Language Log

Tom Scocca, in Slate magazine, is full of scorn for the language of the New York Times. It is not always easy to discern his meaning (he uses a metaphor of lard in pie crusts, which I didn't quite follow), but he seems to think the Times is desperately concerned to "preserve its sacred function (or the appearance of its sacred function) of neutrally and modestly recording events, not judging them" — it struggles so hard to be neutral that it becomes vapid. He is incensed that the phrase "showed just how broadly" in the print edition was replaced in a later online edition by "raised new questions about how broadly", in this passage about the reported deaths of Gaddafi's son and grandsons in Tripoli:

And while the deaths could not be independently verified, the campaign against Libya’s most densely populated areas raised new questions about how broadly NATO is interpreting its United Nations mandate to protect civilians.

Scocca's bitterly scornful remark about the language involved is this:

There: in the disembodied implied passive, questions were raised. About the interpretation of the mandate. And just like that, we have bounced gently away from the bomb crater to a discussion about the understanding of a policy.

The disembodied implied passive? What is this, exactly?

In "No word for 'lazy hack parroting drivel'?" (4/1/2005), Geoff Pullum quoted an exchange between the anthropologist Jacques Ivanoff and CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon, discussing the response of some islanders near Thailand to a tsunami:

Ivanoff: "Time is not the same concept as we have. You can't say for instance, 'When.' It doesn't exist in Moken language."

Simon: "And since there is no notion of time, it doesn't matter if the last visit was a week ago or five years ago."

Geoff's comment:

Simon takes the (utterly unsupported) anthropologist's claim that they don't have the same concept of time as us westerners and stretches it to get to the notion that they have no concept of time. That, of course, will link to why they have no word for "hello": they have no idea whether anyone has been away. No concept of time, so no way absence could make the heart grow fonder. Utter, self-refuting nonsense, of course. If the Moken had no concept of time, how would they have known to flee to higher ground when the tsunami was coming, rather than three hours later? And how would they know that time had passed so it was OK to come back to the beach? How can people believe these things?

One answer might be "when they get some benefit from the belief". Back in 2005, Bob Simon got an appealing if incoherent story line. But in a story aired last Friday,  60 Minutes found itself on the other side of a similar discussion.

Was this inspired by this? Or is it a case of anticipatory plagiarism?

Michael Moore asks:

I wonder what your opinion is about no fly zones. Totally unambiguous (well, unless you think flies are involved), as succinct as possible, and also very irregular. I can't think of a rephrasing that would deliver the message with the same clarity. It seems that we need to sacrifice conventional rules to make a good point.

Apparently some editors at the New York Times are also worried about convention in this matter, because that publication somewhat erratically deploys "no-flight zone" in place of "no-fly zone". Thus David Sanger and Thom Shankar, "Gates Warns of Risks of a No-Flight Zone", 3/2/2011, where "no-flight zone" occurs nine times, and "no-fly zone" occurs four times. The difference? "No-fly" is in all and only the quotes (from Senator Kerry and Defense Secretary Gates), while "no-flight" occurs in all and only the unquoted text.

This is not a consistent editorial practice, however. We also see things like John Broder, "U.S. and Allies Weigh Libya No-Fly Zone", NYT 2/28/2011, where the score is "no-fly zone" 5 (both quoted and not), "no-flight zone" 0.

The word protesters has for obvious reasons jumped into abnormally high-rotation on the news radio dial, and to my surprise, many of the members of the media (on NPR and the BBC) that I've heard use the word are pronouncing it protésters [pʰɹəˈtʰɛstɚz] rather than the way I would pronounce it, prótesters [ˈpʰɹoʊˌtʰɛstɚz]. (Please ignore the r-coloring I've indicated on the last vowel, which reflects my r-ful pronunciation; it's the difference in stress that I'm interested in.) I think I've pinpointed both the justification for pronouncing what I'll arbitrarily call "the media's way" and why I pronounce it my way; read on below the fold if you're interested, and let us know what you think in the comments.

In this week's online BBC News magazine, Alan Metcalf reprises his recent book OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word. I haven't read the book, but Prof. Metcalf is an established scholar as well as a successful popularist, and I have every reason to think that the book is well worth reading. Still, I have a little semantic problem with the article.

The article mostly discusses the history of OK, saying that its widespread circulation probably dates back to an unfunny joke in an 1839 article in the Boston Morning Post. Fair enough: he and the OED agree on this point. Then he goes on:

But what makes OK so useful that we incorporate it into so many conversations?

Today on The Atlantic I break down Watson's big win over the humans in the Jeopardy!/IBM challenge. (See previous Language Log coverage here and here.) I was particularly struck by the snowclone that Ken Jennings left on his Final Jeopardy response card last night: "I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords." I use that offhand comment as a jumping-off point to dismantle some of the hype about Watson's purported ability to "understand" natural language.

Two interesting popular articles on linguistic aspects of artificial intelligence have recently appeared in the popular press.

The first one is by Richard Powers ("What is Artifical Intelligence?", NYT 2/6/2011):

IN the category “What Do You Know?”, for $1 million: This four-year-old upstart the size of a small R.V. has digested 200 million pages of data about everything in existence and it means to give a couple of the world’s quickest humans a run for their money at their own game.

The question: What is Watson?

I.B.M.’s groundbreaking question-answering system, running on roughly 2,500 parallel processor cores, each able to perform up to 33 billion operations a second, is playing a pair of “Jeopardy!” matches against the show’s top two living players, to be aired on Feb. 14, 15 and 16.

This is almost too good to be true. Via The Media Blog, here's a correction that ran in Rockhampton, Australia's Morning Bulletin:

An unusually fine example in Rachel Donadio, "Surreal: A Soap Opera Starring Berlusconi", NYT 1/22/2011:

It is not always easy to translate between Italian and American sensibilities. There is no good English word for “veline,” the scantily clad Vanna White-like showgirls who smile and prance on television, doing dance numbers even in the middle of talk shows. And there is no word in Italian for accountability. The closest is “responsibilità” [sic] — responsibility — which lacks the concept that actions can carry consequences.

While travelling in Spain last week, I found myself waiting in the car for a long enough period of time that I decided to see what might be on the radio. By some cosmic coincidence, the first station I tuned to happened to feature a discussion of language.

Judging by the popular vote, I've done an epically inadequate job of holding up my end of the Economist's debate "This house believes that the language we speak shapes how we think": the Pro side is winning in a landslide, 78% to 22%.

A new motion is open for debate today in the Economist's online series: "This house believes that the language we speak shapes how we think".  Lera Boroditsky is the designated defender of the motion, and I was recruited to be the designated opponent.

In this format, each side submits an opening statement, a rebuttal, and a closing statement. Readers get to comment, and also to vote on the motion. Our opening statements are now live.