Blog Profile / Language Log
| URL : | http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Academics / Linguistics | |
| Posts on Regator: | 3679 | |
| Posts / Week: | 13.5 | |
| Archived Since: | February 24, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
Ultraconserved words? Really??
On the web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in the "Early Edition" section, is an article by Mark Pagel, Quentin D. Atkinson, Andreea S. Calude, and Andrew Meade: "Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia". The authors claim that a set of 23 especially frequent words can [...]
Is Christmas next?
"DIsney files to trademark Mexican holiday, Dia de Los Muertos", Stitchkingdom 5/6/2013; "Disney files to trademark 'Dia de Los Muertos' for movie-themed products", 89.3 KPCC 5/7/2013. The applications cover Goods and Services IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Education and entertainment services Goods and Services IC 030. US 046. G & S: Confectionery and chewing [...]
What use electrolytic pickling?
Once you've written down your responses to the dozen audio clips in yesterday's perception experiment, you can check them against the truth, and also against the transcripts generated by Google's automatically-generated captions, both...Show More Summary
Perception Experiment
Here are a dozen short audio clips from a lecture, stripped from YouTube, and re-encoded after editing as mp3 files. Despite being handicapped by this marginal sound quality, and even more by the lack of context, you will probably be able to transcribe them fairly well. Please do so, and retain your results for later [...]
Offensive crash blossom
Steve Kleinedler spotted this crash blossom on the home page of the New York Times today: "G.O.P. Critics of Immigration Bill Plan Offensive." Screenshotted for posterity: The article itself has the less interesting headline, "G.O.P....Show More Summary
Bad odor are prohibited here!
David W. Donnell has brought this signage from Chinatown, NYC to my attention:
"From Forsythe Street." (VHM: that should be "Forsyth Street.")
Here are the sentences in the photo:
????
???????????????
?????????????????
???????????
Bad. Show More Summary
Candidate for the first annual Politically Biased Peeving award
Allison Flood, "Academics chastised for bad grammar in letter attacking Michael Gove", The Guardian 5/3/2013:
It was a blistering attack on Michael Gove for eroding educational standards and "dumbing down" teaching. But now the 100 academics...Show More Summary
Grilled sexual harassment
David Craig sent in this photograph and asked "What does it really say and why doesn't it?":
The Chinese says xiánzh?sh?u ??? ("groper"), which is a noun derived from xiánzh? ?? ("salted pork") + sh?u ? ("hand") — adjective + adjective + noun. Thus, the literal meaning of xiánzh?sh?u ??? is "salted pig's knuckle / [...]
Donald Kagan's farewell
Matthew Kaminski, "Democracy may have had its day", WSJ 4/26/2013: Donald Kagan is engaging in one last argument. For his "farewell lecture" here at Yale on Thursday afternoon, the 80-year-old scholar of ancient Greece—whose four-volume...Show More Summary
Bested worsted?
J.R. writes: Are you noticing more and more usage of "worsted" for "bested", in the sense of beating someone? It seems to be a trend. It's not consistent with getting the "best" of someone, and the orientation (focusing on the one who lost) is the opposite of topping someone, overwhelming them or surpassing them. But it [...]
Hands, hands, two hands
Hands, hands, two hands
Here's part of a page from a Chinese exercise book for learning English, with a student's notations added in blue ink:
The text reads:
1? shúx? xiàmiàn d?ncí ?????? ("familiarize yourself with the following words")
1. bus / bàs? ?? ("dad died") 2. yes / y és? ?? ("grandpa [...]
Gathering granola on Bedfoprd Avenue
Correction of the month, from Henry Alford, "How I Became a Hipster", NYT 5/1/2013: An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the products sold at By Brooklyn. The store does not sell dandelion and burdock soda, lovage soda syrup, and Early Bird granola “gathered in Brooklyn.” An earlier version also referred incorrectly to the thoroughfare [...]
Whaling/Wailing on
Michael Martinez, "Marine investigated in videotaped road rage at Camp Pendleton", CNN 4/5/2013: The Marine, whose name, rank or unit weren't being released, was cited for communicating a threat in the incident, but he wasn't charged as of Friday, said Sgt. Christopher Duncan, a Camp Pendleton spokesman. The video, which went viral on the Internet, shows a [...]
Ayiti Pare
"MIT and Haiti sign agreement to promote Kreyòl-language STEM education", MIT News Office 4/17/2013: MIT and Haiti signed a new joint initiative today to promote Kreyòl-language education in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines, part of an effort to help Haitians learn in the language most of them speak at home. […] The idea that [...]
New blog on history and philosophy of language sciences
There’s a new blog, “History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences”, edited by James McElvenny at the University of Sydney. I’m the invited author of the third post in it, ‘On the history of the question of whether natural language is “illogical”’, which came out on May 1. For now, new posts are planned weekly. [...]
The tangled web of bologna
Ry Rivard, "Duke Faculty Say No", Inside Higher Ed 4/302013: Bass argued that “politics got in the way of good sense” when the faculty voted last week. Bass said faculty argued they had not been consulted enough by Lange and the administration, though faculty committees have been working on the issue for nearly a year. “This had [...]
Juvenile Peevery
…has been featured in the last three Big Nate strips, starting with this one: Then: And today: This may go on all week. Some past LL commentary on the specific issues involved: "Dictionary Daftness, Dan Brown Style", 8/10/2010 (Comment...Show More Summary
Disclosure
"Citizen Hearing On Disclosure: April 29 To May 3, 2013 – Washington, DC": An event with historical implications will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC from April 29 to May 3, 2013. At that time as many as forty researchers and military/agency witnesses will testify for thirty hours over five days before [...]
The Power of Parts of Speech
Michael Yoshikami "JC Penney's Troubles: The Power of Adjectives", CNBC 4/30/2013: As you read news headlines and listen to and watch media reports on the market, it's important to recognize that language may have different meanings depending on your perspective. Just last week the media reported that J.C. Penney stock "soared" 11 percent—on the surface that [...]
Obama's "is is" redux
Betty Ann Bardell tweets: .@bgzimmer For those who missed the score from today’s W.H. Press Conf.: “is, is” 5 - “as best as they can” 1. swampland.time.com/2013/04/30/bar… — Betty Ann Bardell (@BettyAnnBardell) April 30, 2013 Last October, in my LL post "Obama's 'is is'," I considered Bryan Garner's assertion that President Obama is "addicted to 'is is.'" After [...]