Language Log

I'm spending this week at IEEE ICASSP 2010 in Dallas.  ICASSP stands for "International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing", and it's one of those enormous meetings with a couple of thousand attendees. This one has more than 120 sessions, with presentations on topics ranging from "Pareto-Optimal Solutions of Nash Bargaining Resource Allocation Games with Spectral Mask and Total Power Constraints" to "Matching Canvas Weave Patterns from Processing X-Ray Images of Master Paintings".

It's that time of  the year again: the LINGUIST List's annual fund drive is under way, for the month of March; the drive is about halfway (about $32,000) to its goal of $65,000 (the money goes to support the student staff). From the list's site:

The LINGUIST List is dedicated to providing information on language and language analysis, and to providing the discipline of linguistics with the infrastructure necessary to function in the digital world.

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:

This Yahoo News headline shocked Bethany M.: "Women, girls rape victims in Haiti quake aftermath", 3/16/2010.

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

I recently used the word disprefer in an email, and my spellchecker objected. That led me to a web search that convinced me that disprefer is (1) widely used in linguistics, (2) not listed in the OED, American Heritage, or Merriam-Webster online dictionaries, and (3) abhorred by some prescriptivists.  This post is about to turn into another of those Language Log rants about some prescriptivist's blunders.  My excuse for adding to this already copious genre?  In this case the self-appointed critic aims his barbs directly at "linguists and their lackeys," (Yeah, really) who he describes as "idiotic" and "disaffected… from sense and thoughtfulness."  When a guy calls you names like that and then gets three out of four of his examples wrong, it's hard to keep a civil tongue, but I'll try.

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."

It was recently reported that Ray McBerry, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, sent a message to his supporters reading in part:

In recent weeks, I have been personally accused of, but not limited to, the following list of absurdities: that I attempted to have an affair with my former campaign manager… when she was fired for spending unacceptable amounts of time at the Capitol in lobbying efforts during our campaign; that I somehow “stole” sole custody of my son years ago from his mother, even though she tested positive for meth use in a court-ordered screening after she had been living outside our home for nearly a year; that I have had some sort of sexual or sexually improper relationship with underaged girls; that I am no longer allowed to teach in the state of Georgia, despite the fact that I retain my teaching certificate to this very day; and now that I am somehow unpatriotic because, as a Georgian who cherishes the constitutional Republic given to us by our Founding Fathers and wishes to see it restored, I choose to salute the Georgia flag and the original Betsy Ross American flag instead of the current federal flag which represents the present unconstitutional leviathan in Washington.

Today's Non Sequitur:

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.

JS writes:

I don't think I used the word "sketchy" till I came to college in Virginia, but now I use it with such frequency (especially whenever a party, a city or nightlife is involved) that I am surprised that the meaning I use most for it is not included in most dictionaries. Is there a way to track the evolution of the word? How recent is it, and what its geographical distribution?

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.

Late-breaking news:

The New York Times Magazine announced today the appointment of linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer as the new "On Language" columnist. Mr. Zimmer succeeds William Safire who was the founding and regular columnist until his death last fall. [alas, a non-restrictive relative clause missing its comma] The column is a fixture in The Times Magazine and features commentary on the many facets – from grammar to usage – of our language. "On Language" will appear bi-weekly beginning March 21.

Yes, our very own Ben, who was proud enough to tell the rest of the LLoggers, but too modest to post the announcement himself.

Massive pleasure at Language Log Plaza and on ADS-L.