Being Human

丁丁关注---Ken Wilber
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Wilber's conception of the level is clearly based on several theories of developmental psychology, including: Piaget's theory of cognitive development, ...

Roman Polanski: 'Let's Burn This Witch' – Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland
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... Professor Wojciech J. Burszta, chair of cultural anthropology at Poland's Higher Institute of Social Psychology, explains how such a thing could happen ...

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There are many ways NOT to learn Chinese characters, but one that I just found out about today is probably the worst, even worse than T. K. Ann's Cracking the Chinese Puzzles.  It was written by Alison Matthews ("a statistician who has worked in the oil, aviation, tourism, medical and software industries") and Laurence Matthews (author of books that claim to help you find Chinese characters fast) and is called Learning Chinese Characters:  A revolutionary new way to learn and remember the 800 most basic Chinese characters.

You can find the Matthews' miraculous tome on Google books here.

If you start leafing through the book, as I did, you will find on any given page hilarious explanations such as the following:

"tree 木 + several 几 = machine 机":  It took several trees to provide enough wood to make the parts for the huge machine.           

This is accompanied by a picture of a wooden contraption behind which are four trunks of trees that have been felled and beyond that three trees that are still standing.  Whereas the Matthewses gushingly enjoin us to "see how the 'several trees' have indeed been felled to make the large 'machine' that is taking shape," this is actually a pictophonetic (or semantosyllabic) character in which MU4 is the semantic indicator and JI1 (not JI3 ["several") is the phonophore.

"wrap  勹 + a drop 丶 = ladle 勺":  When he had wrapped it up he put a drop of perfume on the package even though there was only a ladle inside.        

This tortuous explanation is accompanied by a picture of two hands in front of a belly; the right one is holding a perfume dropper out of which has come a drop of perfume that is wiggling in mid-air, while the left hand is holding the handle of a ladle that is wrapped in cloth or paper and tied with a string.  The ladle appears to be resting on a flat surface, or possibly partially submerged underwater.  In fact, this character goes back to the period of the oracle bones (earliest stage of the writing system, circa 1200 BC), at which time it depicted a ladle with a drop of liquid in it.  At the time of its creation, the character had absolutely nothing to do with "wrapping"; the idea of "wrapping" is an artifact of a later stage of evolution when the ladle was transformed into what became Kangxi radical 20 勹.

These are just the first two characters that I happened to turn to as I perused the book.  Looking further, I find that there are even more outlandish explanations for many other characters.  If one tried to use this method to learn 8 characters, it might work, but if one attempted to learn all of the 800 characters in the book this way, it would be a horribly frustrating experience.  If one did not go insane in the process, at the very least one would have lost hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in vain hopes of mastering the strokes, sounds, and meanings of so many characters in this absurd fashion.  And, if one should ever be so foolhardy as to try to employ the method of the Matthewses to learn 8,000 characters, one would certainly go stark, raving mad.

I pity anyone into whose hands this book falls and who actually tries to learn the characters by using it.  The only thing it will do for you is turn your brain into mush.

Hat tip to Jonathan Smith

In the celebrated libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against Simon Singh, Singh has won a round in court. Or rather, he's won the right to appeal a previous loss in court.

Last May, Sir David Eady ruled that a passage in Singh's article "Beware the spinal trap" was a statement of fact rather than a comment, and also that when Singh wrote that  the BCA "happily promotes bogus treatments", he accused the BCA of conscious dishonesty, not just of, well, promoting bogus treatments, i.e. treatments that don't work.

Addressing Mr Justice Eady's previous judgement in the case, Lord Justice Laws said Eady had arguably risked swinging the balance of rights too far in favour of the right to reputation and against the right to free expression. Lord Justice Laws said Eady's judgement, centred on Singh's use of the word "bogus" in an article published by the Guardian newspaper, could be seen as "legally erroneous".

So now Singh gets to appeal Eady's rulings.

Teen Brain: Adult Reasoning Capacity, Emotional Maturity Not So Much
Crosswalk.com
... of dangerous decisions," said Laurence Steinberg, PhD, a professor of developmental psychology at Temple University and lead author of the study. ...

In the latest New Yorker (October 12), Tad Friend takes us into the chilling wonderworld of entertainment-business reporting, in a Letter from California, "Call Me: Why Hollywood fears Nikki Finke" (Finke runs the website Deadline Hollywood Daily). Apparently real life in the entertainment business in Hollywood goes beyond the parodies in movies and television shows.

A linguistic point about the business (p. 99):

Hollywood's leaders work with the understanding that facts are not fixed pillars but trial balloons that you inflate with the gas of vehement assertion. The truth is always negotiable.

There then follows a convoluted story (one of many in Friend's piece), about who said "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead" and in what circumstances.

I'm reminded of the way facts and truth are treated in some other domains, politics and advertising in particular.

And "scientific management", treated by the excellent Jill Lepore in a piece ("Not So Fast") later in the issue, on the history of Taylorism.

Looking at nature makes you nicer
msnbc.com
... psychiatry and education at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study, published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. ...

Some of my Language Log colleagues are too modest for their own good, neglecting to mention here relevant things they've published or blogged on in other places.

A little while ago, I learned that Dan Jurafsky has a cool Language of Food blog (here), an outgrowth of a Stanford Introductory Seminar he's taught a few times. I found out about his blog only because, knowing his interest in the topic, I sent him a link to a recent posting on my own blog about nouns denoting food or drink being usable, metonymically, to refer to events ("After pizza, we watched a movie"), and he told me about his LoF blog.

It's a rich domain: vocabulary (in many languages) for food and cooking, including both everyday vocabulary and (semi-)technical vocabulary, cultural forms in these areas (when do we eat? what do we eat then? who does this? how much variation is there? how do we prepare this food? who prepares it? what cultural values do we assign to these foods?), and much else. Check it out.

Scott Timberg, "Maurice Sendak rewrote the rules with 'Wild Things' " (Los Angeles Times, October 11):

In "Wild Things," a single sentence can take pages to unfold, its meaning changing slightly with each image. And this book with numerous wordless pages ends with a half-sentence and no accompanying image. Sendak works similarly to the directors of the French New Wave, who used jump cuts and other techniques to dislocate their editing. (link)

Apparently this half-sentence has a dislocating effect. But what is this dislocating half-sentence? This, (1):

and it was still hot.

(it refers to Max's supper, still waiting for him on his return from his adventures among the wild things).

Suppose this last page had been this, (2):

And it was still hot.

(with a period at the end of the immediately preceding text). Then we'd have a sentence with an initial coordinator. Such sentences are fiercely reviled in some circles, on the grounds that they are not complete sentences but only sentence fragments. But no reputable writer on usage shares this prejudice. Here's Mark Liberman on No Initial Coordinators:

There is nothing in the grammar of the English language to support a prescription against starting a sentence with and or but — nothing in the norms of speaking and nothing in the usage of the best writers over the entire history of the literary language. Like all languages, English is full of mechanisms to promote coherence by linking a sentence with its discourse context, and on any sensible evaluation, this is a Good Thing. Whoever invented the rule against sentence-intitial and and but, with its a preposterous justification in terms of an alleged defect in sentential "completeness", must have had a tin ear and a dull mind. Nevertheless, this stupid made-up rule has infected the culture so thoroughly that 60% of the AHD's (sensible and well-educated) usage panel accepts it to some degree.

And here I am, following up on Mark:

Mark notes that the AHD note for and rejects NIC out of hand, and he provides a smorgasbord of cites (and statistics) from reputable authors.  Similarly MWDEU.  Paul Brians, collector of common errors in English, labels sentence-initial coordinators a "non-error".  Bryan Garner denies, all over the place, that NIC has any validity.  Even the curmudgeonly Robert Hartwell Fiske tells his readers that there's absolutely nothing wrong with sentence-initial coordinators.  A point of usage and style on which Liberman and I and the AHD and the MWDEU stand together with Brians and Garner and Fiske (and dozens of other advice writers) is, truly, not a disputed point.  NIC is crap.

But still NIC lives on in the popular mind. Presumably Timberg was treating (1) as (2) and criticizing it as a NIC violation (while, perhaps slyly, committing a NIC violation with "And this book with numerous wordless pages ends with a half-sentence …"). (Thanks to Phil Resnik for pointing me to the L.A. Times piece and noting Timberg's NIC violation.)

However, Sendak didn't write (2). He wrote (1), which isn't punctuated as a separate sentence. Here's what Sendak wrote as the final sentence of Wild Things, with line divisions as in the original; the sentence is spread across four pages, with some wordless pages intervening:

The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth
and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws
but Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye

and sailed back over a year
and in and out of weeks
and through a day

and into the night of his very own room
where he found his supper waiting for him

and it was still hot.

(You'll see that Sendak isn't fond of commas.)

This sentence is a coordination of three clauses: the first in lines 1 and 2, the second (introduced by the coordinator but) in lines 3 through 8, the third (introduced by the coordinator and) in line 9, which is our old friend (1). So, yes, (1) isn't a full sentence, just one clause of a sentence, but there's nothing grammatically wrong with it.

Maybe Timberg expects every page in a children's book to stand on its own as a text, and it looks like most (but not all) children's books are arranged that way, but it's not the way Sendak (with his few words and many images) works. In fact, not one of the four pages above stands on its own as a text (granted, the first is missing only a period).

Indiana University
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Gershkoff-Stowe holds a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from IU and received a post-doctoral fellowship from the National Institutes of Health to conduct ...

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Back in June of 2002, one of William Safire's On Language columns began this way:

'The South Carolina primary between Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain in 2000," wrote Eleanor Randolph, the New York Times editorialist, referring to Representative Lindsey Graham's current campaign for the Senate, "left Republicans in his state bitter and divided. That said, both President Bush and Senator McCain have already campaigned for his election to the Senate."

In olden times, those two sentences would have been written as one, with the first clause subordinated: "Although the South Carolina primary . . . left Republicans . . . divided, both Bush and McCain . . . campaigned for his election. . . . " Or they could have remained as two sentences, with the second beginning however instead of with the voguism that said.

Immediately after introducing "[t]his absolutive participial construction now spreading like wildfire through our discourse", Safire quotes a linguist:

We turn now to Prof. John Lawler in the linguistics department of the University of Michigan: "That said is an abbreviated form of the absolutive participial phrase '(With) that (having been) said."' (You were wondering where I got that "absolutive participial" from? You think I make up this stuff? If I had taken Latin, I'd be able to explain the closely related ablative absolute.) Lawler goes on to the essential meaning of that said: "It announces a change of subject, often despite whatever was just said."

By calling that said a "voguism", and noting that things would have different in "olden times", Safire flirts with linguistic peevishness, as he often did. Many of his readers no doubt preferred to interpret him that way, just as LL commenters often write as if the question under discussion were whether a particular usage annoys them. And in this case, Safire was put onto the scent of that said by emails like "The latest abomination is the substitute for however in its many forms — having said that, that having been said, et cetera. That said, I guess I'll just have to get with it."

But after some alliterative harrumphing ("the vocabulary of vacillation"), he describes that said as an inverted-order rhetorical equivalent of "to be sure" ("X. To be sure, Y" == "Y. That said, X"), and closes with the opinion that

To be sure, that said has its good side.

Why am I bringing up this seven-year-old column? Because one of the many interesting talks that I heard at AACL 2009 was Laurel Brinton's 'The development of 'that said'".

Brinton cites the results of a COCA search showing that that said has indeed increased in popularity over the past couple of decades, apparently by moving from (some registers of) the spoken language into writing:

She also gives the results of a search of the Time Magazine archive (also available on Mark Davies excellent web site at BYU), which suggests that a fairly rapid increase in popularity beginning in the 1990s:

And she presents evidence to contradict a temporal implication of Safire's quotation of John Lawler: 'That said is an abbreviated form of the absolutive participial phrase '(With) that (having been) said."'

I suspect that John probably meant this as a description of a cognitive process, or perhaps simply as a way to clarify the grammatical structure involved; but as an account of the historical development of this phrase, Brinton argues that it is  false.  Before giving her own new evidence, she cites earlier authorities who give a different account:

Curme 1931 (A Grammar of the English Language. Vol. II: Syntax, 153): absolute constructions without copula are original, more modern trend is to take tense (having) and voice (having been), especially when active

Jespersen 1946 (Modern Grammar on Historical Principles. Part V: Syntax, Fourth Volume, 46, 55): that said is the original construction; the "more clumsy construction" that being said "begins to appear in the 16th century; that having been said dates from the 18th century.

Visser 1972 (An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Part Two: Syntactical Units with one Verb, 1259ff.): generally, absolute constructions with the simple past participle are original, forms with having/being/having been are introduced in the modern period and are now often preferred.

Before pursuing the history, Brinton gives a table suggesting that American and British usage may now follow somewhat different patterns:

COCA BNC [punc] {that, this} said, 773 134 [conj] {that, this} said, 67 5 [prep] {that, this} said, 52 3 all (of) {that, this} said, 59 4 {that, this} being said, 172 16 {that, this} having been said, 36 4 Total passive forms 1159 166 Frequency per million
(passive forms) 2.89 1.90 having said {that, this} 698 247 Frequency per million
(active forms) 1.73 2.82

(But note that the BNC material was collected in the early 1990s, whereas COCA contains material spread equally over the period 1990-2009 — since the pattern is presumably changing on both sides of the Atlantic, an accurate account of differences will require looking across comparable sources across comparable time periods..)

She also observes that CGEL (p. 1350) analyzes that said as an "absolute construction within the class of supplements, or "elements which occupy a position in linear sequence without being integrated into the syntactic structure of the sentence", where "absolutes" express adverbial notions such as cause, condition, time, concession, manner, and attendant circumstances. She also cites the description of that said by Quirk et al. (1985) as a "contrastive-concessive disjunct".

She notes Garner's observation (in Modern American Usage, 2003) that having said that “is a frequent source of DANGLERS” when not anchored to a speaker in the main clause; he advises deleting the “casualism” as it “doesn’t say much anyway”. However, Quirk, Greenbaum & Leech's 1985 grammar (p. 623n) claims that having said that “has become so stereotyped that it can violate” the “subject-attachment rule”; and Curme (1931:158-159) also argued that in this case, the construction is no longer connected with a subject at all.

She cites the OED's gloss, added as a 2007 online supplement to the 3rd edition's entry for say ("In phrases introducing a concessive clause. having said that (also that said, that being said): even so; nevertheless") with citations only back to 1908 for that being said and 1923 for that said:

1908 Manitoba Morning Free Press (Electronic text) 1 Aug., The story of Sir James Douglas might have been told in smaller compass… That being said, James Douglas certainly deserved a place among the makers of Canada. 1923 Times 14 Aug. 5/2 The change does not appear to be popular… That said, there is little to criticize in the performance last night. 1975 A. V. GRIMSTONE in K. Sekida Zen Training 21, I believe it would be possible..to mount a convincing refutation of the argument… However, having said that, I would add that I do not believe it is really necessary to defend the practice of Zen in that way. 1986 C. SNYDER Strategic Def. Deb. 222 We have little choice; today's technology provides no alternative. That being said, we will press for radical reductions in the number and power of strategic and intermediate-range nuclear arms.

And she observes that Safire missed the chance to give the traditional name of "procatalepsis" to the rhetorical figure that he describes as follows:

Writers of opinion articles know how to use what we call a to-be-sure graph. After making an argument, some of us feel the urge to show that we are not simpletons — that we know the counterarguments, have taken them into due consideration, but still maintain our positions. In goes the to-be-sure graph, disarming our opponents with its "Yes, we know all that folderol on the other side" […]

To be sure is a rhetorical device to set up and counter the opposition after your initial point has been made. You often present the other side's position as a straw man easy to knock down and then repeat your opening argument with great force at the end. This to-be-sure trick is described by grammarians as "concessive" — that is, I'll give you this; it costs me nothing and makes me appear reasonable.

However (to use an old construction), that said is a device that works in the other direction. The point to be negated is made first: "My opponent is a great guy, a real patriot and a quick study." (End of concessive construction.) "That said, he doesn't know what he is talking about."

Compare the relevant section of Henry Peachum's 1593 Garden of Eloquence:

Procatalepsis is a forme of speech by which the Orator perceiving aforehand what might be objected against him, and hurt him, doth confute it before it be spoken, or thus: when the Orator putteth forth the same objection against himselfe, which he doth thinke his adversarie would, and then refelleth it by a reason, whereby he doth providently prevent him. Cicero: as if some Judge or commiissioner might say unto me, thou mightest have contended with a lighter action, thou mightest have come to thy right by a more easie and profitable way: wherefore either change thine action, or resist me not as Judge: or if he do prescribe after what sort I ought to sue for my right, to which objection he maketh this answere. Notwithstanding he seemeth either more fearfull then is reason a Judge should be: or else he dareth not judge that which is committed to him. Likewise against Verres, Cicero saith, that he knoweth some men will marvell, seeing so many yeares he defended many, and hurt none, he doth now come to accuse Verres, then he doth shew them that this accusation against Verres is a defence of their fellowes.

Returning to the history of that said, Brinton notes that despite the antiquity of procatalepsis, this particular way of expressing it seems to be of fairly recent origin. The earliest examples in the OED are from 1923 (that said) and 1908 (that being said), with a 1975 citation for having said that, and no examples of the other forms.

She found no examples in the following corpora of Early and Late Modern English:

Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, Modern English Section (1500–1710) 551,000 words
Corpus of English Dialogues (1560–1760) 1.2 million words
Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts (1640–1710) 1.1 million words
Corpus of Late 18C Prose (1761–90) 300,000 words

She checked these additional corpora:

CLEMT Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (1710–1920) 10 million words
CEN Corpus of English Novels (1881–1922) 25 million words
UofV University of Virginia Electronic Text Center, Modern English Collection (1500– present)
EEPF Early English Prose Fiction (1500-1700) 200 works
18thCF Eighteenth Century Fiction (1700-1780) 96 works
Early Canadiana Online (18th c. - 1920) 3 million pages
ED English Drama (1280-1915) 3,900 plays
TIME Corpus (1923 – 2000)

She was able to find a number of earlier uses, e.g. "And these wordes sayd, she streyght her on length and rested a whyle", from 1387-88. But these are the literal usage that she calls "temporal/sequential", not the "contrastive/concessive" use.  The earliest clearly concessive examples she was able to find are from the late 19th to early 20th century:

This being said, Mr. Hamilton and his colleagues of the executive council of the Territories will pardon me if I do not receive … the assurance given by them … (1894 Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, Vol. 17, p. 57; ECO)

That being said we come to the question as to whether the work is worth the money (1900 Official Report of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada: Fifth Session, Eighth Parliament, p. 9663; ECO)

Thus contra Lawler, Brinton argues that "there is no evidence of the construction being a reduced form of (with) this/that having been said" — she found no non-recent examples of this pattern at all. The time-sequence uses of this said date from the late 16th c., with the earliest examples of temporal/sequential that said from a bit later:

This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue (1592-93 Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis; UofV)

She is a hansome picture, And that said, all is spoken (1636 Massinger, The Great Duke of Florence; ED)

She found a few possible (but ambiguous) early examples of concessive that/this said:

They all are made my Lord, and some giue out, That ‘tis a blow giuen to religion, To weaken it, in ruining of him, That said, he neuer wisht more glorious title, Then to be call’d the scrouge of Hugenots (1608 Chapman, Charles Duke of Byron; ED)

Then, daughter, graunt me one request, To shew thou louest me as thy sisters doe, Accept a husband, whom my selfe will woo. This sayd, she cannot well deny my sute (1605 Anon., King Leir; ED)

Then there's a gap of three centuries or so, before clear examples of that said begin to appear:

The change does not appear to be popular … That said, there is little to criticize in the performance last night (1923 Times 14 Aug 5/2; OED)

So summarizing her findings in a table:

this said that said this being said that being said having said this having said that Sequential late 16th c mid 17th c early 16th c — early 17th c mid 18th c Concessive ?17th c 17th c?/

20th c late 19th c early 20th c mid 18th c 20th c

I observed in the question period after Brinton's talk that the Latin phrase his dictis ("these [things having been] said") was reasonably common — for example, it occurs six times in the Vulgate. Thus Luke 19:25

Et dixerunt ei: Domine, habet decem mnas. 26 Dico autem vobis, quia omni habenti dabitur, et abundabit: ab eo autem qui non habet, et quod habet auferetur ab eo. 27 Verumtamen inimicos meos illos, qui noluerunt me regnare super se, adducite huc: et interficite ante me. 28 Et his dictis, præcedebat ascendens Jerosolymam.

The Douay-Rheims translation:

25 And they said to him: Lord, he hath ten pounds. 26 But I say to you that to every one that hath shall be given, and he shall abound: and from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken from him. 27 But as for those my enemies, who would not have me reign over them, bring them hither and kill them before me. 28 And having said these things, he went before, going up to Jerusalem.

His dictis also occurs several times in Virgil, e.g. Aeneid IV 54

His dictis impenso animum flammauit amore
spemque dedit dubiae menti soluitque pudorem.
principio delubra adeunt pacemque per aras
exquirunt;

So saying, she stirred a passion-burning breast
to love more madly still; her words infused
a doubting mind with hope, and bade the blush
of shame begone. (Theodore C. Williams translation)

Thus educated 16th- or 17th-century authors would probably be familiar with his dictis — but all the classical examples that I've been able to find are strictly temporal/sequential.

Brinton's conclusions:

The concessive meaning develops from, and has replaced, the temporal/sequential meaning.
The longer forms develop from the shorter forms.
That/this said and having said that/this have separate histories.
For the most part, the that forms have replaced the this forms.
That said shows a marked increase in frequency beginning in about 1990.
Semantic change in this construction conforms to well known paths of change.

With respect to the last point, she cites Traugott and Dasher’s “correlated paths of directionality” (Regularity in Semantic Change, 2002):

truth-conditional > non-truth-conditional content > content/procedural > procedural scope within proposition > scope over proposition > scope over discourse non-subjective > subjective > intersubjective

But still, it surprises me that this process didn't take place much earlier.  For example, there are plenty of Latin phrases that followed the path to "non-truth-conditional", "procedural", "scope over discourse", "intersubjective" uses.  So why didn't his dictis make this journey?

And was the 1990s that said vogue a random event? Or has there been something especially procataleptic about the past couple of decades?

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Counting languages isn't an easy task; in particular, it's hard to say whether two varieties are related languages or dialects of a single language. Making these decisions on linguistic grounds is difficult enough, but political, cultural, and social considerations often intervene, to compound the difficulty. The latest Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009) advertises itself as "an encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world's 6,909 known living languages", but the introduction lays out the problems in identifying and counting languages and acknowledges that the methods used in reaching this very exact number are not the only possible ones and that these methods involve judgment calls at several points.

Same thing in counting ethnic groups. But sometimes an authority just stipulates a figure, as in this report on school textbooks in China ("The fragility of truth", The Economist, October 10, p. 45):

The authorities have said that 56 columns erected on Tiananmen Square for the celebrations [the recent 60th anniversary celebrations] will stay put. They represent China's officially recognized 56 "ethnic groups". It is a number that few Chinese schoolchildren would dare to challenge. Yet when the communists came to power there were found to be more than 400. Officials eventually settled on the much lower figure and suppressed further debate.

(That's 55 official minority nationalities, plus Han Chinese.)

I don't see any official pronouncement on the number of languages in China. What the Ethnologue says is:

The number of individual languages listed for China is 293. Of those, 292 are living languages and 1 has no known speakers. (link)

Language and ethnicity are related in complex ways, but 291 languages (discarding the 2 special cases) seems to me to be an awful lot for only 56 ethnic groups.

There's a chance Mind Hacks posts might be a bit sporadic over the next week as I'm returning to beautiful Colombia to work with the fantastic psychologists and psychiatrists in Hospital Universitario San Vicente de Paúl in Medellín.

I'm at the airport in London, but due to my bargain basement plane tickets I won't arrive in Medellín for another 30 hours and then have to find somewhere to live.

After the jet lag has cleared and I find a reliable internet connection, normal service will be resumed, but in the meantime I'll post when I can.

By the way, the picture is the entrance to the psychiatric ward in Hospital San Vicente de Paúl, which like the rest of the hospital, is remarkably beautiful.

Community: “Social Psychology”
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This week, most of the group is seen outside the classroom. Jeff is afraid he and Shirley's long walk to the other side of campus will be ...

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I've heard many interesting papers here at AACL 2009. Here's one of them: Bridget Jankowski, from the University of Toronto, "Grammatical and register variation and change: A multi-corpora perspective on the English genitive".  She was kind enough to send me a copy of her slides, from which I've taken (most of) the graphs below.

In order to study the history of choices like "Ontario's government" (s-genitive) vs. "the government of Ontario" (of-genitive), she created two small historical corpora, sampling Maclean's magazine and the Hansard transcripts of debates of the Ontario Provincial Legislature at three time points: 1906, 1956, and 2006. She picked three authors or three speakers from each source at each time point. All of the speakers and authors were men aged 30-60 at the time of the sample.

Her first result is a replication of the observation that the s-genitive has been gaining ground:

Compare, for example, this figure from Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi, "Recent changes in the function and frequency of standard English genitive constructions: a multivariate analysis of tagged corpora", English Language and Linguistics 11(3): 437–474, 2007:

Jankowski then broke the trends down further by coding the possessors as

1. Human: a student’s schoolwork, Mrs. Hale’s reaction
2. Organizations (animate “collectivities of humans which display some degree of groupidentity”): the local school board’s ruling; the federal government’s plan
3. Places: Canada’s foreign language press, Ontario’s roads, the streets of Rome, the raw edge of the world, the people of this American continent
4. Inanimate objects, activities, units of time, states

This made it clear that the increase in use of s-genitives has been especially strong in the case of organizations, and even stronger in the case of places:

Her category 4 ("Inanimate objects, activities, units of time, states") was realized overall with of-genitive 96% in Maclean’s and 99% in Hansard. So her results are generally consistent with Otto Jespersen's observation in A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles: Part VII (1949) that

In poetry and in higher literary style, the genitive of lifeless things is used in many cases where of would be used in ordinary speech. […] During the last few years the genitive of lifeless things has been gaining ground, (especially among journalists)…

but only if "lifeless things" is taken to include organizations and places, and not "inanimate objects, activities, units of time, states".

She also compared her results to data from a corpus of conversational speech collected recently in Toronto, using speaker age to create two "apparent time" collections comparable to the 1956 and 2006 samples. This suggests that in the spoken language, human possessors have almost always gotten the s-genitive, consistently across time, while inanimate possessors (in this graph including her categories 3 and 4) have consistently gotten the of-genitive:

On this analysis, the increase in s-genitives for human possessors in Maclean's magazine makes the journalistic prose more and more like the spoken language; but the parallel increase in s-genitives for inaminate possessors makes the journalistic prose less and less speech-like.

Her presentation also considered the effect of the length of the possessor (a shorter possessor is more likely to take an s-genitive) and the possessum ("shorter possessum will be more likely to take an of-genitive and so appear first in the construction, while a longer possessum is more likely to take the s-genitive"), as well as other relevant features such as "lexical density":

and "thematicity":

and did a multivariate analysis of all the various factors taken together.

You'll have to read her (I trust forthcoming) paper to learn how it all comes out — I have a 6:40 a.m. plane to catch — but I hope that this much is enough to convince you that there's a rich and interesting pattern of variation to be untangled here. It certainly convinced me.

And it also increased my general feeling that the time is right for the application of automatic or semi-automatic methods of analysis (here in assigning her four categories of possessors, in determining the lengths of the possessor and possessum constituents, in counting local phrases co-referential with the possessor, etc.) to the study of syntactic variation across time, genre, register and so on. Because she had to annotate everything by hand, Jankowski's sample was fairly small — 50K words of Maclean's, and 100K words of Hansards. With automatic or semi-automatic annotation, she could look at larger collections with denser time samples of more sources, and easily add other features, like various word and phrase frequencies, grammatical role and phrasal position of the whole genitive construction, etc.