Language Log

In the case of D. C. v Heller shortly to be decided by the US Supreme Court, the central issue is the meaning of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

One of the issues is whether the Second Amendment guarantees a private right, that is, a right of individuals to own and carry arms, or a public right, that is, a right of militias to own and carry arms, or both. Many advocates of restrictions on the right of individuals to own and carry arms promote the interpretation that the Second Amendment is meant only to protect the organized militia units, which, they typically argue, are now subsumed under the National Guard. For advocates of this interpretation, there is no individual right to own and carry weapons.

Reuters' report on the trial of British mercenary Simon Mann in Equatorial Guinea for his role in a 2004 attempted coup indicates that:

Tuesday's trial was conducted in Spanish without translation… Mann… does not speak Spanish…Asked by reporters if he thought he was getting a fair trial he replied "No comment".

I'm not worried about offending the court or what passes for a government in Equatorial Guinea so I'll take the liberty of answering for him: No. A trial conducted in a language that the defendant does not understand without an interpreter cannot possibly be fair. You'd think even a tinpot dictatorship would be ashamed not to provide at least the pretense of a fair trial.

A message I recently received from an employee of the BBC ended with this piece of legal boilerplate below the name of the sender (I reproduce it exactly as it appeared in my mailer):

This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated.
If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system.
Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately.
Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received.
Further communication will signify your consent to this.

What strikes me about these absurd signoffs that more and more organizations seem to think they need to tack onto the end of every email is not just that they are quixotically absurd as a way of forfending unintended information release (if you are not allowed to read the above message please avert your gaze and do not look at it!) but also that they are often so appallingly written. You would think that if the legal department insists on them being appended for important legal reasons to perhaps millions of messages per day (and I cannot really believe they ever save anyone from anything), the matter would be important enough to occupy a quarter of an hour of someone's time to make them grammatical, coherent, and unambiguous.

You're asked:

(1) Do you mind if I ask you a question?

How do you respond? There's a complexity here, no matter what your opinions about question-asking are. The problem is that (1) has the form of a yes-no question (about what the addressee's sensibilities are) but also conveys a request (for the addressee to allow the questioner to perform an action). An affirmative response to the yes-no question is a negative response to the request, and vice versa. Oh dear. (Actually, there's more.)

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld the decision of a lower court in a suit by the American Council for the Blind, holding that US paper money violates the rights of blind people and ordering that it be modified so as to make it possible for blind people to distinguish one denomination from another. Another advocacy group, the National Federation of the Blind, sided with the Treasury Department, arguing that modifying paper money to accommodate the blind would make business take blind people less seriously and make it harder for blind people to find employment. Of the more than 180 countries that produce paper money, only the United States uses bills whose denomination can be determined only by reading. Euro banknotes, for example, are larger for larger denominations, are of different colors, so that people with limited vision can more easily tell them apart, and have the denomination printed in intaglio, which allows the denomination to be read with the fingers.

We all change our minds once in a while. We think something is a good idea at first and then we decide that it wasn't so good after all. A recent Post article tells how the Maryland Court of Appeals recently overturned a ruling by an lower court. The former ruling held that when a woman first consents to have sexual intercourse and then changes her mind during the act, this change of mind doesn't override her initial consent. Her "yes" remained "yes." The Appeals Court, in contrast, held that when a woman first consents and then changes her mind in the midst of having sex with a man, that man can be charged with rape. Her "yes" changed to "no." 

Slate reports on Justice Antonin Scalia's new book, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, written with Bryan Garner. Scalia has never been timid about offering his opinions on virtually any subject and Garner is cited regularly in Language Log posts on matters of general and legal usage. As authorities, they make an interesting pair. There is a useful review of Making Your Case in the ABA Journal but I want to focus on only one point about which the media seem to disagree. And I'll try to figure out why they do so.

The trial of Los Angles private investigator, Anthony Pellicano, took a linguistic twist this week as the Washington Post reports. He is representing himself at his trial and so he has to follow the language rules imposed by the court. This means that any time he wants to refer to himself, he is not allowed to say "I" or "me." He has to say "he" or "Pellicano." This must be hard for him to do and I think it would feel rather strange. Sounds a bit like the royal he, if there is such a thing, or maybe like "your humble servant" that we find in letters from back in the Victorian Age.

Hate speech laws, in my opinion, are in general offensive and counterproductive, but the Alberta Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act contains a provision that really takes the cake. Section 3(1) provides:

No person shall publish, issue or display or cause to be published, issued or displayed before the public any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that

(a) indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate against a person or a class of persons, or

(b) is likely to expose a person or a class of persons to hatred or contempt

because of the race, religious beliefs, colour, gender, physical disability, mental disability, age, ancestry, place of origin, marital status, source of income or family status of that person or class of persons.

You can't "expose a person … to hatred or contempt because of …source of income"‽ I'm sympathetic to the goal of discouraging the idea that, say, toilet cleaners or leather workers are inferior to other people, but aren't there some occupations that are legitimately and more-or-less universally held in contempt? Are there ways to describe a pimp, a torturer, a pirate, or a slave trader that don't expose them to hatred or contempt? I hope not.

Some time ago Geoff Pullum wrote about the connection between the song "Happy Birthday" and linguistics, via Archibald Hill, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas, who inherited part of the rights to the song. The convoluted story of the copyright to the song has now been sorted out by Robert Brauneis in a paper available here. Professor Brauneis is guest-blogging on the topic today at the Volokh Conspiracy.

The most recent xkcd:

For me, at least, it should be "closer to", not "closer of". This isn't a necessary truth: "I can't get within 500 yards of you" would be perfectly fine; and in French, for example, the preposition used with "plus proche" is de, not à:

Tout ce qui est plus proche que 3 mètres ou plus éloigné que 5 mètres de vos yeux est flou.
C'est une saveur qui est plus proche du thym que de l'anis.

But in English, it seems to me, close and most of its synonyms — without or without -er and -est — should take to. Walt Whitman wrote "Come closer to me", not "Come closer of me". The old song is "Nearer, my God, to thee", not "Nearer, my God, of thee". There are more recent songs "Closer to you" and "Close to you"; as well as "Closer to me" and "Close to me". But the only pop resonance for "closer of you/me" seems to be a non-native-speaker's translation of "Un poco cerca de mi".

It's possible that Randall Munroe originally wrote, or at least thought, "I can't get within 500 yards of you", and then changed "within 500 yards" to "closer than 500 yards" without changing the preposition.

But it's also possible that this is one of the many points on which different speakers of English have different ideas.

I'm relatively sure that Language Log readers have been slavering to get a hunting or fishing license in Montana. So I'll tell you how, sort of. True, this state has been called a hunter's and fisherman's paradise but it an be a bit frustrating when you try to get a license. Locals tell me that this helps keep outsiders outside. But even people who live in Montana have to jump through some confusing linguistic hoops if they want to hunt or fish legally. This problem doesn't affect me personally because I'm a Montana anomaly. I don't hunt or fish at all but I'm amused by the steps people have to take to become legal hunters and fishermen. 

If you're among those who worry that the vocabulary and syntax of English are about to collapse under the assaults of whateverist nomads, I suggest a close study of Penny Arcade for 3/12/2008, "The Case of Texas vs. KryoLord":

[For legal background, see Elizabeth Langton, "Rockwall County District Attorney Ray Sumrow used server for personal items, expert says", Dallas Morning News, 3/11/2008, with more here. For WoW background, see e.g. here.]