Language Log

Jonathan Weinberg wrote to suggest that perhaps "explanatory neurophilia" (the fact that people tend to be impressed and persuaded by neuroscientific details even if they provide no explanatory value) is part of a larger phenomenon that also includes "physics envy" (the desire to achieve in other sciences the success of mathematical reasoning from first principles that Newton brought to physics).

In reference to the witticism "Anything you can do, I can do meta", cited in "Doing Meta: from meta-language to meta-clippy", 1/32/3007, Michael Smith asked:

I was wondering whether you were ever given, or able to find, a citation for "Anything you can do, I can do meta" earlier than the reported use by Samuel Hahn in 1991.

Let me explain my interest.  Each year the Department of Philosophy at Princeton makes a t-shirt for the graduating class with a quotation of their choice on it.  This year they've chosen "Anything you can do, I can do meta", but of course they have no idea who said it.  I'd quite like to be able to tell them when it first appeared in print, if that's known.

Prof. Smith followed up with this post scriptum:

After a little further searching on Google I came up with the attached article from 1979 (see p.1230, footnote 2).  However, if you know of an earlier citation, or of a credit to someone other than Lipson, I'd be grateful if you would let me know.

Jesse Sheidlower points out a "VERY strongly worded spelling/punctuation rant", to be found here.

(Unless you have a very large screen, you'll want to use "right-click>>Open link in new window", or maybe try this link instead. Warning: some NSFW text in VERY large type…)

This seems to reach rage-o-meter values not seen since the "pilotless drone" episode.

According to CNN ("At least 7 arrested after raids in three states", 3/28/1010):

Federal authorities plan to unseal charges Monday against several people arrested in a series of weekend raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, prosecutors in Detroit said Sunday. […]

Mike Lackomar, a county leader for the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, said the target of the raid was a Christian militia group called the Hutaree. The group proclaims on a Web site that it is "preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive."

The origin of the group's name, Hutaree, is not explained on what seems to be their web site. And there are other linguistic mysteries to be found there, including their system of paramilitary ranks.

According to Nancy Montgomery, "Army unit recruiting ‘innovative thinkers’", Stars and Stripes 3/18/2010, that's the motto of the U.S. Army's Asymmetric Warfare Group. It's said to be the Blackfoot version of the English phrase "Normal is the cycle on a washing machine".

The Army Institute of Heraldry's page on the AWG shows its shoulder sleeve insignia to be "a black circular device edged with a 1/8 inch (.32 cm) black border, a red horizontal arrow, pointing to the left",  as shown in the upper right corner of this post.  But the banner on the AWG's own page shows the same insignia with the cited motto in red around the circumference of the patch, as reproduced below:

Another take on the dynamics of political rhetoric (starting around 6:10):

In an article by Malcolm Moore entitled "Chinese language 'damaged by invasion of English words'" published this morning in the Telegraph, a Chinese official expresses grave concern at the invasion of English words in his nation's language.

Huang Youyi, chairman of the International Federation of Translators, makes this alarming prediction: "If we do not pay attention and we do not take measures to stop Chinese mingling with English, Chinese will no longer be a pure language in a couple of years." He goes on to state, "In the long run, Chinese will lose its role as an independent language for communicating information and expressing human feelings."

A carnivore eats meat; an herbivore eats grass; an insectivore eats insects; an omnivore eats everything; a locavore eats locally-produced food. But the latest -vore coinage, femivore, doesn't refer to someone who eats feminists, but rather to, well, something different.

At a restaurant recently, a waiter was asked about the difference between two pinot noirs available by the glass, and responded by describing one of them as "more fruit forward", while the other was "more reticent".  I'm familiar with fruit forward as a bit of winetalk, but this time it occurred to me to wonder where this particular construction came from, and where it's going.

More rhetorical analysis-by-synthesis here.

In the most recent ethnic violence in Nigeria's Plateau State, the victims were "members of Plateau’s leading ethnic group, the Berom, in the villages of Ratt and Dogona Hauwa" (Adam Nossiter, "Clashes kill dozens in central Nigeria", NYT 3/7/2010, update with fuller casualty count here), and the perpetrators were "Fulani herdsmen".

Some excellent background on this conflict can be found in a report by Roger Blench, "Access Rights and Conflict over Common Pool Resources on the Jos Plateau, Nigeria", Report to the World Bank on Jigawa Enhancement of Wetlands Livelihoods Project, 9/13/2003:

Plateau State is distinctive for its high level of ethnolinguistic diversity, and it is populated by a great variety of small groups living in hamlets, with a complex clan organisation and ritual kingship systems. This has ensured that no one language or people is dominant, although the largest ethnic groups are probably the Berom, Ngas and Tarok. Gunn (1953) gives a useful overview of the main ethnic groups of the Plateau region.

Fulɓe movement into the lowland regions is less well chronicled, but it is generally more recent than the movement onto the Plateau. A low human population, low levels of tsetse and mosquitoes and unlimited grassland drew Fulɓe pastoralists from all over the semi-arid regions. Fulɓe established themselves in all parts of the Plateau and originally lived alongside cultivators with minimal friction. To judge by interviews, Fulɓe settlement began in the late nineteenth century but was given a great boost by the end of warfare consequent on colonialism (Morrison 1976).   [links added]

[Guest post by Richard Sproat]

I was spending a pleasant portion of a Sunday morning reading a shocking article in The Economist on The Worldwide War on Baby Girls. One of the sad conclusions of that article is that the preference for male babies, which in some parts of the world is driving the ratio of male to female births to as high as 130 male births per 100 female, is actually getting worse as education gets better in some parts of the world. One of the points made is that "[i]n China, the higher a province’s literacy rate, the more skewed its sex ratio."

I was curious to see how this trend fared worldwide. I have data on literacy and other socioeconomic factors that I collected from the  United Nations Human Development Programme's set of economic indicators, which I had collected for my forthcoming Oxford University Press book Language, Technology, and Society.  Data on sex ratios is available from the CIA World Factbook.

I'm still noodling over Grant Barrett's  "On Language" column in the New York Times the week before last, which tracked the recurring claim that cellar door is the most beautiful phrase in English. It was a model of dogged word-sleuthing, which took us from George Jean Nathan to Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer and Donnie Darko (winnowed down, Grant said on the ADS list, from more than 80 citations for the story he collected).  But the very breadth of the material raised questions that couldn't be addressed in that forum. What accounts for the enduring appeal of this claim in English linguistic folklore? And more specifically: is there a reason why everybody settles on cellar door in particular? I think there is, ultimately. Are you sitting comfortably?