ARCHIVE - The Science of Language aggregator

ARCHIVE - Language Log: Quotative inversion again

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:42:57 -0700

Over on his You Don't Say blog, John McIntyre notes a spectacularly awkward sentence from the New Yorker and asks, "Is this a new tic of New Yorker style, or have I just begun noticing it?" The offending sentence:

“Horton, you’re one of the few people New York seems to agree with,” Tennessee Williams, another regional Young Turk who dreamed of changing the shape of commercial theatre, said.

John explains that he knows "there is a longstanding journalistic resistance to inverting subject and verb in attribution" and understands why some writers might be averse to the construction, but objects to a blanket prohibition against this inversion (known in the syntax trade as "quotative inversion"), especially when it leads to tin-eared sentences like one reporting the Tennessee Williams quotation.

ARCHIVE - Language Log: Ask LL: parents' beliefs or infants' abilities?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:22:41 -0700

Andrew Clegg asks "Is this true?"

I'm more familiar with a different just-so story intended to explain the same alleged generalization: infants' phonetic abilities are initially limited, and this creates pressure to develop variants of words for caregivers (and other things infants are likely to want to name) that suit their preferences.

ARCHIVE - Language Log: The Gubernator's acrostic mischief

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:43:08 -0700

Via The Swamp, the Chicago Tribune's political blog, comes news of an awesome (if spiteful) bit of gubernatorial wordplay from the office of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger:

San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano had sponsored a bill which passed unanimously granting the Port of San Francisco financial power to redevelop a former shipyard for a new neighborhood known as Pier 70.

ARCHIVE - Language Log: Richard Powers on his way to a decision

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:15:04 -0700

A few days ago, Kurt Andersen interviewed the novelist Richard Powers on Studio360. You can listen to the whole nine-minute interview here:

ARCHIVE - Language Log: The 2009 Obama Agenda Survey

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:53:04 -0700

Today I got mail from the Republican National Committee — a survey they want me to fill out and (of course) an attached contribution form. I don't know why they sent it to me, because in spite of their urging me "and other grassroots Republicans" to respond to their survey, I am not a registered Republican. Maybe it's because my neighborhood is mostly Republican, though our nearest neighbors are bigwigs in the local Libertarian party. In any case, many of the survey questions contain presuppositions that make them hard to answer. They don't ask me if I've stopped beating my wife, er, spouse, but they do want to know if (for instance) I "believe that Barack Obama's nominees for federal courts should be immediately and unquestionably approved for their lifetime appointments by the U.S. Senate".

ARCHIVE - Language Log: The Eclectic Encyclopedia of English

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:20:16 -0700

Another notice of a recent book, this time Nathan Bierma's Eclectic Encyclopedia of English (William, James & Co.), an assortment of material from five years of his "On Language" column in the Chicago Tribune (no longer a regular feature in the paper, alas). It's meant for a general audience; in fact, a number of the entries originated as responses to queries from readers.

Here's his point of view:

I used to be picky–really picky–about English grammar and usage. [illustrations of his earlier pickiness follow] (p. iv)
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ARCHIVE - Language Log: Complimentary Internet in the lobby

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:28:34 -0700

What does "Complimentary High-speed Internet access on the lobby level" mean? You can see the phrase on the website of the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport hotel. Did you imagine it meant that if you opened your laptop on the lobby level of the hotel a wireless Internet network would come up and you could connect for free? Oh, you are so naive. You are not a sophisticated jet-setter like Robert Langdon and me.

Actually, until a few minutes ago I was like you. I imagined, trustingly, that after checking out of my room and doing my morning recording session at The Teaching Company, I would be able to sit in the lobby of my hotel and continue to work on academic and administrative tasks until my evening flight out of Dulles, and I would have complimentary high-speed wireless Internet access courtesy of the hotel. But instead the usual "Now agree to a $9.99 charge on your room bill" screen came up as soon as I pointed the browser in the direction of Language Log.

ARCHIVE - Language Log: Autistic dogs: teaching instinctual communication?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:41:05 -0700

One of the key examples in Ruth Millikan's influential 1984 book Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories was the "canid play bow". This piece of doggie-language, exemplified in the photo on the right, is "a highly ritualized and stereotyped movement that seems to function to stimulate recipients to engage (or to continue to engage) in social play."

ARCHIVE - Linguist List: Journal Contents: TOC: Functions of Language Vol 16, No 2 (2009)

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:12:51 -0700

ARCHIVE - Linguist List: Journal Contents: TOC: Studies in Language Vol 33, No 4 (2009)

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:04:01 -0700