A few days ago ("Evaluative words for wines", 4/7/2012), I illustrated how a trivial method can help us uncover the contribution of individual words to the expression of opinion in text. For this morning's Breakfast Experiment™, I'll illustrate an equally trivial approach to learning how words fit together structurally, using the same small collection of […]
There are two basic reasons for the increased interest in "text analytics" and "sentiment analysis": In the first place, there's more and more data available to analyze; and second, the basic techniques are pretty easy. This is not to deny the benefits of sophisticated statistical and text-processing methods. But algorithmic sophistication adds value to simple-minded […]
Brett Reynolds writes: Over on English Language & Usage, the following question appeared: Many Japanese textbooks of English mention the "feminine 'so'": the use of "so" for "very" is more typical of a feminine speaker. I don't think this is true in the US (I learned English living in Southern California and have now lived […]
Tom Chivers, "Sadly, Jamie Redknapp is literally correct", The Telegraph 3/12/2012; "Literally, a discussion about literally", BBC Radio 4 Today.
Murray Smith writes: Friday afternoon in the car I heard a radio news report about the closing of an art gallery on Boston's tony Newbury Street. The reporter had interviewed the gallery owner and learned that due to economic conditions gallery sales had been down forty percent the last two years. Now the landlord was […]
You've probably noticed that how people talk depends on who they're talking with. And for 40 years or so, linguists and psychologists and sociologists have referred to this process as "speech accommodation" or "communication accommodation" — or, for short, just plain "accommodation". This morning's Breakfast Experiment™ explores a version of the speech accommodation effect as […]
FDR had his weekly "Fireside chats", and in 1982 Ronald Reagan began the modern tradition of weekly presidential addresses, which U.S. presidents since then have maintained. I don't think that very many people actually listen to these things — no one that I've asked has ever admitted to regular consumption. But I've been collecting them […]
Now that I've got morning internet access again, and the semester is more or less underway, it's time for another Breakfast Experiment™. In "Markov's Heart of Darkness" (7/18/2011) and "Finch linguistics" (7/13/2011) , we learned that Joseph Conrad's paragraphs are more markovian — at least in terms of their distribution of lengths — than zebra finch […]
In confessing her like-aholism ("My Love Affair With 'Like'", Jezebel 6/26/2011), Erin Gloria Ryan framed the problem in terms of gender roles: Any girl who's been teased for middle school nerdery has likely developed a long standing aversion for the feeling of being excluded for being too smart or opinionated. This is the way that […]
Yesterday, Marc Cenedella did a sort of Breakfast Experiment™, and reported the results in "I, Obama: The President and the personal pronoun": President Obama has taken criticism in some sectors for his use of the personal pronoun in describing, and applauding, the nation’s success in covert operations. So I’ve spent my Saturday morning at the […]
A couple of days ago ("On not allowing Bin Laden to back-burner", 5/3/2011), I noted that English (like other languages) often turns a noun denoting a place into a verb meaning "cause something to come to be in/on/at that place". I also noted that other causative change-of-state verbs generally have intransitive/inchoative uses as well (The […]
I'm in Minneapolis for a meeting of the LSA executive committee, and yesterday afternoon, on the plane from Philadelphia, I listened all the way through to Lee Atwater's extraordinary 1990 album, "Red, Hot and Blue". At the time these tracks were recorded, Atwater was chairman of the Republican National Committee, fresh from his successful role […]
Coco Krumme, "Velvety Chocolate With a Silky Ruby Finish. Pair With Shellfish.", Slate 2/23/2011: Using descriptions of 3,000 bottles, ranging from \$5 to \$200 in price from an online aggregator of reviews, I first derived a weight for every word, based on the frequency with which it appeared on cheap versus expensive bottles. I then […]