Language Log

Yesterday, in answering a question from a reader, I glanced over the section on intonation in the 1877 edition of Henry Sweet's "A Handbook of Phonetics". I found what I was looking for, namely the section where Sweet distinguishes three "primary 'forms' or 'inflections' of tones" in the intonation of English — level, rising, and falling — and the "compound tones" such as "compound rising" (= fall+rise) and "compound falling" (= rise+fall).

But next came something surprising:

280.  The use of tone varies greatly in different languages. In English the tones express various logical and emotional modifications, such as surprise, uncertainty, &c. In some languages there is a tendency to employ one predominant tone without much regard to its meaning. Thus in Scotch the rising tone is often employed monotonously, not only in questions but also in answers and statements of facts. In Glasgow Scotch the falling tone predominates. In American English the compound rise is the characteristic tone. [emphasis added]

A reader from France, SW, wrote to ask some questions about English intonation:

It is with great interest that I discovered your posts on ‘uptalk’ on Language Log, in which you briefly retrace the history of the study of the phenomenon. In several of these posts, you highlight the fact that the association of uptalk with unassertiveness and tentativeness is unfounded, to say the least.

May I ask you if you thereby intend to correct the view propagated by somewhat simplistic newspaper articles, or if you are also disputing the views held by certain linguists?

(I would like to specify that my question is by no means meant to be polemical. I am currently doing research on language change and suprasegmental innovations in Leeds, where young people have recently been observed to use rising tones (UNB rises, not HRTs) at the end of declaratives, and I am trying to obtain information about the history of research on uptalk.)

I also noticed that you had entitled one of your posts ‘uptalk is not HRTs’. Could I ask you what difference you would then make between uptalk and HRTs (I had hitherto assumed that Alan Cruttenden and Robert Ladd established a clear difference between UNB rises on the one hand, and HRTs, *that is, uptalk*, on the other hand).

These questions and their answers are a bit more "inside baseball" than usual for Language Log — but perhaps some readers will be interested, and the rest of you are hereby warned to move along to another post.

A while back I commented on the New York Times's reluctance to print "get laid" (even in quoted speech). Then it occurred to me to check out what the paper did with the movie Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987: directed by Stephen Frears, screenplay by Hanif Kureishi). And, surprise, it had no problem with the title back then; Vincent Canby did a review on 30 October 1987, and the title has appeared in the paper's pages a number of times since then (though some publications referred to it just as Sammy and Rosie). Then in 2005, in Ben Brantley's review of David Rabe's play Hurlyburly, we got 

It is a hangout for friends who want to get stoned, get sloshed, get laid.

And there's more, a lot more.

I have some idea about how this variability in practice could come about. It starts with an attempt to regulate publication practices rigidly: writers are expected to adhere to the prescribed practices, and editors are expected to correct them when they don't. But there are at least two problematic situations for this program of regulation.

From President-elect Obama's latest weekly YouTube Address:

I know that passing this plan won't be easy. I will need, and seek, support from Republicans and Democrats; and I'll be welcome to ideas and suggestions from both sides of the aisle.   (emphasis added)

This sounds to me like an amalgam of

1. … ideas and suggestions will be welcome from both sides of the aisle; and
2. … I'll welcome ideas and suggestions from both sides of the aisle; and
3. … I'll be open to ideas and suggestions from both sides of the aisle.

misread from the teleprompter. But maybe not.

As reported by Der Spiegel and picked up by the New York Times blog The Lede, two German cartographers have created The Atlas of True Names, which substitutes place names around the world with glosses based on their etymological roots. It's a very clever idea, but in execution it enshrines some questionable notions of "truth."

Back in January I discussed the claim by the Federal Communications Commission that the buttocks are a "sexual or excretory organ". To my amazement and dismay, this nonsense continues. The matter has now reached the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Here is ABC's brief and here is the FCC's response.

I don't find the FCC's response at all persuasive. It consists in large part of the claim that in the rule the phrase "sexual or excretory organs" should be interpreted as meaning what they want it to mean, as "body parts whose public display is deemed offensive by prudish people" rather than as what it actually says. It will be interesting to see what the Court makes of it.

Among the comments on Information Week's story of 11/20/08, "Woolly Mammoth Genome Sequenced", is this rant from "Guest" (Nov. 20, 2008 8:32:45 AM), which will provide this week's Hell in a Handbasket (HiHB) moment:

I'm not worried. Whenever I see the deteriorating English skills contained in all these blogs and comments, I am convinced that Homo Sapiens are now in a stage of "devolution" and within less than 10,000 years we will once again be equal in intelligence to not only Neanderthals but Cro-Magnons as well. Maybe we will need whatever beasts we can "manufacture" now so we can use them in the future.* not to mention the ridiculous reasoning or lack therof reflected in so many absurd comments.

According to this commenter, not only are English skills deteriorating, but in fact human cognition itself is deteriorating. (You can supply the implied intermediate steps: the English language is deteriorating, language in general is deteriorating.) You don't see such overheated alarm very often.

Steve Bell takes us behind the scenes at Buckingham Palace, where Prince Charles discusses the GOAT ("tately", "naybody") and MOUTH "vile", "signeds") diphthongs with his mother the Queen:

Mark Liberman has reported on a use of the transitive verb quiesce 'render inactive', in a passive used adjectivally: "Server is currently quiesced". Transitive quiesce seems to be almost entirely restricted to computer contexts, and also to be recent enough to have escaped general dictionaries.

When I tried to take a look at my calendar this morning, I got a little box that told me, in red letters:

Error:
There was a network error while attempting to log you in. Please try again. If this problem persists, please contact your network administrator.

Administrator diagnostic information: Failure logged on 21 Nov 2008 07:35:21,243 as incident 15,241; the original exception text is:

com.meetingmaker.sys.RpcException: Server execution error: 9334: Server is currently quiesced (auto-shutdown)

The server log has more information on this error.

(Emphasis added.)

The announcement that the next edition of Collins English Dictionary will be including the indifferent interjection meh (having beaten out other submissions from the public) has set off a bit of a squabble between Philadelphia's two alt-weeklies. Molly Eichel of Philadelphia City Paper blogged that "meh isn't a word — it's a sound effect." Joel Mathis of Philadelphia Weekly responded that meh is "not only a word, but a great word." Eichel emailed me to try to settle the dispute, and I was only too happy to oblige, given my interest in meh ever since my June 2006 post here, "Meh-ness to society." You can read all about it in my latest Word Routes column over on the Visual Thesaurus (where I hang my hat these days).

While I'm in self-promotion mode, why not try the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee? It's an addictive spelling challenge that adapts to your skill level, and it comes with the seal of approval from such Friends of the Log as Languagehat, Mr. Verb, and Jan Freeman. If you're interested in some background on how we made it adaptive, check out my recent post on OUPblog, "Building the Ultimate Spelling Bee." I hope you find the results anything but meh.

[Update: There's a truce in the meh wars. Mathis responds here and Eichel here.]

We not infrequently point out the gaffes of non-linguists who misuse linguistic terminology and concepts, so I'm pleased for once to have an example of the opposite type, an instance in which a non-linguist has correctly used a technical term from linguistics. In his novel Bad Business at p. 302, Robert B. Parker writes:

"You fucking prick," Lance said to O'Mara. He managed to make the words hiss without any sibilants.

Many people know sibilant in its non-technical sense of "making a hissing sound", but here Parker is clearly using the term in its technical, linguistic sense, in which it refers to a class of consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow passage resulting in a hissing sound. Parker's sentence would be a contradiction if sibilant were meant in the non-technical sense, but is perfectly sensible if sibilant has its technical sense: he is asserting that Lance's utterance "you fucking prick" contains no consonants like [s] and [z], which is correct, but that it nonetheless gave the auditory impression of hissing. Congratulations to Robert Parker.

The Typalyzer website gives an instant and fun psychological profile of any blog based on the language used. Asked about Language Log, it says we're "scientists". It's true! It's true!

Although we are "intellectually curious and daring", we "might be pshysically hesitant to try new things." I admit it. I'm so pshysically challenged that I can't even pronounce it.

Further, we "tend to be so abstract and theoretical in [our] communication [we] often have a problem communcating [our] visions to other people and need to learn patience and use conrete examples." Yes, also true. Communcating has never been our strong point. Note to self: more conrete.

But ok, spelling aside, this stuff isn't bad at all, until you get to the next part of the analysis. Which is the most misleading picture of a brain since Dan Hodgins showed us where to find the Crockus:

That's why my brain hurts.

[Below the fold, a note for the curious on how the Typalyzer website works.