Language Log

Dick Margulis writes:

An NPR reporter this morning, talking about people in Libya: "…have never spoken to a Western reporter, much less seen one."

I hear this frequently (although I don't recall reading it). It is a reversal of what was intended: "have never seen a Western reporter, much less spoken to one."

This occurs with both "much less" and "let alone."

I wouldn't begin to know how to do a corpus search to detect the frequency with which people reverse the arguments of the expression in speech. It occurs to me, though, that the production error seems to be akin to the misnegation phenomenon that you've posted about more than once.

Tominda Atkins, "Words we hate. Discuss.", 2/22/2011:

We all have them, and we can't explain why. Words that just sound like nails on a chalkboard to our unique little snowflake ears. Here are mine. What are yours?

toot
chuckle
lil'
kidnap
Snooki

There are probably more, but when I hear or read those words, I feel more than just a strong dislike; it's revulsion. The last one makes sense, I guess, but I have no explanation for the rest. These words actually make me physically uncomfortable, or angry, or both, and I can't help it. Just typing them up there was difficult for me. Why is that? I have no idea, but I hope you don't use them against me. If you do, I will put you in the same camp reserved for those who think it's a cute idea to tickle me.

Yesterday afternoon, here at AAAS-2011, I attended a superb symposium: "Crossing Borders in Language Science: What Bilinguals Tell Us About Mind and Brain". Here's the abstract:

More people in the world are bilingual than monolingual. Historically, the component disciplines that comprise the language sciences have focused almost exclusively on monolingual speakers of a single language and largely on English as the universal language. In the past decade, there has been a shift in these disciplines to acknowledge the consequences of bilingualism for characterizing language, understanding the way languages are learned and used, and identifying the consequences of negotiating life in two languages for cognitive and brain processes. Recent studies show that bilingualism confers advantages to cognitive control at all stages of life, from infancy to old age; that contrary to popular belief, being exposed to two languages from early childhood does not create confusion but instead modulates the trajectory of language development; that signed and spoken languages produce a form of bilingualism that is similar to bilingualism in two spoken languages; and that the continual activity of both languages affects brain function and structure. Despite the excitement surrounding these discoveries, we do not understand how exposure to and use of two languages creates the observed consequences for bilingual minds and brains. Addressing these questions requires a language science that is both cross-disciplinary and international. The aim of this symposium is to illustrate the most exciting of these new discoveries and to begin to consider their causal basis.

One of the most widely discussed aspects of the Grammy Awards ceremony was the painful-to-watch on-camera aphasic episode of Serene Branson, a reporter for CBS news:

In the comments section of yesterday's post on "Gov. Cuomo and our poor monkey brains", it was noted that some examples of misnegation translate into Russian, French, and Spanish. This observation deserves a post of its own, since it helps us to distinguish among the possible explanations for the phenomena in question.

Following up on "Is irony universal?", 10/22/2009, Victor Mair points to Eric Abrahamsen's "Irony is Good!" (How Mao killed Chinese humor … and how the Internet is slowly bringing it back again"), Foreign Policy 1/12/2011, and to Xiang Li, "Irony Illustrated: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Situational Irony in China and the United States", Sino-Platonic Papers 184, 2008:

To analyze a sample Chinese population’s ability to understand and appreciate situational irony and compare its results with a sample U.S. population, surveys consisting of a series of 15 ironic and non-ironic cartoons were distributed electronically to 126 residents in the United States and 212 Chinese residents in mainland China. Respondents were asked to identify their initial reactions as well as rank their understanding and appreciation of each cartoon. Neither the concept of situational irony nor the research purposes of the survey was disclosed to the respondents, assuring that they would respond on the basis of independent judgment and knowledge.

Rush Limbaugh takes up where Rosie O'Donnell left off:

Rick Rubenstein asks

Has there been any research done on the familiar phenomenon wherein a word which is repeated over and over begins to look misspelled, or even like complete gibberish?

Thanks to Sean H, Mike Fourman, Ian Leslie, Eddie, Electric Dragon, Lizzie, Jayarava, KGR, Will Watts, Alex, DW, Sean Case, (and probably many others still typing their comments) who commented on my earlier version of this post, for confirming that around 8 a.m. this morning James Naughtie of the BBC Radio 4 news magazine program "Today" suffered (or very nearly suffered) a catastrophic obscene spoonerism followed by an obliterative ill-muffled giggling fit. What a pity a coughing fit didn't halt the dumb discussion of nouns and verbs elsewhere in the program.

A couple of days ago, the New York Times published another in its Your Brain on Computers series, which "examine(s) how a deluge of data can affect the way people think and behave". The latest installment is Matt Richtel's "Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction", 11/21/2010:

Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.

Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention.

One of the most interesting papers at an interesting conference was Michael Newman, "Identifying native English speaking Pacific Asian Americans by voice".

From Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, a link to a Nova "The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers" piece on Jean Berko Gleason (shown with an enormous wug), here. Very charming.

My grand-daughter (now 6) is a fan of these "Secret Life" pieces (and also some short Discovery Channel programs, especially one on leeches); JBG is one of her favorites. And she learned about the wug test, though at first she thought wug was an error for bug. But then she got into the game, and behaved like a pretty typical kid her age, including imperfect control of the syllabic allomorph of the plural; kids are inclined to give a nonsense word like tass a zero plural (two tass instead of two tasses).

[Update October 21: EDZ provides a factual correction: "The leeches are also NOVA; Neal deGrasse Tyson. The black mambas are Discovery Channel." Ah yes, the black mambas. A kid with interesting tastes.]

[Update October 23: And at breakfast today Opal showed me the Nova program on black widow spider sex-and-death. Gripping.]

Chris at The Lousy Linguist has an excellent post — "the largest whorfian study EVER! (and why it matters", 9/1/2010 — describing and discussing Jürgen Bohnemeyer, Sonja Eisenbeiss, and Bhuvana Narasimhan, "Ways to go: Methodological considerations in Whorfian studies on motion events", Essex Research Reports in Linguistics, 2006.

We'll come back to the Bohnemeyer et al. study in discussing the larger issue of neo-Whorfian work on spatial cognition and navigation. But for now, I recommend Chris's summary.