Foreign Accent Syndrome

The Log has long talked about cases of Foreign Accent Syndrome, and noted key literature on the subject. Here's another case, of a woman from Port Angeles, Washington. (That direct video link works for me, but here's a link to the Seattle Times article.) The accents are reported to vary between German, Russian, French, Swedish. The woman says about her condition:

It's a blessing. It's fun, it's different, it's sassy.

North Carolina /o:/

One of the striking features of Southern (and many Eastern) varieties of US English that is not (yet) a stereotype is sometimes striking degree of fronting of the vowel in boat, no, hope, etc. Wonkette ran this YouTube video earlier today for its obvious political content. But these are plausibly at least mostly actual Tar Heels talking, and they pretty much all use the word 'vote' so that you can hear a good range of tokens from different speakers.




Many readers of this blog probably don't hear such vowels very often. Besides, it's hilarious.

The cold blogal truth

One of our contributors does most of his gift shopping at despair.com, where Demotivation is their game:

AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That's why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators® designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!

That doesn't leave much to say, now does it?

Palin does 'urban dialect'?

Time is running out on the Palin Clock here, so let's play it for what it's worth. Dana Milbank writes this on his WaPo blog:

The Diva proceeded to list some people whose money the Democrats would take away along with Joe the Plumber's: "Doug the Barber and Christine the Florist, and Cindy the Citizen. We've got Joe the Plumber's Son, Jack the Hunter, Vickie the Realtor. One of my favorites last night, it was 'I am Joe Mama.' " The crowd delighted in the way the former Miss Wasilla said "Joe Mama" in urban dialect. For the record, a search of the White House speech archive indicates that neither President Bush nor Vice President Cheney has used the phrase "Joe Mama" over the past eight years. It was more evidence that Palin will, for better or worse, make good on her promise to bring change to Washington.

"Urban dialect" has to be an awkward reference to African-American speech – out of character for Milbank, I think. But wasn't that turn of phrase stale 20 years ago? It was used on South Park, oh, forever ago. Or longer. Just google it and see how widespread and how post-urban (?) it is.

Image from Cafe Press.

Palin's voice coach

Well, the big linguablogging Palin update is clearly Bill Poser's Log post on moose, source of her favorite burgers. But since nobody else has mentioned it that I know of, here's a fresh language angle, from the Sunday NYT magazine piece on McCain, starting after Palin's speech at the GOP convention:

While all of this was going on, an elegant middle-aged woman sat alone at the far end of the bar. She wore beige slacks and a red sweater, and she picked at a salad while talking incessantly on her cellphone. But for the McCain/Palin button affixed to her collar and the brief moment that Tucker Eskew, Palin’s new counselor, spoke into her ear, she seemed acutely disconnected from the jubilation swelling around her.

In fact, the woman was here for a reason. Her name was Priscilla Shanks, a New York-based stage and screen actress of middling success who had found a lucrative second career as a voice coach. Shanks’s work with Sarah Palin was as evident as it was unseen. Gone, by the evening of her convention speech, was the squeaky register of Palin’s exclamations. Gone (at least for the moment) was the Bushian pronunciation of “nuclear” as “nook-you-ler.” Present for the first time was a leisurely, even playful cadence that signaled Sarah Palin’s inevitability on this grand stage.

Interesting little tidbit, whatever conclusions one can really draw from her having had a voice coach. Also see this post.

The edges of alliteration

In yesterday's column, Safire continues his recent language play — trope-a-dope might be the best example — but actually gave a datum that I'd been half wondering about. In discussing media names for the fiscal catastrophes of late, he notes:

The Guardian, turned to tried-and-true alliteration in dating days of dreary drops, with “Meltdown Monday,” which came along “nearly every other week nowadays, along with ‘Frantic Friday’ and ‘Tsunami Tuesday’ and ‘black’ any old day.”

Then he goes into Manic Monday, sadly without reference to the great 80's song. (Raise your hand if you remember the Bangles.)

When I'd first heard and read Tsunami Tuesday, I definitely did not think of it as alliterative. In fact, it struck me as not quite working. For most Americans, I imagine it's [su:] + [tu:] or [tju:]. For those who get closest to pure alliteration, people who pronounce the affricate of the original form, it's presumably [tsu:] + [tu:]. (That is, I'm assuming nobody says [tu:] + [tu:] here, certainly not Safire.)

Does that feel like alliteration to English speakers? There aren't many parallels for those who use the affricate, maybe tsetse flies teeming or something.

Image from this wonderful website, How Stuff Works.

-toberfest

Guest post from Mark Louden, who will join Team Verb.

In a graduate class this semester titled Spoken German, in a section devoted to the productivity of compounding in German, we were discussing the status of English nominal compounds that make use of morphemes derived from German, "über/uber" being one relatively well known one, but also "fest" (as in gabfest, slugfest, etc.) and "nazi" (examples: grammar nazi, feminazi, parking nazi, and Soup Nazi). The morphological status of these is somewhere between bound and free: following my intuitions, I couldn't use "fest" or "nazi" in isolation (as opposed to "Nazi", of course, as in a "member of the National Socialist Party). In the text we were reading, such word-parts are described as affixoids, something between a word and an affix. In any case, one sharp student mentioned reading in the Madison paper about an upcoming Trucktoberfest. That got me to googling, and I found about 150 different compounds with "toberfest", as well as this piece by journalist Brent Batten that appeared in the Naples (FL) News on October 6, 2005.

"October Festers with Events Bent on Fun Puns"

Personally, I blame Prince Ludwig of Bavaria.

You'll find some people who blame album-oriented FM radio stations.

But I blame Prince Ludwig of Bavaria.

If he hadn't been so all-fired happy about his marriage to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen on Oct. 12, 1810, he wouldn't have commissioned a party for all the people of Munich. And that party wouldn't have evolved into a monthlong celebration known as Octoberfest.

And then radio stations wouldn't have latched on and started calling every little promotion occurring in the 10th month of the year "Rocktoberfest." And then each person, association, organization and business throughout society wouldn't have taken to naming every event taking place in October "Whatevertoberfest."

The misuse of "toberfest" has reached saturation levels.

Although it all began innocuously enough, with Rocktoberfest and the Halloween-linked Shocktoberfest, things have gone well beyond the constraints of rhyme and reason.

In America you can now find Orktoberfest, Oakstoberfest, Oinktoberfest and Oztoberfest.

There's Gothtoberfest, Lawtoberfest, Hopetoberfest, Swaptoberfest, Moustachetoberfest and Puketoberfest.

Animal lovers have glommed onto the toberfest craze, introducing Dogtoberfest, Barktoberfest, Hogtoberfest, Oxtoberfest, Ottertoberfest and Southwest Florida's very own Skunktoberfest, in celebration of the elusive skunk ape.

Skunktoberfest shouldn't be confused with Crunktoberfest, a concert sponsored by a hip-hop radio station in Denver.

Not that the hip-hop genre is the only one to challenge rock's claim on the toberfest name. There's Jazztoberfest, Popstoberfest and Bluestoberfest.

Unwilling to limit themselves to the fall, lovers of German music in Fairfax, Va., put together Augtoberfest, a summertime oomp-pah band concert.

Although that is hardly the most egregious affront to the seasonal limits on a toberfest. Numerous groups have dubbed their spring carnivals Maytoberfest.

In addition to the aforementioned Skunktoberfest, Florida is home to some of the more unique toberfests you'll find. Like the Choctoberfest held at the Paradise Lakes Resort near Land O' Lakes. You wouldn't be surprised to find the festival centered upon chocolate. You might be surprised to find the celebrants naked. Paradise Lakes is a clothing optional resort.

The tide of toberfests is overwhelming. There's no sense in railing against the inelegant, like Flytoberfest, Bugtoberfest, Biketoberfest, Paintoberfest and Finstoberfest. Or the profane, $#@!toberfest and *&%#toberfest.

Better to grudgingly acknowledge clever appellations such a group of beer stein collectors' Ahhhtoberfest and an Iowa horsetrack's Tic Tac Toberfest.

And maybe even join in the fun, applying the toberfest concept to this month's local happenings.

The high school scheduling fiasco: Blocktoberfest. Live-aboard boaters being chased from their slips: Docktoberfest.

And a newspaper column ridiculing the phenomenon: Mocktoberfest.

Don't blame me. Blame Prince Ludwig of Bavaria.

Most of the "-toberfest" compounds I found have a phonological basis (using monosyllables, often resembling [ak]), including a popular one this month: Baracktoberfest. (Image from here.)

Some examples push the phonological envelope (for my ear/brain at least), e.g., Fair Oaks'Toberfest an annual event in a Sacramento suburb. Others are more semantically based, with a connection to beer and its consumption (Drunktoberfest, Puketoberfest, Knock'd toberfest); Halloween (Shocktoberfest); other months (Febtoberfest, Novemberfest); dogs (Barktoberfest, Dachtoberfest); and miscellanenous other gatherings taking place in October: Croptoberfest (scrapbooking); Mopar-toberfest (auto parts sale); Awesome-toberfest; AAAAAR-toberfest (a "pirate-themed bar event" in New Bethelem, PA); Plain ol' boring-toberfest ... .

Zumtrel flooby!

Step aside, colorless green ideas ...

Press Secretary's 'Zumtrel Flooby' Answer May Be Attempt To Evade Question

Scrappily!

Berliner redux

We've noted the old ich bin ein Berliner issue from the classic Kennedy speech long ago. A new blog, Web-Translations, has taken it up. (The image makes me hungry.)

Phils fire what?

Mr. V normally leaves the Hilarious Typo Patrol duties to the various copy editing blogs out there, but this item actually took me a second to make sense of. The fact that Slavo is a man's name connects with the firing thing (but you never fire anybody during the World Series, basically). And having Phils in there maybe triggers some connection to slavophile, slavophilic, etc.

From the Washington Post website, no doubt soon to be fixed.

Sarah Palin: Concerned Linguist

That's not me, that's Wonkette. Here's the text:

• Well, well look who’s suddenly so particular about the intended meanings of words corresponding to their usage! It’s Palin! She hates the name “Trooper-Gate” and would prefer that you refer to her gross abuses of power by their Christian name: “Taser-Gate.” [The Caucus]

Whatevs, but she's no linguist.

Note to self: Gotta find a way to turn the way back to better topics.

Longwindedness and the presidential campaign

Reliable and revered reader t.p. calls my attention to this piece in the Economist. Now, I was wondering why they didn't include Clinton – I mean, you've got longwinded in the headline!

I wasn't actually sure there was a post in here until I checked out the comments. I don't mean the fact that they haven't culled the vast amount of blog spam, but this comment:

Now macroeconomics has an ugly step sister - macro political science. Until now I was convinced a good argument was not so much about the length of a sentence but the order of words in it.

That's just cool. First, linguists aren't getting blame/credit for this piece of trivia about language, but the colleagues over in PoliSci. Second, I finally know the secret to a good argument: word order.

Safire on Palin's 'you betcha'

We've clearly lost claim to being the go-to blog for Sarah Palin's language — the blizzard of posts on the Log leave us in a daze. And that's cool: The Log is a big team of active bloggers. We're getting semi-regular posts now from a set of Team Verb members (and thanks to all of you), but it'll be a year or two before some of our most outspoken colleagues will have time and opportunity to post a lot, so we remain a little operation for the moment. Besides, everybody has a Palin shtick these days.

But now Safire is jumping on the topic?!?!? He's mostly pretty harmless at the moment, devoting his time to political words and turns of phrase, but has a thing on verbal tics today. What does he actually mean by this?

Sarah Palin’s repeated Americanism does not qualify as a verbal tic because she uses it consciously, along with a deliberate, nonspasmodic wink. Now that it has been widely called to her attention, is she likely to continue to use it? “You betcha!”

You betcha is a signature line for her, but it turns up a lot more in parodies than in her speech. She's used it once in the VP debate, for example, with two hecks and two darns.

Immigrants learning English

Miranda Wilkerson (a recent Wisconsin Ph.D. who does second language acquisition) and our contributor Joe just had a piece in American Speech showing that German-speaking immigrants to Wisconsin didn't learn English quickly, in fact even for two or three generations in many cases. It's called "'Good old immigrants of yesteryear' who didn't learn English" and appears in vol. 83, pp. 259-283. They note that scholars like Calvin Veltman show that contemporary immigrants, in contrast, are learning English as fast as they can.

The local paper has picked up the story, here. The 'community comments' section after on-line articles is pretty consistently a forum for screaming wingnuts. It's kinda of like a Palin rally in cyberspace in terms of the attitude toward the media and the racism. It's interesting in this case that a lot of people are actually speaking up showing some knowledge of family, local and state history.

Peggy Noonan on political speech and g-dropping

From the Wall Street Journal, here.

More than ever on the campaign trail, the candidates are dropping their G's. Hardworkin' families are strainin' and tryin'a get ahead. It's not only Sarah Palin but Mr. McCain, too, occasionally Mr. Obama, and, of course, George W. Bush when he darts out like the bird in a cuckoo clock to tell us we are in crisis. All of the candidates say "mom and dad": "our moms and dads who are struggling." This is Mr. Bush's former communications adviser Karen Hughes's contribution to our democratic life, that you cannot speak like an adult in politics now, that's too austere and detached, snobby. No one can say mothers and fathers, it's all now the faux down-home, patronizing—and infantilizing—moms and dads. Do politicians ever remember that in a nation obsessed with politics, our children—sorry, our kids—look to political figures for a model as to how adults sound?

Noonan goes after Palin fiercely — it's called "Palin's Failin'", and she calls Palin's candidacy "a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics".

But to language: First, all you need to know about 'g-dropping' is here. On the one hand, this piece is bringing peevology squarely into the political arena: "A pox on all your houses, you ill-bred, colloquially-enunciating oafs! James, another martini, please." On the other, many people, even far beyond the vast hordes of peevologists, who see this kind of colloquial speech on the campaign trail as faux down-home and patronizing. It's notable that she uses "austere and detached, snobby" to describe more traditional and to her mind appropriate, political speech — terms that have been used critically about Obama. I wonder what politicians sound like adults to her ear, maybe Bill Clinton in giving a major speech? Oh wait, Nicholas Kristof just wrote a column about "Obama the intellectual", here. And yes, the piece even touches on language: He praises Obama for using longer sentences that McCain does.

The image is a cover of the New Internationalist from a year ago … here.

Happy Birthday, Noah Webster

Today is the 250th anniversary of Noah Webster's birth. Webster's influence on our English and on our government has touched us all. (Do you spell the word "honour" or "honor"? "Theatre" or "theater"? "Gaol" or "jail"?) He was a maverick in his time. Check out Dennis Baron's blog The Web of Language, where he discusses America's first language patriot.
Especially in New England there are celebrations today. From Yale comes this summary of his work:

West Hartford native and Yale alumnus (B.A., 1778; M.A., 1781; and Honorary LL.D., 1823), Webster is most commonly known for his “American Dictionary of the English Language” (first published, 1828), but he was also a versatile intellectual and influential reformer whose diverse pursuits ran from the study of infectious diseases and climatology to revising the King James translation of the Bible. He introduced and campaigned for the adoption of copyright laws, established and edited a New York newspaper, and was a founder of Amherst College. An ardent patriot, and friend of George Washington, Webster credited his 1785 tract “Sketches of American Policy” as paving the way for the Constitution.

It was, though, his shaping and codifying the vernacular language of the United States that won him immortality. Webster’s scholarship was goaded by the belief that, in the words of his biographer Harlow Unger, “national unity depended on linguistic unity, with all Americans speaking a single common language.” As a pioneering lexicographer, Webster not only made such quintessentially New World words as “skunk,” “hickory,” “raccoon,” “butternut squash,” and “chowder” part of the English language, he also liberated American spellers from the British “u” in “colour,” the French “re” of “centre,” and the redundant “k” of “musick.”

Some four decades before Webster produced the dictionary, he had already made his mark as a pedagogue in classrooms across the new nation with the “American Spelling Book” – known to the generations of school children who learned grammar, usage and correct orthography from its pages as the “blue-backed speller.”

This One, That One

Last weekend they aired a rerun of the now-famous Palin-Clinton SNL sketch (the blog title is a link to the full video) and I wondered if anyone else noticed what I noticed... Towards the end (the sequence starts with about 35 seconds to go), Palin (Fey) is encouraging the media to be vigilant about sexism, and Clinton (Poehler) says

Although it's never sexist to question female politicians' credentials. Please, ask this one about dinosaurs.

When she says "this one" she gestures with her thumb at Palin. So... an antecedent for McCain's famous "that one" epithet? McCain stealing lines from SNL? Hmmmmmmm?

Political nickname update: Obama edition

This whole campaign, as regular readers will know, I've been keeping an eye on political nicknames. They continue to bubble up — was it Olbermann who just used McFlailin? Still, I'm finding a lot of the action on the campaign trail too alarming to joke about.

But Barack Obama hasn't gotten much in the way of usable monikers that I can see, positive or negative. In fact, the best one I've found, and I herewith abandon the search, is Hopey. Urban Dictionary has an entry for it (here) and wonkette uses it pretty regularly.

Democrats: Linguistics a priority

Actual quote from a WBBH news story, here:

Top Democrats say they want to get started on linguistics right after the election.

Is this some odd example of the Zimmerian Cupertino effect? I could imagine that 'logistics' would fit the full context, which is this:

When Congress does head back to work, there will be a new topic of conversation. The Democratic are reviving efforts to get another stimulus check out to the public.

Top Democrats say they want to get started on linguistics right after the election.

Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who heads the House Financial Services Committee, says it would give the middle-class and the average citizen the same kind of relief Congress has been trying to give the financial sector.

Whatevs, I've got dibs on syntax. Or … wait for it … maybe that should be sin tax.

Latin-English codeswitching

I have read Maureen Dowd, at least her NYT columns, for years and never been quite sure what to make of her writing. (I did learn a ton from Polyglot Conspiracy's smart post about Dowd here.) MoDo's column today dispenses with the ultra-gendered and / or faux potboiler styles she often uses in favor of the classics. Half the column, roughly, is in Latin, a loose translation of her play in the Gallic Wars done by the historian Gary Farney of Rutgers. But it's not simply an English chunk followed by a Latin chunk. There's plenty of written codeswitching and language play in both halves, starting with the title: "Are we Rome? Tu Betchus!" Then:

Amo Latinam, so I was happy to see ...

That's pretty simple, a switch at a clause boundary, but it gets more complex:

why the hyperventilating Republicans are not veni, vidi, vici-ing.

Kind of funny, with the three inflected verb forms getting treated as a unit — that's hardly novel — and then verbed. But the Latin half is just gut-bustingly funny, in a classic school-boy way (so I gather): There's all the inflection of names, some anachronistic bits (Sabbatis Nocte Vivo!) and stuff like this:

Ioannes McCainus, mavericus et veteranus captivusque Belli Francoindosinini, et Sara Palina, barracuda borealis …

Or, the not-merely-coined-but-more-like-faked Latin:

Cum Primus Dudus, spousus Palinanus, culpari attemptaret “Centurionem-Gate,” …

And some nice switches to English:

Tamen Sara et Ioannes bury Obama, not praise him.

OK, maybe I'm a sucker for cheap humor, but there's a little point in here: One aspect of this kind of text is the illusion of a Latin text, but something that is readable even if you didn't do too much of the old amo, amas, amat or hic, haec, hoc, huius, huius, huius. Many of the reader comments at this writing seem to take the text very seriously — as if it were Cicero or something.

A lot has been written about "Mock Spanish", most notably by Jane Hill (see Ben Zimmer's very accessible overview here — a key point is the presumed racist intent of such language). Tu Betchus is an example, I suppose, of Mock Latin.

Image from here.

Verbing, Palin edition

Go to palined.com to see the campaign to make Sarah Palin's last name a verb. Here's the proposed definition:

1. To flub, fail or otherwise stumble in response to simple, predictable questions in an interview; to give an off-topic and incoherent or syntactically suspect response to a simple, predictable question in an interview; to do likewise in any other human endeavor. 2. To fabricate an untruth, that is easily verifiable as such, in response to a question for which one does not know the answer.

'Suspect syntax' aside, I might have imagined a more general meaning, like 'to fail in the most public and spectacular way conceivable', but that chapter probably hasn't been written yet. Maybe that's going to be 3.?

Time for Mr. V to throw in the towel?

I just discovered, Mr Verb, that your blog is linked from Barbara Wallraff's "In a word" blog for the Atlantic. A link from the Judge of the Word Court? How big is your tent?

Nouning, in a terrifying context

In the last couple of days, audience members at McCain and Palin rallies have been inciting violence against the opposing presidential candidate. This may be the most deeply disturbing political development in recent times, at least for those of us who remember the 1960s and 1970s. This started with stuff like somebody yelling 'terrorist' or 'treason' at the mention of Obama's name. And this is surely fueled by people introducing McCain and Palin with references to Barack Hussein Obama.

Now it has escalated to a person in the crowd yelling 'kill him' (is that like something from the Bible?), and now NBC reports that a man yelled "off with his head" yesterday at the mention of Obama's tax plan. It makes me literally queasy to read and hear things like this. Can we assume the Secret Service is tracking these people down and dealing with them? Why aren't McCain and Palin denouncing this stuff, on the spot, or even afterwards?

Yesterday, after noting how often Obama's middle name is being used at McCain/Palin events, Josh Marshall commented at TPM:

Given the regularity of the cries of "treason" and "terrorist" and the like, and the frequency with which the screamers seem in oddly convenient proximity to the mics, we should probably be considering the possibly that these folks are campaign plants. It happens all the time. It's just that usually they don't scream out accusations of capital crimes.

Late Update: A thought. At what point do they start burning Obama in effigy at the Palin rallies?

Today, after noting the NBC story, he's updated:

Like I said, I think it's going to take a few burning in effigies to catch people's attention at this point.

Now, Josh Marshall clearly has a stronger stomach than I do in his political humor. But the politics aside, the turn of phrase there is striking. It looks like it's not a unicum, but close – google has only a couple of other instances. Peevologists like to get excited about putting the plural -s on something other than the head, like this:

brothers in law ~ brother in laws
attorneys general ~ attorney generals
sons of bitches ~ son of a bitches

The forms on the left sound downright formal and archaic to me, things I'd use only in super-form writing. So, that's not the problem with the form for me. (The missues doesn't find Marshall's usage nearly as odd as I do, and I think she finds 'burnings in effigy' at least equally OK.) It's the nominalization itself that doesn't work for me, and I normally really like novel-sounding forms of various sorts. What is it about this one? Is it a semantic thing, that burning somebody in effigy doesn't seem coherent enough as an event that the nominalization is weird? That's something that happens as a part of some other event, like a riot:

*It'll take a few occupying the administration buildings!
*How many storming the barricadeses will it take?

What the heck is going on here?



Image from here.

More randomness

One more campus linguistic snippet, from last Thursday's student newspaper, the Badger Herald:


Update, 3:30 am (by Mr. V): You can see the cartoonist's series on the IPA and other work here. (If you follow that link, note how she treats the American English rhotic in coda position.)

What can we do to support public higher education in WI?

Skyrocketing tuition and declining compensation levels for academic staff and faculty are two very serious problems. They both threaten our university's ability to deliver quality, affordable education to Wisconsin's citizens. And they both arise from the same structural problems.

Too often, university administrators and politicians have tried to pit the interests of students against those of us who work at the university. It is only by working together, however, that we can solve these problems. Come participate in a discussion with United Faculty and Academic Staff (UFAS) and the Coalition for Affordable Public Education (CAPE) about how to improve access to the UW-Madison while maintaining its excellence as a premier teaching and research institution.

Tuesday, October 21
12:00-1:00pm
Union South, TITU

ALL ARE WELCOME!

United Faculty and Academic Staff (UFAS), Local 223, AFT-Wisconsin, AFL-CIO, is a labor union democratically organized to represent its members: academic staff, faculty, and postdocs employed at UW-Madison and UW-Extension’s Madison campus. For more information, contact UFAS President Frank Emspak via femspak@igc.org. You can also learn more about UFAS online at www.ufas.org.

(I was asked to pass this along and am happy to do it — it's a discussion we badly need to have on campus and elsewhere in the state.)

Friday randomness

A few things, first two snippets overheard on campus:

• One undergrad to another, outside the building where languages are taught/housed on campus: OK, you write up all the verb classes forms and I'll do the noun class forms. Utterly mundane if you work with language, but walking by these two kids having this earnest conversation about the morphology of who-knows-what language, well it was cool.
• Speaking of cool: Kind of lost-looking undergrad doing cell yell on the sidewalk: No, it's not like fall fall, it's more cold fall.

On a blogal note, once I digested the excellent content of Rosina Lippi-Green's recent comments about Palin's accent (here), I'm left thinking about her problems with Blogger eating comments. I really seldom comment on blogs other than this one, but have had the same problem. I'll keep an eye on this and if it gets to be too much, maybe I'll move the blog, but I'd rather not have to do that.

A couple of the local folks have been talking to the press about Palin's accent / dialect / speech, and I hope we'll patch together a big-picture post on that in the course of the day.

The Linguists

Babble On, Say Researchers In 'Linguists' Documentary

The Washington Post has an article today about this indie movie. If you're in the DC area you can see it tonight. Its description in the article:

Called "The Linguists," it is basically a home movie with better than average production values -- which, come to think of it, may be a useful definition of indie movies -- that could have been subtitled "Dave and Greg's Excellent Language Adventures."

These guys travel to parts of Siberia, Bolivia and India so truly godforsaken that the film of Arizona Indian country looks cosmopolitan. All in the service of warning us that half the world's 7,000 languages are going extinct.

Have we linguists become almost mainstream?

Palin and language ...

Haven't even kept up on news today (but thank you, Ben Zimmer), let alone been able to blog about it. I'll catch up soon, but note this. It's about diagramming Sarah Palin's sentences (see image). Check out this morsel:

The more the diagram is forced to wander around the page, loop back on itself, and generally stretch its capabilities, the more it reveals that the mind that created the sentence is either a richly educated one—with a Proustian grasp of language that pushes the limits of expression—or such an impoverished one that it can produce only hot air, baloney, and twaddle.

Whoa. I know a lot of syntax folks, but never heard one talk like that before.

Palin's accent and syntax

We finally have a serious sociolinguist addressing Palin's speech: This politico.com piece quotes Rosina Lippi-Green at some length (h.t. to Mike L, passed on by Joe.)

In related news, Katharine Seelye of the NYT has a piece today called

Past Debates Show a Confident Palin, at Times Fluent but Often Vague.

That header calls to mind Mark Liberman's recent Palin-McCain-inspired call for "a disfluency index — or better, a vector of qualities related to fluency and coherence — that could be used to put the field of political babble-ology on a sound footing."

Anyway, Seelye writes that Palin's earlier debates showed these traits:

Her sentences were distinguished by their repetition of words, by the use of the phrase “here in Alaska” and for gaps. On paper, her sentences would have been difficult to diagram.

Well, if you want"difficult to diagram", on paper or otherwise, a couple days ago I heard a blurb for NPR's business show about the bailout, asking "when and will" a solution be reached. (The syntactic analysis aside, the phrase is familiar and doesn't even sound so bad to me, but it triggered a look of horror when I bounced it off the missus.)

A common view is that normal speech represents one big verbal train wreck, but it's worth noting that not everybody sees it that way. In his seminal "Logic of Non-standard English" (available here via Google Books), Labov says this, based on his own work with 'everyday speech':

the great majority of utterances in all contexts are complete sentences, and most of the rest can be reduced to grammatical form by a small set of editing rules. The proportions of grammatical sentences vary with class backgrounds and styles. The highest percentage of well-formed sentences are found in casual speech and working-class speakers use more well-formed sentences than middle-class speakers. The widespread myth that most speech is ungrammatical is no doubt based upon tapes made at learned conferences, where we obtain the maximum number of irreducibly ungrammatical sequences.

There's a lot buried behind that quote (like arguing against Chomsky on 'poverty of stimulus', see footnote 11), but maybe it means that we need a general field of babble-ology! Who'll endow the first chair?

Image from here.