Language Log

In response to my posting about the language of three imprisoned children in Linz, Austria, several people have commented on the report that the children finished all their sentences with the word "but" (which I took to mean German aber). Two noted that many German speakers use sentence-final conjunctions (oder 'or', but also aber) as discourse particles, and one supplied a possible parallel from colloquial Italian (with ma 'but'). Then I recalled a discussion on the newsgroup sci.lang in 2006 about sentence-final but in varieties of English and in Hawaiian Pidgin. No doubt there are parallels in other languages; the semantic development is not surprising (more on this below).

So it's likely that the children were just using a feature of colloquial German speech, which was then over-reported by an observer and treated as strange and new by journalists. Certainly we've seen many such cases here on Language Log.

Last week, I discussed some of the things that Rev. Jeremiah Wright had to say at the National Press Club about race, language, and the brain ("Wright on language and linguistics", 4/29/2008). But I didn't discuss the passage that many journalists identified as the rhetorical and emotional core of his outburst. (Click the link to hear the audio.)

This is the transcript:

In our community, we have something called playing the dozens.
If you think I'm going to let you talk about my momma,
and her religious tradition, and my daddy, and his religious tradition, and my grandpa,
you got another think coming.

Or is it?

Geoff Pullum's wonderful example of the perils of trying to avoid split infinitives: it can lead to a straightforwardedly ungrammatical result. Simplifying the original to make the point clearer, the entirely unproblematic

(1) Rockefeller has pledged $100 million to dramatically increase learning opportunities for Harvard undergraduates

was incorrected to the entirely problematic

(2) Rockefeller has pledged $100 million to increase dramatically learning opportunities for Harvard undergraduates.

I intend to post later on other aspects of the phenomenon, but here I want to say a few words about the "nonintervention constraint" violated in (2): in English, nothing can intervene between a verb and its direct object (unless the direct object is long, complex, or "heavy"). I want to say these few words because I think the constraint — which I'll refer to as *V+X+DO (yes, extraordinarily clunky, but I have at the moment no better alternative) — is a beautiful piece of English syntax.

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.

Geoff Pullum posted a little while back on the way the language of the imprisoned children in Amstetten, Austria was characterized in the Daily Telegraph, under the outrageous headline Dungeon children speak in animal language. Last year I spent some time trying to track down the facts in another imprisoned-Austrian-children story (this time in Linz). In the first coverage I saw, from The Times on 12 February 2007, the children (three girls) were said to have developed their own language, an "almost unintelligible" form of German, with an astonishing twist: the girls "reportedly finish all sentences with the word "but" [that is, German aber]".

This morning's Get Fuzzy:

According to the default settings of Google Maps for a user in Philadelphia PA, if you're IN HEAVEN, you're just outside of Cincinnati OH, whereas if you're IN HELL, you're a few hundred miles north, a little bit northwest of Ann Arbor MI. IN PURGATORY, it seems, is between Lewiston and Augusta ME.

(Click on thumbnails for larger images.)

According to the Wikipedia,

Abstract nonsense, or general abstract nonsense, is a popular term used by mathematicians to describe certain kinds of arguments and concepts in category theory or applications. The term goes back a long way, and even predates the foundation of category theory as a subject itself. Referring to a joint paper with Samuel Eilenberg that introduced the notion of a "category" in 1942, Saunders Mac Lane wrote the subject was 'then called "general abstract nonsense"'.

The term is believed to have been coined by the mathematician Norman Steenrod, himself one of the developers of the categorical point of view. This term is used by practitioners as an indication of mathematical sophistication or coolness rather than as a derogatory designation.

And it's true!

As part of its efforts to spiff up its image for the Olympics and counter the widespread protests over its occupation of Tibet, the Chinese government is putting out propaganda to the effect that all is well for the Tibetan language and that China is promoting its use. CCTV has just reprinted this article originally published in October in the People's Daily (人民日报), the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

In reality, according to Tibetan sources, China is promoting Chinese at the expense of Tibetan as part of its campaign of cultural genocide. Here is a brief news item. The Free Tibet report to which it refers can be downloaded here.

Back in June, we unaccountably failed to cover a linguistic debate that took place in the House Committee on Government Reform of the United States Congress. Lurita Doan, the head of the General Services Administration, testified at length about the number, nature, and interpretation of tenses, aspects, and moods in English. Alternative views were expressed by representatives John Sarbanes (D-MD), John Yarmuth (D-KY), and Henry Waxman (D-CA).

But today, we get another shot at the story, because Ms. Doan is in the news again.