Archive for August, 2023
Debate-night pronouns
In a comment on yesterday's "Debate words" post, I noted that Donald Trump's ratio of I-words to we-words was "off the charts" compared the other eight candidates, and several people have asked me to give all the numbers.
There's an idea Out There that such numbers are related to issues of personality and mood. This is true, but the relationships are complicated — see Jamie Pennebaker's 2009 guest post "What is 'I' saying?". So we really should classify first-person singular pronouns into what Pennebaker calls "graceful-I" vs. "sledgehammer-I" categories. And of course, various pronoun-usage rates also depend on details of topic and interactional context, as noted in yesterday's exchange of comments.
Still, let's look at the numbers.
Read the rest of this entry »
Debate words
The Transcript Library at rev.com is a great resource — within 24 hours, they had transcripts of Wednesday's Fox News Republican presidential debate, and also of Tucker Carlson's debate night interview with Donald Trump on X.
So this morning I downloaded the transcripts, and ran the code that I've used several times over the years to identify the characteristic word-choices of an individual or of a group.
Read the rest of this entry »
Doom-lexing
Yesterday, Randoh Sallihall from unscramblerer.com sent this note:
Susie Dent has an ever growing Twitter following of 1,1 million unique word lovers to whom she shares her daily word of the day. Word search engine Unscramblerer.com went through Susie Dent's whole Twitter history and analyzed what are the most liked, shared and commented words of the day she has posted.
List of Susie Dent's most popular words of the day:
- Word of the day is ‘ingordigiousness’: extreme greed; an insatiable desire for wealth at any cost. (141387 likes)
- Word of the day is 'maw-worm' (19th century): one who insists that they have done nothing wrong, despite evidence to the contrary. (114681 likes)
- Word of the day is ‘sparple’ (14th century): to deflect unwanted attention from one thing by making a big deal of another. (109082 likes)
- Word of the day is ‘recrudescence’ (17th century): the return of something unpleasant after a period of relief. (103422 likes)
- Word of the day is ‘malversation’ (16th century): the corrupt administration of power. (92425 likes)
- Word of the day is 'filipendulous' (19th century): hanging by a thread. (88913 likes)
- Word of the day is ‘circumlocutionist’: one who consistently speaks in a roundabout way in order to avoid addressing a question directly. (77277 likes)
- Word of the day is ‘spuddle’ (17th century): to work ineffectively; to be extremely busy whilst achieving absolutely nothing. (75219 likes)
- Word of the day is 'sequaciousness' (17th century): the blinkered, unreasoning, and slavish following of another, no matter where it leads. (69710 likes)
- Word of the day is Zugzwang [tzoog-tzwung]: a situation in chess (and life) in which a move must be made, but each possible one will make the situation worse. (68422 likes)
A spokesperson for Unscramblerer.com commented on the findings:
"Susie Dent sometimes uses current events to post a word of the day that is relevant to what is happening in the UK. This is why her most popular words of the day are likely also related to past events where she really understood the mood of the crowd. A great example of this is the word 'maw-worm' posted on Apr 12, 2022 her most retweeted word of the day ever (a dig at Boris Johnson during 'Partygate'). In general people love unique and obscure words they have never heard before. It spikes curiosity and it is really fun trying to use such words yourself. Resulting in people laughing and then asking what does 'snollygoster' mean?"
Read the rest of this entry »
Waterless, emission-free toilet that Chairman Xi saw
(see in particular the second item)
If this isn't dictator status, I don't know what ishttps://t.co/A4guMzG4m1
— Bumboclott (@Bumboclott) June 29, 2023
Read the rest of this entry »
Ron's Princibles
Sunday's post on "Listless vessels" opened with this clip:
The movement has got to be
about what are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people
and that's got to be based in principle
uh because if you're not rooted in principle
uh if all we are is listless vessels that just supposed to follow
you know whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning
that- that's not going to be a durable movement
about what are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people
and that's got to be based in principle
uh because if you're not rooted in principle
uh if all we are is listless vessels that just supposed to follow
you know whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning
that- that's not going to be a durable movement
And in the 30th comment, Yuval wrote
FWIW, both utterances of "principle" sound like 'princible' to me.
He's absolutely right — but what those two words "sound like" leaves an important theoretical (and practical) question open.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Tocharian Trek: PIE and migration across Eurasia
In recent weeks and months, Language Log has been quite active in discussions on Tocharian and its relationship to other members of Indo-European. Today's post takes a different approach from this post made just yesterday and many earlier posts.
"Europe's ancient languages shed light on a great migration and weather vocabulary"
by Ali Jones, Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine (8/15/23)
Painstaking archaeological exploration is a familiar, often widely admired, method of unearthing history. Less celebrated, but also invaluable, is the piecing together of fragments of ancient languages and analyzing how they changed over thousands of years.
Historical linguists have reconstructed a common ancestral tongue for most of the languages spoken today in Europe and South Asia. English, German, Greek, Hindi and Urdu—among others in the Indo-European family of languages—can all trace their origins to a single spoken one named Proto-Indo-European (PIE).
Read the rest of this entry »
Listless vessels
In an interview on Friday ("DeSantis plans to do what Trump couldn't | Full Interview with Will Witt", The Florida Standard 8/18/2023), Ron DeSantis referred to (some of?) Donald Trump's followers as "listless vessels":
The movement has got to be
about what are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people
and that's got to be based in principle
uh because if you're not rooted in principle
uh if all we are is listless vessels that just supposed to follow
you know whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning
that's- that's not going to be a durable movement
about what are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people
and that's got to be based in principle
uh because if you're not rooted in principle
uh if all we are is listless vessels that just supposed to follow
you know whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning
that's- that's not going to be a durable movement
Read the rest of this entry »
The origins and affinities of Tocharian
I asked several IEist colleagues:
Of all the IE languages, which one is Tocharian closest to?
Celtic?
Germanic?
Read the rest of this entry »
A sign of the future?
Anemona Hartocollis, "Slashing Its Budget, West Virginia University Asks, What Is Essential?", NYT 8/18/2023:
The state’s flagship school will no longer teach world languages or creative writing — a sign, its president says, of the future at many public universities.
Christian Adams wants to be an immigration or labor lawyer, so he planned to major in Chinese studies at West Virginia University, with an emphasis on the Mandarin language.
But as his sophomore year begins, he has learned that, as part of a plan to close a $45 million budget deficit through faculty layoffs and academic program consolidation, the university has proposed eliminating its world languages department, gutting his major.
He will have to pivot to accounting, he says, and probably spend an extra year in college, taking out more student loans.
“A lot of students are really worried,” said Mr. Adams, 18. “Some are considering transferring. But a lot of students are stuck with the hand they’ve been given.”
Read the rest of this entry »