http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:57:59 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A couple of days ago, Jesse Sheidlower wrote to me about the recent climate-scientist email controversy.  Since Jesse is a lexicographer, he wasn't writing about whether this is the blue-dress moment for anthropogenic climate change, or a nontroversy based on the shocking discovery that scientists are not always scrupulously fair-minded ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1914 Decades ago, when I was little, I read this joke in Mad Magazine: Do your feet smell? Does your nose run? You may be built upside-down. I giggled for a short time — just a couple of days, I think — at the surprising coincidence ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1912 In today's Stone Soup, Val tries to catch up: The previous few strips sketch her motivation: But even among young people, texting became popular in the U.S. only a couple of years ago, more than five years after it became widespread in Europe and Japan. See "What's the difference?" (3/10/2008), and some ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1911 Yesterday's Sally Forth: One of the standard cases of Gricean implicature is the interpretation of irrelevant praise. Thus in "Logic and Conversation", Grice's first example of "flouting the first maxim of quantity" is this: A is writing a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job, and his ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1910 Suppose that Edward is married to Susan and Michael is married to Susan's sister Judith. Edward is therefore Judith's brother-in-law, and Michael is Susan's brother-in-law. In my usage, and what I think is standard English usage, there is no named relationship between Edward and Michael. In particular, they are not ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1909 Yesterday's Get Fuzzy: And today's: Personally, I find that I get better results with a contingency table. A nice solid oak one, for example. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1908 From Dave Montgomery, "Texas marriages in legal limbo because of constitutional amendment, candidate says", Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 11/17/2009: Texans: Are you really married? Maybe not. Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1907 When Sally announced the sad news of Dell Hymes' recent death, she thanked him for his generosity and personal kindness to her. Thanking is a speech act that we all should use more often. There are many of us out here who should join Sally in thanking Dell, who was one ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1905 In a "Fresh Air" piece (audio, text) that aired today, I reprised a couple of the cases of quantitative quackery that Language Loggers have taken on, where someone counts up the words in a text to draw some utterly unjustified conclusions about its content or author. I mention the efforts ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1904 Within the short space of eight months, Singapore's founding Prime Minister and current Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew, has done a nearly complete about-face in his attitude toward promoting the use of Mandarin in the republic.  As late as March of this year, when he was celebrating the thirtieth anniversary ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1903 We've been remiss in not linking to the New Oxford American Dictionary's 2009 Word of the Year, which Rebecca Ford announced on the OUP Blog a couple of days ago. The modern (non-obsolete) positive verb to friend isn't in the current NOAD yet, or for that matter in the OED,  so ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1902 In my recent go rogue posting, I reported a comment on an earlier posting from Daniel Gustav Anderson on go rogue as a sexual euphemism, saying that at first I suspected the comment of being spam, but decided it was legit. Then Jake Townhead commented on my posting, questioning my ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1900 I haven't read Jack Lynch's The Lexicographer's Dilemma yet -- all I know about it comes from Laura Miller's review in Salon, "Memo to grammar cops: Back off!", 10/25/2009. But on the basis of her description, it seems to me that one of his claims is not quite right: According to ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1901 I just heard that Dell Hymes died peacefully in his sleep last Friday (13 November 2009).    Linguists, anthropologists, and folklorists will all mourn his passing.  According to the grapevine, there will be a memorial gathering to remember him at the upcoming American Anthropological Association meeting in Philadelphia (specifically: Saturday, ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1899 In a November 14 comment on Mark Liberman's "Going rogue" posting, David Gustav Anderson says: In many parts of the English speaking world (UK and Commonwealth), "going rogue" is a euphemism for heterosexual women engaging in anal intercourse. (I was at first suspicious, since the comment appeared over a year after the ... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1898