Aug 18 2011

Please do not poster on this gate

Apparently poster has become a verb. If Harvard says so, it must be true. This sign appears on the gate of the fence that separates Harvard Yard on the south from the Science Center and Memorial Hall on the north:

Mar 25 2011

OK

I recently read OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, by Allan Metcalf. For some unaccountable reason this book has only two customer reviews on Amazon; there must be some good reason for that. Anyway, Metcalf tells you everything you ever wanted to know about “OK,” starting with the true story of its etymology. No, OK doesn’t come from “Old Kinderhook,” as most people believe. (Actually, most people have absolutely no opinion on the matter.) Nor does it come from Finnish, or an American Indian language, or any other fanciful source. But you’ll have to read the book to find out the truth. Unlike most other people, he cites sources rather than spouting unsupported assertions.

On the plus side, Metcalf has written an informative, well-documented account that’s easy to read. On the minus side, it’s somewhat repetitive, despite coming in at only 224 pages.

Oh, no! We missed OK Day, which was two days ago. But you can still “like” OK Day on Facebook. More than two hundred of us have done so, even if only two posted reviews on Amazon.

Mar 7 2011

Slides from my talk on linguistics

I have posted the slides from my linguistics talk, but I’m not sure how useful they are without audio. The talk, after all, was an oral presentation accompanied by slides, not a visual presentation accompanied by audio. So I’m going to try to overlay an audio track. In the meantime, you can find the slides here.

Mar 1 2011

Making order out of chaos

Yesterday evening I delivered the first lecture in our new Beyond the Classroom series, described as follows:

Weston High School is pleased to announce a new series of talks for the whole community led by our esteemed faculty members on a broad array of topics and expertise that extend outside the classroom!

My talk was called “Making Order Out of Chaos: A Conversation about Linguistics.” We had 53 attendees, an excellent turnout for a fairly technical presentation, and I was delighted by the audience’s enthusiastic response. Everything went very well, though we ran out of time near the end and I had to skip a detailed slide that would have added ten more minutes. I also promised the audience that I would post my list of recommended resources right here. The missing slide needs some considerable commentary — it’s definitely not a standalone piece — so let’s start with the recommended resources (four books, three websites):

  • Hofstadter, Douglas. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid (Basic Books, 1999)
  • Jackendoff, Ray. Patterns in the mind: Language and human nature (Basic Books, 1995)
  • Pinker, Steven. The language instinct: How the mind creates language (Harper, 2007)
  • Yang, Charles. The infinite gift: How children learn and unlearn the languages of the world (Scribner, 2006)
  • Ethnologue (www.ethnologue.com)
  • Language Log (languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll)
  • Popular Linguistics (popularlinguisticsonline.org)

I also recommended Wikipedia as a rich source of surprisingly reliable information about linguistics (and math), even though one wouldn’t want to trust it for areas like history, politics, and biography.

The slide I had to skip was a summative list of some of the various branches of linguistics. My plan was to build it up line by line. Here is the finished result, where the black type represents notes on my intended commentary:

Here is that intended commentary:

The list goes from the smallest level of detail to the largest level to the biggest picture. For example:

  • Phonetics is the study of individual speech sounds. I already talked about Turkish vowels, where we had descriptions like “high back rounded vowel.” Through phonetics you can learn about how a French accent differs from an Italian one, or how automated speech recognition is possible.
  • Phonology is the study of speech sounds in context, such as which pairs of sounds can distinguish words in a particular language (or dialect). For example, the words merry, marry, and Mary are all clearly distinct to my New Jersey ears, but my wife hears them as identical. (She comes from far western New York state.)
  • Morphology (yes, I know, I’ve skipped one) is the study of how the components of words are put together. Examples include things like plural suffixes, tense markers, etc.
  • Morphophonology (now we can back up) is the bridge between phonology and morphology, as you might expect. For instance, although the plural in English is usually spelled with an “s,” it is sometimes pronounced like a “z.” Why? And when? Similarly, Turkish /ler/ vs. /lar/ or English past tenses in /d/ vs. /t/.
  • Syntax is the study of how words are built up into phrases and phrases are built up into words. (Gee, just like math, isn’t it? Terms are built up into expressions and expressions into equations…) Examples include my discussions of basic sentence order, such as SVO, transformations of basic order, and the ways tenses are formed in languages like Chinese that don’t use morphology (suffixes, etc.).
  • Semantics is the study of meaning. For example, Chomsky’s famous sentences, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,” is syntactically impeccable but semantically anomalous.
  • Pragmatics is the study of how language is actually used in practice. For instance, when a student comes into the Math Office and asks, “Do you know where Mr. McLaughlin is?” I may decide to be an obnoxious mathematician and say “Yes.” Of course that is not truly responsive to the intended meaning, even though it is literally correct.
  • Finally, there are many subfields such as historical linguistics, comparative linguistics, etc. And there are interdisciplinary fields in which linguistics is combined with other disciplines, such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, etc.
Feb 27 2011

Utopia in Four Movements

Saw an absolutely fascinating movie yesterday at the ICA: Utopia in Four Movements. This engaging film, which premiered last year at Sundance, is unusual in at least two ways. First, although it has music and voice-over like most documentaries, both are live rather than recorded in the film. Music was provided in real time by The Quavers, and voice-over was done by filmmaker Sam Green. The film itself was compelling enough, but Green’s narration was striking for its clarity and perfect timing. I was astonished to learn in the Q&A that followed the screening that Green is not a professional actor; you would never know it from the quality of his delivery.

The second unusual feature of the film is that one quarter of it dealt with Esperanto. How often do you come across something like that? The entire documentary was about different utopian movements, ranging from Esperanto to shopping malls — yes, shopping malls —but the inspiring but ultimately unsuccessful vision of Esperanto was of course what most captured my attention. Go see it if you get the chance.

Jan 4 2011

Making order out of chaos

BSP*: Come hear my talk on linguistics at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, February 1, at the Weston Public Library! Here’s a description:

Making order out of chaos:
A conversation about linguistics

“Linguistics? What’s that?” This is the usual response I get from students when they hear that I majored in linguistics.

“It’s the scientific study of language,” I reply. “Linguists look for patterns, solve puzzles, develop hypotheses, and test those hypotheses.”

As an example, let’s examine some data from Kurdish, a language you probably know nothing about, even though it’s spoken by over 16 million people. (Yes, you’ve heard of the Kurds in Iraq, but do you know anything at all about their language? No? I thought not. I don’t either — but I know what to look for.)


Here are six sentences in Kurdish, along with their English translations in the wrong order. Try to match them correctly.

1. Ez h’irç’ê dibînim.

2. Tu dir’evî.

3. Tu min dibînî.

4. H’irç’ di’eve.

5. Ez dir’evim.

6. Tu h’ireç’ê dibînî.

A. You see the bear.
B. You see me.
C. The bear runs.
D. You run.
E. I see the bear.
F. I run.


Could you figure out the puzzle? If so, translate the sentence “H’irç’ mîn dibîne” into English. What did you learn from trying to solve this puzzle? Some of my students noticed that the word “tu” closely resembles a word in Spanish, French, and Latin. Is this just a coincidence? Why on earth should Kurdish resemble these far-away languages?

Maybe there’s a reason…

At Weston High School we care about global awareness. Linguistics reinforces that awareness. How does it happen that the Irish and the Pakistanis speak related languages, even though their countries are so far apart? Why do the Austrians and the Hungarians speak unrelated languages, even though their countries are next to each other? How do linguistic connections relate to other sorts of connections?

We can also learn a lot right at home. English too is a world language. You’re probably fluent in English, but you may be surprised to hear that it isn’t true that the vowels of English are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y. Why not? Doesn’t every language have the same vowels? The answer is “no.” We’ll talk about why the question itself is misleading.

Is there anything that all languages share? This time the answer is “yes.” We’ll look at some examples and their significance.

Finally, you may be wondering how and why a linguist became a math teacher. Does linguistics really have anything to do with math? Come to this talk, and you’ll learn a lot about linguistics, a little about math, and at least one Big Idea about the strange connection between the two.



*Blatant self-promotion


Dec 10 2010

Names of polygons

Why do so many of my students use incorrect names for various polygons? They claim that they are merely recalling what they have been taught; maybe this is so, maybe not.  I suppose there are two major possibilities:

  1. They are remembering incorrectly.
  2. They really were taught incorrectly.

Since this is Weston, I would prefer to believe it’s #1…but I have to admit that it might be #2, even in Weston.

Of course we shouldn’t just throw around the claim that certain names are incorrect without producing an argument for what the correct names are. Some of my students want to look in Wikipedia or count Google hits, but those methods lead to popularity contests, not truths. As I said in an earlier post, you can usually trust Wikipedia for mathematical information, but names occupy a middle ground between math and English, so Wikipedia is less reliable in this case than with pure math. As a better starting point,  here is Wolfram Mathworld’s reasonably authoritative list of names for polygons with n sides:

n polygon
2 digon
3 triangle (trigon)
4 quadrilateral (tetragon)
5 pentagon
6 hexagon
7 heptagon
8 octagon
9 nonagon (enneagon)
10 decagon
11 hendecagon (undecagon)
12 dodecagon
13 tridecagon (triskaidecagon)
14 tetradecagon (tetrakaidecagon)
15 pentadecagon (pentakaidecagon)
16 hexadecagon (hexakaidecagon)
17 heptadecagon (heptakaidecagon)
18 octadecagon (octakaidecagon)
19 enneadecagon (enneakaidecagon)
20 icosagon
30 triacontagon
40 tetracontagon
50 pentacontagon
60 hexacontagon
70 heptacontagon
80 octacontagon
90 enneacontagon
100 hectogon
10000 myriagon

Let’s see what we can do with this list. I make the following observations:

  • The very existence of a two-sided polygon sounds doubtful to most people. We’ll  discuss this one below.
  • Three- and four-sided polygons, being the most common ones, commonly have Latin names (triangle and quadrilateral), even though there are also alternative Greek names, which are very rarely used.
  • All other polygons have Greek names. Therefore nobody ever calls a six-sided polygons sexagon or sextagon, and nobody calls a seven-sided polygon septagon, no matter what my students claim.
  • For some mysterious reason, the 11-sided polygon is listed here not only as hendecagon (the correct name, from the Greek hendeca, meaning 11), but also with an incorrect alternative Latin-Greek name, undecagon. I see no reason to do this. In fact, another Wolfram Mathworld page makes this observation:
  • A hendecagon is an 11-sided polygon, also variously known as the undecagon or unidecagon. The term “hendecagon” is preferable to the other two since it uses the Greek prefix and suffix instead of mixing a Roman prefix and Greek suffix.

  • Somewhat similarly, but worse, the 9-sided polygon is listed in both the Greek form, enneagon, and the hybrid, nonagon — but here Mathworld oddly prefers the Latin-Greek hybrid to the pure Greek. On their other page, however, they make this observation:
  • The nonagon, also known as an enneagon, is a 9-sided polygon. Although the term “enneagon” is perhaps preferable (since it uses the Greek prefix and suffix instead of the mixed Roman/Greek nonagon), the term “nonagon,” which is simpler to spell and pronounce, is used in this work.

Even though counting Google hits is a useless way to decide these issues, let’s check them out just for fun:

  • 14,900 hits for “hendecagon”; 12,400 for “undecagon.” Hooray!
  • 18,400 hits for “enneagon”; 69,500 for “nonagon.” Boo, hiss!

Oh — I also promised a discussion of two-sided polygons, didn’t I? Most people think they don’t exist, so they don’t need to be named. (Unicorns don’t exist, but they still have a name. Hmm….) Actually, however, they do exist: for example, start at the North Pole, draw a line segment along the prime meridian until it reaches the South Pole, and then draw another line segment from the North Pole along the 90° longitude line, also stopping at the South Pole. Voilà: a two-sided polygon! You may think I’ve cheated, since this polygon exists on the surface of a sphere, not on a plane, but it might be worth imagining that you lived on the surface of a sphere, not on a plane… Anyway, I’ve never heard the term digon before; I’ve seen biangle and bigon, however. Be sure to pronounce bigon with a long i, and think of the famous saying, “Let bigons be bigons.” Again we can check Google hits, useless though it may be: 14,600 hits for “digon,” 487 for “biangle,” and 7,330 for “bigon.” Even though “biangle” loses the popularity contest, I suspect that it’s the best choice, since it’s consistent with the general principle: use Latin names for polygons with four sides or fewer, Greek names for those with more than four sides, and hybrid names for none.

Dec 4 2010

Born to Kvetch

So what’s not to love about this book? Just don’t expect Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish, which is a much lighter and less consequential work. Michael Wex’s Born to Kvetch is a serious, in-depth, expert analysis of conversational Yiddish and the culture that surrounds it. Despite the title, it’s not all about kvetching, though kvetching does play a starring role. So of course I do have one kvetch about this otherwise excellent book: I listened to a quarter of the audiobook version before turning in desperation to the much more satisfactory print version, since Wex’s own narration is intolerable. He reads with a sing-song intonation in which every declarative sentence sounds like a question — or, I should say, it sounds like a question? Of course the one advantage of the audiobook is that you know that the pronunciations of Yiddish are accurate, but it’s not worth it: the English is un-listenable-to, however you would say that in Yiddish.

Dec 3 2010

Making order out of chaos

My principal has selected me to give the first presentation in a proposed series of talks to be delivered by faculty and staff; the audience will consist of colleagues, students, parents, and community members. I’ve written a very rough description of what I’m intending to talk about (quoted below), but at a minimum the description needs polishing, and it may need significant revisions. For instance, I already know that I need to include something more about universals of language, I have to show that the presentation will be interactive, I want the focus to be about 90% on linguistics and only 10% on math (which may or may not be evident from the draft), and I have to make it clear that the questions asked in this description are merely examples of the kinds of questions that will be addressed and answered during the talk. So…let me know what suggestions you have!

Here’s the draft description:

Making order out of chaos:
How a linguist ended up teaching math

Linguistics is the scientific study of languages. It involves seeing patterns, putting puzzles together, developing hypotheses. Here’s an example from Kurdish, a language you know nothing about. (Yes, you’ve heard of the Kurds in Iraq, but do you know anything about their language? No??? I thought not.)

Here are six sentences in Kurdish, matched with English translations in random order:

1. Ez h’irç’ê dibînim.

2. Tu dir’evî.

3. Tu min dibînî.

4. H’irç’ di’eve.

5. Ez dir’evim.

6. Tu h’ireç’ê dibînî.

A. You see the bear.

B. You see me.

C. The bear runs.

D. You run.

E. I see the bear.

F. I run.

Can you figure out this puzzle? If so, can you translate the sentence “H’irç’ mîn dibîne” into English? What did you learn from trying to solve this puzzle? Some of my students noticed that the word “tu” resembles a word in Spanish, French, and Latin. Is this just a coincidence? Why should Kurdish resemble these languages? Maybe there’s a reason…

At Weston High School we care about global connections. Linguistics reinforces those connections. How does it happen that the Irish and the Pakistanis speak related languages, even though their countries are so far apart? Why do the Austrians and the Hungarians speak unrelated languages, even though their countries are next to each other?

Of course English is a world language as well. Surprisingly, linguists will tell you that it isn’t true that the vowels of English are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y. Why not? Do all language have the same vowels? Is there anything that all languages share?

Finally, does linguistics really have anything to do with math? Come to this talk, and you’ll learn a lot about linguistics, a little about math, and something about the strange connection between the two.


Nov 7 2010

Lost in Lexicon

If you regularly see my Facebook status in your News Feed, you may have noticed that it said “I’m lost in Lexicon right now…” on October 17. This status confused some of my students. One of them asked, “How did you get lost in Lexington?” (Apparently he isn’t a very careful reader.) Another student asked me what it meant:

Lost in Lexicon is the title of a new book by Penny Noyce, a neighbor of yours from Weston,” I replied.

“Someone in Weston wrote a book????” was her astonished response.

I assured her that there are plenty of people in Weston who have written books.

Anyway, Lost in Lexicon: An adventure in words and numbers is indeed the title of a new book by Penny Noyce. It’s a work of fiction, somewhat in the spirit of The Phantom Toolbooth, aimed at readers in middle school (in my judgment). Of course the real reason I had to get a copy was not that the author lives in Weston (and is the mother of three of my former students), but that the focus of the book is words and numbers, as the subtitle shows. What could be a better combination?

If you know children of the appropriate age (or older, for that matter), suggest this book to them. It’s both fun and informative, and should enhance or kindle interest in both math and language.

Nov 6 2010

Daylight saving time

Why is it that so many people say “daylight savings time” when the correct phrase so clearly is “daylight saving time”???? Do they think it’s like a savings account, where you put an hour of daylight in at one time and withdraw it at other?

Or is the problem the lack of a hyphen? Of course the phrase is supposed to be “daylight-saving time,” i.e. a time that saves daylight, where “daylight-saving” is used as an adjective (OK, technically it’s a participial phrase in which “daylight” is the direct object of the present participle “saving,” but it’s still used adjectivally). Things would be so much easier if we only spoke Latin.

My closely related rant is about the many people who think that the end of DST (now November, formerly October) is actually the beginning! The reason that this is (or may be) closely related to the phenomenon described above is that those who don’t understand the adjectival nature of  “daylight-saving” also don’t understand that it’s what the Brits call “summer time.” Of course you could argue that no daylight is actually being saved in this process; it’s just shifted from one end of the day to the other during the summer. But the theory is that you lose an hour while you’re asleep and gain an hour while you’re still awake, thus saving daylight for your waking hours.

OK, enough of that. You may now return to your regularly scheduled activities.

Nov 5 2010

Facebook “friends”

Listen in on this conversation:

Teacher 1: I hear that you friend your students on Facebook.

Teacher 2: Not exactly. I accept friend requests from current and former students. But I never initiate them.

Teacher 1: Even so, it’s a really bad idea. They’ll see all sorts of personal things about you. You could get into a lot of trouble for this. Besides, you’re not their friend — you’re their teacher !

Teacher 3: Au contraire, mon frère. Teacher 2 doesn’t put personal things on Facebook. It’s a good thing to have connections with your students outside of school. And anyway, don’t you know that “friend” doesn’t really mean “friend” on Facebook?

OK, what’s going on here? This is a composite conversation, but not a fictional one. I’ve been in the roles of Teachers 2 and 3. Let’s dissect three very different points of view about this issue. The first is exemplified in a recent misguided editorial in the Boston Globe, headlined “Teachers: Friends, not ‘friends’.” Here is an excerpt:

A new policy enacted by the Norton school board that bans teachers from becoming Facebook friends with students on social media sites is a simple lesson in common sense.

Some argue that the policy interferes with free speech and assembly rights. Others contend that teachers and students should communicate more, not less. At the college level, that may be true. But from kindergarten to high school, teachers should not need social media to reinforce their lesson plans. If a student has questions outside the classroom, email provides sufficient connection.

What we have here is a fine example of a straw-man argument. Who said that teachers “need social media to reinforce their lesson plans”? The Globe has simply invented a point of view from an imaginary opponent in order to argue against it. The issue isn’t whether we need social media; it’s simply whether it’s acceptable to accept friend requests.

Part of the problem here is the ambiguity of the word “friend.” Facebook users certainly understand the two meanings of the word. Only a naive adult could possibly confuse the two meanings. Only a naive adult could believe that a student who friends me really thinks that I’m his friend in the usual meaning of the word. Many Facebook users have a ridiculous number of “friends”; while I have only 152, one of my former students has 3187. But no one could plausibly think that she considers 3187 people to be actual friends!

I promised three very different points of view. The first one says that accepting friend requests from students is inappropriate; the second says that it’s OK; the third says that it’s something that teachers should do. (As an aside, note that many behaviors can be viewed as this sort of trichotomy. Pick a behavior; you can prohibit it, you can stay neutral, or you can encourage it.) The third point of view came to my attention twice in the past month. The first time was an article in Education Tech News, concerning the principal of All Saints Central School in Michigan. Here is an excerpt:

Principal John Hoving…said he uses Facebook to:

  • promote the school
  • connect with alumni, and
  • increase communication with parents.

Hoving also friends students who send him friend requests. As a result, some parents and students have accused him of using Facebook to monitor students’ online activity.

Notice the not-so-subtle use of the verb “accused” in the last sentence. The article goes on to show why it’s completely the wrong word choice. In reality, the majority have commended him for this connection. (Note that Hoving, like me, accepts friend requests from students but doesn’t initiate them.) Read the follow-up:

Hoving pointed out that students do not have to send him friend requests, but if they choose to — he accepts.

Hoving says if he happens to see students posting questionable content in public forums, he feels it is his responsibility — as a concerned adult — to help students understand the potential consequences of their digital activity.

Several parents and students spoke out in support of Hoving, saying they are fine with his efforts to “look out for” everyone at school.

Richard Guerry, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Online and Cell-phone Communication (IROC2)…posed an intriguing question: Would parents who have an issue with the principal’s actions really want him to ignore potential problems — especially when he has an opportunity to protect their children before something happens? Hoving should “be commended for caring and protecting his students,” according to Guerry.

The second time I heard this view in the past month came in a conference with the parent of one of my students. She said that she insisted that her teenage children had to friend her, just so she could monitor what they’re putting on Facebook. (Yes, I know, the privacy settings complicate this claim, but it’s still a good idea.) For similar reasons she was pleased that they friend their teachers. We talked about the anonymous Teacher 1 in the dialog above (who remained anonymous, of course), and both of us agreed that there’s a simple solution to the problem of not wanting students to see inappropriate personal information about teachers. The solution is for teachers to follow the same advice that I give to students: don’t post anything that you don’t want the whole world to see! It’s called the World Wide Web for a reason. Privacy is an illusion these days; when something is too personal for your teachers to see (if you’re a student) or too personal for your students to see (if you’re a teacher), then don’t post it! That’s my policy, and it should be yours.

In conclusion, I have to say that I suppose there’s actually a fourth point of view: that teachers should initiate friend requests. But I don’t hear anyone arguing for that.

Obviously I’m firmly with Hoving and Gerry on this issue. The Norton School Committee and the Boston Globe are badly off-base.

Jan 18 2010

Avatar

What more can I add to all the chatter about James Cameron’s Avatar? Not much, except to share my opinions. You probably already know all that you need to know about this movie, and I certainly don’t want to include any spoilers.

First of all, it’s absolutely essential to see it in 3-D, preferably in IMAX. The three-dimensional effects were absolutely convincing, especially in the outdoor scenes, giving the viewer the sense of being in the action rather than watching the action. The result was a thoroughly entertaining, amazing film. I was totally absorbed by it, having no trouble sitting for nearly three hours. (The Tempur-Pedic seats definitely helped! I guess that’s one of the benefits of seeing a movie in a theater that’s located in a furniture store.)

The linguistically sophisticated artificial language of the Na’vi was of course of interest to me, though it was really a minor part of the movie. Although the three-dimensionality allowed subtitles to hover well in front of the action — thereby making them less intrusive than they would be otherwise — it was still appropriate for Cameron to use the device of having the main Na’vi characters be more-or-less capable speakers of English as a second language. Doing so allowed him to get away with minimal use of subtitles. Perhaps I’ll write a follow-up post concerning their own language .

I was surprised to see some little kids at this showing (early Sunday afternoon). Either their parents had no idea that there would be so much violence, or they didn’t care. Avatar is basically a war movie, after all, so they should have cared.

As a war movie, it included every cliché in the book, and therein lies its major flaw. The flaw isn’t the lack of originality; I discount critics who observe that this movie has been made before. Yes, the theme and story line are taken from other efforts, but so what? It’s commonplace for plays and films to do this; even Shakespeare took story lines from elsewhere. No, the flaw is the piling on of cliché after cliché. Fortunately the action and the visual effects are so stunning that it’s almost possible to ignore this problem, but “almost” isn’t good enough. As an unsubtle metaphor for the Europeans’ destruction of American Indians and their lands, it was bound to be somewhat predictable — but it didn’t have to go to such extremes. The result was a collection of one- and two-dimensional characters who fell into situations that anyone in the audience would have expected.

Despite that flaw, and despite its transparent political correctness, Avatar is still a successful film. Aside from the special effects, the spectacular scenery and the attention to detail redeem the story. Go see it — warts and all!


A small linguistic question that has nothing to do with the movie: why is it that I have no trouble with the ostensibly misplaced modifier in the fourth sentence of my second paragraph above? By proximity, the participle “having” should modify “it,” yet the intended reading where it modifies “I” is definitely the dominant one to my eyes and ears. Something to ponder…

Jan 15 2010

Linguistics, mathematics, and mysteries

“I make order out of chaos.” This is how an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in years explains her transition from linguistics to statistics, when people think it’s a complete change of field. It’s how she explains it to non-linguists, of course — as I already knew the connection. But the phrasing really resonates with me. I’ve described elsewhere how the search for patterns and abstract generalizations is what unites linguistics and math teaching in my mind, but I rather like the step up the ladder of abstraction implied by “I make order out of chaos.”

It also got me thinking about why I like the mystery and science fiction genres in popular fiction. My liking for science fiction is no mystery, so to speak: anyone with a mathematical bent is likely to enjoy the conventions of that genre. But what about mysteries? I’d been thinking about that lately, and it occurred to me that mystery writers also make order out of chaos: the unsolved crime is cognitively chaotic, and the solution creates order out of it. Furthermore, the puzzle that’s often involved bears definite kinship to the kinds of puzzles we solve in both math and linguistics. Just a thought…

Dec 22 2009

The Meaning of Everything

Like many other books that I enjoy, Simon Winchester’s non-fiction opus, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, won’t appeal to everyone. But if you’re interested in words — and the development of the English language in general — you won’t want to miss this compelling story of the 54-year-long construction of the OED. Something of a companion volume to The Professor and the Madman, we have here what Paul Harvey would call “the rest of the story.” It’s a reasonably comprehensive account of how the OED was built and what the contributors were like. It’s at least as much a human history as it is the story of a dictionary. You would probably expect it to be dry, but it isn’t. In fact, if anything, I would have liked more technical details. But that’s just me; most readers will prefer it the way it is.

Nov 28 2009

A wandering past participle, or a new idiom?

Maybe I am inadvertently committing the Recency Fallacy, but it seems to me that up until last year or so the past participle of pet was petted:

“Where do your cats like to be petted?” <http://www.mihav.com/en/forum/share-amp-chat/where-do-your-cats-like-to-162014>

pet; petted; petting” <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pet>

“The past participle of ‘to pet’ is ‘petted’.” <http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/19711-pet-petted.html>

But Barbara and I have recently noticed that several people we know have switched to pet as its own past participle. For example:

“My dog likes to be pet all the time.” <overheard>
“That cat really likes to be pet.” <overheard>
“Do snakes like to be petted?” <http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090310231953AAm1xeY>

Most interestingly, a post from the UK contains the sentence, “But, when my rabbit is laying down, he definitely likes to be pet around his whole body,” even though the headline (presumably written by someone else) reads, “How do i know my bunny likes being petted?” <http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091011130535AAHEC77>

It may or may not be relevant, but all the attested forms overheard by Barbara and me come from highly educated women — even our veterinarian — so it’s not an illiteracy. Somehow a weak verb has turned into a strong verb, which is the reverse of the natural course of events. (For example, workwrought changed to workworked.) We could gather some evidence of what’s going on by checking other verbs that rhyme with pet, some of which provide possibly explanatory paradigms:

setset (possibly the model for petpet)
betbet (likewise)
letlet (likewise)
getgotten (a different strong-verb paradigm)
jetjetted (a regular, i.e. weak verb)
netnetted (regular)
wetwetted (regular)
abetabetted (regular)
whetwhetted (regular)
fretfretted (regular)
vetvetted (regular)

So these data don’t really explain why petted would become pet. And it’s interesting that all the surprising examples that I could find on the Web or in overheard speech have occurred in the phrase “likes to be pet”; maybe this has become new idiom that I’ve been unaware of, in which case the past participle remains petted elsewhere? Just a conjecture…

Nov 24 2009

An interview in Wildcat Tracks

Junior Lauren Avery, one of the editors of Weston High School’s student newspaper, Wildcat Tracks, asked if she could interview me. Of course I said yes, and the result was a half-page article that focused on my transition from linguistics to teaching math. I was pleased with the depth and breadth of the writing, as well as by its unusually high degree of accuracy. “It’s much more accurate than Fox News,” I said to one of my colleagues.

“That’s not a very high bar,” she replied. She’s right, of course. This article was probably 99% accurate, which is as much as anyone could ask for — and I was just kidding about Fox News.

Here are a few excerpts from Lauren’s article:

Davidson’s smooth switch between two seemingly incompatible fields often surprises his students. Despite this, Davidson sees a great deal of similarities between linguistics and mathematics, and to this day he continues to pursue both subjects.

A linguist is a person who studies the origins and usage of ancient and modern languages…. By studying multiple languages instead of focusing on a single language, Davidson was able to begin to identify trends and patterns between languages, a concept that played a major role in his interest in mathematics later on.

To his current and former students, Davidson’s ability to switch between two fields has given them a new perspective about choosing a career in the future. “It lets me think that it’s not really too late to change what you are passionate about,” said junior Mir Bokhari.

Davidson’s switch between two fields has affected him both as a teacher and as a person, and it reflects some valuable lessons concerning education. “You never know if sometimes something you’re interested in can come back. My jobs make use of all the linguistics I had done 20 years earlier in new contexts. My linguistics training helped in math,” Davidson said. “There are surprising connections. Nothing you learn is ever wasted.”

Nov 21 2009

The Good Woman of Setzuan

Congratulations to the Weston High School Theater Company for another first-rate production! The last time I saw Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan must have been at least 20 years ago, so I didn’t remember much about it except for some bits of plot and theme. In particular, I didn’t remember — or, more likely, I had never known — that this 1938–1943 play was so influential on subsequent 20th-century dramatic literature. Non-Aristotelian drama seems routine to us today, but it was revolutionary at the time, as director John Minigan points out in his program notes. Political and moral issues in this play are evident and often unresolved, making it a good choice for high-school performers and audiences. Several memes common throughout folklore and literature pervade the play: anonymous visits by the gods, the search for a good person à la Diogenes, and cross-dressing by a woman who needs to pretend to be a man.

Several actors stood out in Friday’s performance. At the top of the list must be Ben Heath, whose enthusiastic portrayal of airplane pilot Yang Sun grabbed the audience’s attention and held it throughout the play. Only slightly less vivid was Katherine Donahue, who gave an unexpectedly nuanced performance as prostitute Shen Te and her alter ego Shui Ta. I say “unexpectedly” because Katherine’s roles in past productions have always given her the opportunity to be larger than life — even over the top. I knew that she excelled in those conditions, but I hadn’t known that she could so successfully represent both the sweet Shen Te and the ruthless Shui Ta. (These roles had to be played by the same person, as Shui Ta is merely the male disguise that Shen Te adopts whenever she needs to be fierce.) I also have to mention the three gods, who serve in a dual capacity as both a Greek chorus and the instigators of the plot. But, unlike the typical chorus, actors Mikey Bullister, Laurel Kulow, and Diana Flanagan created three contrasting roles: to my mind Mikey came across as a politican, Laurel as a whiny teenager, and Diana as a demanding boss. The combination was effective and amusing, as was Reid Gilbard’s portrayal of Wong, the water seller. All of the rest of the large cast — Eric Doyle, Luc Pomerance, Matthew Chernick, Nike Power, Peter Birren, Halle O’Conor, Lucy Hastings, Tara Kulas, Geoffrey Binney, Jamie Goulart, Katelyn Engler, Jessica Ober, Lexie Burkus, Gabe Nelson, Haley Knapp, Hannah Dodson, Cailin McCormack, Kimmie Remis, Erica Kwiatkowski, Alessandra Haley, Grace Harper, Daniel Donahue, and Athina Kalemos — also deserve recognition, as the entire performance was strong and convincing.

The small pit orchestra — Tommy Fitzgerald, Myles McMann, Nike Power, and Odin Enzmann — was outstanding in their supporting role in this play, which was definitely not a musical although it contained songs and other musical accompaniment. Lighting and sound must have been flawless, as they were unobtrusively perfect, just the way they should be. Finally, perhaps the most impressive aspect of the production was the amazing set, which was gorgeous and dramatic from my seat in the second row.

And now for a few linguistic points. As I said in the first graf above, I saw a performance of this play at least 20 years ago. But I had already known the work, since I had read it — in the original German — as a college freshman over 40 years ago. Needless to say, I don’t really remember that experience. But I do remember a couple of peculiarities in the standard translation by the well-known Eric Bentley, who had been a professor at Harvard just a year or two before I arrived there as a student. Actually, all I really remember is the title, which contains both of these peculiarities. Brecht’s title for the play is Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, and the alert reader surely notices the two surprises. First, why does Bentley translate “Mensch” as “woman”, when it really means “person”? My guess is that it’s because the person in question is in fact a woman, but it seems to me that this translation dulls the impact of the opening, when the gods are looking for a good person, not specifically for a good woman. Second, how does “Sezuan” become “Setzuan” rather than “Szechwan”? I’m not claiming that “Szechwan” is in any way a reasonable transliteration of the Chinese word, but merely that it’s the standard English one. The rendition “Setzuan” is neither German nor English! My best guess here is that the interpolated “t” is meant to help us pronounce the German word, since German “z” is pronounced “ts.” In any case, Bentley’s translation is the one that was used in the Weston production, and it is (title aside) a seamless and as far as I can tell accurate translation. It certainly worked well in this performance.

Nov 19 2009

Struggle

At this week’s Math Department meeting, we spent the first 15 minutes or so discussing what we do to help “struggling students” succeed in our courses — particularly what resources we provide. Something was bothering me about the whole discussion, so I waited a few minutes before I said anything. Then I realized what was bothering me: the participle “struggling” was apparently being used as a synonym for “unsuccessful.”

This usage has long seemed completely wrong to me. To my mind, I have some students who struggle and do well. I also have some students who are unsuccessful — precisely because they don’t struggle.

It all comes down, of course, to the meaning of the verb “struggle.” Let’s see what a couple of reputable dictionaries say about the matter. In each case I’ve selected the appropriate sense of the word:

  1. to make strenuous…efforts in the face of difficulties… <struggling with the problem>
  2. to proceed with difficulty or with great effort <struggled through the high grass> <struggling to make a living>
—Merriam-Webster
  1. to be strenuously engaged with a problem, a task, or an undertaking
  2. to progress with difficulty <struggled with calculus>
—American Heritage Dictionary

Linguists, of course, always insist on being descriptive rather than prescriptive, and yet they usually rely on introspection or on the use of a small number of informants. I suppose a more accurate technique in this context would be to survey a large number of people and find out how they use the word “struggle”; I have no idea what we would find, but at least the dictionary definitions make it absolutely clear to me that we should stop using this verb as a synonym for “be unsucessful.”

On another front, we spent the next 25 minutes of the department meeting discussing how to solve the equation x2 = 2x. I told my Algebra II class about this, since we’re currently transitioning from quadratic functions to exponential functions, and one of their homework problems called for a comparison between y = x2 and y = 2x. They found it an unlikely topic for a meeting — and they were especially surprised that we were so geeky that the meeting ran ten minutes over before anybody looked at the clock and noticed that we had gone past the announced end of the meeting.

By the way, there are three solutions to this equation. One solution, 2, is immediately obvious; a second solution, 4, is not at all obvious until you give it some considerable thought, at which point it “becomes obvious.” The third solution can be estimated by looking at a graph. Finding this solution is left as an exercise for the reader.

Sep 30 2009

Pasha

I’ve had lunch twice so far at Pasha, a new Turkish restaurant in Arlington Center. Although I don’t know anything yet about their dinners, I can highly recommend it on the basis of the two lunches. If you’ve never had Turkish cuisine, you have to try it! Unsurprisingly it resembles Greek cuisine quite a bit — it’s unsurprising since the majority of Greek foods were originally Turkish, presumably in part because of the geographical proximity of the two countries but more because of the Ottoman Empire. Anyway, the very extensive menu includes a wide variety of meat, seafood, and veggie dishes, with the expected emphasis on lamb and eggplant. At our recent lunch we shared a perfectly done babaghannouj as a cold appetizer (though oddly with an Americanized French bread instead of pita), an unusual mucver as a hot appetizer (that’s fried stuffed zucchini with garlic yogurt sauce, accompanied by a small salad), and the delicious Sultan’s Boat as an entree (described as “beef and lamb marinated with Turkish spices, roasted with mashed potatoes and mozzarella cheese, served with bulgar and house salad”). Despite the bread and the mozzarella cheese (and the presence of lasagna on the menu), Pasha seems very authentic, if I can remember correctly from my visit to Turkey all too long ago — I think it was in 1978. And they do serve wine and beer; even though Turkey is an ostensibly Muslim nation, it’s a thoroughly secularized one.

My only complaint is a linguistic one. Because they chose to use a font that doesn’t include such essential Turkish letters as the undotted i (ı) or the ş and ç with cedillas — all distinct from the dotted i, the plain s, and the plain c — many of the Turkish words were incorrect. Somehow I suspect that that won’t bother very many of the patrons, but it bothered me.

Sep 28 2009

The Internet isn’t melting our brains.

Vincent Rossmeier has written a refreshing article in Salon entitled “Is the Internet melting our brains?” Essentially an interview with linguist Dennis Baron about his new book, A Better Pencil, the article counters much of the typical hand-wringing in the mainstream media and academia:

Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We’re facing a crisis, one that could very well corrode the way humans have communicated since we first evolved from apes.

While I’m sure that many of my students spend too much time on Facebook and too much time texting, I’m equally sure that their social relationships and their use of English were no better before they indulged in such activities. I’ve reserved Baron’s book from the library, and I’ll post a review here (but only after I’ve read it).

Apr 19 2009

Linguistics, mathematics, and the general public

Just about everyone can speak, so we all have an opinion about language. Just about everyone can count, so we all have an opinion about math. Everyone’s an expert. After reading uninformed opinions about both, I decided to compare and contrast. Off the top of my head I can think of three points of comparison and four points of contrast; if I were writing a thesis on this subject I would undoubtedly find many more.

First let’s look at some similarities that go beyond what I hinted at in the first paragraph:

  1. For some reason, people who state their uninformed opinions in public almost always take the conservative side of issues in both of these areas. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me, given the general tenor of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and other instances of talk radio and its television allies. But it’s still striking that your typical layperson wants to preserve or resurrect obsolete grammar “rules,” wants dictionaries to be prescriptive rather than descriptive, thinks that some languages are inferior to others, etc. And it’s equally striking that the same typical layperson advocates “back to basics” approaches in mathematics and thinks that math is all about memorization of facts, rote algorithms, and the like.
  2. Members of the general public are confused equally about what linguists and mathematicians do. They think that a linguist is someone who speaks several languages fluently, so why should they ask a linguist for an expert scientific opinion about language in general or English in particular? Similarly, they think that a mathematician is someone who calculates quickly and accurately, so why should they ask a mathematician for an expert scientific opinion on learning mathematical concepts?
  3. Because the general public understands neither subject, they are confused about the connections between the two. The fact that I moved from studying linguistics to teaching math sounds like a complete change of direction, not a natural evolution. It’s the rare person who sees cryptology as a connection or bridge between the two, or who understands that in some sense math is a language (only in some sense, I hasten to add), or who can imagine that one can apply mathematics in any way to the study of language.

So much for the similarities. Are there ways in which we can contrast the general public’s opinions about language and math? Sure. Here are a few:

  1. People freely profess ignorance about math. When someone at a party asks what you do, and you say that you’re a math teacher, the most common response is, “I was never any good at math.” Rarely are they ashamed. Often they even seem proud of it. But no one admits to be ignorant about reading, writing, and speaking.
  2. On what might be the same lines, people at least have some idea that there is such a thing as a mathematician, even if they don’t know what mathematicians do. (“A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems,” according to Alfred Renyi.) But when I tell people that I majored in linguistics, the usual response is either a blank stare or “What’s that?”
  3. Perhaps as a consequence of the previous observation, a great many myths about language float around in the popular culture, but there are not nearly so many myths about math.
  4. Everyone thinks they can teach English — they can’t, of course — but very few people think they can teach math.

Perhaps in a later post I’ll give some citations to exemplify these seven points, but this will do for now.

Apr 17 2009

Shout-out to B Block

Near the end of my B Block precalculus class this morning, a couple of juniors happen to mention this blog and asked me to give a shout-out here to B Block. I said I would do so.

But first, of course, being a linguistics geek, I had to go research the origin and connotations of the word “shout-out” — with or without a hyphen. Of several sources, the Wikipedia article seemed pretty reliable. (They* aren’t always, of course.) It’s short enough to quote in its entirety. Here’s most of it:

A shout-out is a greeting or acknowledgment of a person, group, or organization of significance. It is often done as a sign of respect, synonymous with “giving props”.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term back to 1990, and notes that in the United States the term is particularly used among fans and performers of rap music (shout-outs are of particular significance in hip-hop culture), while in the United Kingdom it is particularly associated with the rave and club subculture. On either side of the Atlantic, the term is not limited to those groups. Contestants on game shows almost always are given an opportunity to “shout out” to friends and family watching the show on television at home, and other entertainment media that involve one-time appearances by regular people (such as talk shows) also occasionally allow shout-outs.

It’s not surprising that a term originating from rap and hip-hop would be popular among a group of white and Asian teens.

And so…I am happy to give a shout-out to B Block! (But don’t feel slighted if you’re in C, E, or G; it was B Block that asked. Ask, and you shall receive.)

——–

*I know. I used a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent. But the meaning would change to something completely incorrect if I wrote “it isn’t” here instead of “they aren’t.” Sometimes rules need to be broken. (And I had to put this footnote in, since Abby commented on how unusual it is to have footnotes in a blog.)

Jan 3 2009

Thesauri & The Man Who Made Lists

I recently read Joshua Kendall’s biography of Peter Mark Roget, entitled The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus. While this book is fascinating, it’s also deeply flawed — especially for those of us who love lists, not to mention those of us who love thesauri and other reference books.

On the plus side, Kendall teaches us a lot about Roget’s background as a scientist and physician. We learn about his compulsive list-making as a child, whether it be names of farm animals in Latin or lists of the bones in the human body. We learn about his organization of all the concepts of the English language in later life. And we learn a little — but not nearly enough — about Roget’s mental problems and how he coped with them. These problems were relevant, indeed central, to the decision to create the first thesaurus in 1852. Compiling lists of words apparently helped Roget cope with depression, anxiety, and probably Asperger’s, though Kendall only barely touches on the last of these.

On the minus side, the reader gains almost no sense (despite the subtitle) of the importance of the thesaurus to Roget’s life and to the world. It’s just one incident among many. I was looking for details — lots of details — about how the thesaurus was compiled. The lack of details is rather ironic, given the subject of the book. And it reminds me of my issues with The Professor and the Madman. The other flaw is the offhand consideration of the likelihood that Roget had Asperger’s, though of course neither the name nor the disorder was known in the 19th Century. These flaws were not enough to deter me from finishing The Man Who Made Lists, but they certainly reduced my enjoyment of the book and meant that I learned far less from it than I had hoped.

Those who know me will not be surprised that I still have an old copy of Roget’s International Thesaurus, a copy that my father gave me when I was eight years old. As I say, people won’t be surprised that I have this, though they might be surprised that I could lay my hands on it so readily. Anyway, when I was eight, this “new edition” of the thesaurus had been out for nine years, so it slightly predates my own birth. It’s instructive to contrast the arrangement and organization of this edition with the modern alphabetical lists of synonyms that still claim the name “thesaurus.” My copy, published by Crowell, contains the following remarks in the Publishers’ Preface [note the subtle placement of the apostrophe]:

The basic principle of Dr. Peter Roget’s original Thesaurus was the grouping of words according to their ideas rather than the listing of words, as dictionaries do, according to the alphabet. This principle — the secret of Roget’s success — has been scrupulously preserved in the various Crowell editions for over sixty years. [Italics as in original

The difficulty with grouping words by ideas is that it can be very difficult to find a word, so this edition of the thesaurus contains an index that’s nearly as long as the body of the book. Be that as it may, Roget’s idiosyncratic organization of all possible concepts is a delight, as long as you don’t take it as a given truth. The schema is hierarchical and multi-level. For example, suppose you were thinking about prime numbers, but you couldn’t remember the terminology prime number. You would, of course, look under Class I (abstract relations), Section V (Number), Part 1 (Number in the Abstract), Category 84 (Number), Subcategory 2. You knew that, didn’t you?

Well, no, of course you didn’t; that’s why you needed the huge index. Anyhow, the subcategory in question reads as follows:

complement, subtrahend, multiplicand, multiplier, multiplicator, multiple, submultiple, coefficient, dividend, divisor, factor, quotient, fraction, mixed number, numerator, denominator, decimal, mixed decimal, circulating decimal, repetend, common measure, aliquot part, reciprocal, prime number, totient, quota, differential, integral, fluxion, fluent, power, root, radix, base, exponent, index, logarithm, antilogarithm, modulus. 

Note that this is most definitely not a list of synonyms! It’s a list of words that are conceptually related in some way. Reading it, you spot the term you were looking for (“prime number”) and your mind is also captured by a great many other words that are closely or loosely connected. What a loss to use a modern so-called thesaurus, where you probably can’t even find “prime number” unless you already know the phrase, and then you’ll simply find that there are no synonyms.

You can browse through Roget’s Thesaurus and learn something new on any page. All you are likely to learn from a modern thesaurus is some pretentious near-synonyms that will make you a worse writer.

Nov 27 2008

The Girl of His Dreams

If you can’t travel to Venice in the real world, the next best thing is to travel vicariously in the novels of Donna Leon. Formally speaking, these novels are squarely in the mystery genre, but Leon devotes as much attention to her locale (Venice, of course) and her characters (primarily Commissario Guido Brunetti and his family) as she does to the plot of the mystery. Some readers might find this balance disappointing, but the books are much the richer for it.

The Girl of His Dreams is the latest in Leon’s Brunetti series. The characters continue from Blood from a Stone and Death at La Fenice, both of which I read last year; the stories are independent. This time we have a lot about religion: the Roman Catholic church, Catholic priests, and a somewhat vague alternative but Christian religion that might be a cult or at least a scam. The teenagers are a little less stereotypical now, perhaps because they’re older. There is also a continuation of two themes from Blood from a Stone, ethnic prejudice and the presence of foreigners in Venice. This time the foreign group is Gypsies, who have fled from the former Yugoslavia during the conflicts there. Political issues infuse the novel, ranging from the treatment of Gypsies to the word itself to the Venetians’ attitude toward the Church. Leon’s pace is fairly slow and deliberate, but the book is never boring. Do read it.

A small linguistic note:
Leon is an American living in Venice, so she wrote the book in English, though Italian and Venetian are sprinkled lightly throughout to add an air of authenticity. The linguistic issue arises when two characters decide whether to call each other by the familiar or the polite second-person pronoun. I’m familiar with this issue in French and German, and I’ve asked Spanish-speakers about it in Spanish, but I don’t know much about it in Italian. Nevertheless, I understand that an Italian author could simply make a point by having a character say “tu” or “voi.” This distinction is nearly impossible to translate into English, thereby requiring some sort of circumlocation or paraphrase. But the English-speaking writer can simply have her characters say something like, “Shall we call each other tu?” or even “Shall we use the familiar form of the pronoun?” The latter, of course, would be unbearably pedantic and implausible, so we have to assume that the reader will understand “tu” from context or from familiarity with other Romance languages.

Nov 26 2008

Meme abuse

What’s a meme? Well, those of us who have spent too many years on the Internet (from its inception in 1969, actually, when it was called the ARPAnet) and those of us who have read The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, know what a meme is. Although the Wikipedia article on memes is far too long and leaves a lot to be desired, it definitely includes the correct definition:

A meme…comprises any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances. Memes propagate themselves and can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus.

That’s clear enough, so why is the word used incorrectly these days by so many people, some of whom should definitely know better but most of whom have never learned what a meme really is? Many writers seem to think that a meme is an informal quiz or questionnaire that is passed around by email or by the Web, often of the “you are a _____” variety. Now you can see both the similarities and the differences here: Do they propagate themselves, or do users intentionally transmit them? Are they cultural ideas and behaviors, or are they questionnaires? The word is definitely losing most of its import these days!

As a teacher, I suppose I’d better cite some sources for this claim. I’m sure that some of my colleagues would be aghast that I cited Wikipedia as my source for the correct use of a word, but so be it. As for the current incorrect use, I am reluctant to cite either email messages or websites of friends — for obvious reasons — but I can probably find similar use by strangers without much effort. Let’s see… most of the initial hits from a Google search actually lead to the correct usage (much to my surprise), but I’m sure I can also find the usage I object to… OK, here are a few:

That’s enough. You get the idea. What’s up here?

Nov 25 2008

Reading the OED and The Professor and the Madman

I have recently read two unconnected but closely related non-fiction books: Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, by Ammon Shea, and The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester. Probably I should have read them in the reverse order, but it was Shea’s 2008 book that impelled me to go back and read Winchester’s, which was written ten years earlier.

As the subtitle to Shea’s book suggests, he successfully took on the self-assigned task of reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary in a year. You may wonder why anyone would do such a thing — one of my colleagues would uncharitably claim that Shea must have too muich time on his hands — but never mind, the book is well worth reading on several counts even without a compelling answer to that question. First of all, any reader has to be simply astounded that anyone could accomplish such a feat: it has a fascination similar to any story of the accomplishment of a long-lasting unlikely challenge. Second, the details surrounding the endeavor are of interest to any compulsive reader (not that I would know anyone in that category), ranging from Shea’s physical arrangements for the effort to the effects on his eyes, his body, and his relationships. Third, Reading the OED does not merely recount the story of what Shea did but also includes lots of notes on many interesting words that he encountered along the way. Definitely a niche book, I suppose, but go read it if you’re a lover of words and dictionaries. And if you didn’t grow up with a dictionary in every room, it’s never too late to start.

Winchester’s book is much more of a popularization. Basically it tells the tale of two men in Victorian England: James Murray, “the professor” and the principal editor of the OED for decades during the creation of its first edition; and Dr. William Chester Minor, “the madman” and the most prolific contributor of source material to the OED over the same decades. I wish this book had been around during my father’s life, not only because he was a lover of words and dictionaries but also because of one of the stories he used to tell as a psychiatrist. It concerned a visitor to the large mental hospital where my father was the director; the visitor stopped to ask for directions from the first person he saw, and the reply turned out to be detailed, complex, and accurate. It turned out that the person giving directions was a patient in the hospital. When the visitor expressed surprise, the reply was, “I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.”

I’m sure you’ve heard that line before in other contexts, but this (probably apocryphal) story is the context for it that always sticks in my mind. It continued to resonate for me in The Professor and the Madman, where Minor is portrayed as a deeply paranoid schizophrenic who spent most of his adult life confined to the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane, as a sentence for shooting a man whom he had mistakenly believed to have broken into his apartment. Winchester tells the entwined stories of Murray and Minor, but mostly Minor’s, which is the more fascinating or the more sensationalistic one, depending on your view of such things. In any case, I did find it fascinating, but I wish there had been more details of the lexicographic procedures used for researching a writing a gigantic dictionary in pre-computer days. If you’re not a dictionary lover, read it for the story of Minor’s life and mind; if you are a dictionary lover, read it not only for that story but also for the account of how the OED was constructed. And, in either case, read it as intellectual history: Winchester’s portrait of the times provides more than just a glimpse of what was happening in Britain then.

Nov 24 2008

Spanish foods?

Following up on yesterday’s footnote, I need to mention another linguistic annoyance: the misuse of the word “Spanish.” Yes, it correctly describes the language that is spoken not only in Spain but also in much of Central and South America, but it’s not the right word for the culture, the food, or the people — unless, of course, you’re talking about Spain itself. For the Western Hemisphere we have the perfectly good words “Hispanic” and “Latino.” Anyway, my local neighborhood convenience store changed owners recently, and now it advertises “Spanish & American Foods,” as you can see in this picture. (I couldn’t find an angle that would avoid the intrusive stop sign, but you can still read it pretty well.)

Spanish food

Needless to say, I found lot of Latin American items inside the store but very little food from Spain. They do, however, primarily carry the Goya Foods brand, and it’s of interest that Goya was indeed founded by a couple from Spain. Goya, however, clearly uses the words “Spanish,” “Hispanic,” and “Latino” correctly on their website.

Nov 23 2008

Midsummer Night’s Dream

Kudos* to the Weston High School Theater Company for its outstanding production of Midsummer Night’s Dream the past three nights. Among the excellent cast, I first want to mention Katherine Donahue (Helena) and Anna Been (Hermia), who were exceptionally effective against each other (and sometimes against the male leads) portraying convincingly fierce women. You’ll say that of course girls are always stronger than the guys in high school drama productions, but in this case that wasn’t quite true: far and away the best performance was given by Brian Cowe in his amazingly intense, madcap rendition of Puck. All I can say is, “Wow!”

*I can’t refrain from observing that “kudos” is a singular noun, and it irritates me when I hear or see a reference to “another kudo” or the like. If only more people studied Greek, they would know that of course κυδος is simply a third-declension neuter noun in its nominative singular form. Now I know that it actually looks misleadingly like a second-declension masculine, but… OK, OK, end of rant.

Jul 17 2008

What kids call their parents…and their parents’ friends

Just getting around to blogging this, but there was a fascinating article a few weeks ago in the Boston Globe, made all the more relevant to me because it mentioned several of my Weston students and was written by the mother of one of those students. Ellen Freeman Roth’s article, headlined “Not your father’s nicknames when teens talk to parents,” explored what kids call their parents and their parents’ friends:

Lisa and Michael Josephson of Old Greenwich, Conn., are Mama Jo and Papa Jo, names coined by their daughter’s friend. Timothy Sweet of Watertown began calling his father “Sweet Man” a dozen years ago on a Boy Scout trip. Sweet likewise has nicknames for his friends’ parents, including “Glenzo” for Glen and “Pina” for Patricia.

Sarah Switlik, 18, a Babson College student from Princeton, N.J., said her mother, Pam, wasn’t thrilled at first when Sarah called her P-Money. “Initially my mom said, ‘Really, Sarah,’ exasperatedly. Now when she’s texting she signs off, ‘Love, P$.’ It makes her feel like one of the girls.”

Caroline Gaulin, 22, of Greenwich, Conn., yelled “My bad, G-Dog!” to her father, Dan, during a basketball game to make light of an error she’d made. “After that we started calling him G-Dog,” she said. “Now he loves it.”

Teachers are almost always called by title and surname at Weston, but at CSA we’re all on a first-name basis. These customs run counter to expectations and fly in the face of the customs for naming of parents and parents’ friends, at least based on my predictions. There are probably some interesting class issues here. Although I grew up calling my parents “Mom” and “Dad,” I called all my other relatives and my parents’s friends by their first names: it was Lillian and Leonard, not Aunt Lillian and Uncle Leonard; Luke and Gen, not Mr. and Mrs. Garner. But Barbara grew up more formally, with Aunts and Uncles and surnames with titles. I’ll have to ask my CSA students what they do; I’ll predict big differences between Weston and Dorchester.

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