Linguistics

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Poemas del río Wang: The Joys of Yinglish - http://riowang.blogspot.de/2012...

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"ekstra neyes ayn die Ist Seyd! eyn groyser bankrat seyl fun zoyre fun men’s farnishing mus oysferkoyft veren in 15 teg komt und koyft groyse bargins zoyre verd ferkoyft af halbe preysen. komt und (?) eyn" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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from the recently published New York City Municipal Archives <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/r... ; title="http://www.nyc.gov/html/r... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Peter LUDLOW :: The Living Word . [If word meanings can change in the course of a single conversation how could they not change over the course of centuries? cf. textualism, J. Antonin Scalia] - http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012...

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"Recent work rejects the idea that languages are stable abstract objects that we learn and then use. According to the alternative “dynamic” picture, human languages are one-off things that we build “on the fly” on a conversation-by-conversation basis; we can call these one-off fleeting languages microlanguages. Importantly, this picture rejects the idea that words are relatively stable things with fixed meanings that we come to learn. Rather, word meanings themselves are dynamic — they shift from microlanguage to microlanguage. Shifts of meaning do not merely occur between conversations; they also occur within conversations — in fact conversations are often designed to help this shifting take place. That is, when we engage in conversation, much of what we say does not involve making claims about the world but involves instructing our communicative partners how to adjust word meanings for the purposes of our conversation." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

e.g. Funny where Robert Smith will turn up... remember when he turned into a giant moth [mothra / mosura <a rel="nofollow" href="http://tctechcrunch2011.f... ; title="http://tctechcrunch2011.f... ;] to fight Mecha-Streisand? Disintegration. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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BBC News - A Point of View: In defence of obscure words - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news...

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"Both general readers and specialist critics often complain about my own use of English - not only in my books, but also in my newspaper articles and even in radio talks such as these. "I have to look them up in a dictionary", they complain - as if this were some kind of torture." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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"I'd point out that my texts were as full of resolutely Anglo-Saxon slang as they were the flowery and the Latinate. I'd observe that English, being a mishmash of several different languages, had a large and exciting vocabulary, and that it seemed a shame not to use it - especially given that it went on growing all the time, spawning argot and specialist terminology as freely as an oyster does its milt." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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'Hopefully': Five Decades of Foolishness - Lingua Franca - The Chronicle of Higher Education - http://chronicle.com/blogs...

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"In the annals of prescriptivist poppycock, a century is not very long, and a development spanning only 50 years from beginning to end counts as speedy. Let me describe one such incident, which concerns a small and very natural syntactic change in the use of a single adverb." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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"Nobody worries about these two uses of clearly living side by side. Nor does it bother anybody to live with the similar duality of obviously (compare He was flirting with her too obviously, which comments on the manner of the flirting, and He was obviously flirting with her, which doesn’t)." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Wondermark » Archive » #829; In which Pepper is explained - http://wondermark.com/829/

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Language Log, Poetical Etymologies <a rel="nofollow" href="http://languagelog.ldc.up... ; title="http://languagelog.ldc.up... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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coerce - http://www.etymonline.com/index...

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coerce mid-15c., cohercen, from M.Fr. cohercer, from L. coercere "to control, restrain, shut up together," from com- "together" (see co-) + arcere "to enclose, confine, contain, ward off," from PIE *ark- "to hold, contain, guard" (see arcane). Related: Coerced; coercing. No record of the word between late 15c. and mid-17c.; its reappearance 1650s is perhaps a back formation from coercion. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

From Latin coercere (“to surround, encompass, restrain, control, curb”), from co- (“together”) + arcere (“to inclose, confine, keep off”); see arcade, arcane, ark. ~ Verb coerce (third-person singular simple present coerces, present participle coercing, simple past and past participle coerced) To restrain by force, especially by law or authority; to repress; to curb. (transitive) to use force, threat, fraud, or intimidation in attempt to compel one to act against his will. (transitive, computing) to force an attribute, normally of a data type, to take on the attribute of another data type. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wiktionary.org/... ; title="http://en.wiktionary.org/... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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BBC News - Are language cops losing war against 'wrongly' used words? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news...

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"Language enthusiasts bemoan the way words are being misused. But are the meanings they view as improper destined to take over?" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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yes - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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BBC News - Are you a Luddite? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news...

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"They burned down mills in the name of a mythical character called Ludd. So 200 years after their most famous battle, why are we still peppering conversations with the word "Luddite"?" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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In German, we would say "Maschinenstürmer". But that sounds a bit antiquated. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Talmy’s typology | Christopher Culver’s Linguistics Weblog - http://www.christopherculver.com/linguis...

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"In researching my M.A. thesis on verbs of motion in Mari and Chuvash, I discovered a typology developed by Leonard Talmy that categorizes languages according to the semantics of their motion verbs. Basically, it comes down to whether the main verb in a sentence about motion expresses the manner of motion, or the direction of motion." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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"In “verb-framed languages”, on the other hand, the direction of motion is encoded in the verb, e.g. Spanish entrar ‘go in’ and salir ‘go out’. But in verb-framed languages, manner of motion must be expressed by another component, i.e. an adverb or a gerundive." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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A Social Network for Everyone - Themultilife - http://themultilife.com/

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Themultilife is a Social Network for all languages. You just write in your language and it gets translated to your friend's chosen language automatically. Internet is for everyone, even the sightless. Themultilife.com believes that those, who are deprived from the gift of sight, should be able to share thoughts with other people from all around the world. Themultilife speaks every translated sentence out, so everybody, and with everybody we mean everybody in the true sense of the word, will be able to use it. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Is Scoble on it yet? :) - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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sabotage - alphaDictionary * Free English On-line Dictionary - http://www.alphadictionary.com/goodwor...

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Word History: Although the French word sabotage is based on the word sabot "wooden shoe", the meaning of today's word did not come from French workers throwing their shoes into new machinery during the Industrial Revolution. This is an urban myth of long standing. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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In French, the sense of "deliberately and maliciously destroying property" originally was in reference to labor disputes, but the oft-repeated story that the modern meaning derives from strikers' supposed tactic of throwing old shoes into machinery is not supported by the etymology. Likely it was not meant as a literal image; the word was used in French in a variety of "bungling" senses, such as "to play a piece of music badly." <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.etymonline.com... ; title="http://www.etymonline.com... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Native Tongues - Lapham’s Quarterly - http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays...

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"The scene is a mysterious one, beguiling, thrilling, and, if you didn’t know better, perhaps even a bit menacing. According to the time-enhanced version of the story, it opens on an afternoon in the late fall of 1965, when without warning, a number of identical dark-green vans suddenly appear and sweep out from a parking lot in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. One by one they drive swiftly out onto the city streets. At first they huddle together as a convoy. It takes them only a scant few minutes to reach the outskirts—Madison in the sixties was not very big, a bureaucratic and academic omnium-gatherum of a Midwestern city about half the size of today. There is then a brief halt, some cursory consultation of maps, and the cars begin to part ways." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

"All of this first group of cars head off to the south. As they part, the riders wave their farewells, whereupon each member of this curious small squadron officially commences his long outbound adventure—toward a clutch of carefully selected small towns, some of them hundreds and even thousands of miles away. These first few cars are bound to cities situated in the more obscure corners of Florida, Oklahoma, and Alabama. Other cars that would follow later then went off to yet more cities and towns scattered evenly across every corner of every mainland state in America. The scene as the cars leave Madison is dreamy and tinted with romance, especially seen at the remove of nearly fifty years. Certainly nothing about it would seem to have anything remotely to do with the thankless drudgery of lexicography." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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odamaki: Risky Etymological Proposal - http://wodamaki.blogspot.de/2012...

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"Nowruz (Persian نوروز ) is the name of the Iranian New Year—where I live, the Iranian New Year began on Tuesday, March 20, around 1:00 AM. Literally, nowruz means “new day.” The now in nowruz is related to words meaning “new” all over the Indo-European language family, like Greek νέος neos, Latin novus, and English new itself. Ruz is the word for “day.” To honor Nowruz, I have decided to resurrect this blog, and I will try to make regular postings from now on." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Agreed, dear Mina, and thank you. :-)) - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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OUPblog » Blog Archive » The Seasons, Part 3: Rainy Winter? - http://blog.oup.com/2012...

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"The Latin for “winter; snowstorm” is hiems, a noun related in a convoluted way to Engl. hibernate. It is a reflex (continuation) of an old Indo-European word for “winter,” and its cognates in various languages are numerous. Germanic must also have had one of them, but it lies hidden like the proverbial needle in a hayrick. Old Icelandic (OI) gymbr means “one-year old sheep.” In the Scandinavian area, this word does not have an exotic ring, as follows from Modern Icelandic and Norwegian gimber ~ gymber ~ gimmerlam (the latter refers specifically to a sheep that has not yet lambed), along with Swedish gymmer with its dialectal variants. Despite some doubts expressed by etymologists, OI gymbr, gemla “one-year old sheep,” gemlingr “one-year old wether” (a wether is a gelded one-year old sheep; somebody may know the old tongue twister: “I wonder whether the wether will weather the weather or whether the weather the wether will kill”), gemlingr “hawk” (properly, “a one-year old hawk”), and even OI gói, the name of the month between mid-February to mid-March, share a Germanic reflex of the root preserved in Latin hiems (gim- ~ gym- ~ gem-)." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

"The speakers of the Old Germanic languages, like most of the Indo-Europeans, reckoned years by winters, so that all those animals are one “winter” old. To cite a parallel: British dialectal twinter “calf that is two winters old” is a well-known word. Even wether means, from an etymological point of view, “yearling,” because there was a word with the root wet- “year.” Via Latin we have it in inveterate (originally, “established by long standing,” then by extension “persisting in an ingrained habit”) and veteran, where vet-, as in Latin vetus “old,” unlike what we have seen in the animal names listed above, refers to old rather than young age. The same root turns up in veterinary, again referring originally to old animals, and veal, ultimately from Latin vitulus “calf,” very probably another “yearling.” Even Italia goes back to Vitalia (or Witalia) “land of young cattle,” named for the god of cattle, Mars. It follows that at some time Germanic-speakers had two words for “twelvemonth” different from year. They may have had three or more of them, as suggested by Gothic aþn “year” (þ has the value of th in Engl. thin), which seems to be related to Latin annus (as in Engl. annual, biennial, superannuated, and so forth). We witness the usual situation of upstarts edging out and beating old Indo-European words. Day, summer, fall “autumn,” and spring are all such. Incidentally, the custom of counting time by winters lived long. In addition to twinter, consider the opening line of Shakespeare’s Sonnet no. 2: ”When forty winters have besieged thy brow….”" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Polari (or alternatively Parlare, Parlary, Palare, Palarie, Palari; from Italian parlare, "to talk") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

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Polari (or alternatively Parlare, Parlary, Palare, Palarie, Palari;[1] from Italian parlare, "to talk") is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, criminals, prostitutes, and the gay subculture. It was popularised in the 1960s by camp characters Julian and Sandy in the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne. There is some debate about its origins,[2] but it can be traced back to at least the 19th century, and possibly the 16th century.[3] There is a longstanding connection with Punch and Judy street puppet performers who traditionally used Polari to converse.[4] - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Halil, I haven't. These cryptolects are interesting. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w... ; title="http://en.wikipedia.org/w... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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In immersion foreign language learning, adults attain, retain native speaker brain pattern - http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...

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"ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2012) — A first-of-its kind series of brain studies shows how an adult learning a foreign language can come to use the same brain mechanisms as a native speaker. The research also demonstrates that the kind of exposure you have to the language can determine whether you achieve native-language brain processing, and that learning under immersion conditions may be more effective in reaching this goal than typical classroom training. The research also suggests that the brain consolidates knowledge of the foreign language as time goes on, much like it does when a person learns to ride a bike or play a musical instrument." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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""Surprisingly, previous studies have found that the type of exposure typically found in classrooms leads to better learning than that typically found in immersion. However, no studies have looked at the actual brain mechanisms after different types of exposure," Morgan-Short says. Also, because a foreign language is so slow to learn, previous studies have not examined the outcomes of different types of exposure beyond the early stages of learning, since it would take far too long to wait until participants reached high proficiency, she says." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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How should Shakespeare really sound? - Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture...

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"Audio: The British Library have released the first audio guide to how Shakespeare's plays would have sounded in the original pronunciation." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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There are authorities who claim that the English of Shakespeare's time sounded more like American English (maybe it is even communis opinio, but I'm not sure about that). - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Norn language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

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Norn is an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken in Shetland and Orkney, off the north coast of mainland Scotland, and in Caithness. After the islands were pledged to Scotland by Norway in the 15th century, it was gradually replaced by Scots and on the mainland by Scottish Gaelic. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Bilingualism (neurology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

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The state of bilingualism has been studied from various aspects in the field of neurology. ~ Second-language acquisition or second-language learning is the process by which people learn a second language. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w... ; title="http://en.wikipedia.org/w... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Language Log » Non-restrictive ‘that’ - http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll...

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"In the most recent Between Failures, an nice example of a non-restrictive relative clause (or a supplementary relative clause, as Geoff Pullum would prefer) introduced by that rather than which:" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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OUPblog » Blog Archive » The Seasons, part 2. From three to four, summer. - http://blog.oup.com/2012...

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"The ancient Indo-Europeans lived in the northern hemisphere (see the previous post), but, although this conclusion is certain, it does not follow that they divided the year into four seasons. Our perception of climate is colored too strongly by Vivaldi, the French impressionists, and popular restaurants. At some time, the Indo-Europeans dominated the territory from India to Scandinavia (hence the name scholars gave them). They lived and traveled in many climate zones, and no word for “winter,” “spring,” “summer,” and “autumn” is common to the entire family; yet some cover several language groups." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

"It is rather probable that the worldview of the earliest Indo-Europeans was in part determined by a tripartite model of the universe. Julius Caesar must have divided Gaul into three parts almost instinctively. He grew up knowing three main gods: Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus. The terrible hell dog Cerberus had three heads. An echo of the old beliefs is still distinct in epic poetry and fairy tales. The story usually revolves around three brothers or three sisters. The protagonist performs three difficult tasks. The Scandinavian gods often travel in three’s company, and so do Russian warriors. Heaven, our earthly habitat, and the underground kingdom make up another familiar triad. At some time, the “Indo-European year” may have consisted of (1) spring and summer, (2) summer and autumn, and (3) winter." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Culturomics Looks at the Birth and Death of Words - WSJ.com - http://online.wsj.com/article...

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via Joel Kotarski <a rel="nofollow" href="http://ff.im/TgMNJ"&... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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"In the new paper, Alexander Petersen, Joel Tenenbaum and their co-authors looked at the ebb and flow of word usage across various fields. "All these different words are battling it out against synonyms, variant spellings and related words," says Mr. Tenenbaum. "It's an inherently competitive, evolutionary environment."" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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snob - http://www.etymonline.com/index...

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snob 1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," of unknown origin. It came to be used in Cambridge University slang c.1796 for "townsman, local merchant," and by 1831 it was being used for "person of the ordinary or lower classes." Meaning "person who vulgarly apes his social superiors" arose 1843, popularized 1848 by William Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." The meaning later broadened to include those who insist on their gentility, in addition to those who merely aspire to it, and by 1911 had its main modern sense of "one who despises those considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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I'm not even completely fluent in Norwegian anymore, Spidra. It all gets confused :) - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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The Bad Science Reporting Effect - Lingua Franca - The Chronicle of Higher Education - http://chronicle.com/blogs...

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"The press coverage of the so-called “QWERTY effect” in early March left me somewhat worried that it is so easy to publish bad science, but absolutely appalled at the state of science reporting." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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This reminds me again that we should be careful about those reportings on new "linguistic research" results. The problem is that I often read the articles only cursorily, due to lack of time. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Evolution of Language Parallels Evolution of Species :: Languages Evolve in Punctuational Bursts . [2012, Science 319(5863):588] - http://www.wired.com/wiredsc...

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"We think that the bursts of change we have identified have historically arisen from a group wishing to establish a distinct identity. Bursts may also arise from ‘founder effects’ such as when a small group which may have idiosyncracies eventually gives rise to a new language." \\ "We used vocabulary data from three of the world's major language groups—Bantu, Indo-European, and Austronesian—to show that 10 to 33% of the overall vocabulary differences among these languages arose from rapid bursts of change associated with language-splitting events." <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sciencemag.org... ; title="http://www.sciencemag.org... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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