Language Log

Something for everyone

Danny L. Bate has a new article declaring that "PIE was not SOV" (2/20/25), in which he attempts to demonstrate under three objections why "SOV" is not a useful term for describing and summarizing the word order of Proto-Indo-European clauses:  1. "clausal bias", 2. "changing the subject", 3. "discourse dominates".

 

[An essay I wrote a year and a half ago, but whose posting was interrupted by a long run.]

Enlightening article by Peter Backhaus in The Japan Times (6/9/23):

"Za grammar notes: How to properly handle the 'the' in Japanese"

Japanese seems to be able to assimilate any English word, including the ubiquitous definite article "the", which is unlike anything in Japanese itself.

When you queue up, do you "stand in line" or "stand on line"?

This question was prompted by Nick Tursi who remarked:

Two of my colleagues are both from Brooklyn. They frequently say standing / waiting “on line” rather than “in line” when referring to queueing

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「日本で最古」の“文章”か…高知・南国市の遺跡から発掘の弥生土器に文字…2世紀後半〜3世紀中ごろに作られた「刻書土器」文章としては最古の歴史を塗り替える可能性も
＼https://t.co/rRJbBB2jgj#高知 #ニュース #テレビ高知 #KUTVニュース #KUTV #NEWSDIG

— KUTVテレビ高知@開局55周年 (@kutv_tvkochi) January 23, 2025

I don't order things online, but sometimes others do so for me, and I'm always amused / bemused by wording such as this:  "Your package will ship on 1/23/25". Normally, I would expect "your package will be shipped on 1/23/25" or "we will ship your package on 1/23/25".  Now, however, "Your package will ship on 1/23/25" seems to have become almost standard.

Here's a real-life example, received this afternoon:

We have received and begun processing your gift selection. Your gift will ship via United Parcel Service, to the address you confirmed during the ordering process. We expect your gift to ship within 2 weeks.

When I was in the British Museum bookshop several weeks ago, I was pleased by the numerous offerings of books on language.  Two types stood out:  those on the origins of speech and those on the origins of writing.  As we would say in Mandarin, they are iǎngmǎshì 兩碼事 ("two different things").  The best stocked / selling one on scripts was Andrew Robinson's The Story of Writing, and its counterpart for speech was Daniel Everett's How Language Began:  The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention.

In this post, I will focus on the latter volume and its author, with whom Language Log readers are well acquainted (see the bibliography below).  I will not discuss his lengthy fieldwork among the hunter-gatherer Pirahã of the Lowland Amazonia region (to be distinguished from the piranha or piraña fish which has such a fearsome reputation and also lives in the Amazon), but will emphasize his radical theories of the origins of language.

About a week ago, I was composing New Year's greetings for friends:

Akemashiteomedetō gozaimasu 明けましておめでとう御座います "Happy New Year"

Sin-nî-khuài-lo̍k 新年快樂！Xīnnián kuàilè!

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Шинэ оны мэнд хүргэе!

Felix sit annus novus!

When I got to the Latin, I was puzzled by whether I should leave "sit" in there or get rid of it.  I knew it must be some form of the verb "to be", but I wasn't sure exactly what form and what function it played..

So I put "sit" in Google Translate Latin and pushed the translate button, but forgot that I had the "into" language set on Chinese.  I was surprised / delighted / tickled when the Latin came out as Chinese "suí tā qù 隨它去" (lit., "let it go").  On the one hand, I was amazed by how colloquial it sounded, but, on the other hand, I thought it was a brilliant attempt on the part of GT to capture the grammatical sense of Latin "sit".

From Philip Taylor:

Just received this in an e-mail message — sender: American male, born (maybe) early to mid sixties, attended Dartmouth 1984 (or thereabouts) onwards.

Thanks Hilmar. I'll review/install soonly. -k

Seeking clarification, I asked Philip:

The man's name is Hilmar?

What's he going to review/install?

Philip replied:

Hilmar is the name of the addressee (Hilmar Preuße)— the sender was "k", a.k.a. Karl Berry.  "k" is going to review "another set of patches for manual pages".

Grammatically, that is a choice question:  "is it city[-like] (or not)?"  In other words, is whatever is at question sophisticated / modern?  This phrase, which has been chosen by Sixth Tone* (12/17/24) as one of the top ten Chinese buzzwords of 2024 (I will list the other nine in the Appendix) is composed of two identical English loanwords and the most common negative particle in Mandarin.

Before explaining this viral phenomenon further, I will show a video featuring "city不city" to demonstrate that it is real:

When I went to the restroom at Heathrow Terminal 5 in London, I was stopped in my tracks by the sign "Cleaner's Sluice" on a door just outside.  I knew what a "sluice" was, in fact I knew several related meanings for sluice:

• • An artificial passage for water, fitted with a valve or gate, for example in a canal lock or a mill stream, for stopping or regulating the flow.
  • A water gate or floodgate.
  • Hence, an opening or channel through which anything flows; a source of supply.
  • The stream flowing through a floodgate.
  • (mining) A long box or trough through which water flows, used for washing auriferous earth.
  • (linguistics) An instance of wh-stranding ellipsis, or sluicing.

(Wiktionary)

A couple of days ago we examined the mystifying Literary Sinitic / Classical Chinese (LS/CC) collocation 惡惡 (here).  After considering several different ways to pronounce and interpret the elements of this expression, we decided that, in most instances, it should be read wùè and be rendered as "hate evil".

Today we'll go much more slowly and deliberately through a brief classical occurrence of 惡惡 to gain a better appreciation for the meaning of the dyad 惡惡 and how to appreciate its nuances in actual use.

Here I shall quote a short passage from Lǐjì 禮記 (Record of rites) (ca. 3rd c.-1st c. BC):

Suǒwèi chéng qí yì zhě, wú zì qī yě, rú wù èchòu, rú hào hǎosè, cǐ zhī wèi zì qiān. Gù jūnzǐ bì shèn qí dú yě.

所謂誠其意者、毋自欺也。如惡惡臭、如好好色。此之謂自謙、故君子必愼其獨也。