Language Log

A couple of days ago, I tried to answer a journalist's questions about nonplussed ("Nonplussed about nonplussed", 8/6/2008). I wasn't entirely satisfied with one of my answers, and so I've tried again today.

Inspired by Geoffrey Pullum's plan to take Barbara her matutinal coffee at exactly 08:08:08 on the morning of 08/08/08, this morning at 08:08:08 a.m. I took 8 photographs of my wife standing next to our favorite orchid, which has had a total of 8 blossoms.

Yes, everything is coming up 8's today. The morning news made a big fuss over how the uniforms of the American Olympians consist of 8 pieces. And everybody (except perhaps Mark Spitz and a billion Chinese) is rooting for Michael Phelps to win 8 gold medals. And today, of course, is very special for New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee who, by the way, wrote an excellent article back in 2001 about the impact of computers on the ability of Chinese to write characters by hand.

The airwaves are full of instant pundits informing us how important 8 is for Chinese because BA1 八 sounds like FA1 发／發 and FA1, among many other things too numerous to list here, can mean "get rich, make a fortune, become wealthy." So as not to sound too crass, those who explain the Chinese attachment to 8 usually say that it signifies "prosper(ity)" — I guess a lot depends upon what one understands "prosper(ity)" to mean! One hears this sort of sentiment most often during Chinese New Year celebrations when people go around saying (and writing endlessly on greeting cards) GONG1XI3 FA1CAI2, Cantonese GONGHAI/HEI FAT CHOI 恭喜发财 ("Congratulations and May You Get Rich!").

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Army is so badly in need of Arabic interpreters ("linguists" in military-speak) that it is considering paying retention bonuses of as much as $150,000, on a par with what they pay members of the Special Forces. It's good to see some appreciation for language skills. Of course, the shortage would not be as great if they didn't keep firing interpreters who are gay.

Considering all of the unsavory, scatalogical Chinglish vocabulary that we have been examining lately, I find it particularly amusing that a very successful chain of restaurants in Taiwan has chosen to call itself Modern Toilet. Here is a novel theme restaurant if ever there was one.

The originator of the chain apparently got his inspiration from reading Japanese manga, and the Chinese name of Modern Toilet, BIAN4SUO3 便所, is actually a borrowing from Japanese BENJO 便所. That literally means "convenience place," hearkening back to our earlier discussions of the greater and lesser varieties of BIAN4 便.

At some time after my breakfast tomorrow morning, as I get ready to leave for my office at the University of Edinburgh, the moment will suddenly arrive when the exact time and date (in all day/month/year syntax formats) is 08:08:08 08/08/08. Why does that seem so special and noteworthy?

I know that in Chinese the number 8 sounds like the word meaning "prosperous"; but that can't be relevant, because I know almost nothing of Chinese — I can't even tell whether a sign says ‘dining hall’ or ‘translate server error’. And of course there is nothing cosmically interesting about any particular date or time: the time will be different in each different time zone, and the date will be different in some of them. It's not a matter of rarity either: every time/date combination is exactly as rare as every other. Yet it still seems like it would be really cool to send out an email, or post to Language Log, with a 08:08:08 08/08/08 time stamp (though the server would probably have the time wrong by a few seconds, which would screw things up)… or to take Barbara her morning coffee at exactly 08:08:08 on the morning of 08/08/08.

In my recent posting on uses of non-dual (outside the domain of the philosophical/religious position of nonduality or nondualism), I (informally) characterized the meaning of the expression as follows:

a non-dual X is simply something (of the appropriate category) that is not a dual X

This characterization incorporates an important observation about expressions of the form non-dual X, like non-dual citizen: they exhibit a "bracketing paradox", in that these expressions have one syntactic bracketing,

[non- + dual] + [X]

but a different composition for the purposes of semantics,

[non-] + [dual + X] 'something that is not a dual X' (e.g. 'someone who is not a dual citizen')

(and not 'a X that is not dual', e.g. 'a citizen who is not dual'). If you were hoping that semantic interpretation could build directly on morphological and syntactic structure, then cases like these are problematic.

Several readers have encouraged me to tell a bit more about the right angle turn that led me into the field of forensic linguistics. It’s a long, strange story but I’ll try to hit the high spots here. If you’re interested you can find a more thorough report in my book, Creating Language Crimes (Oxford U Press 2005).

 After the man sitting next to on the airplane asked me to take a look at the tape-recorded evidence in a solicitation to murder case, I agreed to do so and a day or so later the lawyer in that case, Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, sent me the audio-tapes. The case was Texas v. T. Cullen Davis. The crucial conversations took place in Davis’s Cadillac, sitting in a sweltering Fort Worth parking lot.

With respect to a piece of political spam from John McCain that included the sentence "You will also have an exclusive opportunity to … ask questions to one of my top advisors", Graham commented

Is "ask questions TO somebody" good American English? It reads very oddly to this Brit.

Well, "ask questions to somebody" sounds odd to me as well. And this morning's Breakfast Experiment™ will confirm that oddity quantitatively, as well as suggesting some further research into the population genetics of prepositions.

Yesterday on WHYY's Radio Times, Marty Moss-Coane interviewed Victor Mair about his translation of The Art of War. You can listen to the interview here. (I've created a new URI for the interview, because the one in their archive for the interview has a bad time offset, and starts you off about 8 minutes in.)

Earlier today, a journalist wrote to ask me about "the way 'nonplussed' gets mistaken for 'unfazed'" . In accordance with my recent policy of turning public service into blog fodder, my answers to her questions are posted below the jump.

According to the USPTO web site, the "Notice of Allowance" for Dell's attempt to trademark Cloud Computing has been cancelled.

If you're watching track and field events in the coming Olympics, keep an eye out for British runner Christine Ohuruogu, competing in the women's 400m race (she's currently the World Champion in the event). In 2005, Ohuruogu graduated with a degree in linguistics from University College London, and her thesis was all about taboo vocabulary, a popular topic on Language Log.

James Fallows has a nice post today on the puzzling proliferation of bizarre mistranslations in English versions of Chinese signs, menus and so on ("Uncle! Or let's make that, 叔叔!", 8/5/2008). He illustrates the post with the "Translate server error" sign that he found in a LL post ("Honest but unhelpful", 7/1/2008), due originally (as far as I know) to Samuel Osouf.

Fallows starts this way: "In response to widespread popular demand, I will admit: screwed-up translations of Chinese into English can be very funny!"