Language Log

In response to "Strunk and Ptah", 10/6/2011, Reader KD has pointed me to a passage in James P. Allen, "Middle Egyptian: an introduction to the language and culture of hieroglyphs", 2000, which describes a real instance of ancient Egyptian prescriptivism.  Crucial background is provided by the history of demonstratives in Egyptian:

Readers of yesterday's discussion of lucking out may wonder what Jack Reacher, a somewhat eccentric man of action, would think of an extended discussion of his lexical choices.  For a clue, if not an answer, we can turn to a passage in the same novel where he learns some crucial information from an old MP colleague named Stan Lowrey. Reacher had earlier asked Lowrey to make unofficial inquiries about a woman named Audrey Shaw, whose fingerprints were found in the house of one of the women murdered in The Affair.

Non-linguists frequently ask me whether I am avidly watching "Fry's Planet Word", the new five-part BBC television series on language written and presented by Stephen Fry. (A bit of googling will probably find it for those outside the UK who can't access the BBC iPlayer; there are various illicit copies around, including some on YouTube.) The answer is no; I simply cannot bear Fry on the topic of language. Such a fine actor (the quintessential Jeeves); such an insufferable twit on linguistic topics. So I know barely anything of this series except that even the radio trailers for it make my teeth itch. However, Edinburgh syntactician Manuela Rocchi is made of sterner stuff, and has watched some. She kindly contributes this guest post to inform you (and me) about it.

I just now stepped out of a Singapore cab.  There are many different ethnic groups in this cosmopolitan city, including Chinese (Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, etc.), Indian, Malay, and so on.  The driver of this particular taxi was Chinese.  He was slight of build and very high strung.  He asked me what I was doing on the campus of the National University of Singapore.  "Were you here to give a lecture?"

According to John Burns, "Reporter Threatens to Name Names in Phone Hacking Scandal", NYT 9/30/2011:

A reporter who is among the 16 people arrested and then freed on bail in the phone hacking case that has shaken Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Britain warned his former bosses on Friday that he planned to break his silence on the scandal in a civil court case. He said that he would reveal those who were responsible for the phone hacking.

The reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, 49, who was the chief reporter for the now-defunct tabloid The News of the World, gave the warning in a statement issued through his lawyers in connection with his wrongful-dismissal lawsuit against News International, the British newspaper arm of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation. […]

“There is so much I could have said publicly to the detriment of News International but so far have chosen not to,” he said. “At the length, truth will out.”

Well, one data-point at least. Back on Sept. 6, Susan Andersen posted this on Facebook:

Today's Zits:

Whenever I visit England, I'm struck by the fact that escalators, moving walkways, and other public conveyances commonly have signs requiring users to carry dogs. I also always remember Martin Kay's observation that phrasal stress on the subject ("DOGS must be carried") suggests the absurd interpretation that "you can't use this facility unless you are carrying a dog", whereas stress on the verb remains consistent with the intended meaning "if you have a dog, you must carry it rather than have it go on its own feet".

There are several linguistic puzzles here. The first one is how to represent and explain the ambiguity in interpretation. One possibility is that there's an implicit universally quantified agent, "Dogs must be carried [by everyone]", which in any case needs to be contextually limited to "everyone using this facility", and then may or may not be further restricted to "everyone using this facility who is accompanied by a dog". And those skilled in the art will be able to think of several other semantic or pragmatic treatments, for instance involving the nature and scope of the deontic modal "must".

A second puzzle is why a difference in phrasal stress should apparently affect this ambiguity.

The infamous melee between the Georgetown Hoyas and the Bayi Rockets that took place this past Thursday has been widely covered in the American press, but has been mostly scrubbed from Chinese media.

Reader JM has pointed me to the slowly-unfolding controversy about the new English-language missal, due to be used in Roman Catholic services from 11/27/2011 onwards. For a chronological overview, see Rita Ferrone, "Roman Missal Crisis: A Timeline", 7/16/2011.

There's still no sign of the logically-imminent spamularity. On the contrary, the same tired old spam formulations seem to be endlessly recycled. One that recently slipped past gmail's spam filters into my inbox began

Greetings from Iraq.
Forgive my indignation if this message comes to you as a surprise.
I am SGT. LAURA MCMILLAN, i am presently in Iraq and i have something very important to discouse with you.Please contact me via my private box: XXXXXXX@aol.com

Last week, I exchanged a few emails with a journalist about "flash mobs",  a phrase that is now widely used in reference to impromptu gangs of teens who converge suddenly to rob stores or attack passers-by. My correspondent felt that this is a misuse based on a misunderstanding. For her,  what the kids are doing should properly be called "wilding". And "flash mob", in her view, ought to be reserved for the groups of hipsters who (used to?) use social media to arrange impromptu public gatherings with frivolous goals: imitating bird calls, having pillow fights, inspecting couches, striking disco poses. It struck my correspondent as Wrong to shift the reference of "flash mob" from this Surrealism Lite to random collective assault and pillage.

The U.S. Civil Service Commission's Manual of Examinations for the Spring of 1916 contains on pp. 44-45 an example of an exercise in "report writing". The task is described as a "Test in writing in letter form, not more than 200 words in length, an orderly, concise, and grammatical statement of the essential facts included in a given statement of 400 or 500 words". The specific instructions read:

Condense the printed exercise into not more than 200 words, retaining all the facts. No effort should be made to follow the language of the text. In rating this exercise the arrangement, completeness, exactness, and conciseness of the statement, its adherence to the subject matter, its style, and freedom from errors in grammar, etc., will be considered.