Voices
A recent cartoon by Tom Gauld:
Search Results
"Grammarian"
Linguists are prone to feel that the word "grammarian" should belong to them, not to prescriptivist scolds like the one in Elle Cordova's skit. And we often object even more strongly to "grammar" being used as the justification for condemnation of non-standard spellings, punctuation, word usage, etc., both because of the prescriptivist stance and also […]
Trespassed update, part 2 (suicided)
In the first part of this post, we came across the notion of "bèi zìshā 被自殺" ("be suicided"). Since, for many people, this idea (of somebody being "suicided") is hard to comprehend, I asked several graduate students from the PRC if they could explain how it and the related expressions "bèi tiàolóu 被跳楼" ("was jumped […]
Trespassed update
I'm at a motel in Nampa, Idaho. A sign posted on a side entrance reads: DO NOT LEAVE DOOR OPEN YOU WILL BE TRESPASSED.
Mutable predicate-argument arrangements
The use of the verb positioned in this sentence, part of an article quoted in "'Dutch roll'", puzzled some commenters: The aircraft remained on the ground in Oakland until Jun 6th 2024, then positioned to Everett,WA (USA), ATS facilities, and is still on the ground in Everett 6 days later. But there are general processes […]
SAT: designs for Star Wars creatures, vehicles, and locations
An anonymous contributor was curious what the real and would-be copy-editors who hang around LL might make of the below — which may serve to represent for those unfamiliar what is actually going on within the so-called "Language & Writing" portion of our now-acclaimed, now-derided "Scholastic Aptitude [no wait Assessment] Test". The anonymous contributor can give the correct […]
"Interesting questions are raised by present speech patterns"
A recent PhD Comics strip:
The Passivator reborn
I've been resisting topics like "words for coup" and "the meaning of insurrection" — we'll see how long that resolve lasts — but this morning's distraction is the rebirth of something I wrote about many years ago, namely an online service for identifying instances of passive-voice verbs. In my review of 'The Passivator" (4/6/2004), I […]
Autological humor
A guest post (guest list?) by Anthony Bladon: A verb walks into a bar, sees an attractive noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines. An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars. A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and […]
"Speech synthesis"
Ordinary language and technical terminology often diverge. We've covered the "passive voice" case at length. I don't think we've discussed the fact that for botanists, cucumbers and tomatoes are berries but strawberries and raspberries aren't — but there are many examples of such terminological divergence in fields outside of linguistics. However, the technical terminology is […]
Passive aggressive
Anne Henochowicz, "Passive-Aggressive: Expressing misfortune, and resistance, in Mandarin", LA Review of Books, 10/23/2018: Strunk and White’s classic textbook Elements of Style taught us to avoid the passive voice in our writing. Our verbs should take action, not a back seat, whenever possible. (This advice is not universally accepted.) In Mandarin, however, the passive voice […]
Corpora and the Second Amendment: “keep” (part 2)
An introduction and guide to my series of posts "Corpora and the Second Amendment" is available here. The corpus data that is discussed can be downloaded here. That link will take you to a shared folder in Dropbox. Important: Use the "Download" button at the top right of the screen. In my last post (longer […]