Language Log

As spectacularly demonstrated by this YouTube video, it is amazing how much one can say in Mandarin simply by punning with numbers alone:

As is often the case, the opinion in a recently-decided legal case (Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in U.S. v. Phillip Abawa) turned on the meaning of a word:

“Inflict” is a narrower term than “cause.” Here, while in federal custody, Phillip Zabawa assaulted a federal law enforcement officer. The officer responded by headbutting Zabawa, which left the officer with a cut over his eye. A federal grand jury later indicted Zabawa for assaulting a federal officer in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1) and (b). Zabawa was convicted of both offenses. But § 111(b) specifies that the defendant must “inflict[]” the predicate injury to the officer, rather than just proximately cause it; and here, the officer himself admitted that his injury might have resulted from his application of force (i.e., the headbutt) to Zabawa, rather than from any force Zabawa applied to him. The district court found this distinction irrelevant, construing “inflict” to mean “cause.” We respectfully disagree, and reverse Zabawa’s conviction under § 111(b).

Reader S.L. pointed to this opinion's "selective use of dictionary definitions, as well as literary and other references", and wondered "if anyone at Language Log might have any observations".

Parse it if you can:

The right, by contrast, wants to provide those cross subsidies via marriage with single women who have sex (and their children) simply left to suffer pour encourager les autres.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably already seen Business Insider's "22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other." (Or, as it was originally titled, "22 Maps That Show the Deepest Linguistic Conflicts in America.") The piece has truly gone viral, garnering more than 21 million views, according to Business Insider. But there's been some confusion about the origins of the dialect survey data.

"Red-blue divisions start with newborns’ names; parents show partisan tendencies", Washington Times 6/5/2013:

Names with the soft consonant “l” or that end in a long “a” — for example, President Obama’s daughter Malia — are more likely to be found in Democratic neighborhoods, while names with hard vowel sounds such as K, G or B — think former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s sons Track and Trig — are more popular in Republican communities.

I've pretty much given up on the idea that literate people can be expected to know the difference between voice and tense, or passive and active, or even nouns and verbs. But I thought that consonants and vowels were pretty safe, at least as a taxonomy of orthographic categories. I mean, "AEIOU and sometimes Y", right?

From Head Trip for 7/6/2006, someone who feels strongly about spelling:

Practically everybody has heard of the fabled Grass Mud Horse (cǎonímǎ 草泥马), which is a pun for "f*ck your mother" (cào nǐ mā 肏你妈). China Digital Times, which pioneered research on "sensitive words", including "Grass Mud Horse", has just introduced a new feature, which should prove to be a useful resource for China scholars and journalists: "Two Years of Sensitive Words: Grass-Mud Horse List".

You will observe that not one of the tones of cǎonímǎ 草泥马 ("Grass Mud Horse") matches the corresponding tone in the original cào nǐ mā 肏你妈 ("f*ck your mother"), yet no one has the slightest difficulty in comprehending that the former is meant as a pun for the latter.

I just learned that the American Psychiatric Association, at their annual meeting last month, had a Media Workshop on "A Case of Xenoglossy and the Nature of Consciousness", where the organizer, a psychiatrist named Samuel Sandweiss, claimed that he had a patient back in 1983 (!) who spontaneously uttered profound philosophical remarks in a mixture of Sanskrit and Pali.  And here I had been fondly imagining that my 1996 encyclopedia article `Xenoglossy' had succeeded in demolishing claims that some people can speak languages they have not had an opportunity to learn in their current lifetime.   But Sandweiss's proposal — unlike those of the late Ian Stevenson, also a psychiatrist and the best-known promoter of purported cases of xenoglossy — apparently doesn't involve reincarnation; it sounds more like channeling, as if a bodiless entity took over the patient's brain to utter profundities in an ancient(ish) Indic mishmash (as verified…supposedly…by experts in Sanskrit and Pali).  Sheesh.   Surely not all psychiatrists are so credulous, but what's with the APA's highlighting this event as a Media Workshop?

In a sign of the times, "Hibbert's Remarks Result in a Fine", NYT 6/2/2013:

The N.B.A. fined Indiana Pacers center Roy Hibbert $75,000 Sunday, hours after Hibbert apologized for using an antigay slur and an obscenity in a news conference after his team’s victory against the Miami Heat in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals. […]

In his postgame comments Saturday in Indianapolis, Hibbert used the term “no homo” when answering a question about defending the Heat star LeBron James on a play in the second half that resulted in James’s being called for an offensive foul. He later directed an obscenity toward reporters after being questioned on another topic.

Anna Staver, "Man threatens to blow up state building over misspelled sign: Suspect blames failure to detonate on misspellings in instructions", Stateman-Journal, 5/29/2013:

A man brought a pressure cooker he claimed was a bomb into the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission office and told employees he tried to blow up their sign because it was misspelled on Wednesday morning. […]

Leonard Burdek, 50, of Salem, told Chamberlain and the receptionist that he tried to blow up the agency’s outside sign, but the bomb didn’t work.

I was a couple of sentences into the story by Ker Than ("More Midwest Twisters: Why Is Oklahoma Tornado Vexed?", National Geographic 6/1/2013) before I figured it out:

Here are two entertainment news headlines that are difficult to parse without knowing in advance what they're reporting on. First up, from TIME, a headline on a May 31 piece by TV critic James Poniewozik:

Second, from Cinema Blend, a headline on a post earlier today by Mack Rawden:

While exploring the history of "hippie punching", I came across this passage:

One day when I was but a young boy, I was walking down the street with my dad to the hardware store. He suddenly stopped, crossed the street and punched a man. When he returned, I ask, "Father, why did you punch that man?"

He turned to me and said, "That's a stupid question." Then he punched me.

It was a stupid question, because who my dad punched was a hippie. Back then, everyone knew that you punched hippies, but I've noticed that this knowledge may not be being passed on to the next generation. [emphasis added]

Michael Watts commented

I'm interested in the apparently full clause "who my dad punched was a hippie". I'm aware of this form, but in my mind it's not permitted in modern standard english; I would have to say "the man [or other noun] who my dad punched was a hippie".

And Eric P. Smith agreed:

I agree that “who” as a fused relative is not standard. Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002) is surprisingly categoric: “We cannot say, for example, *Who wrote this letter must have been mad.” (Page 1076). But I think it is growing, and I think it crossed the Atlantic eastwards. I first saw it about 3 years ago in a notice in Edinburgh University Library: “If we can't help you, we’ll put you in touch with who can.”

This might be called the "who steals my purse steals trash" construction, or perhaps the Iago clause; and Geoff Pullum commented on a modern case in "Can I help who's next?", 12/4/2005.