Language Log

The other day, I bought a soda from a vending machine that was adorned with this sticker:

John McIntyre rules against "Frankenstorm":

Yesterday, I sent this message to the newsroom staff: We will not be using the word “Frankenstorm” in coverage of Hurricane Sandy, because the term trivializes a serious and potentially deadly event. It’s acceptable in direct quotes, but even there we shouldn’t overdo it.

Mitt Romney sometimes exhibits a rapid repetition of phrase-initial function words, often intermixed with um and uh. This behavior was especially frequent in  the third presidential debate (10/22/2012). Here's an example from the beginning of his first response:

um uh this is obviously an area of great concern to the entire world
and to America in particular,
which is to see
uh a- a complete change in the- the- the- the structure and the- um the environment in the Middle East.

Just the last phrase:

uh a- a complete change in the- the- the- the structure and the- um the environment in the Middle East.

Somehow, Language Log has yet to take notice of the international sensation that is "Gangnam Style," the deliciously weird Korean pop video that currently has more than 560 million views on YouTube. Here's a good opportunity to rectify that oversight: among the countless spoofs of the video is this one by enterprising MIT students, featuring a cameo by Noam Chomsky at 3:20.

Kory Stamper at harm·less drudg·ery responds to a correspondent who is sincerely troubled by the illogic of irregardless ("No Logic in 'Etymological': A Response I Actually Sent",  10/24/2012):

English is a little bit like a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned light sockets. We put it in nice clothes and tell it to make friends, and it comes home covered in mud, with its underwear on its head and someone else’s socks on its feet. We ask it to clean up or to take out the garbage, and instead it hollers at us that we don’t run its life, man. Then it stomps off to its room to listen to The Smiths in the dark.

Everything we’ve done to and for English is for its own good, we tell it (angrily, as it slouches in its chair and writes “irregardless” all over itself in ballpoint pen). This is to help you grow into a language people will respect! Are you listening to me? Why aren’t you listening to me??

Like  well-adjusted children eventually do, English lives its own life. We can tell it to clean itself up and act more like one of the Classical languages (I bet Latin doesn’t sneak German in through its bedroom window, does it?). We can threaten, cajole, wheedle, beg, yell, throw tantrums, and start learning French instead. But no matter what we do, we will never really be the boss of it. And that, frankly, is what makes it so beautiful.

Today's SMBC:

"Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama for president", CBS News 10/25/2012:

With 12 days to go before the presidential election, Powell publicly endorsed President Obama for re-election on "CBS This Morning" Thursday

"I voted for him in 2008 and I plan to stick with him in 2012 and I'll be voting for he and for Vice President Joe Biden next month."

For some background — including a similar quotation from Mitt Romney, "I like he and Callista" — see "Coordinate object 'he' in the news", 1/3/2012. (And for some further discussion of the grammatical issues, see "Does Julia Gillard know subjects from objects?", 12/19/2006, and "Patterns of prestigious deviance", 10/3/2011.)  But "…voting for he and for Vice President Joe Biden" has extra interest because the pronouns are not, strictly speaking, coordinated.

Recently announced, a 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal for William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania. The citation:

For establishing the cognitive basis of language variation and change through rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and for the study of non-standard dialects with significant social and cultural implications.

Continuing with the historical priority battle among the older and grander linguistics departments of the USA: naturally, the University of Chicago was bound to respond sooner of later to Berkeley's suggestion of a 1901 founding date. Jason Merchant has written to tell me Michael Silverstein wrote up a history of the department, which Jason has stashed in PDF form here. It provides grounds for pushing back as far as 1892, which would kick the shibboleth out of Berkeley's date; it isn't even in the same century. Some highlights follow (and I'm just repeating what Jason put in his email to me).

Andrew Garrett is Professor of Linguistics and Nadine M. Tang and Bruce L. Smith Professor of Cross-Cultural Social Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and also Director of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages there. He wrote to me after he saw my post about who has the oldest linguistics department in the USA to give some interesting comments about his department's early history, the relations between linguistics and anthropology, and the vexed question of which is the oldest department of linguistics in the USA. Here's the gist of his email, as a guest post.

Guest post by Andrew Garrett

The first Berkeley Linguistics department was set up in 1901, in fact a few months before even the Anthropology department here. An introduction to linguistics course that is still taught was first taught in Fall 1901, by Benjamin Ide Wheeler, the president of the university and an Indo-Europeanist who had received his Heidelberg PhD as a student of the neogrammarians. "Wheeler's Law" of Greek accentuation is named after him. (Joseph Aoun is another linguist university president, at Northeastern University, but I don't know how many others there have been.)

From my inbox:

During last night's presidential debate, usage maven Bryan A. Garner opined on Twitter that "President Obama is addicted to 'is is.'" Garner also directed Twitter followers to his treatment of "is is" in Garner's Modern American Usage, where he writes, "Rarely is this form found in writing, even when speech containing it is transcribed. In any event, it isn't an expression for careful speakers." But few would characterize Obama (despite his occasional lapses) as a careless speaker, and we do in fact have accurate transcripts of all three presidential debates to test the claim that Obama has an "is is" addiction. So let's check.

R.C. sends another example of odd headline-ese: "Schools told not bar naughty sixth formers", BBC News 10/23/2012:

Schools in England have been told they must not bar badly behaved youngsters from sixth forms.