This is the Linguablogging archive
July 1, 2007
syntactic ambiguity
‘Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language’
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Just saw this nice bit of syntactic ambiguity from Wittgenstein on quotes of the day
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)
February 9, 2007
'the murderer of Marx and Freud'
I love Melvyn Bragg. Four days before I introduce the students to the philosophy of science, and three before Bhavana does it in Dubai, he’s just broadcast, and podcast, a discussion of Karl Popper.
What a guy B-))
Posted by Billy at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2007
lexical concept search
Has anybody coined a word yet for that moment when you’re either shuffling or listening to shared music and just the right track comes on at just the right time? I reckon a key part of it is that it should be something you’d kind of forgotten. Something to do with serendipity, maybe?
It just happened to me with I’m So Bored With the USA bringing back memories of my first dramatic performance as Widow Twankey in the still fondly remembered (by people who were in it) ‘Batman and Robin in Pantoland’ where the Joker, the Riddler, Catwoman and the Penguin adapted it to ‘We’re So Bored With Pantomime!’ And funnily enough, I had a phone call from Robin last night.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2007
balderdash & piffle
Just received this from balderdash & piffle
Help them out if you were dogging before 1993 or anything.
B-)
… … . .
Hello,
Just wanted to let you know that the BBC2 show Balderdash & Piffle has recently launched a second Wordhunt. Together with the OED, we’re appealing for the public’s help in rewriting the dictionary entries for words such as ‘loo’, ‘duh brain’, ‘identity theft’ and ‘hoodie’. We’re looking for written evidence of the history and origins of 40 such words - the full list, and more information, can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/balderdash
I’ve also attached a full press release about the project.
Posted by Billy at 1:53 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2007
'footballistically'
I love this word. I just checked and Arsene Wenger used it twice in an interview about David Beckham. I’m not sophisticated enough to link straight to the video but the link is on this page:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/default.stm
Look under ‘Beckham moves to LA Galaxy’ and click on the Wenger video
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:15 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2006
'me know loads of words'
Ali G talks to Noam Chomsky
I is well amused.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:08 AM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2006
cosie bosie
SCOTS - Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech
Enjoying this. Did a quick search for bosie which is the one Scottish word the kids have grown up with and found this:
Mr Ted
Fin I pit on ma jammies, an climm the stairs tae bed
I ken that he’ll be wytin, ma frien caad Mr Ted
An fin I coorie doon tae sleep
I’ll haud him in ma bosie
He’s made o fur, he disnae gurr
He’s affa affa cosie
As Auntie Harriet says, ‘there’s naething like a bosie’!
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:28 PM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2006
more chav research
I have to mention that I asked some of this year’s new students whether they knew what chav meant and one of them, without pausing to think, instantly said ‘asbo’. Meanwhile I’m very excited by the urban dictionary which another student told me about. Check out the four hundred and thirty five (so far) entries for chav there.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:41 PM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2006
random hating
Just had an email from Jamie who hates the word random and is:
‘optimistic we can erase this horror from the language’
He’s linked to our London Language post on this to help explain his issues.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2006
pranging out
I’ve been to two top class workshops this week, both on topics which interest philosophers as well as linguists, pragmatists and psycholinguists. Lots of interesting ideas, mixed with the feeling that the interlocutors (it was the kind of context where we use words like that without blinking) weren’t really having the same conversation (explaining exactly what ‘the same conversation’ might mean being exactly the kind of thing we were talking about). As well as the serious ideas, I enjoyed the in-jokes about Quine, Searle, Grice, etc. and the personal anecdotes about some of the big names back in the day. But I think my favourite moment was when one of the philosophers responded to another and illustrated something interesting about full stops by saying, ‘Suppose I say to you: ‘Jeffrey Skilling has committed suicide. He was found guilty on 19 out of 28 counts.’ The other philosopher was shocked and replied , ‘DID he?!!’ I guess the example was so appropriate that he forgot we were in a hypothetical context. (It’s about Enron btw)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2006
the pen and the sword
language log - the geopolitical significance of sentence-final prepositions
Wow. Seems the US army is trying to counter insurgency by running an essay competition.
John Hodgman and Jon Stewart had a lot of fun with it on the Daily Show. John Hodgman points out that:
You can’t fight a war on terror if you’re ending a sentence with a preposition
He also offered this nice bit of rhetorical advice:
First you tell them how you’re going to kill them; then you kill them; then you tell them how you just killed them.
If you feel like entering the essay competition, here’s the info:
CAC Military Review Essay Competition
And here’s a lnk to The Daily Show piece on it on youtube:
youtube - daily show on the essay competition
B-}
Posted by Billy at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2006
'Dettol protects. Fact!'
This blog hasn’t been too linguistic recently, partly because I have London Language as an alternative outlet, as well as lots of opportunities to talk about language in class.
I got a really nice example from Apoa the other morning. We were discussing facts and propositions (I’m sure all parents chat about things like this with their kids over breakfast, right?) and we were agreeing that facts exist but that we can never know for sure which things are facts, when she said, ‘Dettol protects. Fact!’
For the pragmatists among you, it strikes me as an interesting echoic usage illsutrating something rather than saying it, and also to be a good example of linguistic underdeterminacy - how do you work out the relationship between the two bits, and what exactly does ‘dettol protects’ mean?
Went to see Proof last night, followed by a talk with John Madden, who reminded me that maths is one area where you can prove things conclusively. One big issue with the film, of course, is that they can’t tell us anything about the maths in it as we wouldn’t have a clue about what it meant.
Just updated the site a bit, btw. Some new links below and a few handouts from this year’s teaching.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
BSL degree course
Education Guardian - BA in Sign Language
I wonder how many people will go for this. I’ve always thought that they should introduce sign language in the national curriculum. If they taught BSL to kids when they start primary, they’d enjoy it, learn it easily, be happily bilingual, think positively about language learning and be able to communicate with BSL signers.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2006
how to be nang
My favourite line in this is:
“If you want to be cool you have to live, and if you smoke you will be dead, and that is not cool, to be dead.”
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)
January 3, 2006
balderdash and piffle
This was an enjoyable programme about the OED. The main idea is for viewers and the programme makers to work together to find new info to update the OED. They focused on words where the earliest citation seems too recent, e.g. the earliest citation they’ve got for ‘pear-shaped’ is 1983 and the earliest for ‘ploughman’s lunch’ is 1970. I loved the story about ‘ploughman’s lunch’ (the phrase was invented in the late 50’s/early 60’s as a way of promoting British cheeses) and the literature and beer mats. And I especially liked the scene where Victoria Coren found the phrase in a letter and some minutes while searching the archive with her big white gloves on. The piece on Polari by Mark Ravenhill was also good.
Billy
Posted by Billy at 2:44 PM | Comments (0)
Linguist of the Year
Noam Chomsky just won another poll.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
October 3, 2005
knowns and unknowns
One of the students brought in Donald Rumsfeld’s famous ‘rum remarks’ about ‘knowns and unknowns’ today.
I think we decided that it was gobbledygook mainly because of the processing load and the fact that it was a tautology with no interesting effects that also failed to answer a direct question.
Funnily enough, we then looked at some ‘unknown knowns’, i.e. things about language that speakers know but don’t know they know (like when to aspirate a /p/)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:13 PM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2005
inventor of Klingon dies
inttranews - inventor of Klingon dies
Here’s how inttranews reported it:
London, UK (Times Online): The actor James Doohan who died on July 20 after achieving cult status as the chief engineer ‘Scotty’ in Star Trek, is credited with devising the Klingon language that featured in that film. Although Klingon was later refined by linguist Marc Okrand into a full-fledged language of its own, Doohan can be credited with formulating the world’s most popular artificial language — Shakespeare and parts of the Bible have been translated into it.
For more information, please visit:
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1701993,00.html
Funny to see the whole Star Trek phenomenon described as ‘that film’. If you’re interested in carrying out more research on Klingon, visit the Klingon Language Institute
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2005
web-based stylistics
Not everything’s working just now but if you want to play with what the course I’m attending today is about it’s at:
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:56 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2005
pattern-finder
Pattern-Finder is pretty cool. I’m not sure I agree that humans couldn’t do what it does, but it makes it easier to notice things and is bound to be useful for teachers.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2005
Language Log: Learning the ropes in the trenches with Dan Brown
I love Language Log
Skipping past Arnold Zwicky’s post on splitting infinitives in Rumpole of the Bailey, I came to more of Geoff Pullum’s analysis of the prose style of Dan Brown (haven’t read Dan Brown myself but I can tell you that Ohna and Apoa enjoyed the Da Vinci Code and that Apoa’s English teacher despises it). Do click on to read about the 256 names of Henning Mankell
Who says linguists are nerds?
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:37 AM | Comments (1)
July 14, 2005
popping spoffles
I don’t believe this but I like it anyway (from those bad popbitch people):
Many moons ago, when Hugh Laurie and Sir Stephen of Fry were just becoming ‘known’, they were interviewed on a BBC radio show. Mr Fry asked what the foam covers on the end of the mics were called. To which Mr Laurie said, ‘They’re called ‘Spoffles’ and they prevent what’s known as ‘Popping’. Mr Fry, the Host and the Engineer were all impressed by Mr Laurie’s knowledge and the interview continued.
Years passed, and once again Fry and Laurie were in a radio studio. The Engineer said something like he’ll just adjust the Spoffle. Mr Laurie says, ‘The what?’ And the Engineer explains that this is what the foam things are called. ‘Good Lord,’ laughs Mr Laurie, ‘I made that word up on the spot years ago in a studio!’
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:30 AM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2005
'randomers'
I know some of you are interested in language developments in London. Around a year ago, I noticed Apoa using the word random more often than I would have expected, and then noticed lots of kids were doing the same. They weren’t using it in a new way, just more often than you would expect. Typical utterances might be:
It was just a random thing to do.or
There were just a few random people there.
So I was pleased to hear an actual innovation from Charlotte Church on Jonathan Ross last week. She’d been talking about her adventures in ‘Chip Alley’ (an environ I myself frequented on Cup Final day) and other bits of Cardiff and told him about one time when she was having a meal in a restaurant. She said,
I was sitting there with a few randomers-
Jonathan said,
Hold on a minute. What did you say? ‘Randomers’?
And she said,
Yeh, you know, just a few random people.
One interesting thing about it is there isn’t any obvius motivation for using this word more frequently. It just seems to have been picked on at random.
B-)
[Also posted (slightly adapted) on London Language]
Posted by Billy at 9:31 AM | Comments (2)
June 16, 2005
inttranews
I signed up to inttranews a few days ago. It’s a good way to hear about languagey news. Only a bit of it will be relevant to any individual but still quite useful.
B-)
[Also posted on London Language]
Posted by Billy at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2005
an ask, a watch and a miss
One trend linguists have noticed recently is the increased use of verbs as nouns in structures like ‘a good read’. The most common one is ‘a big ask’ as used by sports commentators in a situation like when a team is two-nil down at half-time. (It’s ‘a big ask’ to expect them to come back, as Michael Howard just found out ;-) Apparently, it started in fundraising circles.
I just heard two new examples. First, Alan Hansen on Match of the Day said that the dramatic day of relegation-deciding matches on Sunday had been ‘a wonderful watch’. Then last night Paul Gascoigne was on a documentary about what happens to footballers after they retire (talking to Alan Hansen, coincidentally). Talking about how much he had missed playing when he first stopped, he said ‘oh yes, it was a big miss’.
It’s an interesting example of some of the processes of language change. I think it would be right to say that the language system itself hasn’t changed, since we have been making nouns from verbs for ages (e.g. ‘a good read’) but language use has changed. It also shows grownups making generalisations, i.e. they’re not just saying ‘a big ask’ but somehow ‘deciding’ that verbs can be used as nouns and doing it to verbs other than ‘ask’. It also gives me a couple of new ambiguity examples to use in class.
B-)
Princeton - making the ‘big ask’
Posted by Billy at 9:22 AM | Comments (2)
May 11, 2005
the nose of the pragmatic camel
Scanned some proofs of an encyclopedia article while invigilating yesterday. I had come up with a fairly clumsy example of an utterance the reader would be unlikely to have seen or heard before as a way of demonstrating the creativity of human language. I then started looking at an article* we’ll be discussing at a reading group on Monday, and came across this:
If we consider semantics the science that tells us what is said, Grice let the nose of the pragmatic camel intrude under the tent of semantics
Anyone come across that one before? Bravely, the authors carried on with the metaphor. Personally, I’m in favour of letting the whole camel in. Even if semantics does end up squashed into a corner of the tent next to the pile of sweaty socks.
B-)
*Korta, K. and J. Perry (forthcoming) Three demonstrations and a funeral. To appear in Mind and Language.
Posted by Billy at 5:44 PM | Comments (1)
April 21, 2005
new language
This is about a PhD student who earned $2,000 when he was commissioned to invent a new language. (Free registration needed to read it).
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:55 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2005
habemus linguam?
Language Log always has a load of interesting stuff on it.
Bill Poser just posted an interesting discussion of the syntactic ambiguity of Quebec English Teachers and a most unnatural intended interpretation, and Geoff Pullum’s post Habemus Linguam? uses yesterday’s communication from the Sistine Chapel to make a point about the definition of linguistics. The sentence from Syntactic Structures that puzzled Pullum in his early days is:
From now on I will consider a ‘language’ to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:04 PM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2005
gerunding gone mad
International Herald Tribune - The World Is Englishing
Just got this link from LINGUIST
I especially like the bit at the end about Spanish people having to coin the term ‘bullying’ because ‘we’ve never needed a word for that before in Spain’
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:45 AM | Comments (2)
'love the wardrobe, darling'
After confusing Mai and Hanna with the mad king’s doctors, I just saw another nice syntactic ambiguity: ‘Patient Transport Service’ on the side of an ambulance-like van. Reminded me of the classic ‘theatrical removals’ truck.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:37 AM | Comments (1)
March 30, 2005
Derek Bickerton
Dear All,
This is to announce the opening of my new website at:
Check it out. Guarantee there’s stuff there you wouldn’t expect. Any resemblance to your average prof’s website is accidental, unintentional and quite possibly non-existent. If you like it, tell your friends about it.
Best wishes,
Derek
Derek Bickerton is a really interesting and influential linguist. Probably his most famous areas of work have been on pidgins and creoles and on the evolution of language. He came up with the notion of ‘protolanguage’. Roughly, protolanguage is an envisaged human communication system which was a first step away from ape communication towards human language. It meant that we could make more sense of the evolution of language as something that evolved without having to make a gigantic leap from nothing-like-human-language to something as complicated as what I’m using as I type and you’re using as you read.
Anyway, he’s now a blogger.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 3:42 PM
March 22, 2005
netspeak
Yahoo! News - `Netspeak’ doing more good than harm to English language
I haven’t got time to read this right now but maybe you will?
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:59 PM | Comments (1)
March 3, 2005
who owns English?
MSNBC - Not the Queen’s English
This is useful for anyone who teaches courses that have to do with ‘the English language’. We have a few modules where this is relevant. Our first year students wrote on problems with defining ‘the English language’ last semester.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:28 AM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2005
conversation
The Observer | UK News | Why chattering classes have nothing to say
Apparently, we’re skilled at talking but only talk about trivia. I thought the function of things like reality tv, celebrity culture, politics and the state of the planet was so that we could talk to each other without having to talk about the important things like our relationships, emotions, etc.?
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:23 PM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2005
language and school
The Guardian - Outcry at Kelly’s exam reforms
The Guardian - big fall in language students
Neither of these stories is much of a surprise. They made clear they’d be making a retreat from Tomlinson as soon as the report was made public. I’m sure it’s as much to do with fear of bad press if they say they’re scrapping GCSEs and A levels as it is to do with what they really think about the proposals.
The language news is a complete disaster. One interesting fact that the report doesn’t mention is that language courses offered outside degree programmes are doing quite well. Numbers of students taking a language as part of their degree are falling but a lot of them want to learn a language outside their degree programmes.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:51 AM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2005
cockney queen
BBC - ‘Queen does cockney accent’
I hear she also does a good impression of a rather posh elderly lady
;-)
Posted by Billy at 1:31 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2005
Tony's wife loves Cherie's husband
We looked at this example in class yesterday:
His wife loves her husband
It’s mentioned by Chomsky (Knowledge of Language 1986) and the question is whether it’s grammatical if the referent of his is the same as the referent of husband and the referent of wife is the same as the referent of her
Naturally, when discussing it you imagine a particular couple and the most likely are the current Prime Minister and his wife/her husband. So we were wondering whether this could mean that ‘Tony’s Cherie loves Cherie’s Tony’ iyswim. We then tried a number of tests including imagining contexts such as:
A: Nobody could possibly have any affection for Tony Blair!
B: Oh, I don’t know. I imagine his wife loves her husband
This all felt very weird in a context where Tony has just been addressing the British people using a metaphor where he’s the erring husband and the people are the wife who’s had enough, as reported here
David Aaronovitch’s comment on this is worth a read (as are loads of others, actually). You can also get the full text here
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)
February 8, 2005
bling is rinsed out, man
We discussed this utterance in class today, which, being a neek, I found in this Guardian article
Later I suggested we’d said enough about a different example we were looking at and and one of the students said, ‘Yeah we rinsed it, man’
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:34 PM | Comments (0)
February 2, 2005
links
In case any linguabloggers are interested, here are some links that students in my classes are looking at just now:
Voices is a bbc project mapping the accents and dialects in the UK. It also has some good links and individual pages on things like isn’t innit ungrammatical?
Students are looking at the Voices project to see to what extent it’s scientific and how useful the data might be.
Then there’s Philip Pullman’s article giving his opinion on the research suggesting that teaching grammar doesn’t help children to improve their writing. He expresses his view really strongly but it’s all a very complicated debate and I’m sure it’s not as clearcut as he thinks it is.
These are news stories mentioning the research he’s talking about:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1393672,00.html
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1393206,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4185507.stm
And this is a teacher, Andrew Cunningham, disagreeing:
http://education.independent.co.uk/schools/story.jsp?story=604889
One thing worth noticing is that Pullman refers to the research but Cunningham doesn’t.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2005
grammar and writing
Had a meeting yesterday with a group who are working on knowledge about language at school. We discussed, among other things, the Philip Pullman piece in which he says how mad it would be to think that grammar teaching would help people with their writing. It’s a funny debate (if it really is a debate) as the different positions keep getting confused. Some of our group thought Pullman’s piece was terrible, but others could see some interesting points in it. I think that my view is that some of the negative bits are attacking a view that doesn’t exist (e.g. he implies that people who think grammar teaching is a good idea wouldn’t realise that playing with language is a good idea) but some of the positive points make sense (even though I think they’re shared by the people he’s attacking). He does also say near the end of the piece that ‘the study of grammar is intensely fascinating’. So I kind of think a lot of the groups who think they’re disagreeing would in fact agree rather a lot if they got round a table. At the same time, though, discussions about ‘grammar’ are usually quite charged with a lot of baggage to do with personal histories and experiences, class, and so on. It’s all quite complicated, but also fascinating. I don’t really believe, btw, that it has been shown that studying grammar doesn’t, or can’t help improve writing. I do agree, though, that writing (with feedback) is one of the best ways to improve your writing. Reading is another. All of this is also relevant to me as I get more and more convinced that the main thing to focus on with students at Middlesex is helping them with their writing. Once you’ve got a good grasp of what you need to do to write a good academic essay, so much of the rest of it seems to just fall into place.
Hope that all makes sense. Got a bit carried away. (And ignored lots of what I’ve taught and been taught about how to write - or is that allowed in the blog genre?)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:35 PM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2005
Aunt Nell!
Club’s ‘bona’ way to communicate - BBC
They’re speaking polari at Madame Jo Jo’s
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:51 AM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2004
makin siccar
People are making fun of the Scots version of the Scottish Parliament website
I canna see fit wye they could a din it ony better, though.
B-}
Posted by Billy at 5:37 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2004
linguistic human rights
Just been reading about Linguistic Human Rights at Peter Patrick’s homepage. There’s a link to a pdf file with guidelines for using language analysis in asylum cases as a way of trying to determine someone’s national origin. I think one aim of the guidelines is to try to avoid too much weight being put on this kind of evidence.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2004
always be careful with language
Language Log - always accompanied by the qualifier
Enjoyed Geoff Pullum’s post about sloppy use of linguistic evidence. He writes:
The bottom line: people who want to be taken seriously should exercise as much care with their linguistic evidence when making a point about the use of language as they do (or should) with their claims about financial evidence when talking about economics, or psephological evidence when talking about electoral politics, or seismological evidence when talking about earthquakes.
At the same time he agrees with Mark Bauerlein’s general argument that there are practically no academics in the states whose politics isn’t to the left of John Kerry’s and that this is a bad thing.
I wonder how this country compares with the states on this. I know that academia here is broadly made up of ‘lefties’ (I’m not sure I’m happy with that term but you kind of know what I mean) but I do come across academics who noone would call lefties every now and then. Pullum and Bauerlein make it sound like that would be very unlikely over there.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
November 6, 2004
'a linguisty jobbie'
We had a lot of kids round on Halloween for some mass trick-or-treating. Even when we split them up, the groups were too big. As we were strolling between houses, JessieL asked me ‘what’s this linguisty jobbie Apoa’s been telling me about?’
She was referring to the utterance ‘Everybody doesn’t like chocolate’. My students find it hard to believe that for some speakers it can mean ‘not everybody likes chocolate’ as well as ‘nobody likes chocolate’ (I’ve got a feeling I agreed with them once - maybe I’ve been contaminated by linguists). I promised I’d ask a few more folk.
At breakfast, we found 3 out of 4 people accepted both senses. Apoa was the odd one out and just found it weird. JessieL was incredibly articulate as she explained her opinion to Apoa:
‘Technically, like if you’re talking proper and everything, it just means that every single person doesn’t like chocolate. But I can see that some people might say it sometimes and mean that not everybody likes it.’
It’s a good illustration of the problems of investigating competence when all of your evidence has to be based on performance data (at least that’s what I tell the students).
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:30 AM | Comments (2)
October 26, 2004
word vote
From The Wrap:
THE BEAUTY OF BELONGINGS
Die Libelle, or the dragonfly, was a runner-up, and so was Rhabarber-Marmelade (rhubarb jam), but the most beautiful German word was yesterday declared to be Habseligskeiten, “belongings, or bits and pieces”.
Nearly 23,000 people nominated their favourite words, including Geborgenheit (a sense of security) and Augenblick (moment or blink of an eye), but Habseligskeiten won, the Times reports, because it can evoke “the kind of possessions collected by a six-year-old which he joyfully displays when he turns out his pockets” or even “the few belongings of someone who has lost his home and has to transport them to wherever there is shelter”.
- Germans find beauty in small things
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-1328697,00.html)
Posted by Billy at 2:17 PM | Comments (0)
a richt moofae
a richt moofae - Press and Journal
Here’s another article from the P&J about the research of the ‘Buckie quine’. I have to say I find it really weird reading things like this. Partly it has to do with decisions about spelling that I wouldn’t have gone for, but I think it’s also just weird reading somebody writing a dialect that you’re only used to in speech. Mind you, I always enjoyed reading Dod and Bunty’s ‘Far’s the paper?’ column. Does it still exist? Is it on the web at all. The closest I got to finding it was this article about things that make Aiberdeen special. It mentions in passing some of the most important things and people, including Dod, Bunty and Snuffy Ivy.
By the way, Jonathan tells me the P&J referred to Jennifer as ‘Ms Smith’ because they refuse to recognise non-medical doctors. Quaint, eh?
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:01 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2004
foo's yer doos
Yes, Robbie, I am very busy and that explains the lack of updates on the blog. Just got back from a weekend in Paris, though, which I’d highly recommend to any overworked academics out there.
It seems Jennifer Smith’s research on changes in my native tongue has become a story in the Scottish press while I’ve been away. Jonathan told me and I also got an email on an English Language list about it.
Here are some links:
Jennifer Smith - Press and Journal
The change which got the papers interested was the decline in the use of velar fricatives among younger speakers. But they’re still saying fit like, apparently.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 3:57 PM | Comments (2)
October 21, 2004
watch your language, liberals
George Lakoff is on Mother Jones:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/10/10_401.html
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:28 PM | Comments (1)
October 12, 2004
for class: John Hegarty
Media Guardian - John Hegarty on advertising
This looks like a useable text. Discusses branding, which is a complicated kind of meaning construction. Uses a nice, vague notion of context which we can talk about making more precise. And also makes some interesting points about branding and viral advertising.
(There’s a free registration you need to do before you can see it)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)
October 3, 2004
white AAVE
LINGUIST List 15.2734: NYT: Op-ed Piece on AAVE
This is a message from Karen Chung about the speed with which expressions from AAVE (Afro-American Vernacular English) are being picked up by white speakers.
You can go straight to the link at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/30/opinion/30gates.html
It reminds me a bit of how quickly Dug’s idiom is entering Clemmiespeak
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2004
rabbiting david 'ockney
Wish I’d spotted this talk at ‘ackney museum sooner.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:10 PM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2004
Judy Kegl
LINGUIST List 15.2609: Nicaraguan Sign Language
This is a message from Renee Jourdenais with a reminder about the documentary that was on BBC2 a few years ago and Judy Kegl’s website
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:59 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2004
Nicaraguan Sign Language
LINGUIST List 15.2596: Nicaraguan Sign Language
Two more links on this, following an update in Science
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:02 PM
September 15, 2004
fish cats dogs chase eat swim fast
Just read this bit of potentially-useable-in-class data in the wrap. I have to say that I processed it instantly without any confusion at all. Interesting that the word ‘pop’ no longer appears in the headline of the first article. Is The Sun trying to spoil our fun?
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
Finally, a puzzle. Can anyone, man, woman or Batman, decipher this Sun headline, which we include in capitals so as not to give away more than the paper itself? RAT NICKS POP NAT’S NEW HITS.
The essential, as with Latin, is finding the verb. Is it pop? Have some rattish fellows called Nick popped Nat’s new hits? Maybe the headline is in the imperative, imploring us to inform on these Nicks, and subsequently pop Nat’s new hits? No, wait: there’s a bad fellow, a “rat” who has stolen (“nicked”) some fizzy drinks (“pop”) - maybe even some booze. All wrong. In fact, a pop singer called Natasha Bedingfield has had her laptop, containing some new songs, stolen from Heathrow airport. Tomorrow, we’ll try to explain how a story about traffic congestion on Venice’s Grand canal became a “gondola love ban”. We’ll try, I say.
* Sun: Rat nicks pop Nat’s new hits
* Sun: Venice Gondola love ban
Posted by Billy at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
September 9, 2004
language legend
E-Julie writes:
Just a teeny note to say the Language Legend blog is out of the summer holiday doldrums - latest post is on the article in the August New Scientist about new linguistic determinism research.
I saw my second years this week and they have filled their summer A2-coursework-ideas-gathering-books with things they’ve been looking into, many of them sparked off by stuff that appeared on the blog so I’m feeling gratified by my “I WILL make them read” strategy! Anyone can use it; it has no agenda other than being of use to English Language A Level students (and teachers?…); and it’s entirely free.
Comments and suggestions always welcome.
E-Julie
Posted by Billy at 11:50 AM | Comments (1)
Doctor Doolittle's Delusion
John Lawler posted this to LINGUIST:
Stephen Anderson of Yale University is featured in an article in the New York Times “Science Times” on Tuesday Sept 7 (p. D3), about his new book ‘Doctor Doolittle’s Delusion’, which debunks stories about animal language on the grounds that (surprise!) animals are innocent of Original Syntax.
The article is available free (one must register) today at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/science/07cont.html
Later it will cost money to read.
U Michigan Linguistics Dept
Posted by Billy at 8:10 AM
September 6, 2004
bordering on the ridiculous
The language feed is a site offering a weekly roundup of language news stories on the web.
I enjoyed Fordyce Maxwell making fun of Dominic Watt’s research suggesting that devolution is causing speakers in Berwick on Tweed to lose their Scottish accents. He responds to the suggestion that their /r/ sound is becoming a bit labial in the style of Jonathan Ross by saying:
‘Show me the Jonathan Ross sound-alike in Berwick and I’ll show you a man afraid to enter a pub…’
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:48 AM
August 24, 2004
language and thought
Another message from LINGUIST. I was shown a summary of this in The Economist on the flight back from Ibiza and it did indeed seem to be concluding that ‘Whorf was right’ which didn’t seem to be justified by the brief summary. Not sure exactly how Dan Everett reaches his conclusion, though. Guess I’ll ask him (but only if I get time to read the article first, of course).
————————————
Many readers of this list may have seen today’s CNN report on the
Science article which was published yesterday on Piraha:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/08/19/science.counting.reut/index.html
The Science article reports on research carried out by Peter Gordon,
along with me and my wife, Keren, several years ago to test my view
that Piraha had no counting. Gordon confirmed that indeed Pirahas have
no concept of counting and further refined my original ideas on the
matter.
Gordon’s conclusion in Science is that Piraha offers support for the
Whorf hypothesis. While I believe that this is plausible, my own view
is that the lack of counting must be seen in the larger cultural
context and that when thus viewed in conjunction with the lack of
color words, the lack of embedding, the simplest kinship system ever
documented, and various other characteristics, a different,
non-Whorfian picture emerges. The basic conclusion I reach is that
culture constrains grammar in ways many of us have not previously
imagined. I take this to be an argument against, for example,
Universal Grammar, at least the more widely-accepted versions of it.
Anyone interested in reading on this further (and the Piraha case does
seem to be getting a lot of attention from various countries, based on
my email folder this morning), my paper ‘Cultural Constraints on
Grammar in Piraha’, currently under review, is available from my
University of Manchester website at:
http://ling.man.ac.uk/info/staff/DE/DEHome.html
- Dan Everett
————————————
LINGUIST List: Vol-15-2360
Posted by Billy at 5:05 PM | Comments (0)
the n-word
Recent post to LINGUIST from Karen Chung:
There’s an online written and audio report from Minnesota Public Radio, dated August 8, 2004, entitled The n-word, by Brandt Williams, at:
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2004/06/28_williamsb_nword/
One quote from an interviewee that especially impressed me from a phonetic and sociolinguistic point of view:
You know why at times they don’t realize how the word offends Afro American people? Simple reason. They don’t say the word pretty as we do!’ says Simmons. ‘They got to hear that ‘r’. That ‘r’ is what makes us go irate. Instant irate. ‘You no-good nigger!’ And I say, whoa man! And he turn around and say, well y’all use it. And I say y’all don’t say it as pretty as we. That’s why. We gotta hear that ‘r’. When you hear us call each other ‘nigga’, you don’t hear the ‘r’.’
The report includes excerpts from an interview with linguist Robin Lakoff, and quotes from comedian Richard Pryor.
The reporter says at the beginning of the report that he is African-American, but he is not identifiable as such from his accent, which sounds like unmarked Minnesotan to me.
No registration is required to access the report.
Karen Steffen Chung
http://ccms.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/
http://lists.topica.com/lists/phonetics/
————————————
LINGUIST List: Vol-15-2281
Posted by Billy at 4:19 PM | Comments (0)
August 5, 2004
Robert Burchfield
Trying to justify my existence as a linguablogger, here is a link to obituaries for Robert Burchfield who died last month. I particularly liked the C.T. Onions line that Burchfield used to quote:
Lexicography can be done on the kitchen table
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:39 AM | Comments (1)
standardisation
Michael Erard posted this on LINGUIST
This article in the Washington Post(registration required) describes how Mexican Spanish is becoming ‘standard’ Spanish, through the power of Mexican television broadcasting giants Telemundo and Univision.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32693-2004Aug1.html
The article’s title is Accent on Higher TV Ratings: Spanish-Language Network Telemundo Coaches Actors to Use Mexican Dialect It may be available via Google news in that format.
Michael Erard
LINGUIST List: Vol-15-2230
Posted by Billy at 9:12 AM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2004
language teaching
I guess what language teachers really need right now is a story about how boring their lessons are.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 2:07 PM | Comments (0)
June 4, 2004
cockney ducks
Just read this research report
Can this be serious? People at Middlesex are studying language variation and I didn’t even know about it?
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2004
TYMLT
This list of acronyms is quite handy. Interesting that SNAFU and FUBAR are both in there, having been coined at least since World War II.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2004
why education needs linguistics (and vice versa)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2004
reads, ponders and enjoys
Here’s what the linguists said:
Actually, I have just begun reading her book (Eats, Shoots and Leaves) and find it very entertaining. She makes some good points, with a great sense of humor, too.
I think it’s a wonderful book, and felt comfortable (as a linguist) with virtually everything she said.
I haven’t read it yet but will get round to it one day.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)
the punctuation vigilante
The two linguists responding to this message (on an educational linguistics mailing list) seem really happy with Lynne Truss’s book:
FROM REUTERS:
Here Comes the Punctuation Vigilante Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:38 AM ET
By Paul Majendie LONDON (Reuters) - In the land of Shakespeare, punctuation faced extinction until writer Lynne Truss came to the rescue with a clutch of carefully placed commas and colons.
Taking a zero tolerance approach to grammatical lapses, she wrote a sprightly guide to punctuation, ‘Eats, shoots and leaves,’ that has sold more than half a million copies in Britain alone and soared to the top of bestseller lists.
Now, honing her crusading zeal over misplaced apostrophes, Truss is off to the United States to ensure transatlantic tidiness reigns supreme on the printed page.
See the full article here:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4701134
Posted by Billy at 10:54 PM | Comments (0)
April 7, 2004
Linguistics under threat in France
From: Aidan Coveney Date: Wed Apr 7, 2004 10:42:01 Europe/London
Dear colleagues
‘Sciences du Langage’ (i.e Linguistics) departments are under threat in France. Please consider signing the petition mentioned below. (The petition has been launched by Grenoble University and Paris X-Nanterre, notably the phonologist Bernard Laks, a close collaborator of Jacques Durand, who is known to many of us in this country.) The French government’s current political difficulties (severe defeats 2 weeks ago in regional elections) mean that they are more likely to respond to pressure from public opinion than at other times.
Yours Aidan Coveney French Department, Exeter
—- Begin Forwarded Message —- Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 21:19:33 +0200 From: MS Subject: Sauvons les Sciences du Langage en France / Save Language Sciences in France
Dear colleagues, Marges Linguistiques expresses solidarity with a petition initiated by Universite Stendhal - Grenoble III (France) calling for support in defence of the teaching of graduate courses in Linguistics in French Universities.
We invite you to sign this petition online through the following link:
http://infolang.u-paris10.fr/sauvons-sdl
where you may read and complete the petition.
The text may also be read on the homepage of the website of Marges Linguistiques:
http://www.marges-linguistiques.com
(click on ‘accueil’ or ‘welcome’)
Thank you for your interest and for your participation in the defence of Linguistics
M. Santacroce Director, Marges Linguistiques In partnership with the French Association of Language Sciences
—- End Forwarded Message —-
——————————— Aidan Coveney University of Exeter
Posted by Billy at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2003
Fw: rescheduled Children & Language event at Tate Britain
Just in case you’re all rushing off there on the 11th of January.
B-)
———- Forwarded message follows ———-
STOP PRESS The ‘Children & Language’ film programme at Tate Britain announced earlier this week has been rescheduled due to refurbishment of the auditorium space: the new date is Sunday 18th April 2004.
The screening is free entry and there is no need to book. For information on how to get there, please see the Tate website
For further information on the programme, please contact me at this address: Mike Sperlinger, Distribution Manager LUX 3rd Floor 18 Shacklewell Lane London E8 2EZ. Tel. +44 (0)20 7503 3980 Fax. +44 (0)20 7503 1606
LUX will be closed from 19th December to 5th January - please do not return film prints during this period
———- End of forwarded message ———-
Posted by Billy at 2:20 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2003
messages and poto and cabengo
This looks unmissable (and it’s free).
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:31 PM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2003
'foreign accent syndrome'
I wonder if the Eastenders people responsible for Vicky’s accent have heard of this
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2003
Closure of Linguistics at Durham
This (from Dr. S. J. Hannahs to the LINGUIST list) is the latest news on the sad situation at Durham where the Linguistics department is being closed down, despite being one of the best departments around:
In response to the recent LinguistList postings concerning the Linguistics department at Durham (Issues 14.3155 and 14.3183), some clarification is in order.
As it currently stands, delicate negotiations are underway between the University of Durham and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne concerning the transfer of linguists from Durham to Newcastle. The full outcome of these negotiations is not yet known, and is partially dependent on funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The current intention does not, sadly, involve the transfer of the whole department; however, we are confident that a fruitful venture can be established between linguists from Durham and the highly respected Linguistics Section at Newcastle.
We will let the community of linguists know how things progress!
Posted by Billy at 1:32 PM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2003
International Stammering Awareness Day
This event was actually last week but the British Stammering Association’s website is here if you’re interested.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:44 PM | Comments (0)