Language Log

My previous post was about "dialects" that are often not really dialects, but bona fide languages, and the efforts of the Chinese government to phase them out.  In this post, I'll be talking about "etymology" that is not really etymology, but character analysis.

The occasion for these ruminations (see especially the last two paragraphs below) is this brief news item that occurred in the Beijing Morning Post on January 13 (pardon the somewhat peculiar English of the following paraphrase, which is taken from a daily Chinese newspaper digest [so far as I know, the BMP is published only in Chinese]; it conveys the sense and tenor of the original in a serviceable, though abridged, fashion):

Murray Smith asks about a phrase in Joe Drape, "Looking for Zenyatta's Mr. Right", NYT 1/13/2011:

How Zenyatta will fare in her new career as a broodmare at Lane's End Farm is anyone's guess. She was a once-in-a-generation princess on the racetrack, winning 19 of 20 starts […]

Breeding, however, is more magic than math. […]

The Mosses and the people they have entrusted Zenyatta to know that the odds of coming up with another horse like her are long.

Murray observes that "The context makes clear that it is considered somewhat unlikely that Zenyatta will produce offspring of her calibre (the odds are against it), but the quote seems to say that it is likely (the odds of it are long)". Any idea what's happening? Any way to tell whether 'odds of' has always been ambiguous between "'for' and 'against'?"

A new online venture has just been launched: Popular Linguistics Magazine. From editor DS Bigham's welcome message to Volume 1, Issue 1:

After seven rounds of balloting, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee is Reince Priebus (Jeff Zeleny, "G.O.P. Elects a New Chairman as Steele Drops Out", NYT 1/14/2011). My reaction is a parochial one: as a linguist interested in prosody, I'm looking forward to Mr. Preibus's contributions to the study of English intonation.

Earlier today, Mark Liberman discussed the abortive attempt by Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to phase in Tunisian Arabic.

Now, in a report circulated by China Daily / ANN and carried in The Straits Times, we learn:  "Dialects to be phased out of China's prime time TV"

According to an email from Youssef Gaigi posted by Gillian York:

Today’s speech shows definitely a major shift in Tunisia’s history.
[Tunisian president Zine El Abidine] Ben Ali talked for the third time in the past month to the people. Something unprecedented, we barely knew this guy. Ben Ali talked in the Tunisian dialect instead of Arabic for the first time ever.

A story in today's New York Times will give you some background on the serious and astonishing situation in Tunisia: David Kirkpatrick and Alan Cowell, "Crisis Deepens in Tunisia as President’s Offer Falls Flat", 1/14/2011. [Update — Since I posted this, Ben Ali has resigned and fled the country, as the linked story indicates.]

Today's Zits:

The image on the right reproduces a brief passage from a letter that Robert Southey wrote to his friend Grosvenor C. Bedford, on October 1, 1795. (Click on the image for a larger version, as usual.)

Read it, and see if you can figure out what aspect of it Richard Grant White in 1869 called the worst of "those intruders in language … which, about seventy or eighty years ago, began to affront the eye, torment the ear, and assault the common sense of the speaker of plain and idiomatic English".

There's been quite a bit of discussion about Sarah Palin's commentary on the Tucson shootings, and most of it has been about the segment where she characterizes criticism of her gunsight map as "a blood libel":

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If you don't like their ideas
you're free to propose better ideas
but
especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding
journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel
that serves only to incite
the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn.
That is reprehensible.

Jeremy Roebuck, "Defendant with no language proves difficult to prosecute", Philadelphia Inquirer 1/11/2011:

As [Juan Jose Gonzalez Luna] has next to no language skills, his case has baffled Montgomery County courts since his arrest on drug trafficking charges late last year. While courts have come a long way in providing access to interpreters in a host of exotic languages, no one is sure how to translate for a man who knows no language at all. […]

Accommodating those with limited access to language is a rare problem in U.S. courts, but one that judges have met with limited success.

Many have avoided the problem, declaring such defendants incompetent to stand trial. Others have relied on a complex and imperfect method of interpretation, one still viewed with skepticism by many in the legal profession.

And while most courts say they do their best, a good effort is not good enough, said Michele LaVigne, a lawyer and scholar at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

It is not, after all, that defendants like Gonzalez are incompetent to stand trial, but that the U.S. court system largely remains ill-suited for trying them.

"The law is a language-based system," she said. "Drop someone in who can't access that immediately, and we still don't know what to do with them."

Today's SMBC imagines the invention of an implantable grammar corrector, the whom-o-matic tooth:

Paul Kay:

The website of a Palo Alto yoga emporium sports the following bit of pricing information:

monthly unlimited automatic with drawl ** $125

The doubly starred footnote explains:

** Requires a 6-month commitment.

Which seems to mean you can have all the yoga lessons you can stand if you sign up for an automatic withdrawal of $125/mo. from your bank account (for at least six months).

From the Ohio State department's memorial page:

Ilse was born on January 31, 1922 in Tallinn, Estonia, but left Estonia as a refugee in 1944, fleeing the Soviet invasion of her homeland. She earned her first Ph.D., in Philology, from the University of Hamburg in 1948 and a second Ph.D., in Linguistics, from the University of Michigan in 1959. In 1963, Ilse joined the faculty at The Ohio State University. Ilse came to OSU from the University of Michigan, after receiving her Ph.D., and spending 1959-63 at the Communication Sciences Laboratory as Research Associate. At Ohio State, she divided her time between phonetics, historical linguistics, and administration, serving as Chair 1965-71, Acting Chair 1984-85, and again Chair 1985-87.  In fact, she was the Department's first Chair (1965-1971) when it was founded in 1965, after having spent two years in the Slavic Department. Professor Emeritus since 1987.

Ilse enjoyed a long and distinguished career.  She was the author, co-author or editor of 20 books, about 200 articles and over 100 reviews. Ilse was honored in many ways for her immense contributions to the field of linguistics. At The Ohio State University, she was awarded the title of Distinguished University Professor and received the University Distinguished Scholar Award, the university's highest recognition for scholarly achievement. She also held four honorary doctorates from Essex University, England (1977), the University of Lund, Sweden (1982), Tartu University, Estonia (1989), and The Ohio State University (1999). She was Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences since 1998, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1990, and Foreign Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences (2008).