Language Log

"What Does 'that' Mean in 'Did You See That?'" ScienceDaily, March 25, 2025.  Discussing "Recency and Rarity Effects in Disambiguating the Focus of Utterance: A Developmental Study." Kishimoto, Reiki et al. PLOS ONE 20, no. 2 (February 12, 2025): e0317433.

Summary (of the Science Daily article)

What goes through your mind when someone asks 'Did you see that?' A study shows that children and adults process ambiguous information like 'that' differently. While children focus more on the literal meaning, adults use multiple cues to grasp the speaker's intent. Researchers hope their findings could aid dialogue robot development and improve support systems for individuals with communication difficulties.

Second paragraph of the Science Daily article

Imagine watching a quiet night sky. When a shooting star streaks across the sky and someone asks, "Did you see that?," we naturally understand they are referring to the shooting star, not the twinkling stars in the background.

A striking instance of the importance of context for communication.  Adults are better than children at sorting it out.

[Prefatory note:  The Chinese author of this guest post, TCI (encrypted acronym to protect her identity) holds a humanities M.A. from a top tier American research university which she attended from 2016 to 2018.  She has been employed for several years as an adviser to  students in China who desire to study abroad (especially the USA) in high school, college, or university.  Her statement will be followed by the remarks of a long experienced, well established practitioner of that profession (application counselor) in China who explains its aims and modus operandi.

The author (TCI) emphasizes what she considers to be a lack of logic in Chinese thought.  It is ironic that her focus is very much on the gender of personal pronouns at a time when many people in America are trying to do away with or downplay that aspect of personal pronouns.  Before dismissing what she says out of hand, bear in mind that for TCI it is a cri de coeur.  She grew up in China learning one system of thought, came to America and struggled to learn another, and now she has gone back to China and is trying to teach the next generation of students who want to come to America and think like Americans how to be less fraught in learning this new way of thinking.

Thæ're serious:

Why There's A Campaign To Re-Introduce A Historic Letter Back Into The Alphabet

It all stems from Old English

By Kate Nicholson, HuffPost (9/6/23)

FWIW:

"Ben Crump retained by group of Northwestern athletes amidst hazing scandal", WGN News 7/17/2023:

EVANSTON, Ill. — A group of athletes from Northwestern University has retained a prominent civil rights and personal injury attorney in the midst of the hazing scandal within the football program.

On Monday morning, Ben Crump along with co-counsel Steven M. Levin of Chicago-based Levin & Perconti announced that they’ve been retained by eight former student-athletes at the school.

In a news release, the lawyers say they were subject to the hazing and are also in conversations with others as well.

I borrow my title from a Tweet by one Shivam that is part of a Twitter Storm sweeping over India these days.  It is playfully described in this BBC article today:

Tu v Aap: The Indian woman who sparked a Twitter battle on pronouns

By Geeta Pandey and Meryl Sebastian, BBC News, Delhi

Never mind how one says "you" in French or German, it matters much how one says "you" in different parts of India.

Still more fun (see parts 1 and 2 on Chinglish examples from WeChat).

(source)

This morning, while washing my face and still not fully awake, I heard a rap song on the radio that kept repeating "me, myself, and I".  It started to bother me.  Why would anybody say that?  Why would they say it over and over?  What do they mean by it?

Emma Bryce (TEDEd [8/28/15]) tells us that " 'Me' is an object pronoun, 'I' is a subject pronoun, and 'myself' is a reflexive or intensive / emphatic pronoun."  Well, so what?  What's the point?  What statement are they trying to make?

According to YourDictionary, "me, myself, and I" implies "Only me, me alone, me without companionship."  Fair enough; that makes some sense.

Wiktionary agrees that "me, myself, and I" emphasizes the speaker's aloneness, i.e., only me; myself alone.

English Language & Usage Stack Exchange (5/6/16) tells us that "Me is the physical aspects. Myself is the soulful aspects. I is the spiritual aspects."  I'm not so sure about that, but at least somebody believes it.

J. O'M. sent a link to the Cambridge Dictionary's online entry for gesundheit, which offers the gloss "said to someone after they sneezes":

I'm in Seattle, attending the 181st meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. It's been a few years since I attended an ASA meeting in person, so I'm not sure whether this is the first time they've offered pronoun stickers for attendees to add to their badges. But it's the first time I've encountered this option. The ASA's explanation:

The online version of the Petit Robert French dictionary has added an entry for a gender-neutral third person pronoun, "iel", also spelled "ielle":

It's a concatenation of [i], the common reduced pronunciation of  the masculine pronoun "il", with the normal pronunciation of  the feminine pronoun "elle".

And the predictable storm of protest has erupted, among politicians as well as many mass-media commentators in France, along with more English-language coverage than usual for dictionary entries in other languages.  Amy Cheng's WaPo story ("A French dictionary added a gender-neutral pronoun. Opponents say it’s too ‘woke.’", 11/18/2021) provides a summary and links.

…but this time it's the second person, in an outtake from the Laura Ingraham show that's been widely discussed in the media, posted several times on YouTube, and apparently viewed millions of times on TikTok:

https://youtu.be/lOY23pOxFPI