Language Log

Two years ago, I posted about a flubbed joke on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update," wherein Taran Killam as historical critic Jebidiah Atkinson slammed FDR's Pearl Harbor address as "a speech that was so boring-ass." The joke as originally written probably referred to a "boring-ass speech," because "[adjective]-ass" almost always occurs attributively (pre-modifying a noun or noun phrase) and not as a predicate adjective. (Acceptability judgments of the predicative use will vary, of course.)

Attributive vs. predicative use of "[adjective]-ass" is relevant again this week, after Sen. Rand Paul was captured on camera being snarky about a daylong livestreaming event his campaign was recording. Asked if he was indeed still running for President, he said:

"I don't know — wouldn't be doing this dumbass livestreaming if I weren't. So yes, I still am running for President. Get over it."

Paul told Fox News today that the comment was intended to be sarcastic. As Talking Points Memo reported,

Paul, who took flak this week for a subdued appearance in a day-long livestream video produced by his campaign, told Fox's "America's Newsroom" that he was joking when he called the exercise "dumbass."

Anschel Schaffer-Cohen writes:

Oli, 63, is generally popular in Nepal and has a reputation for being outspoken. Some use the phrase “Oli ko goli” to describe him – “When Oli speaks, he fires [a bullet]”.

Can so few syllables–three, not counting his name–actually contain that much information? What's the literal translation of this phrase, and if there's implied context where does it come from? Since I remember reading that you speak Nepali, I was hoping you could shed some light on this, either personally or on the blog.

You can find similar translations of “Oli ko goli” all over the web, but they're all wrong.

The Chinese government is troubled by the ongoing unrest in Xinjiang, the westernmost region of the country. The authorities attribute the turmoil to what they refer to as religious extremism, which, they believe, leads to terrorism. Moreover, religious extremism also foments separatism, which the government is dead set against. In an effort to reduce the impact of religious extremism, the government bans many cultural practices that they assert are manifestations of undesirable ideological tendencies.

Here, for example, is a sign that was posted outside hospital in Yining forbidding the burka, unusual facial hair, the hijab, the symbolism of the crescent moon with star, and any apparel conveying pronounced religious sentiments:

(Photograph courtesy of an anonymous colleague)

A dozen people have sent me links to this blog post — "Presidential Debate Grammar Power Rankings", Grammarly Blog 10/6/2015 — or to various commentaries on it, e.g. Justin Moyer, "Trump supporters have the worst Facebook grammar, study finds", WaPo 10/7/2015; Emily Atkin, "New Analysis Ranks Presidential Candidates By Their Supporters’ Grammar", ThinkProgress 10/6/2015; Paul Singer, "Democrats crush Republicans in grammar; Chafee on top", USA Today; "Trump First in the Polls, But His Supporters Are Last in Grammar", Yahoo! Health 10/7/2015; etc.

I don't have time this afternoon to write anything more about this, so feel free to talk among yourselves…

For fans of what we might call rhetoricometry — methods that let you analyze political discourse without having to listen to it or read it :-) — here's a type-token plot of the contributions to Wednesday's CNN debate of five of the eleven candidates who were featured in the prime-time round:

At a loss for what else to say about last night's debate, I decided to follow up on "Political pitch ranges" (4/22/2015) by taking a look at the f0 quantiles of the 11 candidates' opening remarks:

Rebecca Ballhaus, "CARLY, not Carly, Made This Popular Carly Fiorina Video", WSJ 9/14/2015:

A new video in which Carly Fiorina embraces her age and her gender has drawn wide attention, and was praised by a prominent blogger as one of the best spots of the 2016 race so far. But in a wrinkle fitting this modern campaign age, Ms. Fiorina’s campaign had nothing to do with it.

The new video opens by telling viewers it’s a “message from Carly.” It features a clip of the former business executive addressing a cheering crowd as she rebuts disparaging comments from GOP frontrunner Donald Trump about her looks.  “This is the face of a 61-year-old woman. I am proud of every year and every wrinkle,” Ms. Fiorina says in the video, shot last week at a speech in Phoenix. Interspersed are pictures of other women, young and old.

The video beckons viewers to “join us” at “www.CARLYforAmerica.com,” and closes with the words “CARLY for AMERICA” across the screen.

The twist: The maker of the video, “CARLY for America,” isn’t the Fiorina campaign, which is called “Carly for President.” CARLY for America is instead a pro-Fiorina super PAC formally known as Conservative, Authentic, Responsive Leadership for You and for America. The super PAC adopted the acronym earlier this year after the Federal Election Commission said it wasn’t allowed to explicitly include Ms. Fiorina’s name.

Steve Benen, "Jeb Bush’s economic plan: ‘Let the big dog eat’", MSNBC 9/11/2015:

Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush unveiled his tax-cut plan this week, and when making the pitch to voters, the former governor has said it’s time “to let the big dog eat.” It’s a phrase Bush is apparently quite fond of.  

He told reporters on Wednesday that “let the big dog eat” is a Florida phrase, though I can report that I’m a Florida native – and I haven’t the foggiest idea what he’s talking about.

This phrase has been widely interpreted to mean "Greed is good — let rich people take and keep as much money as they want", which seem like a remarkably frank, not to say tone deaf, thing for a presidential candidate to say. So I thought I'd take a closer look, and see if I can figure out what in the world Jeb! actually thought he was saying.

Jeb Bush uses the word rather 6 times in my sample of 14,429 words, for a rate of 416 per million words; Donald Trump doesn't use this word at all in my sample of 14,746 words.

Jeb Bush uses the word formidable 3 times in my sample, for a rate of 208 per million words; Donald Trump doesn't use this word at all.

[See "The most Trumpish (and Bushish) words" for details…]

In a comment on "The most Trumpish (and Bushish) words", D.O. wrote "It seems that we are missing (at least I was missing) a key piece about Mr. Trump's and Mr. Bush's speaking style. Mr. Bush is using significantly more words than Mr. Trump".

What he means is not that Bush talks more than Trump — in fact, the opposite is true. Thus Donald Trump's announcement of his presidential run totaled about 6,400 words, whereas Jeb Bush's announcement racked up less than 2,300. In the first Republican presidential debate, Trump contributed more than 1,800 words, while Bush contributed less than 1,600.

What D.O. means, I think, is that Bush displays his vocabulary at a greater rate; that is, he uses a larger number of distinct word types for a give number of word tokens. A traditional way to look at things of this kind uses a plot of word type count against word token count. And a type-token plot suggests that Mr. Bush's rate of vocabulary display is indeed greater than Mr. Trumps's:

President Obama has a strange moniker among netizens in China:  Guānhǎi 观海 (“Sea-watcher”).  Variants include Àoguānhǎi 奥观海 ("O'sea-watcher"; cf. "Homa Obama") and Guānhǎi tóngzhì 观海同志 ("Comrade Sea-watcher").

How in the world did Obama acquire this bizarre Chinese nickname?

I they you Trump very great he China said me money going Mexico

Those are the top 13 words at Donald Trump's end of a vocabulary comparison with Jeb Bush. The top 13 words at Jeb Bush's end of the list are:

The state strategy government should create president American in growth of ISIS forces

Click the following links for the whole list, sorted by Trumpishness and sorted by Bushishness.

Over the past week there has been a change in the officially ordained wording of the referendum question about European Union membership that will be put before the people of the United Kingdom some time over the coming two years. On the face of it, the change seems trivial or even pointless, because it does not allow for any new decision to be made by the voters. They will vote either to continue the UK's membership in the EU or to discontinue it. But the change provides a very clear and useful example showing the real-life importance of a linguistic distinction.