tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60922028043016397692024-03-05T10:13:24.789-07:00Stæfcræft & VyākaraṇaGermanic, Indo-Aryan, and Indo-European philology & general linguisticsbe_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-41337692046320365852018-06-07T23:12:00.002-06:002020-03-14T11:31:58.168-06:00Closing down. New blog.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
No further posts will appear on this blog. Please see my new blog site at: <a href="https://lambda-y.net/#posts">https://lambda-y.net/#posts</a></div>
be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-54149319274395809092015-08-05T17:08:00.000-06:002015-08-05T17:08:23.416-06:00Hindi/English punning: lions, tigers, and shares<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Thinking about the English idiom <i><emp>the lion's share</emp></i> "the biggest piece", this could be nicely misrepresented in mixed Hindi/English as <i>the lion's शेर </i>[śer]. (शेर being Hindi for "lion".)<br />
<i><br /></i>
Or (almost) translated into the punnish बाघ का भाग [bāgh kā bhāg], though that would be literally "the tiger's share". As a non-native speaker, बाघ का भाग is a nice tongue-twister as well, in terms of aligning aspiration with the correct segments.</div>
be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-81436896280073625302013-07-15T22:51:00.000-06:002013-07-15T23:06:27.271-06:00Linus Torvalds: " There aren't enough swear-words in the English language", or, perkeleen vittupää<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Linus Torvalds, <a href="https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/13/132">commenting on a Linux commit</a>, had to result to swearing in (his <a href="http://www.muktware.com/news/2857/which-linus-torvalds%E2%80%99-native-language-finnish-or-swedish">semi-native</a>) Finnish (emphasis added):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Sat, 13 Jul 2013 15:40:24 -0700</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Subject</span> <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Re: [GIT pull] x86 updates for 3.11</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">From </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Linus Torvalds <></span></b><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 4:21 AM, Thomas Gleixner wrote:</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">> * Guarantee IDT page alignment</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">What the F*CK, guys?</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">This piece-of-shit commit is marked for stable, but you clearly never </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">even test-compiled it, did you?</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Because on x86-64 (the which is the only place where the patch</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">matters), I don't see how you could have avoided this honking huge</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">warning otherwise:</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> arch/x86/kernel/traps.c:74:1: warning: braces around scalar</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">initializer [enabled by default]</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> gate_desc idt_table[NR_VECTORS] __page_aligned_data = { { { { 0, 0 } } }, };</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> ^</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> arch/x86/kernel/traps.c:74:1: warning: (near initialization for</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">‘idt_table[0].offset_low’) [enabled by default]</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> arch/x86/kernel/traps.c:74:1: warning: braces around scalar</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">initializer [enabled by default]</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> arch/x86/kernel/traps.c:74:1: warning: (near initialization for</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">‘idt_table[0].offset_low’) [enabled by default]</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> arch/x86/kernel/traps.c:74:1: warning: excess elements in scalar</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">initializer [enabled by default]</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> arch/x86/kernel/traps.c:74:1: warning: (near initialization for</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">‘idt_table[0].offset_low’) [enabled by default]</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">and I don't think this is compiler-specific, because that code is</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">crap. The declaration for gate_desc is very very different for 32-bit</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">and 64-bit x86 for whatever braindamaged reasons.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Seriously, WTF? I made the mistake of doing multiple merges </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">back-to-back with the intention of not doing a full allmodconfig build</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">in between them, and now I have to undo them all because this pull</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">request was full of unbelievable shit.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">And why the hell was this marked for stable even *IF* it hadn't been</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">complete and utter tripe? It even has a comment in the commit message</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">about how this probably doesn't matter. So it's doubly crap: it's</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">*wrong*, and it didn't actually fix anything to begin with.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">There aren't enough swear-words in the English language, so now I'll</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">have to call you perkeleen vittupää just to express my disgust and</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">frustration with this crap.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> Linus</span></span></blockquote>
</div>
Reddit has some <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1icj46/angry_linus_is_back_there_arent_enough_swearwords/">additional comments</a>. <br />
<br />
What does <i>perkeleen vittupää </i>mean?<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b><i><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/p%C3%A4%C3%A4">Pää</a> </i>= head</b> (From Proto-Uralic *<i><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Uralic/p%C3%A4%C5%8Be#Proto-Uralic">päŋe</a></i>)</li>
<li><b><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vittu"><i>Vittu</i></a> = vulgar term for female genatalia</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b> </b> (< Swedish <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fitta"><i>fitta</i></a>, with the same meaning, apparently ultimately from <i><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fett">fett</a>,</i> meaning "fat" (n.), itself a borrowing in Swedish from <span class="etyl">Middle Low German</span> </span></span><i>vet</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">, from <span class="etyl">Old Saxon</span> *</span></span><i>fētid</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">, from <span class="etyl">Proto-Germanic</span> </span></span>*<i><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/faitidaz#Proto-Germanic">faitidaz</a> </i>)<i><br /></i></li>
<li><b><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perkele">Perkele</a> </i>=<i> </i>the name of the chief deity of the pre-Christian Finnish pantheon, now usually meaning something like "Devil"</b><i> </i>(itself ultimately from Proto-Indo-European; cp. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perk%C5%ABnas">Perkūnas</a>, the common Baltic name for the god of thunder, deriving from Proto-Indo-European *<i>Perkwunos</i>, itself cognate with *<i>perkwus</i>, a word for "oak", "fir" or "wooded mountain")</li>
</ul>
Thus the <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1icj46/angry_linus_is_back_there_arent_enough_swearwords/cb34nk8">gloss</a> of one Redditor.<br />
<br />
For what it's worth, note that two of the three morphemes (and the two which are actually crucial to the compound's vulgarity) are in fact of Indo-European extraction (or, at least Germanic, in the case of <i>vittu</i>), so at least it's not a defiency in Indo-European/Germanic... <br />
<br />
Language Log has <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/003521.html">more on both <i>vittupää</i> and <i>perkele</i></a>.<br />
<br />
[Bonus vulgarity: The version control system used for Linux kernel development is called "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software)">Git</a>" (also originated & <a href="https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitFaq#Why_the_.27Git.27_name.3F">coined</a> by Linus Torvalds).]
</div>
be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-84579295435580715282012-08-04T20:39:00.000-06:002012-08-04T21:03:15.049-06:00The garden path to heaven<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There is a Facebook page called "I Miss Someone Really Bad Who Is In Heaven".<br />
<br />
My initial reading was:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tripperfunster.deviantart.com/art/Evil-Heaven-191525933" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://th00.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2010/364/5/a/evil_heaven_by_tripperfunster-d3612ct.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tripperfunster.deviantart.com/art/Evil-Heaven-191525933">Villain: "If only my parents could see me now..."<br />Sidekick: "Sir, I am sure they're smiling down from evil heaven."</a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tripperfunster.deviantart.com/art/Evil-Heaven-191525933"><br /></a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I was somewhat disappointed to find that this is not the intended reading.<br />
</div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-14444766118622645182012-07-28T11:31:00.002-06:002012-07-28T11:31:23.214-06:00Singular "they" and Minecraft<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A quickish note about <a href="http://notch.tumblr.com/post/28188312756/gender-in-minecraft">a recent posting</a> by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notch_%28game_designer%29">Notch</a> of <a href="http://www.mojang.com/">Mojang</a>. Notch, the original creator of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft">Minecraft</a> (which I really haven't had a chance to play for some time), notes that though the default character skin appears somewhat masculine (and is referred to as "Steve"), the original intent was that characters in Minecraft be genderless. Notch points to the genderless aspects of the other living creatures in Minecraft (cows, birds, pigs etc.) and the fact that all of these can breed with any other member of the same species to produce offspring as part of the same outlook.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The linguistic angle is his closing footnote, which relates to referring to Minecraft's default character as <i>him</i>:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>* I do regret using masculine terms to talk about the default
character. These days I try to use the up-and-coming use of “they” as a
genderless pronoun.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<i>They</i>, of course, has been an "up-and-coming" genderless pronoun for at least a few hundred years now: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="color: black;">
<b>Matt. 18:35</b>:
So likewise shall my heauenly Father doe also vnto you, if yee from
your hearts forgiue not euery one <u>his brother</u> <b>their</b> trespasses. [Tyndale's translation, 1526]</blockquote>
It has been <a href="http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/2006/09/singular-they-in-english-bibles.html">pointed out</a> <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/003572.html">repeatedly</a> that singular <i>they</i> has been used in the Biblical translations of Tyndale and the King James translators, as well as other reputed writers of English literature such as <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/002748.html">Shakespeare</a> and <a href="http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austhlis.html">Jane Austen:</a>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There's not <u>a man</u> I meet but doth salute me<br />
As if I were <b>their</b> well-acquainted friend<br />
[Shakespeare, <i>A Comedy of Errors </i>IV, 3] </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"It had been a miserable party, <u>each of the three</u> believing <b>themselves</b> most miserable."<br />
[Austen, <i>Mansfield Park</i>] </blockquote>
For more on singular "they", see <a href="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27">Language Log's collection of posts</a> on the topic, as well as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they">Wikipedia's extensive page</a>. </div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-42684648573218702492012-06-18T22:30:00.000-06:002012-06-18T22:32:21.874-06:00"Oh, no, maadarcho-": On subtitling vulgarities in Hindi films<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
John McWhorter, in his recent <i>New Republic</i> article, <a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/103945/romney-language-mcwhorter?utm_source=The+New+Republic&utm_campaign=de8a9244c8-TNR_Daily_0">"Gosh, Golly, Gee: Mitt Romney's verbal stylings"</a>, discusses what he appears to view as Romney's over-sanitised style of public speaking as a marker of inauthenticity. Lucy Ferriss, in her post <a href="https://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/06/18/jeepers/">"Jeepers!"</a> on the Lingua Franca site, is somewhat sceptical of this argument.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
However, what struck me in Ferriss's post was the following paragraph, because it touches on something I was pondering a couple of days ago.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It is certainly true, as McWhorter observes, that public discourse has grown more casual and that examples of “taking the name of the Lord in vain” are not so proscribed as they once were. I only became aware of my own habitual use, not only of various expletives involving Judeo-Christian names for the deity, but of designated euphemisms, when I was in Pakistan recently. I would start to say, “Jesus, it’s hot,” and realize that my hosts’ theological frame of reference was somewhat different. Soon I began censoring not only “God” and “Christ,” but also “jeez,” “criminy,” “omigod,” and “lordy.” It was surprisingly easy to do, and as my speech changed, I also noticed no swearing (at least in English) on the part of my interlocutors, who did use other American slang freely. </blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
An oddly persistent feature of Hindi-language film English subtitling is the bowdlerisation of cursing. A particularly amusing instance of this occurs in the film <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_2">Murder 2</a>, </i>a somewhat gruesome thriller. The main character, a hard-boiled ex-cop, is verbally abusing another character, and calls him मादरचोद (<i>m<span class="Unicode">ā</span>darchod</i>).<a href="#*">*</a> Now <i>m<span class="Unicode">ā</span>darchod </i>means "one who has sexual relations with his mother" and thus has a readily available and obvious English gloss. However, in the English subtitles <i>m<span class="Unicode">ā</span>darchod </i>is rendered as "scoundrel". The disparity between the original and the translation afforded me a good chuckle (my wife simply ignores the subtitles, so wondered why I started laughing).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What is even more amusing is that this bowdlerised subtitling extends to subtitling English as well. So, in the same film, when the hero disgustedly says "Fuck." in <i>sotto voce</i>, the subtitles tell us that he said "Oh, no!".</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I wonder if there is a certain subset of South Asians (who can speak English, and reside somewhere in South Asia, as opposed to abroad) who are uncomfortable with cursing in English (even if they do so in other languages) - this subset would seem to include everyone who provides English subtitles for Hindi films.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Postscript: "Taking the name of the lord in vain" doesn't translate well very into a Hindu setting. Hindi speakers will exclaim हे भगवान! (<i>he bhagw</i><i><span class="Unicode">ān</span></i><span class="Unicode">) "Oh, lord!" in times of crisis (or mock-crisis), and likewise will say "Oh, lord!" or "Oh, god!" in English in the same fashion. But these are all what I would call vocative uses, supplications to divine powers for assistance</span> (and I would think "lordy" would fit into this category too). I can't think of Hindi language curses which parallel <i>zounds</i> (< "by god's wounds"). Hindi swearing usually involves some sort of reference to sex or sexual organs, usually involving someone else's mother or sister --- बहिनचोद (<i>bahinchod</i>) "one who has sexual relations with his sister" being in fact a bit more typical than मादरचोद (<i>m<span class="Unicode">ā</span>darchod</i>). </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a name="*"><i>* </i></a>मादरचोद (<i>m<span class="Unicode">ā</span>darchod</i>) is interesting from the standpoint that <i>m<span class="Unicode">ā</span>dar</i> is a borrowing from Persian but is infrequent outside of this compound. That may well not be accidental --- its use in other contexts may be "blocked" by association with <i>m<span class="Unicode">ā</span>darchod.</i></div>
</div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-58980200276805787712012-01-26T08:32:00.000-07:002012-01-26T08:32:57.881-07:00Donkey Anaphora and the King(s) of France<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">An end-of-the-semester gift from one of my semantics students:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3IALs1_4Xwy8wJcyYea-ol30-s0N9jekpbb2Y011Rpu97WUD97go-2rXkIezn6lCc6RlOYeownT5eEWT0FqH7ufuSLNzNdg_Cfedjil7T73va6FGBO4mKZjhyxS9EUgkvn2TLa4y2Phs/s1600/donkey_anaphora_kings_wb.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3IALs1_4Xwy8wJcyYea-ol30-s0N9jekpbb2Y011Rpu97WUD97go-2rXkIezn6lCc6RlOYeownT5eEWT0FqH7ufuSLNzNdg_Cfedjil7T73va6FGBO4mKZjhyxS9EUgkvn2TLa4y2Phs/s320/donkey_anaphora_kings_wb.JPG" width="286" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A t-shirt for a (as yet fictitious?) band. Started as an in-class joke which arose from the juxtaposition of two topics:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">(1) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definite_description#Russell.27s_analysis">presupposition failure</a> in sentences like "The king of France is bald", and</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">(2) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_anaphora">issues involving the binding of pronouns</a> in sentences like "Every farmer who owns a donkey<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sub><i>i</i></sub></span> beats it<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sub><i>i</i></sub></span>." </div></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-59842749468138117232011-09-20T19:47:00.001-06:002011-09-20T20:23:58.167-06:00Lizards, Walls, Dragons: on an apparently undocumented Nepali lexeme (भित्ति)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">I have not posted in some time due to dissertating, searching for (and thankfully finding) a job, and subsequently moving. Here's a short posting on a Nepali word which I heard from my wife which I can't find in any Nepali dictionary.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">When we moved into our new house, we discovered that there were a number of <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/House_lizard">house-lizards</a> already resident (and, less amusingly, quite a few German roaches), which our cat has really enjoyed hunting down. I remembered having such lizards in our house in India, and immediately I saw them remarked to my wife "देखो! छिपकली है!" (Look! There's a lizard!"), using the Hindi word for "lizard", छिपकली [<i>chipkalī</i>]. My wife replied, "in Nepali we call them '<i>bhitti'</i> (भित्ति)."</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span id="goog_1058085750"></span><span id="goog_1058085751"></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">I'd never heard this word before, and was curious. I checked Turner's <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/turner/"><i>A comparative and etymological dictionary of the Nepali language</i></a> as well as his mammoth four-volume <i><a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/soas/">A comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan languages</a>.</i> Neither mentions <i>bhitti</i> or anything like it. I also checked a number of Hindi dictionaries, none of which turned up anything. Except for Platts' <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/platts/"><i>A dictionary of Urdu, classical Hindi, and English</i></a>, which has an <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.1:1:2923.platts">entry</a> for भित्तिका <i>bhittikā</i>:</div><blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">S بهتکا भित्तिका <i>bhittikā</i>, s.f. Wall (=<i>bhīt</i>, q.v.); small house lizard.</div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">This isn't quite <i>bhitti</i>, but it's close. I had already supposed (and my wife had already suggested) that <i>bhitti</i> was connected with the word for "wall" (in Nepali,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6092202804301639769&postID=5984274946813811723"> </a>भित्तो <i>bhitto </i>or भित्ता <i>bhitt</i><i>ā</i>), given that they're often found on walls. So <i>bhitti</i> is something like "wall-(related) creature". [Turner does have an <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:1:1202.turner">entry for <i>bhitti</i></a>, but he gives the meaning "wall".] </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">Platts' entry indicates a Sanskrit origin, and indeed <i>bhittikā</i> looks awfully Sanskritic, with the "diminutive" -<i>(i)ka</i> suffix, which is not really always diminutive, but rather can also attach to words with no change in meaning. But here perhaps a diminutive based on "wall" makes sense. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">Interesting, the Sanskrit word for "wall, panel, partition", <i>bhittí</i>, comes from a root √<i>bhid</i>- "to split", which is <a href="http://www.jnanam.net/slade/papers/Slade2008%5B2010%5D-How_%28exactly%29_to_slay_a_dragon-hs121.pdf">very dear to my heart</a> (part of the Proto-Indo-European dragon mythology). </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">So there's a "new" Nepali word: <i>bhitti</i> "house-lizard", which doesn't seem to have been recorded before. It may be dialectal (i.e. I'm not sure that Kathmandu Nepali speakers would use it), and that's perhaps why it wasn't previously recorded. In any case, I think it's a cool word, given that it does sort of connect lizards and dragons, indirectly.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">[Incidentally, Platts suggests that Hindi छिपकली [<i>chipkalī</i>] derives from the root <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.3:1:3894.platts"><i>chip-</i> "to hide"</a>, which is what I always assumed (going back to an early Indo-Aryan <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.1:1:1212.soas"><i>*chapp-</i></a> "press, cover, hide". Turner, on the other hand, derives it from Sanskrit शेप्या <i>śepyā</i> which means "tail" (and "penis", but I think "tail" is what is relevant here). The (potential) Nepali cognate of Hindi छिपकली [<i>chipkalī</i>] is <span class="head"><span class="hi"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1469528581">छेपारो </a><i><a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.0:1:7916.turner">chepāro</a>, </i>though the latter might be more plausibly derived from </span></span>Sanskrit शेप्या <i>śepyā</i><span class="head"><span class="hi"> "tail", especially as </span></span><span class="head"><span class="hi">छेपारो <i>chepāro</i></span></span><span class="head"><span class="hi"><i> </i>seems to refer to outdoor lizards (while<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_607876814"> </a></span></span><a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:1:2139.turner"><span class="head"><span class="hi">माङ्सुलि <i>māṅsuli</i></span></span></a><span class="head"><span class="hi"><i> </i>is used for house lizards)<i>.</i>]</span></span> </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-43387214594414617952011-07-08T11:52:00.000-06:002011-07-08T11:52:01.642-06:00Some ponderings on Google's research on inter-language linking (Bengali <-> Swahili, Nepali <-> Marathi)<div style="text-align: justify;">On the <a href="http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/">Google Research Blog</a>, the <a href="http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/07/languages-of-world-wide-web.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FgJZg+%28Official+Google+Research+Blog%29">latest post (by <span class="byline-author">Daniel Ford & Josh Batson</span>) concerns inter-language linking</a><span class="byline-author"></span>, i.e. looking at webpages' off-site links which go to a page in another language. From the post: </div><blockquote>Most web pages link to other pages on the same web site, and the few off-site links they have are almost always to other pages in the same language. It's as if each language has its own web which is loosely linked to the webs of other languages. However, there are a small but significant number of off-site links between languages. These give tantalizing hints of the world beyond the virtual.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm particularly interested in the data on Indian language webpages' inter-language linking, especially as there are some perplexing findings. But let's start with some findings which aren't really that surprising.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">One of the features measured is the degree to which webpages in a particular language are "introverted" or "extroverted", where more "introverted" webpage languages have fewer inter-language off-site links. The data are summarised here:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Webpage languages which are higher (on the y-axis) are more introverted; webpage languages which are further to the right (on the x-axis) represent languages with a greater number of total webpages.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">First, a word about the apparently high degree of English-language webpage "extroversion". The relatively high percentage of English-language websites which link to non-English websites is unlikely to represent a high percentage of<i> native </i>English speakers who are linking to non-English websites. Rather, this would seem to simply reflect English's status as a/the world language, so that even sites whose audience may largely consist of non-native English speakers may choose to create English-language websites simply in order to have a larger audience. And I suspect the "extroverted" English-language webpages are of that type: English is the language chosen for this type of website due to its ability to reach a more "universal" audience, but the site itself may have "local" interests, reflected by its linking to non-English language websites.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But it's the Indian languages that I really want to talk about. Given the large number of Hindi speakers, one might at first be surprised at the relatively small number of Hindi language sites (compared to say Japanese). This, I think, is easily explained by the status of English in India, especially amongst people who would be more likely to create and use Internet sites. In another words, many native Hindi speakers would choose to create English- rather Hindi-language webpages. The high degree of insularity ("introversion") of Hindi-language webpages in terms of inter-language linkage is likely not unconnected. In the context of modern India, choosing to create a Hindi- rather than English-language website is already a more "insular" choice, given the widespread use of English in India itself. Those website content creator who choose Hindi medium over English medium are likely to have more "insular" interests, and thus would not be as likely to link to non-Hindi sites (and even less likely to link to non-Indian language sites).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So, thus far, there isn't really anything terribly surprisingly about these findings. But when we look at the particular inter-language link connections which are strongest, especially in the case of Indian languages, there are some weird data:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">[The arrows indicate directionality of linkage; red connections are stronger than green connections.] As <span class="byline-author">Daniel Ford and Josh Batson</span> point out: </div><blockquote>Surprising links include those from Hindi to Ukrainian, Kurdish to Swedish, Swahili to Tagalog and Bengali, and Esperanto to Polish.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">I would add that the Swahili-Bengali and Swahili-Tagalog links are not only strong (red), but also bidirectional (e.g. Swahili pages are linking to Bengali pages, and Bengali pages to Swahili pages). It is hard to think of convincing explanations for the connections between Swahili and Bengali (or Swahili and Tagalog). One possibility comes to mind, which is that, in terms of total Internet representation, the number of pages in Bengali, Swahili, and Tagalog is relatively small. Here the Google researchers' webpage selection criteria is presumably relevant:</div><blockquote>The particular choice of pages in our corpus here reflects decisions about what is `important'. For example, in a language with few pages every page is considered important, while for languages with more pages some selection method is required, based on pagerank for example.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">This means that for languages with a smaller Internet population individuals could have a greater effect on the particular inter-language linkages than is the case for languages with larger Internet populations. And thus perhaps the existence of a few creators of Bengali webpage content who happen to live in central eastern Africa could be responsible for some these unexpected inter-language linkages. I would be curious to what sort of Bengali sites link to Swahili sites (and vice-versa) to see if this is a plausible idea.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is something which worries me about these data though: look at the linkages between the Indo-Aryan languages (Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Nepali, Hindi). Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, and Nepali all have strong bidirectional links with Hindi, which is to be expected given Hindi's status as a Indian <i>lingua franca</i>. Notice however that other than being linked with Hindi, none of the other Indo-Aryan languages are inter-linked with each other: except for Nepali and Marathi.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In India,there are large Nepali communities in West Bengal and other eastern parts of India.Marathi is spoken in Maharashtra in the far western part of India. I would be unsurprised if there were strong Marathi-Gujarati inter-language linkages (since these two languages are spoken in the neighbouring states), or if there were a strong inter-language linkage between Nepali and Bengali. But a Nepali-Marathi link doesn't make sense, at least in absence of other intra-Indo-Aryan linkages.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is one property which I can think of which does link Nepali and Marathi, namely the fact that they both are written in <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Devanagari">Devanagari script</a> (also used for Hindi). Gujarati, Punjabi, and Bengali, on the other hand, are each written in their own scripts (distinct from Devanagari). So I wonder if there is any possibility that the script is creating "false hits" when the off-site link connections for Nepali and Marathi are being computed. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">That also makes me worry about the other surprising inter-language linkages, such as Bengali-Swahili, Swahili-Tagalog. Not, obviously, that these languages share a common script, but whether some of the apparent connections are artefacts of the algorithm, whether due to use of a common script or some other factor. If they're not simply artefacts, then it certainly would be interesting to find out why, for instance, Bengali-language and Swahili-language webpages are linking to each other. </div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-35112219623352750502011-07-03T09:16:00.000-06:002011-07-03T09:16:21.204-06:00What speechitatest you? On engineered language change amongst high schoolers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>The latest Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, on high school language change:<br />
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The type of language change the students are shown undergoing would require more than a source of new lexical items, I would think. <br />
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We find morphological change: <i>Wouldsest</i> for 2nd person singular present of "would".<br />
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And syntactic change: <i>What speechitated Harvard?</i> for "What did Harvard say?" (note the necessity of <i>do</i>-periphrasis in modern English).<br />
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How could a thesaurus (of fake synonyms) drive these sorts of changes? [Of course, under <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Minimalism_%28syntax%29">Minimalism</a>, parametric variation, including differences in word order, is theorised to be a reflex of formal features which are borne by lexical items. So perhaps if the thesaurus had some way of encoding abstract syntactic features in such a way that they would be picked up along with the phonological and semantic aspects of the lexical item....]</div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-24733543140085974382011-05-18T10:39:00.009-06:002011-05-21T11:43:40.990-06:00The Rapture, now with more Harpies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The latest <a href="http://xkcd.com/900/">xkcd</a>:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/religions.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="159" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/religions.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/religions.png">[click to embiggen]</a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Mouse-over text: But to us there is but one God, plus or minus one. --1 Corinthians 8:6±2.)</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first panel is really the funniest bit: a pun on <b><a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Velociraptor"><i>raptor</i></a></b> (referencing the <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Jurassic_Park_%28film%29"><i>Jurassic Park</i> movie</a>). But in fact, <b><i>rapture</i></b> and <b><i>raptor</i></b> are not only phonologically similar, they're also etymologically related: both deriving from Latin <i>rapt-</i>, the past participial stem of <i>rapere</i> "to seize, to snatch, to carry off". </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Also from Latin <i>rapere</i> are <b><i>subreptitious</i></b> "snatching under", <b><i>rapacious</i></b> "(greedily) snatching (with the intent to eat)", and <b><i>rape</i></b> (originally "carrying off", then "carrying off, esp. with the intent of sexually despoiling", later coming to refer specifically to "forced sexual intercourse").</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><b>Raptor</b></i> in classical Latin meant "robber, thief", which is its meaning also in early English, later on in English it can also mean "rapist". From the 18th century, it was applied to "birds of prey", whence its later extension to refer to a particular "dromaeosaurid dinosaur", the <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Velociraptor"><i>Velociraptor</i></a> "swift seizer".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><b>Rapture</b></i>, on the other hand, is not found in classical Latin, though it does appear in mediaeval Latin. The earliest citation the <i>OED</i> provides is from an 8th-century British text, in the form <i>raptura</i>, referring to "poaching". Its use in English, however, originally is confined to the sense (attested from the 16th century) of "extreme joy, intense delight". Though it was also used in the 17th and 18th centuries to refer to the "carrying off" or "rape" of women. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">And not until the 18th century does <b><i>rapture</i></b> acquire its Millenarial sense (<a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rapture#Doctrinal_history">associated with ideas originally advanced by the Puritans Increase and Cotton Mather in Massachusetts</a>). The word <b><i>rapture</i></b> in this Millenarial philosophy apparently picks up on the Latin word <i>rapiemur</i> (from <i>rapere</i>, see above) used in 1 <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/1_Thessalonians">Thessalonians</a> 4:17 to refer to the faithful being "carried up" into the air (to meet Christ) in the <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Vulgate">Latin Vulgate</a>:</div><blockquote><abbr title="...then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord">deinde nos qui vivimus qui relinquimur simul <b>rapiemur</b> cum illis in nubibus obviam Domino in aera et sic semper cum Domino erimus</abbr></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">The Latin Vulgate of course is a translation of the <a href="http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?book=44&chapter=4&lid=en&side=r&verse=17&zoomSlider=0">Koine Greek text</a>, and in this passage Latin <i>rapiemur</i> glosses the Greek <abbr title="harpagēsometha"><i>ἁρπαγησόμεθα</i></abbr> "we shall be caught up":</div><blockquote><abbr title="epeita hēmeis oi zōntes hoi perileipomenoi ama sun autois *harpagesometha* en nephelais eis apantesin tou kuriou eis aera; kai houtos pantote sun kurio esometha.">ἔπειτα ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι ἅμα σὺν αὐτοῖς <b>ἁρπαγησόμεθα</b> ἐν νεφέλαις εἰς ἀπάντησιν τοῦ κυρίου εἰς ἀέρα: καὶ οὕτως πάντοτε σὺν κυρίῳ ἐσόμεθα.</abbr></blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Interestingly, Greek <abbr title="harpazō"><i>ἁρπάζω</i></abbr> "catch up, snatch up"---of which <abbr title="harpagēsometha"><i>ἁρπαγησόμεθα</i></abbr> is the first person plural future passive indicative form---originates from the same Proto-Indo-European root as the Latin <i>rapere</i> which St Jerome uses to gloss it: PIE *<i>h</i><sub>1</sub><i>rep-</i> "to snatch" (also the source of English <i><b>reap</b></i>).<br />
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</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">From the same Greek root as <abbr title="harpazō"><i>ἁρπάζω</i></abbr> "catch up" is the word which comes into English as <b><i><a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Harpy">harpy</a></i></b>: Greek <i><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aalphabetic+letter%3D*a%3Aentry+group%3D309%3Aentry%3D*%28%2Farpuiai">ἅρπυια</a></i> "the snatcher". So, with that, I leave you with some Harpies to flavour your Rapturous visions, courtesy of <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9">Gustave Doré</a>:</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/DVinfernoForestOfSuicides_m.jpg/487px-DVinfernoForestOfSuicides_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/DVinfernoForestOfSuicides_m.jpg/487px-DVinfernoForestOfSuicides_m.jpg" width="324" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:DVinfernoForestOfSuicides_m.jpg">engraving by Gustave Doré illustrating Canto XIII of Divine Comedy, Inferno</a><br />
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</div></div>[Edit (20 May 2011): Now see Mark Liberman's <a href="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3151">"No Word for Rapture" on Language Log</a> for further etymological discussion of <i>rapture</i>.]</div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-9576264103956929932011-05-15T23:58:00.000-06:002011-05-15T23:58:31.993-06:00λ♥[love] (Linguistics Love Song)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mktl_7Hr4GA?rel=0" width="425"></iframe><br />
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See the <a href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/%CE%BB%E2%99%A5love-linguistics-love-song/">Sentence First</a> blog for the lyrics and also <a href="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3139">Language Log</a> for comments and explanation.<br />
<br />
[I'm currently dissertating, thus the lack of posts.]<br />
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</div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-14885954765264711232011-03-23T12:22:00.003-06:002011-05-18T23:12:11.317-06:00Linguistics Behind the Wicket (LBW) #1: Shahid Afridi and Free Love Friday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: justify;">In belated celebration of the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/9429868.stm">breaking of Australia's 34-match unbeaten run in World Cup matches by Pakistan</a>, I offer the first in what I plan to be a recurring series of cricket-related linguistic investigations. I'm dubbing this series <b><a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lbw">LBW</a></b> ("<b>Linguistics Behind (the) Wicket</b>").</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpi-wa6MXQqt9vrYK2u66t-NCyfqocGFG3zCmjFvSJ3V7KyCSEucxtrM-h8nJ0HOrJnA_31BO2-mDoVuHATuXrDT9NbCh3k_zCYfEjfwQBQrSYtvjQLNTSMTOFxgUYv8-kZL9evu5d7P8/s1600/130244.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Shahid Afridi after the 2011 World Cup Pakistani victory over Australia" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpi-wa6MXQqt9vrYK2u66t-NCyfqocGFG3zCmjFvSJ3V7KyCSEucxtrM-h8nJ0HOrJnA_31BO2-mDoVuHATuXrDT9NbCh3k_zCYfEjfwQBQrSYtvjQLNTSMTOFxgUYv8-kZL9evu5d7P8/s400/130244.jpg" width="293" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Shahid Afridi during the Pakistani World Cup 2011 match with Australia</b> </span></div><br />
This first investigation is a study in <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Onomastics">onomastics</a>, taking as its subject the name of the skipper of the Pakistan team: <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Shahid_Afridi">Shahid Afridi</a> (Urdu: <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ur/wiki/%D8%B4%D8%A7%DB%81%D8%AF_%D8%A2%D9%81%D8%B1%DB%8C%D8%AF%DB%8C">شاہد آفریدی</a>). To find out the connection between <b><i>Afridi</i></b> and <i><b>free</b>, </i><b>"love"</b>, and <b><i>Friday</i></b>, read on! </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">[A brief word about the sources of <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hindi/Urdu">Hindi/Urdu</a> words: alongside of the native Indo-Aryan vocabulary (inherited, ultimately, from a vernacular cousin of Sanskrit), both the Hindi and Urdu varieties of Hindi/Urdu employ a large number of Persian and Arabic words (as a result of the <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mughal_Empire">Mughal invasion of India</a>).]</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Shahid</i> (Hindi: शहीद; Urdu: شاہد) is an Hindi/Urdu word of Perso-Arabic origins, meaning "martyr" (religious or political). It derives ultimately from an Arabic root شہد, which Platts[1] glosses as meaning "to give testimony". Not being a semiticist, I cannot offer any further interesting discussion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is rather the name <b><i>Afridi</i></b> (Hindi: आफ़्रीदी; Urdu: آفریدی) which is of more interest for me. Jokingly, I have sometimes referred to Afridi as "Afriti", since his aggressive cricketing (Afridi holds the record (37 deliveries) for <a href="http://www.itsonlycricket.com/entry/771/">fastest century in one-day cricket</a>) and mercurial temperament is suggestive of an Arabian <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ifreet">Afreet</a> (an angry sort of djinn): Arabic <i>ʻIfrīt</i> عفريت, pl. <i>ʻAfārīt</i> عفاريت. [The origin of this word is rather opaque to me: Platts[1] derives it from an Arabic root عفر meaning "to roll in the dust"; the Wikipedia article suggests that it comes from عفرت (<i>`afrt</i>) meaning "the evil"; the translation of the Qur'anic passage, Sura An-Naml (27:39-40) seems gloss it as "strong one". Maybe semiticists could enlighten me here?]</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, <b><i>Āfrīdī</i></b>, in fact, has no connection with Arabic "Afreet". Rather, it is a word of Iranian origin, which, being the name of a certain <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Afridi">Pathan tribe</a>, is thus presumably indicative of Shahid Afridi's ancestral origins. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Khyberrifles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="afridi soldiers" border="0" height="263" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Khyberrifles.jpg" title="afridi soldiers" width="320" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Some <i>afridis</i> in the Khyber Rifles</span></b></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In terms of its etymology, the word <b><i>āfrīdī</i></b> can be derived from the Persian word <b>آفريده <i>āfrīda</i></b>, which means "creature" (noun) or "created" (adjective). (The <i>āfrīdī</i>s are thus perhaps "the created people".)<br />
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<b><i>Āfrīda</i></b> itself can be derived as the past/perfect participial form of the Avestan root <i><b>frī</b>-</i> "love" combined with the prefix <i>ā-</i> (theoretically contributing a sense of "near, towards", but sometimes resulting in idiosyncratic meanings). Avestan <b><i>āfrīda</i></b> would corresponds to Sanskrit <b><i>āprīta</i></b>, both meaning "gladdened, joyous" etc.<br />
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The semantic change from Avestan "gladdened, joyous" to Persian "created" is intriguing. The earlier meaning of "joy" still seems to be present in Persian (and Hindi/Urdu) <i>āfrīn</i>/<i>āfirīn</i>, which can be used to mean "bravo! well done!" (though it too can have the "create" sense, at least in the compound <i>jahān-āfirīn</i> "creator of the world").<br />
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The root underlying both Sanskrit <b><i>āprīta</i></b> and Avestan <b><i>āfrīda</i></b> is Proto-Indo-Iranian *<b><i>prī-</i></b>, which itself can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root *<i><b>prī</b>-</i> whose most basic sense is "to love". <br />
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The PIE root *<i><b>prī</b>-</i> (see Watkins[2]) is also the source of English <b><i>free</i></b> (from Old English <i>frēo</i>, derived from the verb <i>frēon</i> "to love, to set free"), <b><i>friend</i></b> (from Old English <i>frēond</i> "friend, lover"), and <b><i>Friday</i></b> (from Old English <i>Frīgedæge</i> "<a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Frigg">Frigg</a>'s day", where <i>Frigg</i>, the name of <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Frigg">the Scandinavian goddess of love</a>, Odin's wife, derives from Proto-Germanic *<i>frijjō</i> "beloved, wife"); as well as Old English <b><i>frioðu</i></b> "peace", which sadly has no direct reflexes in modern English.<br />
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In fact, PIE *<i><b>prī</b>-</i> underlies not only the Persian tribal name <b><i>Afridi</i></b>, but also a variety of Germanic-derived names (see Watkins[2]), including:<br />
<ol><li><b><i>Siegfried</i></b>, <span style="font-size: x-small;">from Old High German <i>Sigi-<b>frith</b></i> "victorious <b>peace</b>"</span></li>
<li><b><i>Godfrey</i></b>, <span style="font-size: x-small;">from Old High German <i>Goda-<b>frid</b></i> "<b>peace</b> of god"</span></li>
<li><b><i>Frederick</i></b>, <span style="font-size: x-small;">from French <i>Frédéric</i>, itself a borrowing of Old High German <i><b>Fridu</b>-rīh</i> "<b>peaceful</b> ruler"</span></li>
<li><b><i>Geoffrey</i></b>, <span style="font-size: x-small;">from Old French <i>Geoffroi</i> from mediaeval Latin <i>Gaufridus</i>, itself a borrowing from Germanic *<i>Gawja-<b>frithu</b>-</i> "(having a) <b>peaceful</b> region"</span></li>
</ol></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thus perhaps <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Geoffrey_Boycott">Geoffrey Boycott</a> can mention his "<i><b>prī</b>-" </i>connection with Shahid Afridi if he ever needs some filler material when commentating a Pakistan match...<br />
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So, this concludes the first LBW. I'm open to suggestions for other cricketers or cricket terminology to etymologise for future episodes. <br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><u>Bibliography:</u></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]Platts, John T. 1884. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1881338606/beowulfonsteo-20/103-1779062-0455006?creative=125581&camp=2321&link_code=as1"><i>A dictionary of Urdū, classical Hindī, and English.</i></a> London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1884. (Reprinted, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2000.) [<a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/platts/">online</a>]</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2]Watkins, Calvert. 2000. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0618082506/beowulfonsteo-20/103-1779062-0455006?creative=125581&camp=2321&link_code=as1"><i>The American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European roots.</i></a> Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2nd edn.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3]McGregor, R.S. 1993. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019864339X/beowulfonsteo-20/103-1779062-0455006?creative=125581&camp=2321&link_code=as1"><i>The Oxford Hindi-English dictionary.</i></a> Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Indian edition: New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994.)</span></div></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-77188653307513772742011-03-08T13:26:00.005-07:002011-05-27T17:00:28.847-06:00Indian voices from 1913-1929: Gramophone Recordings from the Linguistic Survey of India<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/George_Abraham_Grierson">George Grierson</a> pioneered the vast <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Linguistic_Survey_of_India"><i>Linguistic Survey of India</i></a> in 1894, an immensely useful resource for anyone working on languages of the Indian subcontinent. A set of recordings were also made as part of the survey, which were recently uncovered in the British Library. These recordings are now freely available from the University of Chicago's Digital South Asian Library at <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/lsi/">http://dsal.uchicago.edu/lsi/</a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/lsi/context_maps/lsi_composite.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/lsi/context_maps/lsi_composite.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In order that the languages might be more easily compared (and because "it contains the three personal pronouns, most of the cases found in the declension of nouns, and the present, past, and future tenses of the verb"), Grierson chose to use translations of the Biblical "Parable of the prodigal son", and many of the recordings are of speakers reciting this parable in their native language.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Here is the recording of the "Parable of the prodigal son":</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> In <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/lsi/6960AK">Hindi</a> (one of the major languages of India)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> In <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/lsi/6838AK">Khasi</a> (a Mon-Khmer language spoken in Shillong, Meghayala, [the former capital of Assam])</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">OPEN Magazine has a great article about these recordings, their rediscovery and content, available here: <a href="http://openthemagazine.com/article/arts-letters/voices-from-colonial-india">Voices from Colonial India</a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's well worth a read, but here are a few highlights. For instance:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some of the Sanskrit recording took a bit of doings. Background: strict followers of the Vedic/Hindu tradition are supposed to safeguard the Vedas from the ears of those who are not <i>dvija</i>s ("twice-born", those who wear the sacred thread). This prohibition was taken seriously by some authorities, for instance, in the <i>Gautama Dharma Sutra</i> we find:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>अथ हास्य वेदमुपशृणवतस्त्रपुजतुभ्यांश्रोत्रप्रतिपूरणमुदाहरणे जिह्वाच्छेदो धारणेशरीरभेदः<br />
"Now if he [a <i>Shudra</i> = a non-<i>dvija</i>/untouchable] listens intentionally to (a recitation of) the Veda, his ears shall be filled with (molten) tin or lac.<i> </i>[<i>Gautama Dharma Sutra</i> 12.4] </blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;">From the OPEN Magazine article:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>...All of this, of course, could not have been accomplished without some Brahminical drama. The scholar Ganganath Jha, who was approached for the Sanskrit reading, was scandalised to learn that a <i>mlechha</i> [Sanskrit for "barbarian", "foreign devil", and thus by definition a non-<i>dvija</i>] would be privy to his chaste Sanskrit. A demand was made for a certifiably Brahmin gramophone operator. The Raj, almost as unbending as Brahmins, refused. A compromise was reached: Jha sat in a room and spoke into a large horn-like object that projected his voice into another room where the operator sat. Communication between the two was by means of a complicated system of switches to ensure that the operator didn’t physically hear the Sanskrit. And that was enough to assuage the Brahmin guilt about speaking Sanskrit into a device that held the power to broadcast it to the world... </blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Jha's recording must have been of some Vedic text, because I am unaware of any general prohibition against speaking Sanskrit in the presence of non-<i>dvija</i>s. Sadly, I cannot find this recording on the University of Chicago's Digital South Asian Library site (they do have a general entry for Jha here: <a href="https://coral.uchicago.edu:8443/display/lasa/Ganganath+Jha+Ken.+Sanskrit+Vidyapith+%28Allahabad%2C+India%29">https://coral.uchicago.edu:8443/display/lasa/Ganganath+Jha+Ken.+Sanskrit+Vidyapith+%28Allahabad%2C+India%29</a>).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">[Brahminical rationalisations can be both amusing and creative: My advisor, who is a (German) Sanskrit scholar, once told me about one spoken Sanskrit conference he attended (where, I believe, he was the only non-Brahmin/non-Indian) at which there was one attendee who was a bit unhappy with the presence of a non-Brahmin, and was careful not to let my advisor's shadow touch him... Other attendees came up with rationalisations: <i>German</i> sounds a bit like <i>Sharma</i>, a Brahmin surname, and so they theorised that Germans are perhaps "long-lost" Brahmins, and therefore my advisor's presence could be a acceptable.]</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another interesting bit from the OPEN Magazine article:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>Many of the speakers chose to sing or recite poems or limericks. Particularly lingering is the voice of Hassaina of Delhi who has clips in the Ahirwati and Mewati languages. Who was this girl who sang with such sang-froid of love and waiting on 26 April 1920? Nothing is known of her. She survives only as a voice. </blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Here is <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/lsi/6838AK">Hassaina's song: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/lsi/6838AK</a><br />
<br />
[27 May 2011: Nepali is actually represented too, <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Nepal/comments/g0tr7/recording_of_a_nepali_speaker_from_1920/">hidden under "Khaskura"</a>, including both the <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/lsi/6948AK">parable of the prodigal son translation</a>, and a <a href="http://dsal.uchicago.edu/lsi/6949AK">delightful song</a> sung by a <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Shillong">Shillongwala</a> Nepali, Babu Dhan.] </div></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-82255031888024704912011-02-10T11:35:00.010-07:002011-03-06T17:26:16.761-07:00Minecræft. (Minakraft?)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: justify;">The <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Minecraft#Reception">biggest indie game of 2010</a>: <a href="http://www.minecraft.net/">Minecraft</a>. Since it shares half a compound noun with the <a href="http://staefcraeft.blogspot.com/2009/10/stfcrft.html">title of this blog</a>, that seems as good an excuse as any to look at the "etymology" of<i> Minecraft</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">First, in case you're unfamiliar with Minecraft, here's a video:<br />
<br />
</div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="255" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/m_yqOoUMHPg?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="400"></iframe><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
In terms of Minecraft's design inspiration, its creator, <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Markus_Persson" title="Markus Persson">Markus "Notch" Persson</a>, <a href="http://notch.tumblr.com/post/227922045/the-origins-of-minecraft">attributes its origins</a> to <a href="http://thesiteformerlyknownas.zachtronicsindustries.com/?p=713">Infiniminer</a>, <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper">Dungeon Keeper</a>, <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Left_4_dead">Left 4 Dead</a>, and <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper">Dwarf Fortress</a> (the last <a href="http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=19469&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a">has been described</a> as a mixture of <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Nethack">Nethack</a>, <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Oregon_Trail">Oregon Trail</a>, <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Sims">The Sims</a>, and <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lemmings">Lemmings</a>).<br />
<br />
<u><b>Etymology 1: "the art of mining"</b></u><br />
If<i> Minecraft </i>were truly parallel to <i>stæfcræft</i>, then it would be what is referred to in Sanskrit grammar as a <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tatpurusha">tatpuruṣa (तत्पुरुष) compound </a>, that is, a compound of the form YX, where X is the head noun and Y relates to X as if it were some non-nominative case form, e.g. a genitive, dative, etc. For example, the <i>tatpuruṣa</i> compound <i>mousehunter</i> is a hunter (=X) <i>of</i> mice (=Y). If this were the case then <i>Minecraft</i> would mean something like "the craft of mining", i.e. "the art of mining",---which in fact is an analysis which makes eminent sense, given that mining is a major component of the game.<br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
<u><b>Etymology 2: "mining and crafting"</b></u><br />
Another possibility, however, is that <i>Minecraft</i> is what is referred to in Sanskrit grammar as a <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dvandva"><i>dvandva</i> (Sanskrit द्वन्द्व <i>dvandva</i> 'pair') compound</a>, that is a compound of the form YX, where X and Y could be otherwise expressed as X <i>and</i> Y. For example, the <i>dvandva</i> compound <i>producer-director</i> <i>(duo) </i>is <strike>someone who is a producer and a director</strike> a pair of people, one of whom is a producer, and one a director [examples: <a href="http://www.scrollindia.com/art-zone/1867director-biju-vattappara-talks-about-his-debut-film-ramaravanan-the-superstardom-fans-assoication-menace-and-a-new-producer-director-duo-in-malayalam-film-industry-including-his-new-film-swantha/">(1)</a>, <a href="http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1989-01-02/features/8901010267_1_barry-levinson-first-tom-cruise-producer-mark-johnson">(2)</a>, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/53/celebrity-09_Brian-Grazer-Ron-Howard_BAW0.html">(3)</a>, <a href="http://www.wordnik.com/words/producer-director/examples?page=2">(4)</a>]. This would also seem a plausible analysis, given that aside from mining, <a href="http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Crafting">crafting</a> items is the other major component of the game (well, alongside trying not to get eaten by <a href="http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Zombie">zombies</a> or blown up by <a href="http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Creeper">creepers</a>).<br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
<u><b>An excursus on <i>mine</i> and <i>craft</i></b></u> <br />
A third possibility, which presents itself in view of the fact that the game's creator, Persson, is Swedish, is that it is indeed a <i>tatpuruṣa</i> compound, but a Swedish compound rather than an English one. To explore this possibility, it's worthwhile to delve deeper into the etymologies of <i>mine</i> and <i>craft</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Mine</i>, in English, derives from an Anglo-Norman word <i>mine</i>, which was more or less a form of Old French (the word <i>mine</i> is found c1220 in Old French with sense 'underground cavity or excavation where metals and minerals are found'). The Old French/Anglo-Norman word itself was most likely borrowed from some continental Celtic language (compare Welsh <i>mwyn</i> 'mineral, mine' (14th cent.); Old Irish <i>méin</i> 'ore, metal'; Scottish Gaelic <i>mèinn</i> 'ore, mine'; further etymology of the Celtic words is uncertain). A Swedish cognate, <i>mina</i>, is attested from the 17th century; cognate forms appear in other Scandinavian and Germanic languages, as well as in other Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, etc.), but all appear to ultimately be borrowings from the French. The Scandinavian words are likely to have been borrowed from German <i>Mine</i> (itself, of course, also originally borrowed from the French word).<br />
<br />
<i>Craft</i> is an interesting word. Like <i>mine</i> its ultimate ancestry is uncertain (i.e. there is no obvious reconstructable Proto-Indo-European source for either <i>mine</i> or <i>craft</i>), it appears only in Germanic, with no apparent cognates in other Indo-European languages. The origin sense of <i>craft</i> is "power, might, strength". This was one of the prevalent senses of <i>craft</i> in early English (the last attestation in the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> for this sense is from 1526, W. Bonde <i>Pylgrimage of Perfection</i> ii. sig. Kviii, "By the <b>craft</b> [=power] of nature."), and this is in fact the <i>only</i> sense borne by its cognates in other Germanic languages.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Etymology 3 ("the Swedish etymology"): "the power of the mine"</u></b><br />
The development into the more familiar English senses of <i>craft</i>, e.g. "skill, art" is a solely English development---though it took place very early in English, as evidenced by an abundance of words in Old English of the type <i>stæfcræft</i> ("skill of letters; grammar"). This development seems to have involved a metaphorical extension of <i>craft</i>'s original sense "(physical) power" as "intellectual power" and therefore "ability, skill, art". Thus, its Swedish cognate, <i>kraft</i>, has only the more original sense "power, might, strength". Therefore, if <i>Minecraft</i> were to be actually be a Swedish coinage (or, at least, an anglicisation of such a compound, which, I think, would have been <i>Minakraft</i>), then it could be treating as a (<i>tatpuruṣa</i>) compound meaning something like "power of the mine".<br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
<u><b>The real etymology</b></u><br />
However, none of these proposed etymologies appear to in fact be correct. Persson on his <a href="http://notch.tumblr.com/post/107676487/minecraft-order-of-the-stone">blog (14 May 2009)</a> originally proposed to call the game "Minecraft: Order of the Stone", a name "awesome but insane people in <a href="http://tig.wikia.com/wiki/TIGIRC">#tigirc</a> helped [him] come up". Further investigation <a href="http://tig.wikia.com/wiki/Minecraft">reveals that</a> "[it was] <a href="http://tig.wikia.com/wiki/RinkuHero">RinkuHero</a>...who suggested "Minecraft" (as an analogy to "Starcraft"), having not played the game and knowing nothing about it other than that it was a type of strategy game involving mines."<br />
<br />
So <i>Minecraft</i> is simply an analogical form based on <i>Starcraft</i> (Starcraft is a game having to do with stars, and therefore a game having to do with mines is Minecraft). Now, <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Starcraft">Starcraft</a> itself appears to be analogical form based on the title of one of <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment">Blizzard Entertainment</a>'s other games(/game franchises): <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Warcraft">Warcraft</a>. If the compound type (<i>tatpuruṣa</i>) is carried over in the analogical process, then, in a sense, <i>Minecraft</i> should indeed mean something like "art of mining", which was the first of the proposed etymologies.<br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
<u><b>Miscellany: wars and crafts</b></u><br />
The word <i>warcraft</i> itself is of course not a new coinage specific to the Blizzard Entertainment series. Interestingly though, <i>warcraft</i> does appear to be a relatively recent coinage (recent compared to the history of English at least), with the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i>'s earliest citation being from around 1660 (T. Fuller <i>Worthies</i> (1662) Lanc. 124 "Duke Hambleton‥had Officers who did Ken the <b>War-craft</b>, as well as any of our Age."). Though <i>warcraft</i> itself appears relatively late in the history of English, there are earlier formations ending in <i>-craft</i> which bear the same meaning that appear in Old English, including <i>beaducræft(ig)</i>, <i>gūðcræft</i>, and <i>wīgcræft</i> (the last is the most widespread; the first two occur only in <a href="http://www.heorot.dk/"><i>Beowulf</i></a>).<br />
<br />
Incidentally, <i>war</i> is a word with a weird history, it's a "returnee"-type borrowed word: it derives from a Germanic word, borrowed into French, and thence "given back" to English (a Germanic language). [It appears in late Old English (c1050) in the form <i>wyrre, werre</i>, a word borrowed from North-eastern Old French <i>werre</i> (cp. modern French descendant, <i>guerre</i> "war") which itself was borrowed from Old High German <i>werra</i> "confusion, discord, strife", related to the Old High German verb <i>werran</i> "to bring into confusion or discord" (cp. modern German <i>wirren</i> "to confuse, perplex"), ultimately from a Proto-Germanic root *<i>werz-</i>, *<i>wers-</i>, which is the origin also of the modern English word <i>worse</i>.] </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b><br />
</b></u><br />
<u><b>Anglo-Saxon Minecraft</b></u><br />
Returning to Minecraft: what---you didn't ask---would be the Old English form of <i>Minecraft</i>, given that we have determined that it must mean "art/skill of mining"? Probably <i>Delfingcræft</i>.<br />
<br />
Thus, on that note, we close with some gratuitous screenshots of Heorot, the famous meadhall of <i>Beowulf</i>, as constructed in Minecraft:<br />
<br />
</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioJnpTcvvKT23fsUfCGtEj6WqAf8j1VcnpCJkjATJbuEmN36k-qylTUm2FaF1LDGFd4t2V4_zdrMIX6HC6HQ1DYMl4pvpF4r9K0-cJda1D097bWq1KhHgcanQtTFQ3Njb3n2BzusvCIr8/s1600/Screenshot-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioJnpTcvvKT23fsUfCGtEj6WqAf8j1VcnpCJkjATJbuEmN36k-qylTUm2FaF1LDGFd4t2V4_zdrMIX6HC6HQ1DYMl4pvpF4r9K0-cJda1D097bWq1KhHgcanQtTFQ3Njb3n2BzusvCIr8/s320/Screenshot-1.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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</div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-74127746018388629682011-02-04T07:40:00.006-07:002011-02-04T11:54:39.607-07:00Trocheeotomy? Trocheeectomy.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The latest <a href="http://xkcd.com/856/">xkcd</a>:<br />
<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/trochee_fixation.png"><br />
<img alt="If you Huffman-coded all the 'random' things everyone on the internet has said over the years, you'd wind up with, like, 30 or 40 bytes *tops*." src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/trochee_fixation.png" title="If you Huffman-coded all the 'random' things everyone on the internet has said over the years, you'd wind up with, like, 30 or 40 bytes *tops*." width="400" /></a><br />
<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/trochee_fixation.png">Click for larger image</a><br />
<br />
<div>Trocheeotomy? Or should it be trochee-ectomy? (~trocheeectomy)<br />
<br />
[Some additional things:<br />
<br />
Here's an interesting chart of trochee bigrams from the <a href="http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/04/trochee-chart/">xkcd blag</a>:<br />
<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/trochees_chart.png"><img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/trochees_chart.png" width="400" /><br />
[again, click for larger image]</a><br />
<br />
And Mark Liberman on Language Log offers some discussion <a href="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2944">here</a>. (I imagine xkcd is thinking of <i>Snow Crash</i> rather than <i>The Big U</i>. By the bye, the linguistic-y part of <i>Snow Crash</i> I've always felt to be the weakest part of the book.) ]<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #666666;">The alt-text:</div><a name='more'></a></div><div style="color: #666666;">If you Huffman-coded all the 'random' things everyone on the internet has said over the years, you'd wind up with, like, 30 or 40 bytes *tops*.</div></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-16161591010890272182011-01-24T12:03:00.011-07:002011-02-04T11:40:49.202-07:00Good-bye, Good Luck, and Godspeed: On linguistic (de)secularisation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Godspeed</b> <br />
What exactly does someone mean if they wish you <i>Godspeed</i>? Here's one answer, courtesy of comedian Eddie Izzard:<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="youtube-player" frameborder="0" height="255" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hE3LOHltBSM?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" type="text/html" width="400"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000ALA3P/beowulfonsteo-20/103-1779062-0455006?creative=125581&camp=2321&link_code=as1">Eddie Izzard, <i>Circle </i>(2000)</a><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In fact, the <i>speed</i> of <i>Godspeed</i> refers to one of <i>speed</i>'s other early senses, namely "success" or "(good) luck, fortune, prosperity". The <i>OED</i>'s [1] earliest citation for <i>Godspeed</i> is from Tyndale's Bible translation:</div><blockquote style="color: blue;"><span class="noIndent" id="eid159831236">[1526] </span><span class="noIndent" id="eid159831236"> <i>Bible (<span class="roman">Tyndale</span>) - </i></span><span class="noIndent" id="eid159831236">2 John 10</span> Yf ther come eny vnto you and bringe not this learninge him receave not to housse: neither bid him <b>God spede</b>.<br />
(Roughly: "If anyone comes to you who does not bring this (Christian) learning, don't let him into your house, nor wish him <i>Godspeed</i>.")</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">In such early uses of <i>Godspeed</i>, it appears that <i>spede</i> is used as a subjunctive verbal form, so that <i>God spede</i> means something like "may God speed (you)", i.e. "may God grant you success/prosperity". </div><blockquote style="color: blue;"><span class="noIndent" id="eid159831270">[1597] <span class="smallCaps">Shakespeare</span> <i>Richard II</i> <span class="smallCaps">i.</span> iv. 31</span> A brace of draimen bid, <b>God speed him wel</b>.</blockquote></div>More familiar is the use of <i>Godspeed</i> as a noun-noun compound, as in:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;"><span class="noIndent" id="eid159831284">[1865] <span class="smallCaps">J. R. Lowell</span> <i>Polit. Ess.</i> (1888) 229</span> Every humane and generous heart‥has wished us <b>God-speed</b>.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">However, I have reason to suspect that examples like those from Tyndale and Shakespeare represent a later refashioning: in Old English, the verb <i>sp<span class="Unicode">ēdan</span></i><span class="Unicode"> does not seemed to have been used a causative (nor does there appear to be any other causative form of it), while the 16th century examples treat it as such (i.e. X <i>speed </i>Y as "may X cause Y to be speedy/to succeed"). </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Unicode">Rather Old English </span><i>sp<span class="Unicode">ēdan</span></i><span class="Unicode"> meant simply "to speed, to be successful, to have good fortune", in which case, the later Middle/Modern English <i>God spede</i> should have meant something like "may God be successful" (or "may God go really fast"?!). The equivalent of "God causing someone to be successful" in Old English required a periphrasis of the sort "God gave speed (i.e. success) to someone", as in:</span><br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;"><span class="Unicode"><i>Exodus</i> 153b-4b: þær him mihtig god on ðam spildsiðe <b>spede</b> forgefe</span><br />
<span class="Unicode">("if Mighty God would grant them <b>success</b> on the destructive quest") </span></blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Unicode">I argue that the origin of <i>Godspeed</i> is in fact as a compound word, formed of <i>good</i>+<i>speed</i>, which was later reanalysed as </span><span class="Unicode"><i>God</i>+<i>speed, </i>whence back-formations like <i>God spede (ye)</i>, with <i>spede</i> being reanalysed as a causative (i.e. "may (he) cause you to be successful"). </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Before turning to details of the analysis proper, a quick lesson on some Middle and early Modern English sound changes.<br />
<br />
First, the <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift">Great English Vowel Shift</a>. I won't go into all of the details here, for they don't concern us, but in general the Great English Vowel Shift raised all long vowels (and diphthongised <span class="Unicode">/ī/ </span><span class="Unicode">to /</span><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">aɪ̯/</span><span class="Unicode"> and /ū/ to /</span><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">aʊ̯</span><span class="Unicode">/). More relevantly, Old English <i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>d</i> "good" (noun and adjective) became /g</span><span class="Unicode">ūd/. By other sound changes, Old English <i>g</i></span><i>ŏ</i><span class="Unicode"><i>d</i> "god" (originally </span><span class="Unicode">a neuter noun, but a masculine form was innovated in Christian contexts)</span> became /gɔd/, which by later changes became /gɒd/ (British) or /gɑd/ (American). There were yet later changes affecting <span class="Unicode"><i>ū</i> which caused various (and somewhat sporadic) shortenings, sometimes to /</span>ʌ/ (e.g. <i>blood </i>/blʌd/ from OE <i>bl<span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>d</i>) and sometimes to /</span>ʊ<span class="Unicode">/, as in the case of <i>good </i>/g</span>ʊ<span class="Unicode">d/.</span><br />
<br />
Additionally, in Middle English a phonological change occurred which shortened long vowels in closed syllables which preceded another syllable. For example, consider the changes which occurred in vowel of the first member of the compound words <i>shepherd</i> and <i>wisdom</i>, contrasted with the lack of change in the simplex words <i>sheep</i> and <i>wise</i>, as summarised in the Table below. </div></div><br />
<table border="1"><tbody>
<tr> <th>Old English</th> <th>Middle English</th> </tr>
<tr> <td>scēap</td> <td>sheep [shēp]</td> </tr>
<tr> <td>scēaphirde</td> <td>shĕpherd</td> </tr>
<tr> <td>wīs</td> <td>wīs</td> </tr>
<tr> <td>wīsdom</td> <td>wĭsdom</td> </tr>
</tbody> </table></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Here the simplex words <i>wise</i> and <i>sheep</i> thus remained unaffected (and became, by the Great English Vowel Shift, /w<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">aɪ̯</span>s/ and /<span class="IPA">ʃ</span><span class="Unicode">ī</span><span class="IPA">p/, respectively), but the vowels of first component in <i>shepherd</i> ("sheep-herd(er)") and <i>wisdom</i> were shortened.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="IPA">With these sound changes in mind, let us consider what would have happened to a hypothetical Old English compound *</span><span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>d-sp</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ēd </span></i><span class="Unicode">("good</span> fortune, good luck"): by the Middle English closed-syllable-before-another-syllable rule, this would become /god<i>s</i>p<span class="Unicode">ēd/, which would thus have become Modern English </span><i>Godspeed</i>:<i> </i><span class="Unicode">/</span>gɒdsp<span class="Unicode">ī</span>d/ (British), /gɑdsp<span class="Unicode">ī</span>d/ (American). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">If this etymology is correct, then the original sense of <i>Godspeed</i> is <i>good speed</i>, in other words <i>good luck</i>---which makes eminent sense as a formula of well-wishing (note above in the above video clip, Izzard in fact glosses "good luck" as "Godspeed").</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> In fact, an Old English form <span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>d-sp</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ēd </span></i><span class="Unicode">is not entirely hypothetical: the adjectival form </span><span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>dsp</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ēdig </span></i><span class="Unicode">is recorded in the verse "translation" of <i>Genesis A</i>:</span></div><blockquote><div style="color: blue; text-align: justify;"><i>Genesis A</i> 1008b-9b: Him þa brego engla, <b>godspe<b>d</b></b><b>ig</b> gast geanþingade, "Hwæt...'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Unicode" style="color: blue;">("The Lord of Angels (i.e. God), the "good-speedy" spirit, answered him: 'Listen...'")</span></div></blockquote><span class="Unicode">[This is God addressing Cain, right after Cain utters his signature "I am not my brother's keeper" line.]</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Unicode"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Unicode">The question is how to translate <i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">o</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>dspedig</i><i> </i>(though, as is typical of Old English manuscripts, the vowel quantity is not indicated, it is fairly obvious that it is in fact </span><span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>dsp</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ēdig</span></i> and not <span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i>ŏ</i><span class="Unicode"><i>dsp</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ēdig</span></i><span class="Unicode">, given that it characterises God himself). If it is an adjectivalised noun-noun compound (as Bosworth and Toller treat it in their dictionary [2]), then perhaps "rich in good(ness)". But it could be based on an adjective-noun compound </span><span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>dsped </i>"good fortune", and thus mean something like "one is good at success, full of good fortune". </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Unicode">In any case the occurrence of </span><span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>dsp</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ēdig</span></i><span class="Unicode"> in Old English strengthens the case for <i>Godspeed</i> as originating from </span><span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>dsp</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ēd</span></i><span class="Unicode"> "good luck" with </span><span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i>o</i><span class="Unicode"><i>d sp</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ēde</span></i> "may God speed/grant good fortune to (you)" being a later reinterpretation (with reanalysis of <span class="Unicode"><i>sp</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ēde</span></i> as causative).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<b>Gospel</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another word which has a similar history is <i>gospel</i>. The original form in Old English was <span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>dspel "</i>good news", glossing </span>Latin <i>ēvangelium</i>, (from Greek <i>ευαγγελιον</i> (<i>evangelion</i>), from <i>eu-</i> "good" and <i>angelion</i> "message"; but which in classical Greek meant only "a reward for bringing good news," and in the plural "a sacrifice offered on receiving good news"). Now, by the Middle English shortening rule described above, <span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i><span class="Unicode">ō</span></i><span class="Unicode"><i>dspel </i>would have become <i>g</i></span><i>ŏdspel</i>, and thus Modern English <i>gospel</i> /gɒsp<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɛl</span>/ (ignoring the loss of the <i>d</i>).<br />
<br />
However, in this case, the word was in fact actually reanalysed much earlier, at some point in Old English, as <span class="Unicode"><i>g</i></span><i>ŏdspel </i>"news about God", apparently based on the written form (which would not have usually indicated vowel quantity), as evidenced by the forms in other Germanic language (the other Germanic peoples were evangelised by Anglo-Saxons): <span id="etymologySpanBlock2">Old Saxon <i>godspell</i>, Old High German <i>gotspell</i>, Old Norse <i>guð-</i>, <i>goðspiall.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span id="etymologySpanBlock2"><b>Good-bye</b></span><br />
<span id="etymologySpanBlock2">Assuming the above proposed etymology for <i>Godspeed</i> is correct: that the original was <i>good speed</i> "good luck" and thus secular in nature, it is interesting to note that exactly the opposite change occurred in the case of <i>Good-bye</i>: an originally religious formula was secularised. <i>Good-bye</i> is a shortening of <i>God be with you(/ye)</i>. Here <i>God</i> has been substituted by <i>Good</i>, presumably by analogy with/contamination by other leave-taking formulae like <i>Good Day, Good Night, Good Morning</i> etc.</span><br />
<br />
<span id="etymologySpanBlock2"><b>Summary</b></span><br />
<span id="etymologySpanBlock2"><i>Godspeed</i> likely originated as a secular formula "good speed" (i.e. "good luck"), but due to a phonological change in Middle English affecting long vowels in close syllables followed by one or more syllables the vowel of the first word was shorten, becoming homophonous with <i>God</i>, thus giving rise to a reinterpretation of <i>spede</i> as a causative verb meaning "cause to succeed" and resulting in formations like <i>God spede</i> "God prosper (you)". While<i> Good-bye</i> originally had religious connotations, being a shortened form of "God be with you/ye", but by analogy to other leave-taking formula like <i>Good Night</i>, <i>God</i> was substituted by <i>Good.</i> </span><br />
<br />
<span id="etymologySpanBlock2"> One secular formula, <i>go(<strike>o</strike>)d-speed, </i>was thus reinterpreted as religious in nature, and the other, originally religious formula, <i>go(o)d-bye, </i>took on a secular nature. <b> </b></span> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><br />
[Updates (04-Feb-2011):<br />
<br />
Some new information gleaned from the <a href="http://www.languagehat.com/archives/004131.php">comments</a> at <a href="http://www.languagehat.com/">languagehat's blog</a>:<br />
<br />
I. <a href="http://polyglotveg.blogspot.com/">MMcM</a> points out that:<br />
(1) Webster (ca. 1830) glosses <i>godspeed</i> as "good speed" [<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=9ZUVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA381#v=onepage&q=%22good%20speed%22&f=false">link to Google Books page here</a>].<br />
(2) Tyndale's Bible translation (whence the first citation of <i>godspeed</i>, see above), also includes<i> good speed</i> [<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=9ZUVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA381#v=onepage&q=%22good%20speed%22&f=false">link to Google Books page here</a>]: "LORde God of my maſter Abrahã, ſend me <b>good ſpede</b> this daye, & ſhewe mercy vnto my maſter Abraham".<br />
<br />
II. <i>Goodspeed</i> also appears as a surname, e.g. <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ben_Zimmer">Ben Zimmer</a>'s maternal line [hattip <a href="http://benzimmer.com/">Ben Zimmer</a>], the author of the 1923 <i>American Translation</i> of the New Testament, Edgar J. Goodspeed [hattip <a href="http://www.ccil.org/%7Ecowan">John Cowan</a>].<br />
<br />
] <br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><u>References:</u></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">[1]<i><a href="http://www.oed.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Oxford English Dictionary</span></a></i><a href="http://www.oed.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">,</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> September 2009 rev. ed.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><u> </u></span></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">[2]Bosworth, Joseph and T. Northcote Toller. 1898. <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198631014/beowulfonsteo-20/103-1779062-0455006?creative=125581&camp=2321&link_code=as1">An Anglo-Saxon dictionary</a>.</i> London: Oxford University Press.</span></span></span></div></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-50507589610688723032011-01-12T09:15:00.004-07:002011-01-12T10:48:23.085-07:00On analogy: Octopuses, Octopi, Octopodes, Emacsen<div style="text-align: justify;">From <a href="http://boingboing.net/2010/07/27/octopuses-octopi-oct.html">a post on boingboing.net</a>, Merriam Webster editor Kory Stamper discusses the "correct" plural of <i>octopus</i>:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><object width="320" height="265"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wFyY2mK8pxk?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wFyY2mK8pxk?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Octopus</i>:<i>octopi</i> is a standard example illustrating ("false") analogy that I've used in class before. The story I've told goes like this: <i>Octopus</i> sounds like a Latin word, and so by analogy to Latin borrowings like <i>syllabus</i>:<i>syllabi</i>, <i>alumnus</i>:<i>alumni</i>, people often form its plural as <i>octopi</i>. But, so the standard story goes, it's not a borrowing from Latin, but rather from Greek, so <i>octopi</i> is technically incorrect. The proper Greek plural is rather <i>octopodes</i>. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">[More technically, it is a borrowing from Latin, but the Latin word itself is a borrowing/coinage from Greek, and the Greek word would be (in nominative singular) <i>ὀκτώπους</i> (<i>oktṓpous</i>), whose (nominative) plural would be <i>ὀκτώποδες</i> (<i>oktṓpodes</i>). Given that it's a scientific name, it will in fact be a Latin word (albeit one of Greek origins). By modern Latin rules for Greek borrowings, it should be a third declension noun, and form its plural with <i>-es</i>. Thus the Latin forms are <i>octopus</i>:<i>octopodes</i>.]</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the video, however, Stamper makes the following arguments: (1) <i>octopodes</i> sounds rather pedantic (I think a good compromise here though is to pronounce it to rhyme with <i>nodes</i>), and (2) once a word is borrowed into English, it becomes an English word and so should form its plural according to the standard English rules for pluralisation, i.e. it should be <i>octopuses</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In fact, though it is true that <i>-s</i> is the dominant plural ending in English, and thus the one usually used for borrowings and new coinages, it is not the only possibility. Even coinages don't always form plural with <i>-s</i>. For example, there is a powerful text-editing program called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs"><i>Emacs</i></a>. Different varieties of this program have arisen, and thus a plural form is sometimes called for. And the standard plural used is <i>Emacsen</i> (by analogy to <i>ox</i>:<i>oxen</i>; cf. <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boxen"><i>boxen</i></a> and <a href="http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/jargon/html/V/VAXen.html"><i>VAXen</i></a>). The point being simply that if even coinages don't always use the <i>-s </i>plural, then we needn't expect that borrowings should either. And therefore, nothing forces us to accept <i>octopuses</i> as the "correct" plural. [Caveat: of course there is no real "correct" plural for any word, aside from whatever people accept/use.] </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But, as it stands, it would seem that the "correct" pluralshould be either <i>octopuses</i>, since that conforms to the dominant pluralisation rule for English, or else <i>octopodes</i>, since <i>octopus</i> is a coinage made from Greek components.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">As one of the commenters to the boingboing post (<a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/27/octopuses-octopi-oct.html#comment-851197">Anon #80</a>) points out though, there is in fact a case to be made for <i>octopi</i> as the "historically correct plural". The case is as follows: Linnaeus may have coined <i>octopus</i> ("eight foot (creature)") by analogy to the old Latin word for "octopus", namely <i>polypus</i> ("many foot (creature)"). Now <i>polypus</i> is obviously also a borrowing from Greek, but in Latin the normal plural of <i>polypus</i> was in fact <i>polypi</i>! (And, likewise, the plural of the modern scientific term <i>polypus</i> is also <i>polypi</i>). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">[The commenter goes on to add that even the Greeks sometimes treated <i>πολύπους</i> (<i>polúpous</i>) as a second declension noun (which would give it a nominative plural of <i>πολύποι</i> (<i>polúpoi</i>). So even the Romans might have had a precedent for their <i>-i</i> plural of <i>polypus</i>.] </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So if <i>octopus</i> is seen as a modern "updating" of the original Latin word for "octopus" (<i>polypus</i>), then there is an interesting case to be made for <i>octopi</i> as the (historically) "correct" plural.</div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-43743766246228819082011-01-06T13:06:00.001-07:002011-01-06T13:38:21.462-07:00Free OEDIndulge your thirst for etymology. Use the online version of the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> free (for a month; until 5 February 2011).<br />
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<a href="http://www.oed.com/">Login</a> with "trynewoed"/"trynewoed."<br />
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From <a href="http://www.languagehat.com/archives/004107.php">languagehat</a>.be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-8764823542027714082010-09-16T09:11:00.009-06:002010-09-16T09:27:11.312-06:00Philology and (La)Tex: on Proto-Indo-European dragon-slaying and Hittite ḫ<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">A couple of years ago I made the switch from Word to LaTex. At the time I was in the middle of writing a paper on formulaic language in Proto-Indo-European, specifically working on the reconstruction of formulae connected with the PIE dragon-slaying mytheme. Though the (first draft of the) paper was mostly written, I decided I would reset it in LaTeX. This was a rather labourious task, but resulted in much more aesthetically-pleasing document, and LaTeX allows for a much easier system of referring to numbered examples than does Word (amongst other benefits of the LaTeX type-setting system). [I use <a href="ftp://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/linguex/linguex-doc.pdf">Wolfgang Sternefeld's linguex package</a> for example numbering.]</div></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">As this was a philological paper dealing with a number of different languages (Old Irish, Old English, Old Saxon, Gothic, Vedic Sanskrit, Classical G<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">reek, Avestan, Pahlavi, and Hittite), special diacritics and characters were required. <a href="http://www.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~fkr/tipa/tipaman.pdf">Rei Fukui's TIPA package</a> handles almost all of the characters/diacritics which were needed. The one exception was the Hittite "laryngeal <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; line-height: 19px;">ḫ</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">" and polytonic classical Greek.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><b>I. How to typeset Hittite </b></span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; line-height: 19px;">ḫ </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">in LaTeX:</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">The character </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; line-height: 19px;">ḫ </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">may be defined by the following macro (assuming that the TIPA package has been loaded in the preamble by <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\usepackage{tipa<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">}</span></span>):</span></div><blockquote><div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\newcommand{\hith}{\tipaLoweraccent[+.1ex]{\u{}}{h}}</span></div></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Then whenever </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px;">ḫ</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> is required, it may be called via the command<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> {\hith}</span></span>, as in the following text:</span></div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">n=an=za namma \super{\sc{mu\v{s}}} illuyanka$[$n$]$ tara{\hith}{\hith}\={u}wan d\=ai\v{s}</span></blockquote>which results in:<br />
<blockquote>n=an=za namma <sup>MUŠ</sup>illuyanka[n] taraḫḫūwan dāiš</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">(meaning "He (the storm god) began to overcome the serpent"; from KBo. 3.7 iii 24-5)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>II. How to typeset classical Greek in LaTeX:</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the philological tradition, the only language using a non-Latinate script which is not transliterated is Greek (I've always found this a bit unfair: why isn't Sanskrit rendered in Devanagari?). To typeset polytonic (ancient) Greek in LaTeX, we'll need the following packages: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/babel/babel.pdf">babel</a></span>, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/teubner/teubner-doc.pdf">teubner</a></span>, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.ctan.org/pkg/fontenc">fontenc</a></span>, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/greek/cbfonts/cbgreek.pdf">cbgreek</a></span>. Defining a macro <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\greekfont </span>then allows us to switch to polytonic Greek.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">A minimal example illustrating the usage:</div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\documentclass{article}</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\usepackage[polutonikogreek,latin,english]{babel}</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\usepackage{mathptmx} %OPTIONAL, in order to set Latin/English in Times font</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\usepackage{teubner}</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\usepackage{tipa} %OPTIONAL, for typesetting diacritics/special characters for other lgs.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\newcommand{\greekfont}[1]{\fontencoding{LGR}\fontfamily{cmr}\selectfont\foreignlanguage{greek}{#1}\normalfont}</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\begin{document}</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">{\noindent}From Pindar's \textit{Olympian} 13.63--4:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">{\noindent}\greekfont{\Ar{o}c t\cap{a}c \s{o}fi\'hdeos u\r{i}\'on pote Gorg\'onos \cap{\s{h}} p\'oll> \s{a}mf\`i krouno\cap{i}c\\P\'agason ze\cap{u}xai poj\'ewn \Gs{e}pajen}</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">\end{document}</span></blockquote><br />
produces:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSDqljQmyu4UDxHs_MqlhwflOW5RWsimdwHbTNtArA4Us6A6nW5sjUC0fTA99g2Hfsf8Ubcyw8mNxaeB6UsCGS1Vgv1FF1z5Ly55rKjCclN2ss3UD1IAxZTQMWLKqD84Q5wPdEcxQsxPg/s1600/pindar_ol.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="63" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSDqljQmyu4UDxHs_MqlhwflOW5RWsimdwHbTNtArA4Us6A6nW5sjUC0fTA99g2Hfsf8Ubcyw8mNxaeB6UsCGS1Vgv1FF1z5Ly55rKjCclN2ss3UD1IAxZTQMWLKqD84Q5wPdEcxQsxPg/s400/pindar_ol.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
(meaning "who (rel. pro.) beside the Springs, striving to break the serpent Gorgon's child, Pegasos, endured much hardship")<br />
<br />
You'll need to make sure you have the <b>full</b> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">cbgreek</span> package, otherwise the Greek font will be blurry and ugly.<br />
<br />
<b>III. Post scriptum</b><br />
Here's the rub (of course): having produced a beautifully typeset document, I submitted it to <i><a href="http://www.v-r.de/de/zeitschriften/500012/">Historische Sprachforschung</a></i> (Adalbert Kuhn's old <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historische_Sprachforschung">Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung</a></i>). It was accepted, but the journal could only process Word documents. So I had to go back and retypeset the whole thing in Word (again). This involved a lot of using find-and-replace (to turn LaTeX code/macros into Unicode characters or Word formatting or example numbers etc.) Unfortunately, this almost meant that the table I had managed to fit on a single page (in order that the various formulae could be easily compared) using smaller font sizes and rotating it horizontally using the package <a href="http://www.bakoma-tex.com/doc/latex/graphics/lscape.pdf">lscape</a>, thus<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVFFN-58MZfh7DsC8jiHbvv-cEOTbmdTWKMBn9jBOW8pp9ofY1vpa98M8-NLI4ozCrUrgOJkHbA85C90PZgMYD32jUKlzGGY8GGyI7Az-0UIwa4us_55gJHlMWoZQo4msDkgrGjXIwB1Y/s1600/dragon_table.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVFFN-58MZfh7DsC8jiHbvv-cEOTbmdTWKMBn9jBOW8pp9ofY1vpa98M8-NLI4ozCrUrgOJkHbA85C90PZgMYD32jUKlzGGY8GGyI7Az-0UIwa4us_55gJHlMWoZQo4msDkgrGjXIwB1Y/s400/dragon_table.jpg" width="322" /></a></div><br />
is in <i>HS </i>split across three pages...<br />
<b><br />
</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Happily, the original LaTeX-produced version did in fact appear earlier in <i>Studies in the Linguistic Sciencies: Illinois Working Papers</i> 2009 (who <a href="http://sls.linguistics.illinois.edu/submissions.html">do accept LaTeX submissions</a> (since I designed a LaTeX style file for the journal...)).</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><u>References:</u></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1] Slade, Benjamin. 2008[2010]. How (exactly) to slay a dragon in Indo-European? PIE *bheid- {h<sub>3</sub>ég<sup>w</sup>him, k<sup>w</sup>ŕ̥mi-}.<i> Historische Sprachforschung</i> 121: 3-53. <a href="http://www.v-r.de/de/titel/1006486/?sn=78qtfj5qg9c2h3in59553a6om7">[link]</a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[2] Slade, Benjamin. 2009. Split serpents and bitter blades: Reconstructing details of the PIE dragon-combat. <i>Studies in the Linguistic Sciences: Illinois Working Papers</i> 2009: 1-57. <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/2142/13178">[link]</a></span></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-46957502002201753892010-09-08T08:07:00.013-06:002010-09-15T14:35:03.369-06:00English "like" can, like, function like Sanskrit "इति"<div style="text-align: justify;">In a recent blog post, <a href="http://blog.oup.com/2010/09/like/">"How Old is Parasite 'Like'?"</a>, Oxford Etymologist Anatoly Liberman explores the history of (modern) English <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> when used as a type of filler/discourse-marker. However, modern English <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> has another function, which I think is often conflated with filler <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> (presumably because it commonly occurs in the speech of people who also use filler <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span>): namely, as a sort of quotative marker (also noted by commenters <a href="http://blog.oup.com/2010/09/like/comment-page-1/#comment-171933">Mike Gibson</a> and <a href="http://blog.oup.com/2010/09/like/comment-page-1/#comment-171965">Charles Well</a><a href="http://blog.oup.com/2010/09/like/comment-page-1/#comment-171965">s</a>).<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">She was like OMG! And then I was like wow!</span><br /></blockquote>The above sentences might be "translated" as:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">She said, "Oh my god!" And then I said, "Wow!"</span><br /></blockquote>Or (since there seems to be some ambiguity):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">She said, "Oh my god!" And then I thought, "Wow!"</span><br /></blockquote>This use as a sort of quotation mark is a separate function from its pragmatic discourse-marking use (which Liberman focusses on) in examples like:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">You wanna, like, go see a movie?</span><br /></blockquote>Which might be uttered by a teenage boy asking a girl out on a date , where <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> can either act as a "hedge", foreseeing the possibility of rejection ("....it's ok if you don't want to"), or to allow for the possibility of other activities ("...or get some ice cream").<br /><br />Both uses of <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> are stigmatised; again, the stigmatisation of "quotative" <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> is probably via guilt-by-association with the discourse-marking/filler <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span>. I'll admit that, like Liberman, I find both uses rather aesthetically displeasing (which doesn't mean that I never use them---they are, as Liberman suggests, somewhat viral). But the "quotative" <span style="font-style: italic;">like </span>is interesting. Though Liberman remarks that:<br /><blockquote>Particularly disconcerting is the fact that the analogs of like swamped other languages at roughly the same time or a few decades later. Germans have begun to say <i>quasi</i> in every sentence. Swedes say <i>liksom</i>, and Russians say <i>kak by</i>; both mean “as though.” In this function <i>quasi</i>, <i>liksom</i>, and <i>kak by</i> are recent. The influence of American like is out of the question, especially in Russian. So why, and why now? Delving into the depths of Indo-European and Proto-Germanic requires courage and perspicuity. But here we are facing a phenomenon of no great antiquity and are as puzzled as though we were trying to decipher a cuneiform inscription.</blockquote>Interestingly, however, the "quotative" function of English <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> has a couple of parallels in Sanskrit. One is these---the one most closely resembling English "quotative" <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span>, at least in its frequency---is the Sanskrit particle <span style="font-style: italic;">iti </span>(इति).<br /><br />Both Sanskrit <span style="font-style: italic;">iti</span> and English <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> can occur in the following contexts:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">A. When quoting words actually utttered, alongside a verb of speaking:<br /></span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">(Skt-1) </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">kathitam avalokitayā "madanodyānam gato mādhava" <span style="font-weight: bold;">iti</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">"Avalokita had told me that Madhava was gone to the grove of Kama." [</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">Mālatīmādhava</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> I, p. 11; cited from Speijer[1]:§493a]</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">(Eng-1) "She said </span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">like</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> 'I want to go too'."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">B. Expressing the contents of one's thought:<br /></span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">(Skt-2)</span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">manyate pāpakam kṛtvā </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">"na kaścid vetti mām"</span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;"> iti<br /></span></span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">"After committing some sins, one thinks 'nobody knows me'." [<span style="font-style: italic;">Mahabharata</span> 1.74.29; cited from Speijer[1]:§493b]</span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">(Eng-2) “And I thought </span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">like</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> 'wow, this is for me'.”</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">[</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">OED, 2nd Supplement</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">[2]</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">; 1970, no earlier citations]</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">C. More general setting forth of motives, emotions, judgements etc.:</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">(Skt-3)</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> vyāghro mānuṣam khādati </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">iti</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> lokāpavādaḥ<br /></span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">"'The tiger eats the man' is slanderous gossip." [</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;">Hitopadesha</span></span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> 10; cited from Speijer[1]:§493c]</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">(Eng-3) "I was </span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">like</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> 'wow'!"</span><br /></blockquote>There are obvious differences between English quotative <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> and Sanskrit <span style="font-style: italic;">iti</span>, including the fact that English quotative <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> precedes the "quotation", while Sanskrit <span style="font-style: italic;">iti</span> follows it (in conformity with the general left-branching nature of Sanskrit syntax).<br /><br />Further, Sanskrit <span style="font-style: italic;">iti</span> doesn't have any of the other functions or meanings associated with English <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span>. English <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> derives ultimately from Proto-Germanic *<span style="font-style: italic;">lîko</span>- "body, form, appearance", while Sanskrit <span style="font-style: italic;">iti</span> is built from the pronominal stem <span style="font-style: italic;">i-</span>. In fact, <i>iti</i> still has pronominal uses, even in Classical Sanskrit, as in the following example.<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">(Skt-4) <i>tebhyas pratijnāya nalaḥ kariṣya <span style="font-weight: bold;">iti</span></i><br />"Nala promised them he would do <span style="font-weight: bold;">thus</span>." [<span style="font-style: italic;">Nala</span> 3,1; cited from Speijer[1]:§492]</blockquote>Amusingly, I find that (pretending that a parallel development has taken place in English) replacing "quotative" <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> with <span style="font-style: italic;">thus </span>actually seems grammatical to me---though wholly unidiomatic, e.g.:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">(Eng-4) "I was thus: 'Wow!'"</blockquote>(Somehow I imagine that if <span style="font-style: italic;">thus</span> had been recruited as a quotative in English rather than <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span>, the use of a quotative marker wouldn't be so stigmatised, since there would be no association with filler <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> and, moreover, <span style="font-style: italic;">thus</span> is largely used in formal registers of English.)<br /><br />However, there is another element in Sanskrit which---though not as frequently used in this function as <span style="font-style: italic;">iti---</span>actually is more similar to English quotative <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> in its syntax and semantics: <span style="font-style: italic;">yathā</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Yathā</span> is, properly speaking, a relative pronoun and is often part of relative-correlative constructions of the form <span style="font-style: italic;">yathā X...tathā Y</span> "As X...., so Y". However, it can occur without correlative <span style="font-style: italic;">tathā</span>, and in fact can have the meaning "like", as in the following example:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">(Skt-5)</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>mansyante mām <span style="font-weight: bold;">yathā</span> n</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">ṛ</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">pam</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">"They will consider me </span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">like</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> a king." [</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">Mahabharata </span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">4.2.5; cited from Speijer[1]:§470a]</span><br /></blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">Yath</span><span style="font-style: italic;">ā</span> can also function as a sort of quotative, but---unlike <span style="font-style: italic;">iti</span> and like <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span>---it precedes rather than follows the quoted discourse:<br /><span></span><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"><span>(Skt-6)</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> viditam eva <span style="font-weight: bold;">yathā</span> "vayam malayaketau kimcitkālāntaram uṣitāḥ".</span><br />"It is certainly known (to you) that I stayed for some time with Malayaketu." [<span style="font-style: italic;">Mudrarakshasa</span> VII; cited from Speijer[1]:§494]<br />(Or, maybe: "You certainly know, <span style="font-weight: bold;">like</span>, 'I stayed for some time with Malayaketu'.")</blockquote>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Yath</span><span style="font-style: italic;">ā</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">iti</span> (since they occupy different syntactic positions) can also co-occur.)<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><span>So there is at least one antique parallel for the development of modern English <span style="font-style: italic;">like</span> as a quotative marker.<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span>Returning to the more commonly used <span style="font-style: italic;">iti</span>, the following Sanskrit example---occurring when one of the heroes of the Mahabharata has performed an act of generosity so great that even the gods are impressed---I think is a great parallel for examples like "I was like, 'Wow!'":</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"></span></span><blockquote><span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">(Skt-7)</span></span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> tato 'ntarikṣe vāg āsīt "sādhu sādhv" </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">iti</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">"Then a voice in the sky was </span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">like</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> 'Wow! Wow!'" [</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">Mahabharata</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> 14.91.15]</span></blockquote>This line might be more usually translated as "then a voice in the sky said 'Bravo! Bravo!'", but there is actually no verb of speaking: <span style="font-style: italic;">āsīt</span><span> means "was".</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><u>References:</u><br />[1] Speijer, J.S. 1886. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1112297812/beowulfonsteo-20/103-1779062-0455006?creative=125581&camp=2321&link_code=as1">Sanskrit syntax.</a> </span><span style="font-size:85%;">Leiden: E.J. Brill. [reprinted, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973.]<br />[2] <a href="http://www.oed.com/">The Oxford English Dictionary</a>, September 2009 rev. ed.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;font-family:'Droid Serif';font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(76, 38, 0); line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;font-family:'times new roman';font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"></span></span></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=beowulfonsteo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1112297812&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="width: 120px; height: 240px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe></span><br /><br /></div></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-82129716618214272322010-08-30T09:42:00.010-06:002010-08-30T09:53:44.200-06:00Co-ordination fail<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >One of the first topics in intro syntax classes is the notion of constituency, including a variety of tests which can be used to determine constituency. One of these tests is the co-ordination test: generally only items of the same syntactic category can be conjoined. Thus the following examples are fine: </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >fresh and clean</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" > (coordination of adjectives), </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >mad dogs and Englishmen</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" > (coordination of nouns [DPs]), </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >(to) serve and protect</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" > (coordination of infinitive verbs). But verbs can't be conjoined in the same way with nouns, e.g. </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >*I like mad dogs and to serve</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" > is bad; and prepositional phrases don't conjoin with nouns, e.g. </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >*I like mad dogs and on top of the Empire State Building </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >is also bad</span></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Here's a label I noticed which violates the co-ordination constraint:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbQfWTYiwhV5kz0PS2uox3RFQWcrMat3wLzF7OTSqJIYEcaQdpDWQH4AsgH9IigFo6TMwsmpXcHK_iZI9Gv-kC7TFX6Xsy5vw1CaRg50x4pwopZQtjxuDLdvVAGfDQ89uEefu1qNG-jL0/s400/IMG_0149e.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430374598626930722" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 246px; height: 400px; " /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >*[</span></span><sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >DP</span></span></sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" > Side Dish], [</span></span><sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >DP</span></span></sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" > Soup Mix], [</span></span><sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >PP</span></span></sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" > Over Rice]</span></span></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-41045482207025557252010-08-03T10:26:00.007-06:002010-08-04T10:11:02.937-06:00Computational approaches to understanding language evolution [video]<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In her recent </span></span><a href="http://ills.linguistics.illinois.edu/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">ILLS</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> talk, Tandy Warnow discusses computational approaches for inferring language evolution and linguistic relationships:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><span id="contentTitle"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Computational methods for inferring evolutionary histories of languages</span></span></span><div id="embeddedPlayer_CHGjaBxrKk2lsdIJUPCXTA"><object width="480" height="320" data="http://ensemble.atlas.uiuc.edu/app/flash/flowplayer-3.1.5.swf?0.27571585681289434" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="movie" value="http://ensemble.atlas.uiuc.edu/app/flash/flowplayer-3.1.5.swf?0.27571585681289434"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="flashvars" value="config={"clip": {"url": "http://ensemble.atlas.uiuc.edu/app/assets/BB8ED7B1-EB2A-48D1-8F84-8576F7875B8B.jpg?width=480"}, "playlist": [{"url": "http://ensemble.atlas.uiuc.edu/app/assets/BB8ED7B1-EB2A-48D1-8F84-8576F7875B8B.jpg?width=480", "autoPlay": true}, {"url": "flv:/ling/ling-v-2010-4/02_Warnow", "provider": "rtmp", "autoPlay": false}], "plugins": {"rtmp": {"url": "http://ensemble.atlas.uiuc.edu/app/flash/flowplayer.rtmp-3.1.3.swf", "netConnectionUrl": "rtmp://flash.atlas.illinois.edu/vod"}}, "playerId": "embeddedPlayer_CHGjaBxrKk2lsdIJUPCXTA"}"></object></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">A page with links to various publications associated with this project (and the datasets used) is available here: </span></span><a href="http://www.cs.rice.edu/~nakhleh/CPHL/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">http://www.cs.rice.edu/~nakhleh/CPHL/</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">One of the interesting points of this study is the relationship of Germanic with respect to the other branches of Indo-European. Germanic, at least when the morphological data is given more weight, is not particularly closely related to Italic or Celtic, though it shares a number of lexical similarities with these groups. This is suggestive of a later migration of Germanic-speaking peoples into an area where they came into contact with Italo-Celtic speakers. In any case, it's an interesting approach to historical data.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://www.cs.rice.edu/~nakhleh/CPHL/IETREE.jpg" border="0" alt="" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; " /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;color:#0000EE;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">For more ILLS2 videos, see this link: </span></span><a href="http://ills.linguistics.illinois.edu/current/showcase.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">http://ills.linguistics.illinois.edu/current/showcase.html</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">.</span></span></div><div><br /></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-57544553170906728072010-02-12T06:52:00.000-07:002010-02-12T07:04:48.434-07:00Logic, Language, and Information: Summer course at Bloomington<div style="text-align: justify;">The <b><a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~nasslli/">North American Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information</a></b><a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~nasslli/"> (</a><b><a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~nasslli/">NASSLLI</a></b><a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~nasslli/">)</a> is a summer school with classes in the interface between <b><i>computer science</i></b>, <b><i>linguistics</i></b>, and <b><i>logic</i></b>.</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Sans', Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~nasslli/images/lettersized.pdf"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYWnRXwDFm9yNZ2g-MnBYoNhfHNsRRhouRaHBO3PH4bz9kT404qK_yaJf3j2YFWkAuR4QWqD0Uqh8FNTF6Q-mdbZdFzC3C9qEg5vVDitMKn2uCKTch4G7FBDMTWyIYC4MGiuIsXb1JK4Y/s400/nasslli.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437355710818417746" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 309px; height: 400px; " /></a></span><a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~nasslli/images/lettersized.pdf"><p></p></a><div style="text-align: justify;">After previous editions at Stanford University, Indiana University, and UCLA, NASSLLI will return to Bloomington, Indiana, June 20–26, 2010. The summer school, loosely modeled on the long-running ESSLLI series in Europe, will consist of a number of courses and workshops, selected on the basis of the proposals. Courses and workshops meet for 90 or 120 minutes on each of five days, June 21–25, and there will be tutorials on June 20 and a day-long workshop on June 26. The instructors are prominent researchers who volunteer their time and energy to present basic work in their disciplines. Many are coming from Europe just to teach at NASSLLI.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">NASSLLI courses are aimed at graduate students and advanced undergraduates in wide variety of fields. The instructors know that people will be attending from a wide range of disciplines, and they all are pleased to be associated with an interdisciplinary school. The courses will also appeal to post-docs and researchers in all of the relevant fields.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We hope to have 100-150 participants. In addition to classes in the daytime, the evenings will have social events and plenary lectures. Bloomington is a wonderful place to visit, known for arts, music, and ethnic restaurants. All of this is within 15 minutes walking from campus. We aim to make NASSLLI fun and exciting.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Website: </b><a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~nasslli/"><b>http://www.indiana.edu/~nasslli/</b></a></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6092202804301639769.post-71976949200303957452010-02-02T04:50:00.000-07:002010-02-12T07:04:58.541-07:00Ill Linguistics and Novel Technologies (Call for papers: 28 Feb '10 deadline)<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><a href="http://ills.linguistics.illinois.edu/">Illinois Language and Linguistics Society 2</a></span></span></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">ILLS2 (28-30 May 2010) is a student-run conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The theme for this year's conference is Novel Technologies and Methodologies in Linguistics Research. The purpose of this theme is to inspire ideas and create enthusiasm for the ways in which we pursue research in Linguistics. Talks will involve the creation of new tools for Linguistic research, the novel use of old tools, experimental methods, studies of validity or authenticity, and, otherwise, studies that cause reflection in Linguistic research.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Talks from all subfields of Linguistics are welcome.</div><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Invited Speakers: </span><br />Wayne Cowart (University of Southern Maine)<br />Bryan Gick (University of British Columbia)<br />Tania Ionin (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)<br />Richard Sproat (Oregon Health and Science University)<br />Tandy Warnow (University of Texas at Austin)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Conference Chairs: </span><br />Tim Mahrt (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)<br />Megan Osfar (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)<div><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><a href="http://ills.linguistics.illinois.edu/current/images/ills2_8.5by11d.png"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinYErAMwhsn5Nrt-5VtvzGhDtyyrlUy8EmJRMZIJcaQuq7iJhmwlpdcZWqPSBZJ8KrrxbmSDDuMzRL8mldVlSVrFPSq6GEWim8wchMlauPMQNgatV0Ex2e1yEZMQ-euP8Z6eXClR0AB7c/s400/ills2_8.5by11d.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433615733273311490" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 309px; height: 400px; " /></a></span><a href="http://ills.linguistics.illinois.edu/current/images/ills2_8.5by11d.png"></a><div><a href="http://ills.linguistics.illinois.edu/current/images/ills2_8.5by11d.png"></a><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold; font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#990000;">Call for Papers</span></span></div><span style="font-weight:bold;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#990000;">Call Deadline: 28-Feb-2010</span></span></div></span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The online submission form can be found on the conference website:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://ills.linguistics.illinois.edu/">http://ills.linguistics.illinois.edu/</a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#003333;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#003333;">ILLS welcomes the submission of general empirical and theoretical papers relevant to the field of linguistics and the language sciences. Special consideration will be given to applicants whose research fits within the conference theme of Novel Technologies and Methodologies in Linguistics Research.</span><b> </b>Relevant talks for this theme would involve at least one of the following: the use of new tools for Linguistic research, the novel use of old tools, experimental methods, studies of validity or authenticity, and, otherwise, studies that cause reflection.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">ILLS requests the submission of abstracts summarizing the main points of the research paper, including hypotheses, methods, and conclusions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">ILLS also welcomes the submission of workshop proposals on advanced, emerging, or domain-specific applications, particularly where there is little available existing documentation. Where applicable, we invite those with a related paper to consider submitting a workshop proposal--however, independent workshops are just as welcome.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Suitable topics could involve technologies such as PRATT, eyetrackers, or EMA.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Abstracts are to be submitted in PDF format, and should be no more than 500 words in length, including examples (encouraged) and in-text citations. Full references are not necessary; please use the (Author, Year) format.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">See the LSA model abstracts page for guidance in building an acceptable abstract.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">You may submit at most: one single-author abstract and one multi-author abstract, or two multi-author abstracts. Additionally you may submit one workshop proposal. For abstracts co-authored with a faculty member, the student should be the primary author and should have carried out the bulk of the research and analysis. In addition, the student will be responsible for the presentation of the paper at the conference.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Abstracts are to be uploaded through the conference interface on the Abstract page.</div></div></div>be_slayedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02920742528327860445noreply@blogger.com1