Language Log

The Guardian has an article today entitled, "Linguist on mission to save Inuit 'fossil language' disappearing with the ice," about a forthcoming research trip by University of Cambridge linguist Stephen Pax Leonard to study Inuktun, an endangered Polar Inuit language spoken by the Inughuit community of northwest Greenland.

It's always great to see this kind of coverage for anthropological linguistics, and the article is worth a read — though I'm a bit suspicious of the claim that Inuktun "is regarded as something of a linguistic 'fossil' and one of the oldest and most 'pure' Inuit dialects." Regarded by whom? The scare quotes (or claim quotes) around "fossil" and "pure" fail to indicate whose notion of ethnolinguistic purity is at play here. (The "language" vs. "dialect" confusion throughout the article doesn't help, either.)

But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the news article is what it doesn't include. From the Guardian Style Guide's Twitter feed:

We have managed to carry a story on Inuit language without the cliche "number of words for snow". Well done Mark Brown.

Well done, indeed. Once again, it's good to know that our perpetual gripes about the snow-word myth are not just empty howls echoing across the tundra.

An anonymous informant deep within corporate America ("I work at a large financial institution", he says guardedly) has seen the corporation's style guide for communications with customers, and its advice includes (guess what) this gem of cluelessness:

Use active voice rather than passive voice. Active voice is easier to read. Instead of "we have decided," write "we decided." Instead of "we will be implementing a program," write "we are implementing."

They think these are passives! And people disagree with me when I point out such things (over and over again, like a CD that has gotten stuc- stuc- stuc- stuc- stuc- stuc- stuc- stuc- stuck), and ask rhetorically where on God's green earth knowledge of elementary English grammar terminology disappeared to in the late 20th century. People — writing advisers, in fact — are scoring zero on identifying a grammatical construction they feel a need to warn other people not to use. I know I have already pointed this out a time or two, but really, this is an utterly insane situation.

Cute illustrations of chains of English word-sense ambiguities:

This morning's Non Sequitur is not, as far as I know, a comment on my previous post:

Carolyn Y. Johnson, "Author on leave after Harvard inquiry", Boston Globe 8/10'/2010:

Harvard University psychologist Marc Hauser — a well-known scientist and author of the book “Moral Minds’’ — is taking a year-long leave after a lengthy internal investigation found evidence of scientific misconduct in his laboratory.

The findings have resulted in the retraction of an influential study that he led. “MH accepts responsibility for the error,’’ says the retraction of the study on whether monkeys learn rules, which was published in 2002 in the journal Cognition.

Two other journals say they have been notified of concerns in papers on which Hauser is listed as one of the main authors.

It is unusual for a scientist as prominent as Hauser — a popular professor and eloquent communicator of science whose work has often been featured on television and in newspapers — to be named in an investigation of scientific misconduct. His research focuses on the evolutionary roots of the human mind.

The phrase placebo questions comes up in today's Dilbert strip. You can see the intended meaning (once you realize that Dilbert's boss has handed him a project so confidential that a lot depends on his keeping it rigorously secret), despite the stretch from the medical use that nearly everyone is familiar with. It's an unusual word, placebo: it comes directly from an inflected word of another language. It is the first person singular future form of the verb placere in Latin: it means "I will please". It apparently entered common parlance on the strength of being the first word of the first antiphon in the Latin text of the Catholic service of vespers for the dead, and somehow got picked as the technical term for an inactive substance used as a control in testing pharmaceutical products.

According to Douglas B. Brill, "Barack Obama image targeted in Roseto Big Time shooting game", 8/3/2010:

A game called "Alien Attack" at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Big Time celebration in Roseto encouraged players to shoot darts at the head and heart of an image of a suited black man holding a health care bill and wearing a presidential seal.

Perhaps you saw the outrageous headline from The Daily Telegraph last week: "Secret vault of words rejected by the Oxford English Dictionary uncovered"! Michael Quinion called it "quite the daftest dictionary-related story I've ever read," and I tend to agree. In my latest Word Routes column on the Visual Thesaurus, I take a look at just how daft the story is, with its suggestion of a Dan Brown-style Dictionary Cabal locking up failed words. (Actually, Dan Brown could probably write a better story — that's how laughable it is.)

Restaurant sign in Kashgar:

An article by Daisuke Wakabayashi entitled "English Gets the Last Word in Japan" in the August 4 issue of The Wall Street Journal describes how English is becoming the language of Rakuten Inc., Japan's biggest online retailer (by sales volume).

from http://forum.zazzle.com/tools/lets_see_your_create_a_product_store?m=357327 , from a post from 5/13/2009:

As for whippet/lurcher colours, my last lurcher (apricot with kohl eyes) had 23 puppies (two litters), not one with the same coat colour or length, all fabulous handsome dogs though.

Hmm, that way of talking would spoil the resolution of the famous inductive “proof” that all horses are the same color.

I ought to be grateful to see any sort of sporadic twitching of anti-racism, since I despise racists so much, but as I have said before, I sometimes find it hard to summon up a great deal of enthusiasm for some UK victories over hate speech. Let me tell you about a story I meant to mention back at the end of June but didn't get around to. It seems to have almost completely slipped away from public notice in the six weeks. The aspect of it that is likely to astonish Americans acquainted with the First Amendment is that a black city councillor, speaking in a council meeting in Bristol, England, in remarks about a race-related issue before the council, was prosecuted for a criminal offense, and fined, because she (allegedly) used the word coconut. The minor point, of linguistic and philosophical rather than legal relevance, is that strictly she didn't use the word at all.

In The Glass Rainbow, James Lee Burke's latest, the protagonist, Dave Robicheaux, is arguing with his daughter Alafair about a novel written by an ex-con who's staying with her boyfriend:

"Have you read The Green Cage?" Alafair asked.

"I have. I got it from the library. I didn't buy it."

"You don't think it's a brilliant piece of writing?"

"Yeah, it is, for reasons the author and his admirers don't seem to understand."

She wasn't taking the bait, so I slogged on. "It's a great look inside the mind of a sociopath and narcissist and manipulator. Count the number of times the pronouns 'I,' 'me,' 'mine,' and 'myself' appear in every paragraph."

"Somebody must have liked it. Robbie was a finalist in the National Book Awards."

"Robbie?"

"Argue with someone else, Dave."