Language Log

Nicholas Tomaino, "The Most Spoken Words in Glasgow", WSJ 1/6/2024:

When someone says, ‘Would anyone like a cup of tea,’ he isn’t offering the best-tasting thing one’s ever had. But that isn’t the point.

The author begins:

I was 23 when I drank my first cup of tea. As an Italian-American, I was raised on coffee. My life changed, however, when I met my wife.

Victor Steinbok said that he found this on Wish:

Andus Wing-Kuen Wong et al., "Tonal and syllabic encoding in overt Cantonese Chinese speech production: An ERP study", PLOS ONE 2023:

Abstract: This study was conducted to investigate how syllables and lexical tones are processed in Cantonese speech production using the picture-word interference task with concurrent recording of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Cantonese-speaking participants were asked to name aloud individually presented pictures and ignore an accompanying auditory word distractor. The target and distractor either shared the same word-initial syllable with the same tone (Tonal-Syllable related), the same word-initial syllable without the same tone (Atonal-Syllable related), the same tone only (Tone alone related), or were phonologically unrelated. Participants’ naming responses were faster, relative to an unrelated control, when the target and distractor shared the same tonal- or atonal-syllable but null effect was found in the Tone alone related condition. The mean ERP amplitudes (per each 100-ms time window) were subjected to stimulus-locked (i.e., time-locked to stimulus onset) and response-locked (i.e., time-locked to response onset) analyses. Significant differences between related and unrelated ERP waves were similarly observed in both Tonal-Syllable related and Atonal-Syllable related conditions in the time window of 400–500 ms post-stimulus. However, distinct ERP effects were observed in these two phonological conditions within the 500-ms pre-response period. In addition, null effects were found in the Tone alone related condition in both stimulus-locked and response-locked analyses. These results suggest that in Cantonese spoken word production, the atonal syllable of the target is retrieved first and then associated with the target lexical tone, consistent with the view that tone has an important role to play at a late stage of phonological encoding in tonal language production.

If you want to give your brain fortifying nutrition, what kind of language should you feed it?

"Complex, unfamiliar sentences make the brain’s language network work harder"

A new study finds that language regions in the left hemisphere light up when reading uncommon sentences, while straightforward sentences elicit little response.

Anne Trafton | MIT News (January 3, 2024)

—

"Complex, Unfamiliar Sentences Make the Brain's Language Network Work Harder." Science Daily, January 3, 2024. .

Discussing "Driving and Suppressing the Human Language Network Using Large Language Models." Tuckute, Greta et al. Nature Human Behaviour (January 3, 2024).

Fair enough, maybe, but what if you lose your auditor / lector altogether?  It seems to me that the type of brain-food sentences cited in this study border on incomprehensibility.

With help from an artificial language network, MIT neuroscientists have discovered what kind of sentences are most likely to fire up the brain’s key language processing centers.

The new study reveals that sentences that are more complex, either because of unusual grammar or unexpected meaning, generate stronger responses in these language processing centers. Sentences that are very straightforward barely engage these regions, and nonsensical sequences of words don’t do much for them either.

For example, the researchers found this brain network was most active when reading unusual sentences such as “Buy sell signals remains a particular,” taken from a publicly available language dataset called C4. However, it went quiet when reading something very straightforward, such as “We were sitting on the couch.”

The plagiarism circus has added second and third rings, and a sideshow.

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-thirty-eighth issue:

“Mapping the Language of Spices: A Corpus-Based, Philological Study on the Words of the Spice Domain,” by Gábor Parti.

ABSTRACT

Most of the existing literature on spices is to be found in the areas of gastronomy, botany, and history. This study instead investigates spices on a linguistic level. It aims to be a comprehensive linguistic account of the items of the spice trade. Because of their attractive aroma and medicinal value, at certain points in history these pieces of dried plant matter have been highly desired, and from early on, they were ideal products for trade. Cultural contact and exchange and the introduction of new cultural items beget situations of language contact and linguistic acculturation. In the case of spices, not only do we have a set of items that traveled around the world, but also a set of names. This language domain is very rich in loanwords and Wanderwörter. In addition, it supplies us with myriad cases in which spice names are innovations. Still more interesting is that examples in English, Arabic, and Chinese—languages that represent major powers in the spice trade at different times—are here compared.

"How Korea's alphabet is saving an Indonesian dialect", SCMP (1/4/24)

A couple of weeks ago, a reporter asked me for an interview "to discuss the style of Donald Trump's campaign events, the role his rhetoric plays in them, and why they’ve been an effective tool for him".

I explained that I haven't held any focus groups or done any polls, so I don't have any empirical basis for opinions about the role that "the style of his campaign events" plays in making them "an effective tool for him". But over the past 8 years, many LLOG posts have analyzed several aspects of his rhetorical style, both the text and the delivery, which are strikingly different from other contemporary American politicians and public figures. Specifically, these posts have described his

• Repetition
• Informality
• Fluency
• Melody

This has nothing to do with the political and cultural orientation of his speeches — the same techniques could in principle be applied to the promotion of internationalism rather than nationalism, for example. No doubt the content is a large part of the reason for his appeal, but the rhetorical affinity with professional wrestling is probably the rest of it, as discussed in "The art of the promo", 10/31/2020.

You'll find the list of relevant past posts past the fold  — I invite you to look for one or more of the four features in each post.

But in a way, the most striking thing about the list is its length.

"The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work", NYT 12/27/2023:

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies.

The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular A.I. platforms, over copyright issues associated with its written works. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.

The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.

[from a long-time Language Log reader]

One of the well known Cantonese versions of Auld Lang Syne: 友誼萬歲 jau5 ji4 maan6 seoi3 “Long Live Friendship” from Hong Kong:

朋友 再見聲聲 往昔歡笑 來日記取
pang4 jau5  zoi3 gin3 seng1 seng1  wong5 sik1 fun1 siu3  loi4 jat6 gei3 ceoi2
Farewell friends, happy memories of the past, 
Retrieving in the future.

憶記舊日情誼 痛哭歡笑 在校園裡
jik1 gei3 gau6 jat6 cing4 ji4  tung3 huk1 fun1 siu3 zoi6 haau6 jyun4 leoi5
Recalling past sentimental bonds, crying and laughing at school.

Excerpt from Ambassador Robert Lighthizer’s recent book, No Trade is Free, on the use of "yīng" 应 or "jiāng" 将 to translate "shall" in official trade agreements:

«We relied primarily on these USTR [United States Trade Representative] officials in the Office of China, Affairs, the Office of Innovation and Intellectual Property, the Interagency Center on Trade Implementation, Monitoring, and Enforcement, and the Office of the General Counsel, and their work was invaluable in ensuring that there were no gaps between the English text and the Chinese text.

Yesterday, on New Year's Eve, I was sending around, to family and friends, the lyrics and melody of the beloved song we sing at this time of year (here [The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin], here, [Rod Stewart]).  I also circulated the Wikipedia article so that people could know the ballads and folk songs that preceded Robert Burns' famous poem (1788).

This morning when I awoke, I received the following message from Martin Schwartz:

It is indeed interesting to see how these Scottish sentiments are presented in this East Asian language.  Thoughtfully, the source provided an English translation for the Japanese.

"The 'Effective Accelerationism' movement doesn't care if humans are replaced by AI as long as they're there to make money from it", Business Insider 12/30/2023:

The Effective Accelerationism movement — a staunchly pro-AI ideology that has Silicon Valley split over how artificial intelligence should be regulated — appears to be walking a razor's edge between being a techno-libertarian philosophy and a nihilistic, even reckless, approach to advancing one of the world's most significant technological developments. […]

A riff on the effective altruism, or "EA," philosophy touted by tech influencers like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk, e/acc took off in 2023, though its exact origins remain unclear. The movement has attracted a cast of unlikely characters, including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli.

"EA and e/acc are mostly the same people," Emmett Shear, the former interim CEO of OpenAI, said in an interview with Meridian. "Their only difference is a value judgment on whether or not humanity getting wiped out is a problem."