that question as the answer to another question 'What is weird?'


4. "the second 'is' is part of a question.": I had to include this one right?

The first two are standard pseudocleft sentences. Imagine them without one of the copula verbs: *what they are(,)egomaniacs or *What it is(,)a rousing good read.

Also dodging the Isis label are performance errors like stutters and other disfluent repetitions.

Listen closely around 4:36 into the following video



Conchata Ferrell says "See my problem is is that I'm a giver." Some questions here: Did the writers put that into the script or did Conchata Ferrell just utter it as a natural form because the script is just loosely followed and not strictly obeyed? Did she deliberately choose the form as a characterization of Berta? If so, what does she believe the form implies about the Berta's character?

Zwicky provides an example from the show Charmed: "The difference is is that I don't want him to find you." He writes that it "was surely not a scripted bit," but I say it is hard to know. He also suggests that it "was probably not noticed by anyone involved with the episode." True. These things easily go unnoticed.

The TV.com guide to this episode of Two and a Half Men quotes Berta's line as "See, my problem is that I'm a giver." Is this an oversight or a correction? We may never know. But I just asked Buffy to quote the clip and she said "See my problem is that I'm a giver." Of course Ferrell utters the line very quickly and I can imagine that Buffy noticed the trip and discounted it as disfluency. I'll ask her.

Nope. She says she didn't notice it at all. "But she talked so weird" she says.

5th grade bullies

I have enjoyed watching a few episodes of Are You Smarter than a 5^th Grader. I like the implication that a typical fifth grader can answer all the questions asked. I know I couldn't have answered them all at that age. And I can't answer all of them at this age. Sure I know that there are 13 stripes on the flag. And I can name all 5 Great Lakes. But I don't know the national dog of France. I would guess it's a Poodle. But I'm not sure.

And should I know for sure? Should I be embarrassed that I don't? Am I not smarter than a 5^th grader? There's a split claim being made by the show. Everyone is familiar with the concern that Americans are stupid. We hear that 20% of the country can't find the country on a map and we think hmmm...Our schools are a mess so 1/5 sounds about right. Even though the actual number is probably closer to 1/15. Then we turn on the claim that Americans are stupid and we look to the 5^th graders as a group that puts us to shame. American 5^th graders. So maybe schools are getting better?

Well of course this show has made no overt claims that Americans are dumb. It might in fact be more intent on simply calling attention to a lot of kids that are representing us very well. But there's no entertainment without a patsy and what's better than an adult being made to look foolish by a kid. It's a great reversal. Have they had a 5^th grade teacher compete on the show yet?

So the kids have the ɵ-role of THEME: the producers hired them. Or they are a GOAL if they receive the praise. They might be in the role of EXPERIENCER if they are personally encouraged by the praise. The kids can also be AGENT if they answer the questions or deliberately tease the contestants. They might be a SOURCE if the contestant gets an answer from the kids. The LOCATIVE role isn't as obvious. But there are opportunities for the contestant to sit next to a student.

That leaves INSTRUMENT as an unfilled role. If we consider the role of the contestant we find that the students are often used to make the EXPERIENCER grown-ups feel ashamed. If we make the producers the AGENTS we then make the kids the INSTRUMENTS.

But this can get out of hand. I read a sentence the other day that unwittingly put a brutish sense out there.

• "I feel like seriously I could be beaten with a fifth grader!"

That puts the producers or some other AGENT in a pretty violent role. And it puts the kids into a very non-human INSTRUMENT role. It also called to my attention the way that prepositions can propel some very textured readings when they occur in an unexpected phrase. If the sentence simply changed "with" to "by" we wouldn't just assume that the kid is clobbering the writer. We would assume the pummeling was in some sort of a non-violent skills competition.

And of course a kind reading using with allows us to see the producers as nefarious agents of destruction and ridicule. And isn't that the safest bet when it comes to the suits at FOX?

Knees and ankles...I mean niece and uncle

My 9-year-old niece just told me that she sprained her ankle. "Yes. You told me" I said. "Did you still sprain it?" I asked (playing around with the telic sense of the word--she didn't catch that and it wasn't that funny anyway).

"How long ago did you sprain it?" I asked.

"Two days ago" she said. Then she corrected herself. "Well...one and a half day ago."

"One and a half day ago?" I asked thinking she had misspoken.

"Yes" she assured me. "One and a half day ago."

Long headline sends daft linguist into parsing fit

AP headline:

Embarrassing record spurs Redskins hope to improve takeaways

Is "Redskins" the object of "spurs"? It can't be because the verb "hope" right after a noun puts "Redskins" two incompatible roles.

Unless "hope" isn't a verb. So if "hope" is a noun we reanalyze "Redskins" as a modifying possessive because it is their hope. But then where's the apostrophe? So it's not possessive. It's just a hope that is characterized as pertaining to the team. Maybe a neutralized form that with other nouns could take an -an or -ian ending. American hope. Canadian hope. Newtonian hope.

The -an/-ian ending isn't necessary with the names of sports teams. Yankee fever. Celtic pride. Red Wing championship.

But we commonly see the plural form made singular in such cases. Is there something wrong with "Redskin hope"?

And why is "hope" necessary? Maybe Embarrassing record spurs Redskins to improve takeaways implies that they succeeded. And at this point we have no reason to think they will succeed. They only hope to.

Obviously keeping the headline short was not the primary constraint. They violated that one right off the bat. I would have though fatally but...no. It almost looks like they wanted a long headline. So how about

Embarrassed by record Redskins look to improve takeaways
or
Embarrassed Redskins hope to improve takeaways next season

But officer I wasn't not going that fast

I was looking for good scenery but traffic and the Iowan landscape made pictures difficult. When Buffy started impatiently tailgating an enormous truck I shook loose from my fear and noticed some writing. She got more than close enough for me to make out the message so I got the camera out and snapped this picture.

It's a little hazy. I didn't have time to get a really good shot. By the time I was able to get the focus and framing right Buffy was flooring it and passing semi.

As I understand the message it means that driving 55 mph is too slow to ensure that the produce will be fresh when it finally arrives. So the driver has to go faster than 55.

It's more evidence of negative concord in PdE. That slash-circle is the visual equivalent of a negative morpheme. In some English dialects it would have to be silent in order to avoid further semantic content: It isn't fresh at 55. But in other dialects we can imagine the negative working for emphasis.

FOREMAN: Them potatoes better be fresh. And you better not get no speeding ticket on the way here!
DRIVER: It ain't gonna be fresh at no 55 miles an hour!

I've seen instances of this visual negative concord before. Remember the Red Rocker? His shirts are still out there on eBay.

Me Tarzan. You don't understand.

Over on the wall of the Truth Cave I recently etched a link to Geoffrey K. Pullum's Language Log post on apes and language. Pullum's voice is keen as ever and his insights are always worth noting. His post focuses on the silly credulousness in John Berman's piece for ABCNews. Read it. It's an excellent post.

Pullum's point (making it clear that apes can't understand English) is most strikingly made when he parses one researcher's claim: "Qualitatively, there is no difference between Kanzi's language and my language." He writes

Let's look at that first sentence Fields uttered. It has a preposed adverb in adjunct function (qualitatively) at the beginning of an existential clause with a singular postcopular noun phrase with a negative determiner (the determinative no) and a complement preposition phrase headed by between. The preposition between has as its complement a noun-phrase coordination in which the two noun phrases have contrasting genitive noun phrase determiners (Kanzi's and my, respectively). Bill Fields knows how to construct English clauses with typical syntactic sophistication.

Kanzi, on the other hand, sometimes presses the EGG lexigram on hearing a human say "Egg".

Some who would defend Kanzi's ability to understand language would be hard pressed to show that the ape is able to understand how any of those words are functioning. And I'm not talking about analysis. I'm talking about simple competence.

One commenter on the ABCNews site tries hard (with several comment posts) to assure readers that there is good evidence of the ape's English competence. Posting under the name sarunfeldt the commenter says of Kanzi:

He clearly understands spoken English sentences where syntax is critical. ... Apes, and particularly bonobos, are clearly able to communicate symbolically and to use a limited form of ordered syntax.

And in another comment

Kanzi readily distinguishes between the sentences - Kanzi, did you eat the benana?, Kanzi, eat the banana. Kanzi, give me the banana., Kanzi, better not eat that banana. and Kanzi, do you want to eat the banana?

At least sarunfeldt admits that intonation probably has a lot to do with the apes ability to "distinguish between the sentences."

Distinguishing is vastly different from understanding. And it's not a simple "matter of degree." An ape that distinguishes demonstrates little more than that he knows when to choose an appropriate response. Let's look back at the claim that Kanzi shows syntactic competence. The ability to recognize a few (or even many) frozen forms and respond differently to each one does not indicate syntactic competence. One important test is productivity and the ability to understand how a syntactic alternation changes a statement.

Let's look at a very simple example. I noticed this form in a typo that I committed. Imagine your dog is talking with words. Consider two sentences it might say, each missing a word.

1. (*)I have chewed bone.
2. (*)I have chewed bone.

Both sentences look the same. Both are clearly wrong (unless we use "bone" as a mass noun -- that'd be odd) tho the meanings are easy to work out. When assured that they are different and the missing word is the article 'a' the two meanings are then clear to the hearer. Let's assign them correct forms thus

3. I have chewed a bone.
4. I have a chewed bone.

I'll agree that both facts can be "known" or even "understood" by a dog. All it requires is a tiny memory. But could any non-human animal comprehend the critical role of syntax? A simple movement of the article makes the meaning unambiguous by relying on the simple rule that a verb following a determiner must be a participle (a converse of the rule that keeps the participle from preceding the article as adjectives must come after the article). Hence the following obviously contrasted phrases

running the machine
the running machine

lit a match
a lit match

eating the shark
the eating shark

giving the tree
the giving tree

etc

And another simple little difference between sentences 3 and 4 is the verb have. In sentence 3 have is an auxiliary verb which must then take a main verb "chewed" as a complement. And in 4 it's a verb meaning possession and must be, since an article cannot follow an AUX verb. Only a main verb can. In the decontextualized fragment "...have chewed..." the first word is ambiguous: it could be an AUX or main verb, but in "...have a..." it can only be a main verb.

These are rules of English that you understood before reading this elementary analysis. This is what grammatical competence allows you know without ever having heard a sentence.

Let's move beyond the claims that Kanzi shows an ability to distinguish between some simple syntactic alternations. Has Kanzi ever shown the ability to produce any syntactically determined differentiation? And nothing like YOU.BYEBYE or ME.EAT.BANANA (which I doubt he would differentiate from BANANA.EAT.ME).

Let's see Kanzi express the difference between I have related a story and I have a related story using the rules of English he has allegedly acquired.

How breaking is it?

I saw the following over at Johnny's Cache. These Google current_ videos are hit and miss. And foul sometimes. Sometimes easy pop-up. To extend the metaphor poorly -- this one reaches base...um...on an error. It should be an out but one good joke saves it.


The use of "breakinger" (around 1:45) is a lovely reanalysis of "breaking" as an adjective rather than a progressive participle. The two categories are close for it to make a good joke. It's related to the "hey...why not" question I mentioned in an recent post.

It's a clear difference between participles and adjectives when you focus on one as a verb and the other as a quality. But consider that both describe define or modify a noun, and in some phrases a substitution test shows they're interchangeable.

And as the structure of "a breaking story" shows, we can use a participle in an attributive position, but how similar are participles and adjectives?

1. He was tired.
2. He was walking.

Throw in an adverb and they both seem fine still.

3. He was clearly tired.
4. He was clearly walking.

But that's too simple an analysis of the adverb's function in the phrases. If we flip the order of the participle/adjective and the adverb in each of these sentences a not yet obvious meaning pops up. (I've left out the commas as per my usual habit. A comma in sentence 6 would resolve the possible ambiguity)

5. He was tired clearly.
6. ?He was walking clearly.

Sentence 5 doesn't make sense if we parse clearly as a modifier on "tired." In sentence 6 the new meaning is more salient and the ambiguity is between the scope of "clearly" in the sentence. It could be modifying the walking (which would be odd) or it could be modifying the apparency of the entire proposition that he was walking.

Let's consider another adverb to highlight the ambiguity.

7. He was quickly tired.
8. He was tired quickly.
9. He was quickly walking.
10. He was walking quickly.

The adverb as event modifier is the only possible reading of 7 and 8. That helps avoid the ambiguity. In sentences 9 and 10 the ambiguity is still there. Was he walking at a quick pace or did he start walking right away?

Some adverbs won't work at all with the participle.

11. He was very tired.
12. *He was very walking

This is because very cannot modify a non-gradable adjective or a verb, and it cannot be an event modifier. So the limits of a participle as a modifier become utterly apparent here. The Oxford Companion to the English Language identifies the importance of a "permanent characteristic" for a participle in attributive use. Such permanence loosely defined, but it does help with some analyses. Consider the difference between "the running man" and "the man who is running." We might easily assume that the former is always running or at least has a habit of running. The man who is running could stop and never run again and we would not need to correct ourselves. We would simply reassess the situation. He's not running now. But if the running man stops being a runner "he's not running now" doesn't quite address the change. The correction would have to address the characteristic. He's not the running man anymore or he no longer runs

Newscasts trust that a word like "breaking" is practically (albeit not syntactically) interchangeable with adjectives like important or interesting. Anyone who has been watching Game 7 of the finals when a breaking story interrupted knows very well that's not true.

About 'in about in'

The many tongues at Language Log have found a new issue to drive their wagging. (That sounds derogatory and I don't intend any derogation. It is an excellent web log.) There's some preposition doubling going on. Some of their examples:

• A thing of which I'm afraid of


• A phenomenon in which I'm starting to believe in


• the streets in which he lives in


• making sense of the world in which he lives in.


• something to which Traore grew accustomed to

Theories abound. I remember in the summer of 94 once saying "that's the professor about which I was talking about." Why did I say it? It was a combination of trying to be "grammatically correct" by not stranding the preposition, but not being used to that construction. So that heavy transitive accretion persisted. A syntactic blend.

A few months ago now I first noticed the "in about in" phrase. Consider the combination of the following two forms: In about two hours and In two hours. Searching for this construction is tricky. A web search of {in about in} brings just short of 10,000 results. But a lot of those are clear typos. This leads me to exclude a few repetition typo markers such as "in about in about" or non-credible forms as in the following passage:

I have visited same SWSS that you talk in about in Thailand farms shrimps. But, I have seen it in P.indicus in Iranian farm shrimps in ago year. That shrimps had sign SUBCARAPACE WATERY SAC with white muscle in abdominal together. Outbreak been limited some farms but in ponds been height and... . If you have propensity, I have excess data in about to accompanying pictures.
Best regards!
~Armin

Odd as that is I don't think it has much to say about English forms that are becoming standardized or normalised.

I hate jumping on bandwagons. Just ask mxrk. He'll tell you that I mentioned this in about in construction to him at least a month ago.

But I don't think this is fruitful as an emerging syntactical form. Mark Liberman has suggested that some preposition doubling might hail a future of case marked prepositions. He makes the claim lightly. With more chuckle than anticipation. In the case of in about in I'm not holding out for much more for more than a simple syntactic blend analysis could provide.