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.

Remind me not to do yoga with him

I've never been a fan of Jackass or any of those crazy-stunt shows that focus on attention starved boys kicking each other in the groin. I'm not sure what they do or say to each other to convince themselves that their little dares are worth taking. Perry Caravello must have known what he was getting into doing business with Johnny Knoxville. And at some point while putting his genitals a mousetrap he must have thought This might not be entirely pleasant.

Yes. He put his genitals in a mousetrap.

His lawsuit now claims that he was injured. Not a surprise. Wasn't that the whole point? I don't know how much tissue damage is necessary to constitute injury but even if there was no tissue damage I'm willing to go ahead and say that a mousetrap snapping on your slim-jim counts as an injury. So don't do it.

Here's the surprise. The lawsuit makes the following claim.

Plaintiff agreed to do so, and, much to his emotional tranquility and to his physical harm, was severely injured when the trap literally went on his manhood[.]

Is this a legal term? Emotional tranquility? Uhhh...what? Either this is a mistake or Mr Caravello is one hell of a Buddhist.

Or...
The phrase anticipates the phrase "was severely injured" and the sentence is trying to say that his emotional tranquility was severely injured -- he sustained severe injury to his emotional tranquility. But putting it alongside "physical harm" confuses the whole sentence. How can severe injury undo his emotional stability while at the same time furthering his physical harm? But if "and to his physical harm" is a parenthetical that isn't coordinated with "to his emotional tranquility" then we have a reading that makes more sense to me. Let's see if we can rewrite that just a little:

"In regard to his emotional tranquility (and this caused him physical harm) he was severely injured when the trap literally went on his manhood."

Now one last question. Did it hurt as soon as it "went on" his manhood or was it when it "went-off on" his manhood? It doesn't matter. It was a stupid idea from the beginning.

And according to the lawsuit he didn't get paid. Yeah I'm sure that stings.

The sunn wil comme out...

I always thought Dan Quayle was unfairly ridiculed for his potato moment. First of all how many people have ever misspelled an easy word? Everyone I know. Consider also that the plural of potato does have an 'e' which could lead to some confusion when the poor guy was given a card on which someone else had spelled the singular potatoe.

And so I will downplay the importance of the following picture as well.



First of all Hillary Clinton did not create the banner. Second that's a common misspelling. (It took me a couple passes to understand what the joke was.) Third it's still pretty funny.

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.

An ask to grind

Although my recent post might have used a needling tone in noting George W Bush's frequent glottal stops I do not intend to make a claim about phonology/phonetics as indicators of intelligence. That's the bailiwick of the language muckrakers. Those people who throw phrases like that's my biggest pet peeve or Oh! I hate it when people say that! into every conversation.

I'll admit it. I was once one of those. I would rail away on the usual subjects. different than, final prepositions, split infinitives, even flapping of intervocalic -t-. And sometimes that little red-penned devil perches on my shoulder and tries to goad me into a rant.

But halfway into the first chapter of any syntax or phonology or historical linguistics textbook and the peeves start dropping like flies. Nothing is so detrimental to the spirit of prescriptivism as learning how arbitrarily the loathed forms are picked for loathing. Not only is almost every word and much of the syntax of PdE the product of changes from former grammatical forms, there is a discrepancy in the attention given to different "mis"pronunciations. Consider some of the familiar foils. (I'll represent the alternations orthographically)

ask/aks
asterisk/asterik(s)
chipotle/chipolte
nuclear/nucular

These are the subject of such lame late night TV type jokes as Of course Bush didn't find any weapons. How could he find any nuclear bombs if he can't even pronounce the word! I'm not quoting anyone with that quip but I can guarantee that some comic hack out there thought it was gold. (If David Letterman ever made the joke I take back the 'hack' accusation. If Jay Leno made it...well...)

I wonder why those words get so much attention while no one finds it necessary to jump and point every time someone says relator for realtor. And almost no one notices when someone says jewlery for jewelry or comfterble for comfortable. And if you are thinking of defending yourself by saying "I hate those too! I notice them every time!" you have missed the point of this post entirely.

Question: does anyone think that Agt Jack Bauer's pronunciation of "nucular" is intended as a comment on the silliness of deriding George Bush's same pronunciation? And didn't Secretary of Defense Heller say it as well?

I'm sorry if that made sense.

When Monica Goodling testified before the House Judiciary Committee there were representatives that wanted to help her and others that wanted to trip her up. Representative Dan Lungren (R-California) prefaced his first question with an account of his work as the attorney general (elected) of California.

After describing the judgment he was necessarily allowed in order to deliver on his promises, he asks Ms Goodling

Analogously, doesn't a president have a right when he appoints an attorney general to expect him...to make the decisions in terms of priorities that the president wants? And isn't that an appropriate thing, and is that the kind of thing that you did while you were in the department?

He tees it up for her so all she has to do is swing with a Yes and she's safely on base.

The gentlemanly Virginian Bobby Scott (D-Virginia) isn't so kind.

=================

SCOTT: In your testimony, you indicate that you..."may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions." Do you believe that those political considerations were not just in appropriate but in fact illegal?

GOODLING: That's not a conclusion for me to make. I know I was acting...

SCOTT:...What do you believe? Do you believe that they were illegal?

GOODLING: I don't believe I intended to commit a crime.

SCOTT: Did you break the law?...

GOODLING: The best I can say is that I know I took political considerations into account on some occasions.

SCOTT: Was that legal?

GOODLING: Sir, I'm not able to answer that question. I know I crossed the line.

SCOTT: What line? Legal?

GOODLING: I crossed the line of the civil service rules.

SCOTT: Rules? laws? You crossed the line of civil service laws. Is that right?

GOODLING: I believe I crossed the lines, but I didn't mean to. I mean, I...you know, it wasn't...

=================

Mr Scott is also looking for a simple answer. In this passage he asks two wh- questions, but he follows them with a yes/no question -- trying to keep her from giving an explanatory answer.

"What do you believe? Do you believe that they were illegal?"
"What line? Legal?"

Both Lungren and Scott realize that the right simple answer will give a clear message. Lungren is hoping for a 'Yes! We did what we were legally and ethically expected to do.' Scott is hoping for 'Yes. I believe I broke the law.'

Then comes along Ms Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) with a request that doesn't make a lot of sense. Because time is running short she asks Goodling to make her answers "as cryptic and as brief as possible."

I can understand if Jackson Lee wants Goodling to sacrifice comprehensive answers for the sake of simplicity. That has been the order of the day. I can understand if she wants to assure Goodling that a confusing answer is acceptable. I understand if she wants to assure Goodling that her answers don't have to be complete and unproblematic.

But is she really hoping that Goodling's answers will be as cryptic as possible? I'm going to analyse this as a syntactic compression. She probably meant to ask for Goodlings answer to be as cryptic as necessary and as brief as possible. Otherwise she would have to be very pleased if Goodling responded PHHFFFT

[Update:
I have to wonder if this might just be a misuse of "cryptic." Since the word usually means hidden or secret Jackson Lee might be asking Goodling to leave out as much information as she can. Then "as possible" would have to be followed by the unstated "while still making sense."
]
Read the entire testimony as transcribed by The New York Times

A whole glottal love

I've done a few impressions around the office that have gotten chuckles from my generous colleagues. The impressions are only good enough to be recognized. Not good enough to get any calls for an encore. I only pick the easiest and most obvious. A few people around the department have habits and tics so characteristic that they need only be mentioned and everyone knows the object of emulation. (The "low-voice" is a crowd favorite.)

Years ago when he got famous for doing his George Bush (Daddy) impression Dana Carvey liked to describe the voice as a combination of Mr Rogers and John Wayne. The speech and mannerisms of Bush the younger are also emulated of course and by much better performers. Frank Caliendo does one of the best impersonations out there. He doesn't use the the rubber face masking like Steve Bridges, but his voice is spot on. Bridges has mastered the mannerisms and body language. Just type either name into YouTube and you'll find several clips of their work.

It's quickly apparent from a study of Bush Jr videos that his characteristic facial expression is a squint and his body language often involves stretching his neck, pushing his face forwards towards the audience while either gripping the lectern with both hands, or symmetrically doing a the-fish-was-this-big gesture with both hands, or repeatedly pointing down at the lectern with one.

Let's consider some phonology then. If you choose to watch the following clip listen for the glottal stops.



----------
Glottal stops are a very common in English both phonemically and non-phonemically. They're almost always used as the onset of a sentence that begins with a vowel as in Apples are delicious. If a word begins with a vowel but follows a coda consonant, the consonant will often serve as the onset and a glottal stop is unnecessary. Consider Red apples are delicious. The [d] serves as the onset for apple so no glottal onset is necessary. But Bush uses them in all sorts of odd places where they are commonly not used. He especially favors them for emphasis.

I won't transcribe these passages, but I'll place the symbol for a glottal stop [ʔ] at the head of each syllable that begins with it. Note that many of these syllables follow a coda consonant. There are also glottal stops on some syllable onsets that already have an onset. Typically the glottalized C onset is a soft consonant like [h] or [r] or [N]. It is common when a vowel follows a stylized pause for a glottal stop to be used -- Bush isn't the only one. But note that in several passages he doesn't pause and still uses the stop. I've provided the rough time marker before each passage.

:39 - ʔand the subsequent ʔexplanation of these changes ʔhas been confusing ʔand in some cases incomplete. Neither the attorney general ʔnor I approve...

1:10 - to explain how the decision was made ʔand for what reasons. Second(ʔ) we're giving congress ʔaccess to ʔan ʔunprecedented...

3:00 - We will also release ʔall Whitehouse documents ʔand emails ʔinvolving direct communications with the justice department ʔor ʔany ʔother ʔoutside person ʔincluding members of congress ʔand their staff

3:20 - ʔa ʔreasonable solution to the issue. However ʔwe will not go along with ʔa partisan fishing ʔexpedition ʔaimed ʔat ʔhonorable public servants.

After quite a fluid passage about ("...it'll be a shame") Bush really puts his foot down with four glottal stops, the last three of these are especially odd and clearly employed for emphatic style. 3:45 - ʔit ʔwill be ʔreʔgrettable

Syntax -- Bush like appositives: He likes to reword his claims.

(I've chosen to post a FOX News video because sometimes we forget that this man is the President and FOX News kindly flanks him with flags to remind us. They also like the tasteful alert graphic to remind us to be at a responsible level of awareness. And you have to love the understated "BIG STORY" graphic. Thank you FOX News. Without you I forget to be "an Amerkin")

Angal fixation

My friend Rick used to laugh every time he saw a commercial for Black Angus burgers. And at our local steakhouse he'd always flip through the menu looking for the Angus beef picture and smack his lips saying "Mmmm...I sure could use some tasty black anus!" Now Carl's Jr. is suing Jack in the Box for making a similar joke. The lawsuit claims that Jack in the Box misleads viewers by implying that Angus beef comes "from the rear-end and/or anus of beef cattle by creating phonetic and aural confusion between the words 'Angus' and 'anus."

Are viewers really going to get confused if they get the joke?

The lawsuit also claims that one Jack in the Box ad is comparing "apples to oranges" (or making that type of comparison) when it compares Sirloin to Angus. Sirloin is a specific cut of meat and Angus is a breed. Watch the ads. Weakening the suit is the fact that the ad ultimately compares, or contrasts, the hamburgers not the type of beef. And they're obviously meant to be funny. That's quite a task -- arguing that a joke is intended to be taken seriously. (Sorry about the double passive. Read what Neal says about them here here and here.)

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.

The the question

Recently Buffy and I were planning for a 3 hour drive on which I would not be allowed to listen to the radio. Buffy was going to be reading her Donne and the raucous music I listen to would distract her. You know how crazy that NPR interlude music can get. So I went online to search through the NPR podcasts and I came across KPBS radio's A Way With Words hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett. It's an hour a week of the usual language issues that you'd expect to hear on NPR: mostly discussion of etymologies and pet peeves. The episode I downloaded aired 5 May 2007. In this episode Ms Barnette shares a vocabulary tidbit (the synonym of synonym) a guest shares a puzzle, and several callers ask questions. The answers are occasionally confused and even misleading*. One of the lower points comes when a NASA engineer calls to ask about acronyms. His question is fine.

While setting up the problem the caller notes that some acronyms such as FBI CIA IRS and NTSB are always preceded by the definite article while NASA is not. Nor does the article precede UCLA FSU UGA CNN or ABC.

He makes an important observation in noting that NASA, Laser and Radar are "pronounced like words." He looks up the words and at this point, I'm not sure why, he throws up his hands and accepts that the language has stumped him. He says "guess what. They're not even capitalized anymore. But they are acronyms. So that's how I feel. I can't figure it out. The language has conquered me."

Oooh he's so close.

Mr Barrett then rightly makes the distinction between initialisms and acronyms, which the caller has used indiscriminately. And though this distinction could give him a very important half of the solution he makes an odd turn into a terribly clumsy answer. Here I'll provide a snipped transcript:

Barrett: "It didn't sound like you looked at the long form that the short forms came from. I think you'll generally find the rule is is that if the long form of an initialism takes an article (that is the...) as part of its formal name then so does the short form. And that's where you get the distinction between universities. UCLA is not The UCLA, because we don't say...we...we may say the University of California Los Angeles in the long form but it's not The Official formal name of it, not like the...

Barnette (talking over him): "...and it's not 'the Uklah'...'the Uklah'...

Barrett: "Right and it's also not...it's also not an acronym. So that's the general rule. it doesn't always hold but it's...it's gonna get you there most of the time. ...Acronyms however don't...they almost never take the article even if the longform does."

Mr Barrett's focus on the long form as the determining factor is misguided. It's not just incomplete. It's easily disproved. He appears to catch this himself when he starts using UCLA to support his point. He resorts to making a distinction between "official" definite articles and apparently 'unofficial' ones. (Language Log has dealt with this issue regarding The buckeye school.)

His analysis cannot explain the definite article before FBI even though the official name does not include the definite article. The official name is Federal Bureau of Investigation. The article when used is not capitalized. I'm guessing this is what Barrett meant by a not "official" article. The same is true of the Central Intelligence Agency.

We will grant Mr Barrett's claim that true acronyms typically do not take an article regardless of the official name. We are then left with the question of why some initialisms take an article and some do not. Why do FBI CIA and UN regularly take an article when UCLA UGA and FSU do not? I suggest that the nature of the organization is more important than the name. The initialisms for civic or administrative organizations will take an article regardless of official name. Commercial or private organizations (or organizations that are commonly perceived as such) will not take an article.

Forget about "official" names. For the long form of NBC most people would likely say "The National Broadcasting Company" and for PBS most would say "The Public Broadcasting Service." But no-one says the NBC or the PBS because they are not administrative. They are companies. They are not governmental. They are run by citizens and they control only themselves: they have no jurisdiction outside themselves. The same is true of colleges and universities. I believe this holds even if we consider the PGA the NBA the NFL and the NHL, which are not companies but administrative bodies that have jurisdiction over various corporations and individuals that are not owned by them and do not work for them. (Note that Major League Baseball is not tagged with the initialism and NASCAR is an acronym.)

Now I'm making a connection to the power of "the" in another case. Is this related to the difference between "man" and "THE man"?

---

*_{It's unfair to make a claim like this without qualifying or explaining it. The show is not an embarrassing display nor do the hosts lose credibility. As Mr Barrett reminds us in his comment, it is difficult to consider these questions on the fly without overstating or stumbling on a claim. One answer I had in mind (regarding the word "integrous") was logical and accurate. A relevant tangent during the discussion was hard to follow, and I had to listen again before I understood what the claim was, but that could be my fault. I'm kinda...slow.}