Language Log

The protean particle zhī 之 (3 strokes, classifier / radical 丶) has more grammatical functions than you can shake a stick at, e.g.:

(literary) genitive or attributive marker

    indicates that the previous word has possession of the next one

    indicates that the previous word modifies the next one

    particle indicating that the preceding element is specialized or qualified by the next

(archaic)  particle infixed in a subject-predicate construct acting as a nominalizer or indicating a subordinate clause

(literary) the third-person pronoun: him, her, it, them, when it appears in a non-subject position in the sentence

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(adapted from Wiktionary, with illustrative quotations for each type)

From a Duolingo chat page:

This morning, when I checked out the website of The Atlantic, I saw an article by Megan Garber with the headline, "Gifting Is Not a Verb":

Megan has written perceptively about language before, notably in her piece from last year, "English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet," which played a large role in bringing attention to the emerging use of "because" — shortly thereafter recognized as the American Dialect Society's 2013 Word of the Year. (Some might argue that the new "because" isn't a preposition; Geoff Pullum defends that classification here and here but says it actually was one all along.)

The article itself is a seasonally appropriate exercise in word aversion, and Megan quotes one of Mark Liberman's posts on the topic to try to understand the source of her intense dislike of "gift" as a verb. But the headline goes much further, declaring that it is not a verb, despite the fact that the article clearly demonstrates that it is a verb, even if it's one that many people don't care for.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs' annual survey on Japanese usage is out. This year's results as reported in the media: