Do linguistics still matter?
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I've been scarce here for a while, due to moving (for a year, while the Quadrangle is reconstructed) and dealing with some overdue professional obligations. Time will continue to be tight for me, and it'll be a couple weeks before I have time for a Breakfast Experiment™ but I'll try to find time for a series of interesting short posts, starting with this one.
English nouns ending in -ics come in several morphosyntactic flavors, some of which act like plurals while others act like singulars.
Some are the plural of a singular noun in -ic, like comics or clinics: ("Comics are interesting").
Others are uncountable (treated as singular) nouns referring to fields of knowledge or practice, like physics or politics:("Politics is interesting").
And then there are plural nouns referring to activities, like calisthenics, where a corresponding nominal singular is non-existent or rare: ("Calisthenics are interesting") — but the same word-form can also be used with singular agreement for the associated discipline.
Despite these differences, it's surprisingly rare to see agreement errors for such words.
But here's one in an article title: "Do Linguistics Still Matter in the Age of Large Language Models?", Slator 5/28/2024.
Within the article, at least four uses of the word take the standard singular agreement:
- “Linguistics is no longer front and center in the way we build NLP systems,” they said.
- The authors identified six major facets where linguistics contributes to NLP
- Linguistics provides NLP with an appropriate metalanguage, serving as a common language for expressing observations and formulating explanations.
- “Linguistics offers NLP an important metalanguage for expressing observations, such as about model predictions, and hypothesizing explanations,” they said.
But there's one sentence with three conjoined uses of plural agreement:
”Linguistics help take a system’s fingerprint, evaluate a system in particular categories, and foster understanding of complex models by binding observed behavior to interpretable linguistic categories,” said the authors.
In fairness, that's exactly how the authors of the cited arXiv.org paper phrase it.
The author of the Slator article is based in Athens, Greece, which may explain and excuse the error in the title. And the lack of copy-editing can be seen in the first sentence:
"…Juri Opitz from the University of Zurich, along with Shira Wein and Nathan Schneider form Georgetown University…"
I'm not pointing an accusatory finger at any of the authors in question. I find it surprising that -ics disciplinary words are so rarely treated as plurals, and so these examples are interesting.
The obligatory screenshot:
Philip Anderson said,
May 30, 2024 @ 7:50 am
While I would say that politics is interesting, I would also ask “what are your politics?”
In this case, I feel that politics is shorthand for political beliefs or ideas, rather than the subject as a whole, in the same way an individual might have a philosophy, although philosophy normally doesn’t take an article.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 30, 2024 @ 8:07 am
Further to Philip Anderson's observation, you can find lots and lots of hits for "her politics are," with the women who are the antecedents of "her" including, in the first two hits of my google search, the current prime minister of Italy and Taylor Swift. That's sense 3 of the noun here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/politics, noted to be plural, as distinguished from e.g. sense 5 which is noted to be singular.
Jenny Chu said,
May 30, 2024 @ 8:16 am
The same issue arises when we talk about the communications profession.
Communications is an important discipline and should be included in every MBA.
Communications is too often ignored in favor of marketing.
*Communications are important for every company.
Laura Morland said,
May 30, 2024 @ 8:54 am
And then there's the difference between the BE* and AE varieties of English:
BE: Mathematics are fascinating. (Abbreviated as "maths")
AE: Mathematics is a rigorous discipline. (Abbreviated as "math")
One explanation I found on the web: "Mathematics is a count noun in British English because there are different types of maths (geometry, algebra, calculus, etc.)"
*Normally BE would include Antipodean English as well, but that's the standard shorthand in certain circles.
Coby said,
May 30, 2024 @ 9:01 am
I believe (though I haven't actually researched the matter) that the singular -ics is an extension of "mathematics, which in French is mathématiques (while all the other -ics are ique), which was really intended to be plural, as it embodied what were once considered distinct disciplines (arithmetic and geometry). Then "physics" became necessary because "physic" meant medicine, and it just went on from there. " Logic, being older, remained singular.
Juri said,
May 30, 2024 @ 9:46 am
"there's one sentence with three conjoined uses of plural agreement"
I've written this sentence, so I'm checking in as the culprit! I may have written that way because the German word is "Linguistik" and I might feel inclined to take words with a suffix "s" as plural (if it's not the genitive case). I might have also intended to mean "tools/ideas/concepts from linguistics." I think I remember feeling briefly confused about how to continue grammatically after "Linguistics," and at that moment, the incorrect form apparently felt more right.
Markonsea said,
May 30, 2024 @ 9:52 am
@ Laura Morland
Never in my 79 years (78 of them lived in England and none across the Pond) have I encountered “mathematics” or “maths” used with a plural verb or understood to be a plural noun.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 30, 2024 @ 9:56 am
Here's an old usage of "linguistics" taking a plural noun: "Arts are multiplied to secure the joys of life, institutions are multiplied to secure justice, linguistics are multiplied to secure mental communication, and multiplied truths are discovered, so that the body of science is ever expanding." This from the October 1888 issue of _The American Anthropologist_, Vol. I, No. 4.
The speaker/author (this was a transcribed address) is John Wesley Powell, who in those pre-specialization days served as director of the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology as well as director of the U.S. Geological Survey and was also, at the time of the relevant address, the outgoing president of the Anthropological Society of Washington.
Philip Taylor said,
May 30, 2024 @ 11:15 am
From a purely personal perspective, I do not regard "Do Linguistics Still Matter in the Age of Large Language Models?" as an error, but rather a choice on the part of the author who felt (IMHO) that linguistics could reasonably regarded as plural in this context. Just as there are different sorts of thyme (so one could reasonably use "thymes" in Scrabble, as I once did) so there are different types of linguistics : https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=proscriptive+linguistics%2C+prescriptive+linguistics%2C+descriptive+linguistics%2C+&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
Philip Taylor said,
May 30, 2024 @ 11:20 am
And as regards Markonsea's « Never […] have I encountered “mathematics” or “maths” used with a plural verb », Google Ngrams attests to all four possibilities — https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=maths+is%2Cmaths+are%2Cmathematics+is%2Cmathematics+are&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
Philip Taylor said,
May 30, 2024 @ 11:27 am
Oh, and as regards Jenny Chu's "the communications profession", I still recall my horror when Post Office Telecommunications (for whom I worked) re-branded as "British Telecom". "Telecomms", I screamed at the uncaring world, "It's 'Telecomms' in British English, no matter what it might be elsewhere in the world …
Jerry Packard said,
May 30, 2024 @ 11:32 am
I think it’s all a matter of construal , as when a speaker construes what appears to be a plural subject as singular, as in ‘The chassis and tailpipe was damaged.’
Philip Taylor said,
May 30, 2024 @ 11:49 am
I could accept that if the two items could conceivably be regarded as one, Jerry, but a tailpipe (by which I am assuming that you are referring to the rearmost part of an exhaust system) and a chassis are two totally separate components, so I would regard your example as a simple error, neither more nor less. For a slightly more reasonable example, how about "the dean and chapter", as in "A dean and chapter is a spiritual corporation" [Archibald Brown, A new law dictionary, 1880 et prec.]
Xtifr said,
May 30, 2024 @ 12:00 pm
Get a fairly similar looking curve for "physics is/are":
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=physics+is%2Cphysics+are&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
But it's worth noting that if you just look at "maths is" vs "maths are", you see that the former is heavily dominant! (Although both forms seem quite rare before about 1960. I wonder if that's when "maths" started being common?)
And, of course, the fact that the word "are" sometimes appears after the word "mathematics" (or "physics") does not necessarily mean it's being interpreted as plural. "The relevant branches of mathematics are…".
That said, the plural of "mathematics" presumably is "mathematics", and not "mathematicses". :)
J.W. Brewer said,
May 30, 2024 @ 12:41 pm
Perhaps in a parallel to the point above about how "politics" takes the plural when you're talking about "so-and-so's politics," you can find sentences Out There like "his linguistics are sometimes called structural," where the "he" is de Saussure. Or the phrase "influences on the development of his linguistics," where "he" is Chomsky. Or "in both content and method his linguistics are part and parcel of his now famous political theory," where "he" is Gramsci (whom I would not take particularly seriously as a scholar of Sprachwissenschaft, but I'm not the one writing a book about him …). Etc.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 30, 2024 @ 1:04 pm
Sorry, I truncated the second quote (about Chomsky) in the previous content in a way that obscured its relevance: "linguistics" was followed by "are" although I guess on further review that's arguably agreeing with plural "influences." So one could swap in instead an online discussion prompted by the question "Chomsky claims that his linguistics are Cartesian, what does this mean?" The run-on sentence reflects informal/unedited internet discourse, but I think the plural verb makes perfect sense and would make perfect sense in a more formal register and copy-edited presentation.
Philip Anderson said,
May 30, 2024 @ 1:29 pm
@Laura Morland
“Maths or mathematics is …” is the norm in BrE.
I would need to make an effort to construct a plural usage: being topical “the mathematics of a hung parliament are complicated”. But the mathematics have to be definite for me.
Regarding physics, physica was used as a neuter plural in Latin, as well as feminine singular.
Daniel Barkalow said,
May 30, 2024 @ 1:50 pm
It sounds to me like the authors followed the pattern of "calisthenics" to say that each rule that a linguist would find is called a "linguistic", particularly if you're contrasting such rules with other analysis. Of course, this word is rare or non-existent, but it's hard to tell which.
Dan Faulkner said,
May 30, 2024 @ 3:20 pm
The choice of singular/plural seems to be affected by scope. When talking about the large, comprehensive, institutionalized field of linguistics, I'd be likely to use the singular: "It's interesting to see how linguistics has affected LLM development." But when the scope is smaller and more personal, the plural seems more appropriate: "Her linguistics are interesting and highly unconventional."
In my mind, it's similar to (or perhaps congruent with) Linguistics vs. linguistics. The former is a broad field of study, the latter is some subset of that broad field, held closely. Somehow the sense of closeness and immediacy makes it more like a count noun and less like a mass noun.
In the the "Linguistics help take…" sentence, the action feels a bit more local and concrete than in the other examples. I can easily envision someone performing those tasks, and that makes it feel closer and smaller in scope, which is perhaps what led the author to feel more comfortable with the plural. But all of my intuitions lie on a continuum, and I suspect there are cases where both the plural and the singular would feel appropriate.
Jerry Packard said,
May 30, 2024 @ 3:29 pm
@ Philip Taylor
How about ‘roses and violets was yesterday’s order.’
J.W. Brewer said,
May 30, 2024 @ 3:35 pm
@Jerry Packard: that sounds like a poetic inversion of "yesterday's order was roses and violets," and/or like there are implied quotation marks around "roses and violets." But here's an example for you found in the wild: "So he used his uncle Sigmund Freud’s (you read that right) psychological approaches to help convince the public that, among other things, bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast." "He" is Edward Bernays, the so-called "father of public relations." https://www.zingermanscommunity.com/2014/05/the-making-of-the-all-american-breakfast/
JPL said,
May 30, 2024 @ 4:26 pm
It's important to consider the relation of reference when thinking about this question. Are you talking about a discipline or field of study, which is a unified entity, or are you talking about "views" falling under the subject as a category, the various judgments a person tends to make because of their general knowledge of the subject. In the example presented in the OP, presumably the writer was intending, at least initially, to refer to the discipline, as in, "Does the field of linguistics still matter …?" If there is a possibility of misinterpretation ("tools/ideas/concepts") you can always clarify just what kind of thing you are referring to (e.g., "Do ideas from linguistics/the approaches of linguistics …", etc.). (The weird thing is that this distinction in cases like "linguistics" is probably only possible because the historical name for the field has an "s" on it. Other examples are BE "sport" vs. AE "sports" and "athletics", wrt singular field of endeavour vs. plurality of subfields.) (BTW, the initial clause of Juri's comment flagged for me "nonnative speaker", since it expresses that he wrote another instance of the sentence in question on a previous occasion, rather than referring, as I think he intended to do, to the occasion on which he brought the sentence in the text into being.)
(Apologies for any overlap with comments added since I started writing the above.)
AntC said,
May 30, 2024 @ 6:30 pm
@myl I've been scarce here for a while,
Have you? I never cease to be astonished at the volume of posts you put out here, whilst keeping up a full teaching load, conference attendance, and published work.
If there's a need for more posts on LLog, can we ask Geoff Pullum to relent? — Pleeeease!
RWMG said,
May 30, 2024 @ 8:52 pm
But there's one sentence with three conjoined uses of plural agreement:
”Linguistics help take a system’s fingerprint, evaluate a system in particular categories, and foster understanding of complex models by binding observed behavior to interpretable linguistic categories,” said the authors.
Are these three uses of plural agreement or just one? I read it as "Linguistics help take, (help) evaluate, and (help) foster."
Brett said,
May 30, 2024 @ 9:20 pm
For as long as some editors would let me get away with it, I tried to use physics with consistently plural construal.
Philip Taylor said,
May 31, 2024 @ 4:22 am
I would find both "roses and violets was yesterday's order" and "bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast" natural and therefore acceptable. In both cases I would infer implied quotation marks around the "X and Y" phrases.
Victor Mair said,
May 31, 2024 @ 6:10 am
@AntC whilst keeping up a full teaching load, conference attendance, and published work.
Language Log is just one of the important hats that Mark wears around the Penn campus, including such ginormous positions as director of LDC (Linguistic Data Consortium), head of the undergraduate house system, resident master of the fabled Quadrangle Dormitories, and so forth. And yet I've never once seen him appear to be rushed or harried.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
May 31, 2024 @ 7:46 am
I was going to respond sooner, but I had to do some deep breathing and take a walk around the block after Prof. Mair put in writing the word "g*n*rm**s". I think I'm okay now, but I demand to be refunded my Language Log subscription fee.
—
Now that we've all warmed up a bit, here's a bonus question; which is correct?:
"The Turks and Caicos Islands _are_ a British Territory.", or
"The Turks and Caicos Islands _is_ a British Territory."
J.W. Brewer said,
May 31, 2024 @ 8:53 am
Extra-credit problem for Benjamin Orsetti: Whichever of the alternatives might be claimed to be "correct," the google ngram viewer tells us that "are" follows "Turks and Caicos Islands" consistently more frequently than "is" does, although the ratio between the variants varies over time. But by contrast "Northern Mariana Islands" (another plural thing that can be thought of as either an archipelago or a unitary political entity) shows very close to an even split between the "are" variant and the "is" variant. Why should it be different? One possibility, of course, is variation between BrEng and AmEng, and the ratio of BrEng to AmEng not being constant in those who have occasion to write about these two different archipelagos/polities.
KevinM said,
May 31, 2024 @ 9:46 am
@JW Brewer: Waiting in line for ice cream, I heard the following conversation:
Teenager 1: Where are you from?
Teenager 2 (outraged): Trinidad and Tobago
Teenager 1: You CAN'T be from Trinidad AND Tobago!
Philip Taylor said,
May 31, 2024 @ 10:18 am
Crikey — and I thought it was only Ngozi Fulani who could possibly be outraged by such an innocent and innocuous question …
Jonathan Smith said,
May 31, 2024 @ 10:52 am
OT re: Juri "I've written this sentence" / JPL's reaction
But I thought BrE. had moved to present perfect over simple past in literally all situations in a gesture of Western European solidarity :D while here in the States we aim to abandon it to mark our exceptionalism.
Lazar said,
May 31, 2024 @ 12:02 pm
@KevinM: That's reminiscent of some cases where the officialese "Asian American and Pacific Islander" is applied in reference to only one of its parts (usually the first).
J.W. Brewer said,
May 31, 2024 @ 1:20 pm
@Lazar: these difficulties can be avoided by retreating into the even more officialese initialism "AAPI" in which the "and" between the two components becomes invisible, as does the fact of compoundness. See also the parallel initialism "AIAN" (for the demographic category "American Indian(s) and Alaska Native(s)").
Philip Taylor said,
May 31, 2024 @ 2:13 pm
JWB — See also the parallel initialism "AIAN" (for the demographic category "American Indian(s) and Alaska Native(s)") — Is "American Indian(s)" still in use ? I understood that it had been replaced by "Native American(s)".
J.W. Brewer said,
June 1, 2024 @ 6:02 am
@Philip Taylor: Certain speakers, writers, and institutions in American society have come to eschew "American Indian," but the Census Bureau, which collects and disseminates the relevant demographic data, is not one of them, and maintains the traditional usage. I am given to understand that usage preferences among members of the quasi-racial group so designated vary considerably, and that claims by activist types who present themselves as spokespersons for the larger group that only one usage is acceptable should be discounted accordingly.
I should perhaps note that the box you can check on the Census form (in answer to the "What is so-and-so's race?" question) says "American Indian OR Alaska Native," recognizing, as it were, that a specific individual cannot, as an individual, be from both Trinidad AND Tobago.
Philip Taylor said,
June 1, 2024 @ 6:12 am
Thank you, JWB. Interesting (to me, at least) that the former specifies "American Indian" but "Alaska Native" (no of-or-pertaining-to "n" in the latter) — "Alaskan" is an attested form, is it not ? And also, why "Alaska Native" and not "Native Alaskan" ? I ask because "Native" as an alternative to "Indigenous resident" or whatever, is, I thought, regarded as pejorative these days, whilst "Native <whatever>n" is not only acceptable but encouraged (at least by some — your points above noted).
J.W. Brewer said,
June 1, 2024 @ 7:17 am
@Philip Taylor: For purposes of the actual Census form, the "American Indian or Alaska Native" box you can check made its debut quite recently, in 2000. The 1990 Census form still gave "Indian (Amer.)," "Eskimo," and "Aleut" as three separate options. Someone decided to revise the form to aggregate those three categories into one larger category, which thus needed a name. But there had been a need both in Alaska and nationally for an umbrella term that would comprehend all three of those groups well before 2000. Google Books contains a copy, for example, of a "Summary Report" of the "American Indian and Alaska Native Agricultural Conference" held in 1979 in Albuquerque under the joint auspices of multiple tentacles of the U.S. federal bureaucracy, including but not limited to the Agriculture Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, so the bureaucrats had worked the phrase out by then. And there's a 1971 Congressional resolution that uses the phrase, quoted from a prior document, "national American Indian and Alaska Native policy" before going on to refer variously to "Indians and Alaskan Natives," as well as "Indians and Alaskan Native peoples" and "Indians and Alaskan natives" (note lower-cased "n" in that one), suggesting that the jargon was at that point still in a state of flux. 1971 was the year Congress enacted the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which may have either reflected pre-existing usage or influenced subsequent usage or both, especially via its establishment and empowerment of these entities to have significant ongoing roles as sort of the rough analog to the tribal governments that exist in many parts of the Lower 48: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Native_corporation
Philip Taylor said,
June 1, 2024 @ 8:18 am
Thank you, JWB — very interesting reading.
Lazar said,
June 1, 2024 @ 1:05 pm
@Philip Taylor: "Alaska Native" seems to reflect a general preference for using attributive nouns rather than attributive adjectives for US states – the California Highway Patrol, Pennsylvania Dutch, Louisiana French, Texas hold 'em, etc. etc. (aided by the fact that some states, like New York and Massachusetts, wouldn't have ready adjectival forms at all). The only state that seems to escape this treatment is Hawaii.