Language Log

The path of those who fail to follow the example of scripture is often dark indeed. In particular, in referring to singular quantified entities of indefinite gender,  the King James bible and William Shakespeare agree in recommending the pronouns they, them, themselves ("Shakespeare used they with singular antecedents so there", 1/5/2006; "Is 'singular they' verbally and plenarily inspired of God?", 8/21/2006; "'Singular they': God said it, I believe it, that settles it", 9/13/2006; etc.). But many people have become convinced that this is wrong; and as Horace put it, in vitium ducit culpae fuga ("avoidance of error leads to fault").

There is a lot for reasonable people to agree with and disagree with in Philip Kitcher's recent essay in The New Republic, "The Trouble with Scientism: Why history and the humanities are also a form of knowledge". This being Language Log, however, I can only urge readers of Kitcher's essay to take the following linguistic claim with a healthy dose of skepticism:

In English we speak about science in the singular, but both French and German wisely retain the plural.

Kitcher's point in making this claim — and the actual, reasonable argument that follows it — is that "science" is hardly a singular thing:

The enterprises that we [English speakers–EB] lump together [with the singular word "science"–EB] are remarkably various in their methods, and also in the extent of their successes. The achievements of molecular engineering or of measurements derived from quantum theory do not hold across all of biology, or chemistry, or even physics.

This argument is a key part of the larger (and again, reasonable) argument laid bare in the essay's subtitle: that "history and the humanities are also a form of knowledge". Anyone interested in this kind of topic (as I am) is encouraged to read this essay, followed by the other links further above, and perhaps counterbalanced by this NYT Opinionator blog post. (And don't forget to squeeze the comments.)

So what about the linguistic claim? Unfortunately for Kitcher, it's complete hogwash.

Andrew Dowd, the intrepid and renowned hunter of syntactic rarities, has finally managed to find a "Russia sentence" captured on video. There are bound to be some of you out there who didn't fully believe that people walk around saying nonsensical things like More people have been to Russia than I have. You needed harder proof. Well, here it is, on YouTube, and what's more, the speaker is an experienced broadcaster confidently compering a TV panel game:

At around 30 seconds in, you can hear and watch Stephen Fry (he of the unbearably prissy recent BBC language program Fry's Planet Word) say: It so happens that more people in the world are bitten by New Yorkers every year than they are by sharks.

Lori Levin writes:

What is going on with "will have had gone"?   It gets 122,000,000 hits in Google.   I thought there could only be one auxiliary "have" per clause.    Did the English auxiliary verb system change while I wasn't looking?

Some of my students say "will have had gone" sounds completely normal to them, and some won't accept it at all.

Murray Smith writes:

Friday afternoon in the car I heard a radio news report about the closing of an art gallery on Boston's tony Newbury Street.  The reporter had interviewed the gallery owner and learned that due to economic conditions gallery sales had been down forty percent the last two years.  Now the landlord was imposing a thirty percent rent increase, and the owner was throwing in the towel.  The reporter concluded, "The decision was academic; she had to do it."  The intonational profile showed that the second clause was a gloss on the first.  I was surprised, not having heard this use of "academic" before.  I have always understood "academic" in this sort of context to mean something like "without significant consequences".

James Parker, reviewing Matthew Pearl's new novel The Technologists, has a question ("Science Will Save Us", NYT 2/24/2012):

Bad prose […] is arrestingly weird. It stops the clocks and twists the wires. It knits the brow in perplexity: What the hell is this? What’s going on here?

My reaction to Pearl's first novel, The Dante Club, was similar, although more charitable to the author:

The Dante Club's front matter tells us that "Matthew Pearl graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude in English and American literature in 1997, and in 2000 from Yale Law School". I ask you, is it likely that a person with that background would be so insensitive to the norms of the English language?

No, a much more plausible hypothesis is that Pearl graduated from a slightly different Harvard University, in a universe slightly different from our own, and read a body of English and American literature that is also just a bit different.

Jillian Rayfield, "‘Sovereign Citizen’ Sues Prosecutors For Grammar-Based Conspiracy", TPM :

A so-called sovereign citizen in Washington, recently sentenced to three years for threatening to “arrest” a local mayor, is now suing federal prosecutors for conspiring against him using poor grammar, or as he calls it, “backwards-correct-syntaxing-modification fraud.”

David Russell Myrland filed a (virtually incomprehensible) lawsuit in federal court in Washington in late January, accusing federal prosecutors and Department of Homeland Security officials of violating his civil rights through “babbling-collusion-threats” and “grammar-second-grade-writing-level-fraud.”

And the referent is Newt Gingrich! Mitt Romney, on Fox and Friends today, in response to Newt calling him a liar:

Well um uh I- I understand Newt must be very angry
and I- I don’t exactly understand why, but uh
look, I wish him well, it’s a long road ahead,
i- he's a good guy, I like he and Callista, and uh-
uh we got many months ahead of us, so
uh I’ll leave it at that [laugh].

According to Reid J. Epstein, "Republican debate: 7 attacks on Newt Gingrich to watch", 1210/2011:

“Gov. Romney is much more disciplined in his approach and much more thoughtful about what he says and how he says them,” Iowa state Rep. Renee Schulte said in a Romney campaign press call Friday.

Ms. Schulte may very well have been misquoted or quoted without essential context, but it's not surprising for someone to use a  plural pronoun that co-refers with the referent of a fused relative clause introduced by what. Although "what he says" is morphosyntactically singular, a paraphrase with an overt head is likely to be plural: "the things (that) he says", etc.

"Wikipedia woos India with local languages", Hindustan Times, 11/19/2011:

Adding an article on a local Maharashtrian delicacy or making changes to an existing page on ‘Misal Pav’ on the Marathi Wikipedia could now earn you the title of the ‘Global Wikipedian of the Year’. The Wikimedia Foundation has instituted an annual award for regular contributors and editors of the online community resource. “Regular contributions need to be acknowledged. From this year, the foundation will honour one Wikipedian for his effort,” said Jimmy Wales, the site’s founder, who addressed 700 Wikipedians on the first day of the WikiConference 2011 in [Mumbai] on Friday.

This year’s award will go to a Wikipedian from Kazakhstan, most prolific amongst the contributors of his community. In 2011 the number of editors making five edits on the Kazakh Wikipage per day rose from 15 to 231, said Wales. The winner will get a direct entry to the next WikiConference with a fully paid ‘delegate pass’.

Martin Robinson, "Piles of ancient rubbish could prove incredible temple that's 6,500 years older than Stonehenge was actually a house", Daily Mail 10/19/2011:

It has long been considered the world's oldest temple and even thought by some to be the site of the Garden of Eden.

But a scientist has claimed that the Gobekli Tepe stones in Turkey, built in 9,000 BC and 6,500 years older than Stonehenge, could instead be a giant home 'built for men not gods'.

Ted Banning, a professor at the University of Toronto, has branded it 'one of the world's biggest garbage dumps,' with piles of animal bones, tools and charcoal found there proving that it was an ancient home rather than a religious site. […]

The incredible site was put up long before humans mastered language or skills like pottery or metal work, making it one of the true wonders of the world pre-dating any previously discovered religious site by 1,000 years. [emphasis added]

Adam Kilgore and Juan Forero, "Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos kidnapped in Venezuela", Washington Post 11/9/20111:

Wilson Ramos, one of the Washington Nationals’ most promising young baseball players, was kidnapped at gunpoint Wednesday night from his family’s home in Venezuela, leaving the team in a state of shock and raising questions about the safety of playing in a country ravaged in recent years by kidnappings and street crime. […]

In a crime and safety report this year, the U.S. Department of State described kidnappings in Venezuela as “a growing industry.” In 2009, according to an estimate in the crime and safety report, “there was an alarming 9.2 incidents of kidnapping per 100,000 inhabitants in Venezuela.” […]

Many of the kidnappings that take place in the country are so-called “express” kidnappings, in which armed men drive a victim around and take money from him before releasing him. The Department of State crime and safety report stated that “groups that specialize in these types of crimes operate with impunity or fear of incarceration.” [emphasis added]

Some elderly guys in northeastern Georgia have apparently been  plotting diverse and extensive mayhem, in ways that I personally found surprising  (Scott Shane, "4 Georgia Men Arrested in Terror Plot", NYT 11/2/2011):

Four Georgia men who were part of a fringe militia group were arrested on Tuesday in what the Justice Department described as a plot to use guns, bombs and the toxin ricin to kill federal and state officials and spread terror.

The men, all aged 65 and over, were recorded telling an F.B.I. informant that they wanted to kill federal judges, Internal Revenue Service employees and agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to court documents.

“There is no way for us, as militiamen, to save this country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly, highly illegal: murder,” one of those charged, Frederick Thomas, 73, of Cleveland, Ga., was recorded telling the informant.

“When it comes time to saving the Constitution, that means some people have got to die,” he said.