Dr. Goodword’s Language Blog

One of my first blogs was “Life in the Slow Lane“, a short essay on my life in Lewisburg. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken so soon since this past weekend we had a riot downtown. It was reported in the Sunbury Daily Item this morning (no hurry: news doesn’t go away) under the headline above.

My wife and I were downtown watching the parking meter flags pop up at the time of the riot but somehow missed it. Apparently he didn’t spill over onto Market Street.

My first reading of this headline led me to suspect that maybe a riot had charged up an otherwise lethargic student into really digging into his studies. But, no, he actually was the riot under the Lewisburg criminal code if not under the laws of English grammar.

Ho-hum. Another week slips by; another word gains new meaning.

Jere Mitchum dropped us this note Monday:

“I’ve been concerned about the awkward placement of only in present day writing. This example is from your April 27th discussion of denouement:

‘It has only been in the language since the latter half of the 18th century, so it has changed little.’

It seems to me that only should be next to since because the sentence means it has been in the language only since the latter half of the 18th century.”

“Another recent example may be clearer: ‘We were only able to book six travelers.’

Only here modifies six, not able. Why not place it next to the word it modifies?”

My response to Jere was so long that I haven’t heard from him since. The reason I was swept away in my answer to this question is that it touches on one of the most fascinating aspects of language: how it is processed by the human brain.

In fact, language comprises several layers of mental rules that operate independently but simultaneously. The semantic regions in our brains feed on syntactic and morphological (word form) regions but maintain their own set of rules and acceptable relationships.

This means that the semantic operations of our minds put the semantic components of a sentence together in a way vastly different from the way syntatic rules put words together. The classic example is, “An occasional sailor walked by.” I think most English speakers would accept this sentence even though ”an occasional sailor” here does not refer to someone who occasionally sails.

Even though the adjective occasional is perfectly at home before the noun sailor syntactically, its meaning does not combine sensibly with sailor in this sentence. So, the semantic component in our brains simply looks and finds another word in the sentence whose meaning the adjective makes sense with, and we understand the sentence as quickly as we would have had syntax placed occasionally before walked.

I have published quite a bit of scholarship about noun phrases like criminal lawyer and old friend. A lawyer doesn’t have to be crimnal to practice criminal law (though some wag might suggest it might help). Again here, the semantic rules dig into the syntactic stuff of this phrase and decide that the suffix -(y)er has more likely been added to the phrase criminal law than simply to law. Piece of cake.

While an old friend may be old, the semantic operator in our brains is happy if only the friendship is old. The definition of friend is “member of a friendship” so, at the semantic level, old may modify either main semantic concept: “old member” or “old friendship”. Semantics operates on semantic objects, not syntactic or morphological ones. Makes sense.

The syntactic component of our mind ’reads’ morphological rules, and follows hints laid down by suffixes and the like: occasional goes well with sailor but three does not, since adjectives may modify nouns syntactically but numbers above one require a plural noun. This information helps semantics but doesn’t do its job for it.

The semantic component in our minds operates on logic: which words make sense together? Semantics looks for the most likely combinations whether the syntactic construction helps or not. Semantics considers syntactic rules suggestions, not laws.

I find it fascinating that we can collect examples like these prove that our brain contains a language processor that comprises distinct parts (levels, subcomponents) that talk to each other but have their own rule-governed characters. Linguists today are exploring the interactions between these parts and the discoveries they are making are truly remarkable.

Occasionally, the associations of a word become more powerful than its meaning. The history of rapeseed oil provides a glorious illustration of this fact.
 
The oil from the rape, a variety of turnip, has been in use since the 13th century. It was used as a lubricant called simply rape-oil until the mid 20th century. During World War II it was widely used as a lubricant for steam engines in ships.

Over the centuries, however, several words have merged into the spelling of rape, including one referring to  the administrative districts of Sussex, England, a usage that continued until the end of the 19th century. Another, referring to the refuse of wine-making came from French râpe “grape stalk” from Old French rasper “to scrape”, source of English rasp.

The verb (from Latin rapere “to seize”, the origin of English raptor) orginally simply meant “to force”, as in The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope. However, as it made its grimy way to its current meaning, all the homophones of the verb receded into the shadows.

The oil of the rape (from Latin rapa “turnip”, Rübe in German), however, was discovered to be low in cholesterol by Canadians after World War II, and they developed a type that was not only fit but healthy for human consumption. By the middle of the 20th century, however, marketing this oil even as “rapeseed oil”, was out of the question due to the new overbearing sense of the verb. Call in the marketers.

The result was that a new name was created for this very healthy oil from the phrase “Can(ada) o(il,) l(ow) a(cid)”, which is to say, canola.

The US press is pushing a new word into our collective vocabulary in an apparent attempt to tilt the US elections in the direction it prefers. Political leaders are now called superdelegates because they have more power at a political convention than rank-and-file members of the party.

Of course, this has always been the case. In fact, it should be the case since it is the leaders of the party who must ultimately decide what is best for the party and who are responsible for its health and success. So why do we need this new pejorative term this year (2008)?

The press has decided that it prefers Senator Obama for the Democratic Party nomination and, according to objective studies, has been giving him consistently more positive coverage than Senator Clinton. Recently, all the networks began announcing that Senator Obama had, in fact, won the primary race and have been openly appealing to Senator Clinton to resign from the race, making the job of the press easier.

The last hurdle the press must overcome is the Democratic Convention in Denver this summer. How can the press be sure that party leaders do exercise their prerogative to choose Ms. Clinton as the party candidate? After all, neither candidate has enough delegates to win the nomination; the primary is a virtual tie.

Well, one tack would be to concoct a new epithet with which to intimidate party leaders in case they decide to make such a move. That word is superdelegate, defined as someone who has more votes than he or she deserves, i.e. more than ordinary democrats. The implication is that this is unfair and that party leaders should have no more influence at a convention of their party than an ordinary rank-and-file members. Look out for an increase in the usage of this aspersive term as the Convention convenes this summer.

Why does the press prefer Mr. Obama so passionately as to flagrantly attempt to undermine Senator Clinton? Former President Clinton visited Lewisburg this past weekend and he suggested that it was because his wife is old news and the Press wants someone new to write about. My guess would be that the press is tired of looking for skeletons in Ms. Clinton’s closet and have greater hopes of digging up something that would embarrass Mr. Obama. He is the greater unknown.

Mr. Clinton also thinks that his wife represents a demographic that the press doesn’t understand: people who struggle to pay for their mortgage, send their kids to college, and pay their medical bills. “People at the networks don’t have to worry about these things,” he opined, “They are of no concern to network producers.”

Whatever, the reason we have a new useless word, another lexical toxin to tarnish those brave enough to enter the US political process.

I received this comment last week: “I was just listening to a cellphone product review on the CNET website, and the speaker, a guy in his early 30’s, ended every statement about the phones features with “up-talk”. I find this speech habit to be extremely annoying. In general i thought it was indicative of younger speakers, but they seem to be getting older and older - i guess i am too for that matter. I guess that once everyone my age is dead, everyone will be doing it and nobody will be annoyed, know what I’m saying?”

I see no reason to be upset by “uptalk”: it has been around since before the states were united. It is the common intonational means of indicating the end of a clause in Irish English.  All English speakers from Ireland and other parts north of England use this intonational marker—some parts of Scotland, too. 

It is more common in the south of the US because dialects there tend to be more conservative, preserving various aspects that settlers brought with them from the old country.

But it is nothing to be offended at. Different languages and different dialects have different means of intonationally marking clauses, sentences, and questions.  This one has been around for centuries—at least.

In the US, we often hear that there are winners and losers. Loser may be the worse pejorative term that is not considered profanity in US English.  My question today is this: Have we lost the meaning of win and lose in the United States. There is no question that the talking heads in the media have.

Before the 1994 Olympics, the ex-husband of a figure-skating competitor, Tonya Harding, hired someone to club the knee of another competitor, Nancy Kerrigan after practice.  I will discuss what competition has come to mean in the US another time.  The point I wish to make today is that Nancy recovered, skated in the Olympics and took second place after Ukrainian Oksana Baiul.  What I recall is the first question asked Kerrigan after she took the silver medal: “Nancy, how does it feel to lose?”

Now, Nancy had just demonstrated herself to be the second best figure-skater on the face of the Earth. In what conceivable sense had she lost?

The incident put into perspective the “fifth-down” football game between Colorado and Missouri. In 1990 Colorado University “won” a game on a fifth down play that judges allowed to stand under the misguided assumption that the referees are always right even when they are blatantly demonstrably wrong.  (Maybe we should examine sportsmanship at some point, too.)

These two instances teach us the difference between having the highest score and winning. In the Colorado-Missouri game, Colorado had the highest score officially but in every sense of the word they lost.  Nancy Kerrigan, although she did not have the greatest number of points, clearly won in every sense of that word. Silver medals in the Olympics are not assigned by a lottery; you have to win those, too.

Win does not mean “be the best” and lose does not mean “be the worst” as these terms are used in the US media. If you win the lottery, you just get it. If you win someone’s support, you just persuade them. Elsewhere, however, win means to achieve something through excellence above that of the competition. Notice this leaves plenty of room for excellence among those the press likes to call ”losers”. 

Scott McDonald dropped a note today protesting our use of misogyny in reference to US voters’ attitude toward Senator Clinton and other women in public office. The offending example in today’s Good Word is: ”Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in the 2008 presidential elections may test the misogyny in US society.” Scott thinks:

“Today’s word misogyny is misrepresented in your example, much like the misuse of homophobia to describe any and all disapproval of homosexuality. These are words used loosely when they have a very specific meaning.”

To say, ‘I hate Clinton, Clinton is a woman; therefore, I hate women’ is a faulty syllogism, just as saying is, ‘You dislike this person, they are homosexual; therefore, you are a homophobe.’”

I actually agree with Scott in that the example might lead back to a faulty assumption; however, the statement applies more broadly to all the possible reasons people might avoid voting for Senator Clinton and I still think that misogyny is a major one. I even adulterated the sentence with a cautionary may: “may test the misogyny in US society”. The point of the example was simply to show how the word is normally used and I may have let this sentence’s topicality overwhlem my control of deductive logic.

The logic here does reek of guilt by association in that we are encouraged to assume that if Obama has any African blood in him and we oppose him, it is because of his African ancestry. If Senator Clinton is a woman and we oppose her, it is because of her femininity. In both cases there is no logical, let alone causative, relation between the two factors.  I certainly think above the range of the talking heads on US TV who use this mislogic with such passion night after night.

I am surprised that this expression is not heard more in the news, aside from the rock group so named. It has become the sole basis of argument for the US news media this week in their attempt to create a scandal out of nothing and besmirch the character of Senator Barack Obama.

The lowest form of attack—as opposed to any form of argument or proof—is to accuse someone of a belief held by someone else they just happen to know. We should have learned this lesson from Senator Joseph McCarthy’s use of guilt by association in his attack on the First Amendment via the infamous House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the 50s. (Click here for comments on this practice by Edward R. Murrow.)

The purpose of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee was to root out ”Communists” from the US society. It succeeded in destroying the lives of thousands of decent Americans in that pursuit and its primary tool was guilt by association.

People lost their jobs and reputations, not because they were members of the Communist Party or ever had been, but because they were seen in the company of a member of that party at one time or other. Often they didn’t even know at the time that the associate in question was a member of the Party.  But if you stand beside a Communist, you must be one, right? That is guilt by association.

How absurd. It is just as absurd to conclude that because Senator Barack Obama attends the church of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, that he must agree with everything the right Reverend utters. So why were Reverend Wright’s truthful if mildly provocative comments even repeated in the news? Why should Senator Obama feel compelled to respond to a scurrilous attack on his character from the US press, based solely on guilt by association?

To stoop to creating scandals using guilt by association lowers the press into the debilitating mire of Dark Ages. We can only hope that it will somehow retain the strength and light to eventually pull itself out of that mire.

Guilt by association is a phrase none of us should forget or misunderstand. The news this week was not the words of Reverend Wright, but the rearing of the ugly head of guilt by association, a news item no one heard about anywhere—save here.

Robyn Rishe was puzzled by a comment in my treatment of Oscar a few weeks back. She wrote:

“I am puzzled by your comment about today’s word, Oscar, that ‘like all proper nouns, it is a lexical orphan’. When I was in China, people often asked me what my name meant, because in Chinese all names have a meaning. I always assumed that somewhere way back in history, that was true of our names too. Otherwise, what are they? Random sounds?

“The comparison with Chinese brings up a second point—that you are ethnocentrically speaking of names with a European history only. What does Hillary Clinton’s name mean? Nothing, because it is European? What does Barak Obama’s name mean? I don’t know what its derivation is, but definitely not European. Does it mean something in another language? What does John McCain’s name mean? John goes back at least to Hebrew. Does it have a meaning there?”

The short answer to the question is, no, proper names do not have meaning in the sense common nouns have; they merely refer to objects. To understand this answer, however, we have to understand the difference between a word’s meaning and what it refers to.

When linguists use the term “meaning”, they usually have in mind a class of things, actions, or qualities associated with the word’s sound. Thus bird does not refer to one or two birds that hang around our back yard, but to an open-ended class of avians that differ significantly.

At the end of the 19th century Gottlob Frege demonstrated how the meaning of a word differs from what it refers to, its reference. His examples included the phrases morning star and evening star. These are, of course, two different phrases that have two different meanings. Morning and evening are different words with radically different meanings. However, they refer to the same thing: Venus—not even a star!

Now, if meaning and reference are distinct aspects of a word, then we should find words with meaning but no reference and words with reference but not meaning—at least, that would be ideal. Guess what? We find both.

Words with meaning but nothing to refer to include Martian, ghost, unicorn, gryphon, among many others. Most of us have a mental image of what a ghost is, but there is nothing in the real world for it to point to.

Words with references but no meanings include proper nouns. What is the meaning of Jim? Well, I know which person in my life it refers to but that person is not its meaning. I cannot answer the question, “What does a Jim look like?” “A Jim” makes no sense since Jims do not form a mental class like birds do. I can answer the question, “What does a bird look like?” That is because I have a concept of a class of bird objects.

Now, let’s get back to Oscar. I can answer the question, “What does an Oscar look like?” But my answer will be a description of the statuette, not a description of my Uncle Oscar. That is because Oscar® has become a common noun with the meaning “a statuette awarded for excellence in the motion picture making”. It now has a meaning and a reference, like all common nouns.

One final note for those who have waded this far with me. We should not confuse a word’s etymology with its meaning. The etymology of the name Cooper is that it comes from a word meaning “barrel-maker” and is based on the word hoop. However, “barrel-maker” is not the meaning of the name Cooper today because few if any Coopers make barrels. Cooper is a name without meaning even though it does have an etymology that leads to a word with meaning.

Chris Stewart, a long-standing e-friend in South Africa who loves language as much as I, brought to my attention today a phrase created by Keunwoo Lee in October of 2001. At the time, Mr. Lee was a graduate student in the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. According to Mr. Lee (personal communication), “The term was inspired by a sequence from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon wherein one character is observed to have had a ‘fractally weird’ life.” The phrase I find interesting is fractal wrongness and Lee defines it thus:

fractal wrongness
“The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person’s worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person’s worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.”

“Debating with a person who is fractally wrong leads to infinite regress, as every refutation you make of that person’s opinions will lead to a rejoinder, full of half-truths, leaps of logic, and outright lies, that requires just as much refutation to debunk as the first one. It is as impossible to convince a fractally wrong person of anything as it is to walk around the edge of the Mandelbrot set in finite time.”

“If you ever get embroiled in a discussion with a fractally wrong person, . . . your best bet is to say your piece once and ignore any replies, thus saving yourself time.”

This phrase impresses me because I have known several people who wandered into my life suffering from the malady it labels. I have broken off friendships with the comment, “I’m tired of your pretending to argue with me.” My thought was that some people argue; others merely pretend to. The latter live in the safety of fixed convictions and see argument as a defense of those convictions rather than as a test of them, a test which is a requirement for a healthy Self.

I’m thinking now that such people are not pretending to argue but are fractally wrong about everything and are comfortable in their wrongness so long as their corporate and political leaders agree with them on most if not all points.

You can tell a fractally wrong person that the world is round and they might respond that it is a square, flat plate resting on the back of a turtle. You think that you can convince them that you are right, so you ask, “So how is it that people can start out in Philadelphia, travel in a straight line, and end up in Philadelphia?” “They are confused and don’t remember turning around,” could be the reply.

You might persist with, “So why does the Earth cast a round shadow on the moon during an eclipse?” They might respond, “Everyone knows that light traveling through space rounds off corners.” You don’t have time to waste disproving that.

Finally, you know how to pin him or her down: “OK, if the Earth is resting on the back of a turtle, what is the turtle standing on?” And, as the fabled student of William James once responded to the identical question from Professor James, you might hear, “Oh, no, you can’t catch me there: it’s turtles all the way down!”