Language Log

The England and Wales Court of Appeals delivered its judgment this morning in Simon Singh's appeal of last year's libel verdict against him.  This all began on April 19, 2008, when Singh wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian containing these sentences:

The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

The BCA sued for libel, and won an initial victory in May of 2009, when Sir David Eady, the presiding judge in the English High Court, decided that Singh's piece involved assertions of fact rather than opinion, and that the word bogus in effect meant "fraudulent" and not just "ineffective". This decision meant that in order to defend himself successfully, Singh would have to prove that the BCA was deliberately and knowingly dishonest in promoting treatments that it knew did not work.

Although the Guardian withdrew the article, Singh chose to appeal Eady's judgment, and attracted considerable support for his goal of keeping libel laws out of scientific debate.

According to Eric Schmidt, "A different kind of company name", The Official Google Blog 4/01/2010:

Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.

Pictures here.

Including some nice examples of Muphry's Law in action:

Debate rages among philosophers, linguists, and psychologists: does Quigley know that he knows that he will die?

In a discussion we were having about the Tibetan evidential particle yin, Nathan Hill sent me an article by Nicholas Tournadre entitled "Arguments against the Concept of 'Conjunct' / 'Disjunct' in Tibetan" from Chomolangma, Demawend und Kasbek, Festschrift für Roland Bielmeier (2008), 281-308.  As I started reading through the article with the hope of finding how yin functions as a sort of equational verb or copula, I was caught up short by some preliminary remarks about the classification of Tibetan that Tournadre makes at the beginning of his paper.

Based on his 20 years of field work throughout the Tibetan language area and on the existing literature, Tournadre estimates that there are 220 "Tibetan dialects" derived from Old Tibetan and currently distributed across five countries:  China, India, Bhutan, Nepal, and Pakistan.  In a forthcoming work, Tournadre states that these "dialects" may be classed within 25 "dialect groups," i.e., groups that do not permit mutual intelligibility.  According to Tournadre, the notion of "dialect group" is equivalent to the notion of "language," but does not entail standardization.  Consequently, says Tournadre, if the concept of standardization is set aside, it would be more appropriate to speak of 25 languages derived from Old Tibetan rather than 25 "dialect groups."

In reference to the witticism "Anything you can do, I can do meta", cited in "Doing Meta: from meta-language to meta-clippy", 1/32/3007, Michael Smith asked:

I was wondering whether you were ever given, or able to find, a citation for "Anything you can do, I can do meta" earlier than the reported use by Samuel Hahn in 1991.

Let me explain my interest.  Each year the Department of Philosophy at Princeton makes a t-shirt for the graduating class with a quotation of their choice on it.  This year they've chosen "Anything you can do, I can do meta", but of course they have no idea who said it.  I'd quite like to be able to tell them when it first appeared in print, if that's known.

Prof. Smith followed up with this post scriptum:

After a little further searching on Google I came up with the attached article from 1979 (see p.1230, footnote 2).  However, if you know of an earlier citation, or of a credit to someone other than Lipson, I'd be grateful if you would let me know.

Jesse Sheidlower points out a "VERY strongly worded spelling/punctuation rant", to be found here.

(Unless you have a very large screen, you'll want to use "right-click>>Open link in new window", or maybe try this link instead. Warning: some NSFW text in VERY large type…)

This seems to reach rage-o-meter values not seen since the "pilotless drone" episode.

OK, I'm back in Philadelphia and my copy of Louann Brizendine's The Male Brain has arrived. I still haven't had time to read it, but I promised to look up the business about the dorsal premammillary nucleus, so here goes.

Today's Doonesbury explores the problem of over-ambitious translation:

According to CNN ("At least 7 arrested after raids in three states", 3/28/1010):

Federal authorities plan to unseal charges Monday against several people arrested in a series of weekend raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, prosecutors in Detroit said Sunday. […]

Mike Lackomar, a county leader for the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, said the target of the raid was a Christian militia group called the Hutaree. The group proclaims on a Web site that it is "preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive."

The origin of the group's name, Hutaree, is not explained on what seems to be their web site. And there are other linguistic mysteries to be found there, including their system of paramilitary ranks.

A Language Log reader named metanea points out to us that the Urban Dictionary claims aibohphobia is a technical term for the irrational fear of palindromicity. The etymology will raise a smile. Just stare at the word for a few seconds, and it will reveal itself to you.

The Associated Press reports:

America's first legal gigolo leaves rural brothel

LAS VEGAS — America's first legal male prostitute has left a rural Nevada brothel after a two-month stint that generated plenty of attention but fewer than 10 paying customers.

Brothel owner Jim Davis said Friday his Shady Lady Ranch had parted ways with the nation's first "prostitude."

Prostitude? Really? That caught the eye of Amy West, who read the wire story in The Boston Globe and posted about it on the American Dialect Society mailing list. Amy rightly suggested the blend should be prostidude.

There's been a lot of discussion of what Joe Biden apparently said to Barack Obama at the HCR signing ceremony:

When he turns to the president, some combination of careful listening and lip-reading suggests that Biden said "((this is)) a big fucking deal".