Language Log

Comedy Central is currently showcasing this "astoundingly popular" video clip from The Daily Show:

Throughout the clip, Jon Stewart juxtaposes comments about [Alaska Governor and Republican V.P. nominee] Sarah Palin by [former Republican strategist] Karl Rove, [FoxNews blowhard] Bill O'Reilly, ["lying sack of shit"] Dick Morris, and [McCain's senior policy advisor] Nancy Pfotenhauer with other comments previously made by those same people about [Virginia Governor] Tim Kaine (Rove), Jamie Lynn Spears (O'Reilly), and Hillary Rodham Clinton (Morris, Pfotenhauer). The juxtaposition exposes a high level of hypocrisy among these conservative commentators: they all defend Palin with the same swords they use to attack Kaine, Spears, and Clinton. If you haven't already, please watch the video (better yet, the full episode): it's one of those laughs that'll make you cry.

Josh Marshall was amused by Governor Tom Ridge's word-substitution error, in an interview last night on MSNBC:

But the fact is, Governor, that you've *had* eight years
of a Bush administration, and a lot of Republicans in Congress for the last eight years,
so why wouldn't the American people say
"Look, they've had their shot, we're going to change."

Uh, because uh John Bush [0.213]
b- because uh John McCain [0.396]
is very much his own man, because John McCain brings a different style and a different approach toward Republican leadership, [0.388]
because John McCain has made some promises that I think Americans can feel comfortable about,
that he will keep.

As has been widely reported, the text released to the press of Sarah Palin's speech, and the version that appeared on the teleprompters for her to read, contained a quasi-phonetic spelling that signals a striking departure from the policy of the Bush administration:

Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines … build more new-clear plants … create jobs with clean coal … and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative sources.

What with all the controversy over Sarah Palin's views and (lack of) qualifications to be President, as far as I can tell thus far no one has claimed that she is prone to linguistic errors. That's really too bad. If only she would make the right sort of error, rather than the mundane bushisms we could be discussing palindromes.

A follow-up to yesterday's post on Barack Obama's half-Indonesian half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. There's a difference of opinion about how to pronounce her name, or at least the Ng part (taken from her husband, Konrad Ng). The "real" pronunciation of Ng is a syllabic velar nasal [ŋ̩]. Westernized versions of the name insert an initial vowel, but which one? When she was introduced at the Democratic National Convention last night, the announcer said [ɪŋ], as can be heard in this YouTube clip. But when John Roberts interviewed her earlier today for CNN's "American Morning," he said [εŋ]. So does the Filipino American anchor for New America Now here, but this Hawaiian host says [ɪŋ]. And Soetoro-Ng herself? In this clip, and this one, it sounds like she says [ɪŋ], or perhaps [ɨŋ]. So let's go with [ɪŋ].

Tonight is the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, and the headliner is Michelle Obama. I'm actually more interested to hear from another speaker who will be brought out to "highlight Barack’s life story," as the Convention schedule says. That's Maya Soetoro-Ng, Barack's half-sister, who is scheduled to speak shortly before 7 p.m. Denver time (9 p.m. Eastern time). At the very least, I expect her to lead off with some self-deprecating remarks about her difficult-to-pronounce surname. Since there's already been such a to-do over Barack's name (see my two posts from Feb. 2007), you can bet there will be a lot of head-scratching over "Soetoro-Ng." Let me try to break it down.

Random House recently cancelled publication of Sherry Jones' novel The Jewel of Medina, about Muhammad's child bride Aisha, for fear of violent reaction by Muslims like that engendered by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. In a whine entitled Crying Censor in the New York Times, Stanley Fish takes Rushdie to task for describing this as "censorship" on the grounds that it is only censorship when governments forbid absolutely the publication of a work.

Here we go again. Reporters and Republicans have been making a big deal out of two slips of the tongue that occurred in quick succession during yesterday's rally introducing Joe Biden as Barack Obama's running mate. The ABC News version, for example, is Obama Misspeaks, Calls Biden 'The Next President'; Biden Calls Obama 'Barack America':

When introducing his running mate, Obama said, "So let me introduce to you the next president – the next vice president of the US of America, Joe Biden."

And then when it was Biden's turn to speak, the Delaware senator called the presumptive Democratic nominee "Barack America" instead of Barack Obama.

"My friends, I don't have to tell you, this election year the choice is clear. One man stands ready to deliver change we desperately need. A man I’m proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next president of the United States, Barack America,” Biden said, per ABC News' Sunlen Miller.

Some of the political blogs (Marc Ambinder here, for example) are talking about counterfactuals today. A counterfactual conditional adjunct is a conditional adjunct (usually taking the form of a subordinate clause with the word if before it) that makes reference not to this world but to another world, a non-existent one. The phrase if Edwards were honest is unambiguously counterfactual, because were with first or third singular is a special possibility, the irrealis form of the verb, reserved solely for clauses making counterfactual reference. But the phrase if Edwards was honest doesn't necessarily have that meaning.

The office of US Vice President Richard Cheney has said that Russia's aggression against Georgia in South Ossetia "must not go unanswered". That and the mention of "serious consequences" sounds like another war. But no, it turns out otherwise (see the Associated Press):

Asked to explain Cheney's phrase "must not go unanswered," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, "It means it must not stand."

I wish these people would just check with the Language Log 24/7 Semantic Inquiries desk before they talk to the press on linguistic topics. Here I sit, at two thirty in the morning at the Language Log offices in Philadelphia (I have been assigned the night shift again), and the phone has not rung in more than five hours. You are completely wrong, Mr Johndroe: "must not go unanswered" does not mean "must not stand." What on earth gets into the members of the current administration when they are asked semantic questions that relate to justifying war? Why are they so often driven into semantic incoherence? Call Language Log for a chat about this, Mr Johndroe. Your call will not go unanswered.

I didn't intend an orgy of posts on English First, but one of the commenters on my previous post followed the link I gave to the English First site and in their issues section came upon H.R. 768, a bill "To provide that Executive Order 13166 shall have no force or effect, and to prohibit the use of funds for certain purposes", sponsored by no less than 55 Congresscritters. According to English First, "E.O. 13166 created an unlimited entitlement to services provided in a language other than English from all recipients of federal funds." This is simply not true.

The linguistic claims on which the arguments of the "English Only" movement are based are generally so ill-founded that one is hard put not to suspect that the underlying agenda is something else. A nice bit of evidence just surfaced.

The White Dog Cafe, a restaurant in West Philadelphia near the University of Pennsylvania, has a pervasive doggy theme, from the numerous dog pictures on the walls to their famous "Leg Lifter Lager". This theme extends to two of the four individual-sized restrooms, which are labelled "Pointers" and "Setters". The remaining two toilets are denominated as "Democrats" and "Republicans". I always use the Republicans, myself, because it's the least used, and therefore the cleanest and the most likely to be free.

Although I'm actually a registered independent, someone has apparently outed my restroom activities to the Republican National Committee, which has begun sending me email. I wrote about one of these notes last week ("It shall be our unity that overcomes", 8/27/2008). This morning's note, said to be from John McCain himself, invites me to take part in the "first McCain Nation national event day" by "host[ing] an event on the evening of August 14th". Senator McCain has offered me several inducements to participate, including one that seems genuinely spectacular:

If you host an event on this day, my staff will send you a host package with special materials for you and your guests. You will also have an exclusive opportunity to be on a conference call and get a strategic briefing and ask questions to one of my top advisors. And while I'd love to be there to talk to you as well, I'm going to send someone even better – my wife Cindy.