1167: Writing Systems: An Overview Feb 18, 2018

There are many different writing systems from all over the world, used with varying frequency, but not all of these are alphabets. The most obvious example of this may be with pictographic and logographic writing systems (symbols that represent words but aren't images thereof), which aren't alphabets because little to no attempt needs to be made to convey the way that the word sounds. This is why Cantonese and Mandarin (are not mutually intelligible when spoken always, but are written in much the same way. However the list goes on, for instance with abjads, such as for Arabic, Hebrew, and also Tifinagh, Syriac, and ancient Phoenician for which consonants are represented, but not necessarily vowels; Greek and by extension Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are essentially Phoenician but written left-to-right and with the addition of vowels. There are also syllabaries—where a syllable is represented but not the individual sounds—such as for Cherokee or Katakana Japanese. Finally, there are abugidas, which represent consonant-vowel segments; this gives the vowel more prevalence than in an abjad, but not equal status to consonants, such as in an alphabet. Of course, some languages are more suited for certain writing-systems than others, which is why Inuit words look so long written in the Latin script, and but why the Cree abugida (used for some Inuit-Yupik languages) could not be used for Georgian, with its long consonant-clusters.

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1166: Contractions: One or Two Words? Feb 17, 2018

If you listen to some speaking a completely foreign language, you won’t hear pauses between words. Some languages make this easier than others to decipher, such as Estonian, which always has stress on the first syllable of a word (though the idea of what a word is has no major consensus). This lack of division is made even more apparent when looking at words that together influence the pronunciation, for instance ‘in’ is pronounced [ɪn] usually, but before certain sounds, like [p], it becomes [ɪm] (2). Considering that there is no actual space between words when spoken, and that words can still influence the way other words are pronounced, there is not really any reason that contractions, or arguably words like ‘another’, should be considered one word. “ ‘Tis” and “isn’t”, or more extremely even, “won’t” are considered to be one word, but act grammatically as two. Moreover, most of the time, at least one element of the contraction is usually unchanged at all. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with writing these together—the International Phonetic Alphabet just writes all words together anyway—but it can give people a skewed view of grammar, and word-count less importantly.

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1165: Zero-Markers Feb 16, 2018

There are affixes that indicate grammatical function without carrying meaning themselves necessarily, such as '-tion' which makes verbs into nouns, or '-S' which pluralized or indicated the 3rd person singular tense for verbs. There are also free words that have a similar role, such as 'will' indicating future time (not future tense, technically). While some of those were affixes and some are words, all of those are considered 'markers', and markers can show many different things. There are, as shown before, tense markers for instance, but just like how there are "zero-determiners" which do not exist in speech or writing but whose apparent absence still means something, the lack of a '-ed' or '-s' on a verb does not mean that it lacks tense, and indeed people know only because of the lack of an apparent marker that 'I walk' is not in the past tense. These zero-markers of course still mark things, but less intuitively. Some languages like English, or moreover Chinese will use zero-markers more than languages like Latin or Finnish where meaning is comparatively more dependent on affixes.
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1164: Double U; Double Approximate Feb 15, 2018

What sound does W make? Even the more scientific question: "what sound does [w] or [ʍ] make?" may appear rather pedantic or even silly, but it actually lends itself to phonological and orthographic insights. First off, the question is a bit of a trick; while any native speakers of English would be able to pronounce the phoneme, it is considered a doubly articulated consonant. That is to say, while other sounds are pronounced in one part of the vocal tract, such as [b] being produced by a closure of the lips, [w] is produced by  at the lips, just like [b], but is also velar, such as [k], but it is not exactly like either. Other languages have dealt with this in a few ways. For instance, 'west' in French is 'ouest'; the French doesn't use [w] the same way of course, but it does show how a clearly closely related word has been recognized to be pronounced with a closure (or at least partial closure) of the lips, which happens when the lips round to pronounce [o] and then the way the tongue moves back to pronounce [u], or indeed other velar sounds like [k]. The fact that it is called "double-U" is quite fitting therefore, since while it is not the same as actually having two U's in terms of pronunciation, at least it coincidentally acknowledges that there are two ways this is pronounced at the same time.
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1163: Sentences without Syntax Feb 14, 2018

A subject will be nominal (specifically, a determiner-phrase), but that doesn't meant that every pronoun, noun etc. will be a subject. Semantics relates a great deal to the way  that people can construct sentences, in part due to things like this. The sentences "the man saw the dog" and "the dog saw the man" are both fine, and no one would argue against the validity of "the woman eats the carrot" but that cannot be reversed to become "the carrot eats the woman" in the same way. Opposite to Chomsky's famous "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" which is syntactically acceptable but semantically meaningless, the existence—but lack of acceptably—of "the carrot eats the woman" means that regardless of word-order, or declension (theoretically, English doesn't use it) there is only one possible meaningful utterance here, so the sentence can exist without needing a syntactic structure. It is therefore possible that a language could allow for speakers to invert this specific word-order (assuming there is no case-system) howsoever they choose in these situations where carrots cannot logically eat people. This already sometimes happens in sentences like "the book reads quickly".

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1162: Syllable Structures Feb 13, 2018

When phoneticians describe the arrangements of consonants and vowels, in a syllable, they will often just denote them with C and V respectively, so 'cat' would be CVC, and 'strengths' [stɹɛŋθs] would be CCCVCCC. This is useful for talking about the differences between English and Hawai'ian, where there are no consonant clusters, and all syllables will be CV, V, or VC, but not useful for explaining why [vdgihlp]—which is also CCCVCCC—can't be an English word. Though admittedly that was an extreme example, there are plenty of languages, famously Slavic and Caucasus languages that allow many more; Kartvelian regularly contains clusters of 6-consonant, and contains words like /ɡvbrdɣvnis/ with 8 or more, in this case CCCCCCCCVC. Nevertheless, no matter how long strings of consonants can be in a language, there will be constraints on the arrangement thereof. Even normal pairs of consonants, like [sl] at the beginning of English syllables (e.g. 'slip') cannot be reversed as [ls] as a syllable's onset (i.e. 'lsip').

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1161: X-Bar Assumptions Feb 12, 2018

Syntacticians sometimes have to make certain claims about how language must be logically, even if it doesn't appear that way necessarily, in order to maintain certain theories. This is not prescriptive as such, because these linguists are still describing how people actually talk, but simply have to come up with certain reasons of how things must be. For instance, "a subject must be a determiner phrase", i.e made up of at least a determiner (like 'the', 'a' or 'some') and a noun. Nevertheless, plenty of subjects do not have such elements, such as with given-names, or when there is zero-determiner, also called a silent determiner. In English, a silent determiner regularly appears when the subject is indefinite and plural, e.g. '[determiner] men are from Mars", as opposed "the men....", which changes the meaning. Why not just say that subjects (and many other things like this) don't need to have a determiner, and instead claim that they have a determiner that happens to be silent? Consider that most present tense forms of verbs are not modified at all; if a verb 'run' is put in the first person present "I/we run", this does not mean that the verb doesn't have tense in this case, but does when it becomes "he runs"; instead, both are present tense, but 'I run' has a zero tense-marker. The logic of the theory (X-bar theory it's called), is still supported by a great deal of syntactic and neurolinguistic evidence, even though certain assumptions have to be made about how humans think. 

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1160: Condensing Expressions Feb 11, 2018

People are very good at figuring out what implied information should be. Simply put, this is how people can understand pronouns and other things like that. It also means that people can leave off the end of sentences, e.g

Speaker 1: "Can you meet your deadline?"

Speaker 2: "I will try" [and finish meet the deadline]

When this happens often enough to the same clauses, then the rest can easily exist on its own. Expressions like "put 2 and 2 together to make 4" are regularly abbreviated to "put 2 and 2 together". All of this is done in an effort to save time, and to sound less clunky when stating something which is probably obvious. Not to be confused however, other expressions feature bits of words or phrases that already carry connotations, such as 'bright' in "not the brightest crayon in the box" or 'sharp' in "not the sharpest tool in the shed". This also happened with 'cute'.

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1159: Adjective-Noun Compounds Feb 10, 2018

Usually when people think of compounds in English, people thing of words composed of two nominal elements ('noun-noun'), or occasionally two verbal elements in the same fashion, but sometimes it is different. For instance, the nominal form of 'slow' is 'sloth', but the term for the pot that stews things over many hours is not a 'sloth-cooker' but a 'slow-cooker'; indeed, a 'sloth-cooker' would mean something very different entirely: culinarily savoury, but ethically unsavoury. What makes 'slow' here different than an ordinary adjective is that it does not describe the 'cooker' so much as it becomes a new one. As extra proof, consider that 'slow' can't be removed while retaining the core meaning, but it can be modified in ways that would otherwise be impossible semantically, as in 'fast slow-cooker', and also the stressing of the word is different than it would be with 'slow cooker'. This is also true of other words like 'sweet-meats', which unlike meat with sugar added (i.e. 'sweet meat') is a specific product. Feel free to add your own examples in the comments.
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1158: Semiotics and 'Virtù' Feb 9, 2018

Part of the reason that translation can be so difficult is that translating something word-for-word does not work. Not only does this attempt fail for idiomatic phrases, which is the most obvious example, but also, since one word can have multiple connotations in one language but not another, sometimes executive decisions about cultural importance or semantics have to be made. In Machiavelli's "The Prince" for instance, the word 'virtù' describes the quality that a good leader should have, but can be translated easily a few dozen ways, including as 'virtue', 'strength' and 'power', but also 'cunning' etc. The reason that there is not a one-to-one correspondence across languages is partly cultural, but at its core it is because all language is arbitrary; there is no more sense in calling pig-meat 'pork', than there is to say 'schweinefleisch', which is why they both mean the same thing in different languages. This observation is key in semiotics, which is the topic for the most recent Word Facts Video, out today: https://youtu.be/ETRNxrPVDvI

1157: Hisself is More Consistent Feb 8, 2018

Every dialect will have its own rules and its own exceptions thereto, so even in a dialect that is considered "standard" so to speak, it does not mean that it necessarily the most consistent. For instance, in Standard American English and British English, and others, reflexive pronouns are usually formed by the genitive [possessive] form of the personal pronoun + 'self'. For instance 'you' --> 'your' --> 'yourself', as well as 'I' --> 'my' --> 'myself. This is because it was originally two words, but the determiner phrase eventually came to be thought of as a single term. There are two exceptions to this: the 3rd person singular masculine ('himself') and the 3rd person plural ('themselves'). However, in African American English (AAE), the pattern of using the genitive form + 'self' is maintained. This is most obviously seen in 'hisself', which is a standard variant of 'himself', but 'theyselves' is also consistent with the pattern. The reason for this is that in AAE 'they' is also possessive as well as being nominative. For a long time AAE was thought of as lazy and simply ungrammatical English, but in this case it is even more consistent with certain rules.

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1156: (Possible) Sexist Animosity of Vocal Fry Feb 7, 2018

Creaky voice, vocal fry, sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation, or glottal fry may sound horse and scratchy to some when it is extremely pronounced, but it is totally normal to use, and jut about everyone does. There is a video from Johns Hopkins University showing how this sounds looks physiologically, but warning: it shows someone's throat, and is fairly graphic. Some people criticize it for sounding lazy, detached, or for being bad for people's voices, etc. but to understand this animosity one has to keep in mind that it is "increasingly common among young American females" [1], and furthermore, not only do people associate it with young, educated, city-dwelling women, but that is makes people (women) sound "less competent, less educated, less trustworthy, less attractive, and less hirable" [1]. The confusion that vocal fry is associated with educated women but gives the impression of being less-educated, well noted by linguists, shows the way in which people hold opinions about pronunciation and dialects without necessarily basing them upon evidence. Ultimately, the dislike of vocal fry is one that goes beyond the language itself, and is an example of how language is sometimes tied to culture—or people, generally—whether it makes sense to do so or not. This will be the focus of a video in the next few weeks, so do include any thoughts or questions you may have in a comment.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0097506

1155: Danger of Death Feb 6, 2018

It can be tricky to get people to talk right away, especially within formal settings. Indeed, the idea of "small talk" describes a common sense that such speech is not especially relevant or important, but may be felt as necessary anyway. However, people in an ordinary conversation have as much or as little time as they want, at least in theory, but meanwhile researchers may need to collect data in a setting that is fairly formal and perhaps intimidating (to the participant), so the concern is that the speech will not be as authentic as it ought to be to do proper scientific analysis. Regarded as the father of sociolinguistics, William Labov came up with a solution to this, with the notion that “danger of death” (as a question) elicits a thorough response. The question would be something such as "have you ever been in a situation in which you were in serious danger of being killed?". Clearly, this is a very bold question, and evidently not only was it effective enough to be used relatively frequently, but that got participants to focus more on the question than on being overly careful with their language-use, though some people have criticized the fact that it can also make people nervous, on the spot, and could also prevent people from talking as much as they would otherwise. Ultimately, there is no right answer to the question of how to ask questions.
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1154: Small Clauses and Tense Feb 5, 2018

Something that everyone who speaks English (and German, and many many other languages) knows subconsciously is that the verb only needs to be marked for tense and number etc. once. Usually this is once per clause, such as 'he has seen' or '...had seen' rather than '...has sees'. This is also true when one verb, such as 'need', takes another, such as in 'he needs her to explain' which has 'to explain' in the infinitive form. When there is another clause, then the verb will also be conjugated, such as what follows 'what' in "he needs her to explain what she needs". The reason however, that one cannot say that there will be one verb marked for conjugation for every clause precisely is that so called 'small clauses' contain unmodified verbs. If you were to say "I find these inconsistencies to be confusing", the phrase "these inconsistencies to be confusing" is a small clause, because of the type of verb it follows. To be clear, this is not to say that they have no tense, but just that it is not marked, and that meaning is then dependent upon the main verb.
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1153: Passival Pt. 2 (Semantics) Feb 4, 2018

Verbs in English are either active or passive, but occasionally there is a third option, because people are surprisingly good at making sense of gaps between grammar and meaning that don't always match apparently. What is sometimes know as the passival is a form of the middle voice which is passive in meaning but active in form, such as the awkward sounding 'the food is eating' (i.e. 'being eaten'), but also appear more colloquially, such as in "this book reads well". This is different than "this child reads well" because of course children have eyes and brains with which to read, while books do not. What makes this voice a middle voice is that the action is done by the recipient of said action—which is totally fine as either active or passive e.g. 'he shaved himself' an theoretically 'he was shaved by himself' respectively—but sentences in this form of the middle voice, such as also "the window breaks", is not something that can actually happen given the meaning of the words, even when the sentences are absolutely grammatical.
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1152: Marvin Gaye is a Verb Feb 3, 2018

The line “let’s Marvin Gaye and get it on” from the song 'Marvin Gaye' uses the name of said artist as a verb, which is fairly obvious, but more specifically the lyrics use it as one word. It can easily be thought of as two words given that it uses both two parts of someone’s given name, which can often be thought of as two elements, but the grammar shows otherwise. In the term ‘store-owner’ as opposed to ‘storage’, while both are single words coming somehow from ‘store’, the ‘-age’ of ‘storage’ (here not referring to the noun ‘age’) cannot function as its own word, whereas both ‘store’ an ‘owner’ can function independently of each other. Here, Marvin Gaye is also not a compound, but to be clear, that is not to say that ‘Marvin’ or ‘Gaye’ cannot exist on their own as verbs theoretically even, but because this example is using his name quite inventively, only it has semantic meaning that could allow for the syntax to do what it does.

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Due to technical setbacks, yesterday's post was only uploaded now. Today's will be on schedule.

1151: Few Words for Smells Feb 2, 2018

There are a number of adjectives that can be used to describe how something looks, or feels. Of course, it is sometimes easier to observe what else something is like e.g. "this brick feels like a rock", but using words like colors or others like 'pale' for vision and other words like 'hard', 'soft' rough' etc. there are plenty of ways to describe the way something appears or feels using these more abstract adjectives. This is also true of tastes and sounds, for example with 'sweet' and 'savoury' or 'loud' and 'quiet'. Certainly there is also some crossover because of how people can assume that one sense would not contradict another, so something can look smooth because it is assumed to feel smooth. None of this information should be surprising to an English speaker, but when it comes to scents there is a certain lack of adjectives. Bad smells are comparatively easy to describe with words like 'stinky' and 'putrid', and people can say something has a 'strong' or 'putrid' smell, but most of the time people need to rely upon relating smells to other things. One's sense of smell is comparatively the weakest of all of these five, and mattered little unless something might have smelled as if it would be unhealthy to consume or otherwise be near, so people were not as inclined to make new adjectives, but there certainly is the potential for it. Languages that don't have words for certain colors also sometimes relate it to other things, such as relating something that could be called 'blue' to the sky.
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1150: How Large was Shakespeare's Vocabulary? Feb 1, 2018

Following yesterday's post about Shakespeare, another possible misconception about the vocabulary he used was in the number of distinct words he used in total. The number is 24,000-28,000, though the exact number is tough to gauge especially with ordinary compounding [2], but also that he would quote things from foreign languages verbatim sometimes. This has been suggested to mean that he knew around 100,000 words, which is certainly quite impressive. Nevertheless, this also has to take into account the vast amount of words that he used in the first place; between sonnets, full plays and everything else that he wrote, there is no doubt that he was prolific, but when compared to other works by the total number of words used therein, according to Matt Daniels' statistics, the first 35,000 words of Moby Dick has more distinct words than all of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, As You Like It, Winter's Tale, and Troilus and Cressida. Moreover, that same study compared Shakespeare to modern rappers, and using the same, first 35,000 word mark, a few artists including Aesop Rock used more than those writers in his songs. Shakespeare's language and was certainly impressive, but he is not necessarily as revolutionary as people can make him out to be.

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1149: Did Shakespeare Really Invent 1,700 Words? Jan 31, 2018

Shakespeare certainly had an effect on the way that people use and consider English. He wrote at a time of rapid change within the language—sounds were shifting and vocabulary changed with it—with the result being Modern English, so if he wrote much earlier or later, his contribution would likely be less noticeable. Nevertheless, no matter how much he did or did not do, the number of words that he created is often stated in a way that is misleading. Shakespeare certainly coined many words, but considering the notion that he invented around 1,700 words that are still fairly common, this is not exactly in the same way as Sir Thomas More invented 'Utopia' or how Paracelsus possibly invented 'gnome', because Shakespeare is said to have invented words often by simply adding affixes to words where there hadn't been ones before—which only includes ones that were not found to be written before—or using some parts of speech in a way that was not typical e.g. using what would be a noun as a verb. This is how a word like 'circumstantial' can be linked to Shakespeare when at most he added '-al' in the way it would normally be applied. This is not to say he did not have a lasting impact or an impressive legacy, but that the issue is more nuanced than imagining that The Bard pulled 1,700 words out of thin air which all happened to catch on among the public in a way that no one could have used before him.

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1148: Omitting 'That' Jan 30, 2018

English tends to be fairly flexible about word-order, but in terms of clauses that begin with 'that', it is often acceptable to omit it entirely. For example, in the sentence "Jane saw (that) Jim left", the word 'that' is optional. This is not to say that the grammar lends itself to only being optional, but that is the case with indirect perception, as seen before. Nevertheless, in the sentence, "Jane saw Jim leave", which is direct perception instead, the phrase cannot take 'that'. Sometimes, the reason for omitting 'that' is because it is also used as a demonstrative adjective and demonstrative pronoun, and so there are possible sentences like "that dog that that man had..." which gets rather clunky, though often 'that' can be replaced by 'the' or 'it', depending on the context.

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