Language Log

Tangutologists and Old Chinese aficionados take note: the whole 2024 Festschrift for M.V. Sofronov, produced on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2019, is now available via C. Harbsmeier's academia page: https://t.co/hGUhgrgauE pic.twitter.com/zH7zxY0YjG

— Wolfgang Behr (@behrwolf) June 27, 2024

Philip Resnik, "Large Language Models are Biased Because They Are Large Language Models", arXiv.org 6/19/2024:

This paper's primary goal is to provoke thoughtful discussion about the relationship between bias and fundamental properties of large language models. We do this by seeking to convince the reader that harmful biases are an inevitable consequence arising from the design of any large language model as LLMs are currently formulated. To the extent that this is true, it suggests that the problem of harmful bias cannot be properly addressed without a serious reconsideration of AI driven by LLMs, going back to the foundational assumptions underlying their design.

ICYMI:

"Internet Not Killing Off Dialects within Russian as Many Suppose but Increasing Their Diversity, Moscow Scholar Says",  Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia (6/7/24)

It is widely assumed that the Internet is contributing to the homogenization of languages and killing off both dialects and local variants; but in fact, a Moscow scholar says, a new survey of Russian as spoken in the cities of that country finds that in many places, dialects are unexpectedly expanding.

Ivan Levan, a specialist at the Moscow Institute of the Russian Language at the Russian Academy of Sciences, says that he and his colleagues have recently found “about 2,000” new words that vary from city to city and were not recorded in V.I. Belikov and V.P. Selegey’s 2005 work on Languages of Russian Cities (yandex.ru/company/researches/2021/local-words).

This new sign at the intersection of Cottman Avenue and State Road has gotten a lot of news coverage:

Do babies develop accents even before they can speak conventionally?

The short answer is yes… and these linguistic markers begin even sooner than you might think.

So many of you tagged me in this video yesterday featuring an infant that babbles with the same Scouse accent as… pic.twitter.com/EO5WJllRnE

— Dan Wuori (@DanWuori) June 22, 2024

Behold the Latin word sāpō (soap) and its many, many descendants which include the Mother of the Austronesian language family—the indigenous Formosan languages of Taiwan:

阿美語 Amis: safon
噶瑪蘭語 Kavalam: sabun
卑南語 Puyuma: sabun
鄒語 Tsou: savungu https://t.co/aYrp1a8bEl pic.twitter.com/YvbyQWTRI7

— Ted (@ted_huang) June 17, 2024

Opinion:  "These gaming terms are transforming slang. Do you know them? Even those not involved in gaming culture are becoming familiar with the new vocabulary." Washington Post, by Adam Aleksic (June 20, 2024)

…Dozens of video game terms have sneaked into everyday conversation over the past several years, particularly among younger people. For instance, it’s common to hear “speedrun” for completing a task quickly, “sidequest” to tell your friends about an unexpected adventure or “spawn” when you’ve made a sudden appearance. 

All of these come from gaming culture, where they’re used to describe virtual actions — yet they’ve transformed into offline slang. 

Since at least the early 2000s, millennials have adopted gaming words such as “noob” (short for “newbie”), “OP” (short for “overpowered”) and “gg” (short for “good game”) in real life. These terms reached such ubiquity online that they made intuitive sense when extended to analogous in-person interactions.

A week ago, I was in Gothenberg, Nebraska and went to the local historical museum.  I asked the volunteers there what was the most unusual, interesting, and important exhibit they had.  One of them, Barbara Fisher, thought for a moment, then said, "We have a unique collection of barbed wire fence downstairs, each strand of which is specific to the ranch or tract where it was used."  She must have read my mind and heart, for that is just the sort of thing that would captivate me.

So I dashed down the stairs and beheld:

In a country like China that is drenched in censorship, people who have opinions that differ from those of the government resort to any means possible to get their message across.

"Bookstores Become Sites of Subtle Protest Against Xi Jinping", by Alexander Boyd, China Digital Times (7/18/24)

The novel “Changing of the Guard” displayed at left, alongside “Study Outline for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”

As someone deeply interested in the languages of Taiwan, I have long been preoccupied by the origins and expansion of Austronesian on the island circa six millennia ago and its spread from there around four thousand years ago throughout Southeast Asia, to Oceania and as far as Madagascar.  This new research article from PLOS ONE sheds light on how a part of that process occurred.

"Investigating Demic versus Cultural Diffusion and Sex Bias in the Spread of Austronesian Languages in Vietnam." Thao, Dinh Huong et al. PLOS ONE 19, no. 6 (June 17, 2024): e0304964.