Language Log

As preface to today's taboo-language story, an Ariel Molvig cartoon from the latest New Yorker:

The story is a column by Adam Liptak in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times: "Must It Always Be About Sex?", about the word fuck, which the Times is committed to avoiding — so that if Liptak is going to report on a current U.S. Supreme Court case about this word, he has to do some deft side-stepping.

A couple of days ago, in response to John Gonzalez's question "Where does this unit rank among the most beloved Philly sports teams of all time?", Phil Sheridan answered:

For me, this team has to rank up there with the Flyers' Stanley Cup-winning teams for sheer beloved-osity.

This reminded me of a question from a reader that arrived in my inbox the same day:

I wonder if you know of any explanation for why the final -ed is made into a syllable in some words used as adjectives, such as blessed, beloved, learned, and dogged, though when these words are used as verbs, the final -ed is not pronounced as a syllable.

The short answer: liturgical habit protected a few words from a sound change, half a millennium ago (and also, "dogged" is not derived from the verb dog). A longer answer is after the jump.

At a rally a few weeks ago in Newport News, Obama criticized McCain's economic program, claiming that the average CEO would get a $700,000 tax break, and then added: "Not only is it not right, it ain't right." Apart from the obvious "just folks" implications of the register shift, the line exploits a subtle distinction in evidentiality that Tom Wasow pointed out to me some years ago, which I worked into a "Fresh Air" piece back in 2002:

A while ago my Stanford colleague Tom Wasow sent me an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that quoted a dean at a prestigious Eastern university: "Any junior scholar who pays attention to teaching at the expense of research ain't going to get tenure." That ain't was a nice touch: it made it clear that the dean's conclusion wasn't based on expert knowledge or some recent committee report — it was something that should be clear to anyone with an ounce of sense.

That's the message that ain't conveys in all those common expressions like "It ain't over till the fat lady sings" or "If it ain't broke don't fix it" —ain't tells you that you're dealing with a nitty-gritty verity that you don't need a college education to understand.

I was interested in this comment by BeachSaint on Matt Yglesias' post "Duberstein for Obama":

Someone should check the seismic activity in the Simi Valley between now and election day because Ronald Reagan must be rolling over in his grave over the antics of the McCain Campaign.

I am a registered Republican who has received extensive campaign training from the national committee. I am ProObama, ProLife. I’m not sure how much longer I can remain registered in a party run amok by the likes of Sarah Palin, Joe-the-Plumber and the other uneducated members of the radical right.

At first, I thought that the phrase "a party run amok by the likes of Sarah Palin [and] Joe-the-Plumber" was a passive of a causative: Sarah and Joe ran the party amok, i.e. caused the party to run amok, and so the party was run amok by them. (N.B. No political commentary is intended here — this is linguistics.)

But … Well, before going further into this analysis, let's back up on amok.

We haven't had anything recently about how clever starlings are, but what with all the discussion about parrot lips, I thought that some of you might enjoy this:

There are no associated news stories, so far, about vocal organs or communication skills, though commenters on several web forums have made suggestions about demonic possession and (from those who listen more carefully) the possible dangers of keeping vocal mimics as house pets.