Language Log

Over at Lingua Franca, where I do weekly blog posts for The Chronicle of Higher Education, I tried to refer to some ongoing research other day, and called it that, and I was slapped down by my editor (she knows the New York Times style manual prohibitions far too well), quoting a remark by the managing editor: "If I see someone using ongoing in The Chronicle, I will be downcoming and he or she will be outgoing."

Lexical fascism! They would fire me for using ongoing as an adjective? Thank goodness for Language Log, I thought, where lexical liberty survives. So I'm back over here today, choosing my own words, ruminating resentfully on this stylistic bullying.

Sindya N. Bhanoo, "Real Words or Gibberish? Just Ask a Baboon", NYT 4/16/2012:

While baboons can’t read, they can tell the difference between real English words and nonsensical ones, a new study reports.

“They are using information about letters and the relation between letters to perform the task without any kind of linguistic training,” said Jonathan Grainger, a psychologist at the French Center for National Research and at Aix-Marseille University in France who was the study’s first author.

Murray Clayton, a statistician from the University of Wisconsin, sent in this photograph of a sign on the Tamsui Fisherman's Wharf in Taiwan:

(Click to embiggen.)

The marginally linguistic topic of freedom of linguistic expression occasionally occupies me here on Language Log, as you probably know. And you may be aware that my instincts tend toward the libertarian end of the spectrum, and the defense of the First Amendment. Possibly you are also aware that there really isn't anything I despise and abhor more than racism. So the recent case of Liam Stacey here in the UK puts my principles in tension. He has been jailed for exercising what you might describe (incorrectly, I think) as his free speech rights on Twitter, having apparently forgotten that the UK does not have any analog of America's First Amendment. I'll review the facts of the case, including the language that he used. But do not read on unless you are prepared to see some seriously offensive linguistic material.

A few days ago ("Evaluative words for wines", 4/7/2012), I illustrated how a trivial method can help us uncover the contribution of individual words to the expression of opinion in text. For this morning's Breakfast Experiment™, I'll illustrate an equally trivial approach to learning how words fit together structurally, using the same small collection of 20,888 wine reviews.

In "Larkin v. the Gray Lady," Mark Liberman credits a Language Log reader with pointing out that "the NYT printed asshole for the first time a couple of weeks ago" ("Race, Tragedy and Outrage Collide After a Shot in Florida", 4/1/2012):

Mr. Zimmerman told the dispatcher that this “suspicious guy” was in his late teens, with something in his hands. He asked how long it would be before an officer arrived, because “these assholes, they always get away.”

But this wasn't, in fact, the first time that asshole graced the pages of the Times. That verbal transgression was pioneered, like so many others, by Richard Nixon in the Watergate tapes.

Michiko Kakutani, "A Master of Verse Spreads Bad Cheer", NYT 4/9/2012:

Many American readers know Larkin chiefly from his more darkly funny lines: “Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three/(Which was rather late for me) —/Between the end of the ‘Chatterley’ ban/And the Beatles’ first LP” (from “Annus Mirabilis”). Or: They mess you up, “your mum and dad./They may not mean to, but they do./ They fill you with the faults they had/And add some extra, just for you” (from “This Be The Verse”).

Steve Kass found this curious expression in the nutrition facts (where "Saturated Fat" usually is) on a package of imported-from-Taiwan crackers at his local Chinese grocery, Jīnmén 金门 ("Golden Gate"; Quemoy [Hokkien Kim-mûi]) in East Hanover, New Jersey. Here is a picture of the label:

Scans of the front and back of the package are shown below.

From the allmusic.com biography of the heavy metal band Celebrity Skin (apparently unrelated to the 1998 Hole album of the same name), a recent addition to the Fellowship of the Predicative Adjunct's collection of epically dangling modifiers:

At one show in particular, ex-Germs/45 Grave drummer Don Bolles went to review the band's live performance for the L.A. Weekly newspaper and gave the band a favorable review. The following week the band went to Bolles' apartment in hopes of persuading him to join the group. When asked to join the band, Bolles' pet rat went into a spastic fit and died. Bolles took this as some sort of strange sign and joined the group cementing his spot as the band's permanent drummer.

Nick Edwards, "Analysis: China currency move nails hard landing risk coffin", Reuters 4/14/2012.

"Escaped wallaby caught using huge fishing net", BBC News 4/13/2012:

A wallaby that was on the loose from a fishery near the boundary between Midlothian and the Scottish Borders has been found.

The 2ft Tasmanian wallaby was caught just after midnight using a fishing net after he was spotted feeding on a 40 acre estate.

This item was sent in by Tim McDonald, who wonders "why any wallaby with the intelligence to use a fishing net should have to do so clandestinely".

Featured in a post by Laura Conaway ("Impossible sentence diagrammed twice", 4/13/2012), this virtuosic effort from Mississippi State Senator Hob Bryan:

What we have not done is to pass bill after bill after bill that was obviously unconstitutional just so we could all get on record one more time as casting another vote realizing that what was going to happen was someone would file suit the next day and the legislation would never take effect.

We're about 29 minutes into the first episode, Rose, of the series featuring the ninth Doctor Who, played by Christopher Eccleston. Rose Tyler, a London department-store  clerk who's been caught up in an interdimensional adventure by accident, realizes that her boyfriend — turned into a plastic replica by the Nestene Consciousness — is probably dead.