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.

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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.

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

-- Josh Olson

A little phthalo schwa & some alizarin fricative

One of my favorite tools on my Mac is the IPA Palette (found here) that allows me to click on each symbol to choose it when typing. Download the package. Put the component in the /Library/Components folder. Then it's available from the menu bar.

Choosing from here ↓


brings up this ↓


I've recently upgraded to Snow Leopard. The menu option is still there, but clicking on it now brings up nothing. "Show Character Viewer" works. "Show Keyboard Viewer" works. "Show IPA Palette" doesn't work.

There's some sort of workaround that I don't fully understand, and so it isn't reliable. Nor is it practical even if it were to become reliable. I select the palette from the menu then I click on some application in the dock, (seems that only 3rd party applications do the trick) and the palette shows up. And even tho it shows up, it doesn't function. Click click click. No output.

I know most of you don't care. But if two of you do, and one of you knows something about this and has a little advice... Yeaaaah, that'd be greaaat.

Speak American!

Joe posted this video over at the Mr. Verb plaza. It's. Amazing.



The English Only movement is fascinating. So often driven at the same time by such pride and such insecurity. Such assuredness and such fear. Combine that confused stance with the dynamics of the current health insurance volley, and you've got a roiling mass of 'We have a right to tell you how to speak.' I have to imagine that the same boos that are elicited by a reasoned dismissal of death panel rumors or the calm denial of nefarious motivation, are also elicited by the sound of a question asked in an unknown language: I.e. They simply boo when you say something they have no way of processing.

Chupacabra = not very coyote-like coyote

We have another chupacabra candidate.



Jerry Ayer pretty much admits that not knowing what to call it is good enough for him. So he might as well call it a chupacabra. And why not? It'll help bring some attention to his taxidermy business.

But the issue of what we expect a chupacabra to be is harder to resolve. From an investigative position I have to say that longer front legs doesn't convince me this isn't a coyote. Some will argue that just looking at it should be enough evidence that it's not a coyote. It doesn't look like one and that's how we decide most animal classifications. This is an OK argument as far as we trust that seeing something provides us with enough information about it to include or exclude it in a class. If we take the time to identify what exactly doesn't look like a coyote, we come up with the same argument. Just more detailed. No fur = we trust it's not a coyote. But long legs? This is why just lookin' can be so easily countered. Because impressions need to survive investigation.

The old saying about looking sounding and... tasting like a duck is really based on an interplay of feature analysis and prototypes. Prototype theory suggests that we have an idea of an ideal duck in mind when we call something a duck. And we know when we see a good example of what we were thinking.¹ Feature analysis works by proposing a checklist of those features common to a set. Proper features might be something like physical characteristics. Size. Shape. Skin/coat type. When distinguishing species, it's safe to say that something [+scales] is not the same species as something [-scales][+fur]. So for any category, feature analysis will suggest that there is a set of features that are necessary and sufficient for classification. So every member of a group is and must be [+F1] [+F2] [+F3]...

But features are tough to lock down. Features like quadriped or biped can be used when categorizing members of some classes. So among other things, a human is [+biped] and a dog is [+quadriped]. But a husky with two legs is still a dog. Even if it was born with two legs. So we can add a set of transitive features. A little mammal born of a dog is also a dog.² Even if it doesn't have some of the features we use to identify dogs. But this is just passing the buck. Such transitive features rely on the premise that the class of one dog is already known. In some cases this is valid. Like the difference between a Ford and a Chrysler.³ But we haven't moved too far with the analysis. We find ourselves stuck with the ultimate feature being tautological. A dog is [+dog].

This question of the chupacabra works by subtraction. The argument is almost explicit that since it's "unlike anything native to Texas" it must be that mysterious chupacabra that we have never before seen. That's not a very strong argument. But we use some of the assumed features of the chupacabra in our analysis. I wrote about this exact topic a couple of years ago.

So now we see that Texas has produced two of what look like the same weird little sucker. And only 130 miles apart. I'll go out on a limb and say that if we find a few more of these creatures that look like bald coyotes with long front legs, a new category will be created. Some name will be suggested. But no one will accept that this is the little monster. The chupacabra will still be an elusive little wingless bat that must remain [+mysterious].

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1. That's too simple to be very helpful. But we'll move on for the sake of space.
2. One big question here: are we sure it's a dog because when born of a dog it must be a dog, or because we trust that it simply will be a dog?
3. Let's avoid the arguments about quality usually heard in the vicinity of a set of truck nuts and bumper sticker of Calvin taking a leak.

To put it simply

These good people feel that there is an almost indecent nakedness, a reversion to barbarism, in saying No news is good news instead of The absence of intelligence is an indication of satisfactory developments. Nevertheless, The year's penultimate month is not in truth a good way of saying November.

-H.W. Fowler

So... I'm back to posting again. 'Nuff said.

Call it an honored, stunned silence

Lexiophiles Top 100 Language Blogs list for 2009 included me at #27. In about two weeks I'll have the time and energy to get back to putting up the types of posts that somehow earned me this undeserved ranking.

And thanks for checking in.

Yes we can!

Wishydig has been nominated for Lexiophiles Top 100 Language Blogs list for 2009. Last year I was ranked #73.

That was a pure judgment ranking. But this year, votes are half the formula. Sure, that means that popular blogs have a huge advantage. So a strong showing from my 7 readers will probably only help me in some theoretical way. But all it takes for evil to triumph is... no that's another plea.

Some things to keep in mind:

Yes, posting has been slow lately. I've been away from the megaphone, but the mouth will rise again!
Voting begins this Wednesday, July 8 and will close the July 27.
I'm in the Language Learning category. I don't know if that matters.
It's an honor to be nominated.
It'd be a much much greater honor to do well in the rankings.
Rather than ranking the quality of the blog, if they ranked by the fragility of the ego, I'd win in a landslide.

No pressure.

(Oh) for ____!

When I was living in North Dakota I heard the phrase 'for cute!' alot. (Never in reference to me of course.) I understood it to be close in meaning to 'that's (so) cute!' or 'how cute!' or something along those lines. I heard it from teenagers to forty-somethings. From the Dakotas and Minnesota. I was going to write about this a while ago, but I'm glad I put it off.

Since I don't remember hearing 'for ____' with anything other than cute filling the blank, I was thinking that it was a single idiomatic phrase and not a productive construction. The only variation I heard was the occasional 'Oh!' introducing the exclamation. Not relevant.

That's why programs like Antiques Roadshow are so wonderful.

A couple weeks ago I was watching, enjoying all the Northern Prairie/Upper Midwestern dialect features from the show's stopover in Bismarck. Plenty of open Os, defricated dentals, raised pre-velars, and yah you betchas. Unfortunately I didn't hear any ufdahs. That was one of my favorites.

But during the closing credits two treasure hopers were whooping about the good time they had. For fun! said one. For neat! said the other. And earlier today, when I mentioned elsewhere that I want to be recycled when I die, a North Dakotan friend commented That's icky. For gross.

So if we know that 'for ____' is productive, the next step is to find out what constraints there are on productivity. It looks like adjectives fit in the blank. But all adjectives? Semantically it looks like the adjectives are more likely to be those of judgement and quality. It's not very likely that someone would say 'Oh, how pleated!' unless they find pleats particularly exciting. Similarly I wouldn't expect to hear something like 'for transparent!' or 'for polished!' even though there's really no syntactic constraint. But for all you Northern Prairie/Upper Midwest speakers: are there any adjectives that wouldn't fit in the blank?