Language Log

A couple of days ago, Jim Bisso sent me a question:

I've been embattled by a bunch of peevologists over the grammaticality of sentences of the sort: "my mother(,) she is a good person". I have pointed out that many kinds of apposition are not only acceptable but flow from the pens of some of our finest writers, but they are having none of that. Somehow a construction like "we the people of the United States etc." is okay, but reverse the order of Pron + NP to NP + Pron and sparks start to fly. I say it's simply a stylistic matter and not a syntactic one, but who am I? What say you? (Do you know any monographs that I might delve into to fuel my argument?)

Executive summary: This construction goes back to Old English, and is still widely used in spoken English and in some regional varieties ; but its use in formal written English has been decreasing since about 1500, and is now either informal or archaic.

Today saw the release of the anxiously awaited T-Mobile G1, the first phone to use Google's Android software. On T-Mobile's website, the first ad for the phone was unveiled, and it's packed with jocular comparative adjectives: smarterer, connecteder, funnerer.

This isn't just an homage to Dumb and Dumberer, the even more dim-witted sequel to Dumb and Dumber. Rather, it's being recognized by many in the techie community as a pointed jab at Apple honcho Steve Jobs, who recently enthused about "the funnest iPod ever." (That's still the tagline on the website for the iPod Touch.)

A brief note on the intrusion of the word uppity into the U.S. presidential election. It came a while back, from congressman Lynn Westmoreland. Here's one (of a great many) reports on the event, from The Hill on 4 September:

Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term "uppity" to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

"Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.

Uproar ensued.

Zippy's talking in catch-phrases again:

We haven't posted on Eskimo words for snow in a while, but here's a sighting from the lolcat universe:

This from Karen Baumer, who has a collection of linguistic lolcats on her Facebook page.

Despite the FUWA ("good-luck dolls," "friendlies") mascot-goddesses in the "niches" below the sign, the translation is most inauspicious.

Now that the Large Hadron Collider is stumbling towards full operation, perhaps it's time to clarify how to parse (and interpret, and pronounce) its name. Is it the [large [hadron collider]] or the [[large hadron] collider]? Is it a device for colliding hadrons (in the way that a particle accelerator accelerates particles, and an atom smasher smashes atoms) or just a collider whose operation depends essentially on hadrons (in the way that a hydrogen bomb depends on hydrogen, and a lithium-ion battery depends on lithium ions)?) And is the main phrase stress on the last word ("collider") or on the middle word ("hadron")?

In a post last February I wrote about Yale professor of language and literature Thomas R. Lounsbury (1838-1915), whose 1908 book The Standard of Usage in English bucked the priggish prescriptivism of the era. More recently, Arnold Zwicky hailed his English Spelling and Spelling Reform as "a bracing, sharp-tongued book" full of "elegant rants." Lounsbury also played a major role in the history of language study at Yale, along with his more famous colleague William Dwight Whitney. In my February post I wrote that Thomas Lounsbury was not (as far as I knew) related to the anthropological linguist Floyd Lounsbury (1914-1998), an expert on North American and Mesoamerican indigenous languages who taught at Yale several decades later. It turns out the two language-loving Lounsburys were indeed related, but rather distantly: they were third cousins thrice removed.

Arnold Zwicky recently wrote about the word once in an important post on what he calls "temporary potential ambiguity" (a very useful concept indeed). His target was the strange practice among prescriptivists of deprecating what he calls the "subordinator" use of once, by which he means the use where it is immediately followed by a clause complement, as in Once you've finished the report, bring it to me immediately. The prescriptivists object to that, but don't seem to mind the others at all. I want to refine Arnold's analysis a bit — in a way that only strengthens his general point. He says there are three main uses of once. I put the number at five well-established different uses. And interestingly, if I'm right about them, this word has been completely misanalyzed by all grammarians so far.

The simple version of the traditional position is that once is an adverb, and in the objectionable use it's a subordinating conjunction. I claim all of this is wrong. Neither the traditional grammarians nor the usage purists have managed to get anything right about this multi-talented word.

In the section on "Theories of Language Development" in Karen Huffman's Psychology in Action, Wiley, 8th edition, 2005 (p. 303), we read that

… Noam Chomsky … suggests that children are born "prewired" to learn language. They possess neurological ability, known as a language acquisition device (LAD), that … enables the child to analyze language and extract the basic rules of grammar.
[…]
Although the nativist position enjoys considerable support, it fails to explain individual differences. Why does one child learn rules for English, whereas another learns rules for Spanish?

David Crystal laments on his blog:

it's going to be difficult to dispel the urban myths about texting. Here’s an example of the problem. Txtng came out on 5th July. On the 6th there was a report in Scotland on Sunday headed ‘Professor spreads the word on joy of text’. That sounds good, and the report did summarize quite well the six main points …

At the end, the reporter asked for a reaction from the Headteachers’ Association of Scotland. This is what the spokesman said: ‘Because of the rate in which text-speak is taking hold I shudder to think what letters will look like in 10 years’ time.’

The spokesman obviously hadn’t paid any attention at all to the report.

Not an uncommon scenario. An expert — someone with detailed knowledge in some domain and with evidence bearing on a question in that domain — speaks authoritatively on that question. Some members of the public who have an opinion on the question then simply disregard the expert's testimony. What's going on here?

More on the evils of texting, with a predictable response by authorities: there oughta be a law (or at least an administrative ban). From the New York Times:

California Bans Texting by Operators of Trains
By JESSE McKINLEY and MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: September 18, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO — A day after federal investigators said an engineer in last week’s deadly train collision outside Los Angeles had been text-messaging on the job, California’s railroad regulators temporarily banned the use of all cellular devices by anyone at the controls of a moving train.

The emergency order was passed unanimously by the five-person California Public Utilities Commission, which noted the lack of federal or state rules regarding the use of such devices by on-duty train personnel.

Michael R. Peevey, the president of the commission, which oversees rail traffic in the state, said in a statement that the prohibition on cellular use was “necessary and reasonable.”

Notice that the ban is on all cellular devices.

Now comes a fresh bulletin on the Texting While Xing front.

When I read this article in the New York Times that is critical about the expert witness system in the US courts, I found a lot to cheer about. I’ve served as an expert in scores of cases in the US state and federal courts, before the US Congress, and at the International Criminal Tribunal, so my agreement may seem surprising.

It’s no secret that serving as an expert witness can be excruciatingly difficult experience. Some say it’s a lot like taking a four-hour doctor’s oral exam. In the US criminal court system, experts are hired either by the prosecution or the defense. No matter which side we’re working for and no matter how objective we may try to be, some people still call us “hired guns.”