Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "J"

Jacaltec Mayan language spoken in the interior of southern Guatemala, in an area close to the border with Mexico.

jargon In the ordinary sense of technical or pseudo-technical vocabulary. Also of nonsense forms as a symptom in aphasia; hence a type labelled 'jargonaphasia'.

jer One of two letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, one indicating that a preceeding consonant is palatalized, the other, no longer in use for Russian, that it is not.

Definitions from: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, Second edition, 2007
Image credits: flickr

Pedestrian Semiotics

To walk, or not to walk: the answer doesn't always look the same.

Here is a link to 23 additional images of pedestrian signals from around the world.

Via Neatorama

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Semiotics is the scientific study of signs and their linguistic meaning. It is about the relationship between a sign and what it represents. It is about how people determine the meaning of signs. A sign is considered anything (a symbol, an icon, a sound, a picture and so on) that stands for another thing.

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "I"

idiolect The speech or dialect of a single individual. Hence idolect variation is variation within a language that is simply between one speaker and another.

illative (ILL) *Case whose basic role is to indicate movement into something: e.g. schematically, I walked house-ILL 'I walked into the house'.

intervocalic Appearing between vowels. E.g. [p] is an intervocalic consonant in kipper ['kIpə].

Definitions from: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, Second edition, 2007

Image credits: teach-nology

Till is Not Clipped from Until

clipping, n.2
c. The shortening of a word, etc.; also, the resulting shortened form.

Many people are of the belief that till is a shortened form of until (I admit, I was one of these people). However, a closer look at the word histories reveals that till was the first to enter the lexicon.

Following are the words in question (with 'til thrown in to round out the set) along with their relevant definitions and first recorded usages.

till, prep., conj., and adv.
a. In the ordinary local sense of to.
a800 Inscription, Ruthwell Cross, Dumfries in O.E.T. 126 Hweþræ þer fusæ fearran kwomu æþþilæ til anum.

until, prep. and conj.
a. To, unto (denoting motion to and reaching a person or place); = till prep.
?c1200 Ormulum (Burchfield transcript) l. 1399 Forr whatt teȝȝ fellenn sone dun Off heoffne. & inn till helle.

'til, conj.
Variant of till prep., conj., and adv. or short for until prep. and conj.
1939 P. G. Perrin Index to Eng. 606 Till, until, ('til), these three words are not distinguishable in meaning. Since 'til in speech sounds the same as till and looks slightly odd on paper, it may well be abandoned.

Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary

Image from The History of English

Printed Texts or Digital Media

The Age of Books

Crated, carted, cast aside,
printed works have liquefied
in shocking bouts of bookicide.

The printing press is done, perhaps,
and publishers have (boom!) collapsed
to clicky gadgets, gizmos, apps.

Digital books are all the rage,
touchless paper, turnless page.

Stores are only cyber spaces,
cold, electric, faceless places.

Bookshops closed, bookshelves cleared,
paperbacks have disappeared.

The age of print has culminated,
finished, finis, terminated.

- Susan M. Ebbers

This was posted on Vocabulogic, a wonderful blog that focuses on words and language education from a linguistic perspective.

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "H"

H = Het

Het = Egyptian Hieroglyph

Hieroglyph = Fence

hapax legomenon In Lexicology, a word which occurs only once in a text, author, or extant Corpus of a Language, often shortened to hapax. The expression is from Greek, 'something said only once'.

host In Grammar, a word or phrase to which an affix or clitic is phonologically attached. For example, he is the host for 's in he's, and is is the host for n't in isn't.

hybrid In Historical Linguistics, a word composed of elements from different languages. An example of a hybrid term ('a hybrid') is television which comprises elements from both Latin and Greek.

Definitions from: A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Sixth edition, 2008
Image credits: Panel of Thoughts

Word Creation - Blimpworthy

If you are wondering which sporting event to watch this weekend, you may want to take the blimpworthiness factor of the options into consideration; Goodyear sure hopes you do.

Goodyear recently coined a new word in the name of marketing. Through the creative use of compounding and affixing, Goodyear wants sports fans to vote for the event they feel is most "blimpworthy" in a new series of ESPN online polls. By voting in the polls, sports fans help to determine which sports events the blimps will appear at on particular weekends.

More information about Goodyear and the polls here and here.

Linguistics in the News: Oops Etymology

Brought to you by Slate, inspired by Rick Perry.



Oops: A History
When did we come up with a word for making mistakes?
By Forrest Wickman

During the Republican debate Wednesday night, Rick Perry began to explain that there are three government agencies he hopes to eliminate. Unable to name the third agency, the candidate simply said, “Oops.” When did people start saying oops?

Around the 1930s. The first known appearance of oops in print comes from a 1922 Washington Post caption, apparently for a cartoon, but it’s unclear whether the exclamation carries the same meaning it does today: “Efery dog has his day, says der poet—und der same iss for goats!... Oops!” As an expression of apology or surprise at a blunder, oops begins to appear more often in the 1930s. In Dorothy Parker’s short story collection Here Lies, there are not one but two oopses. In the collection’s “Lady With a Lamp,” a character interjects, “oops—I’m sorry I joggled the bed,” while in “The Little Hours," another character exclaims, “oops … I’ve got to watch myself.” Whoops, in the sense of oops, began appearing around the same time and can be found repeatedly in issues of Popular Science and Boys’ Life, where it was printed as early as 1929. By 1937, “Whoops!” was exclaimed in a letter by nobody less than Ezra Pound. It’s unclear whether Britney Spears’s 2000 single “Oops! ... I Did It Again” has increased the popularity of the expression in recent years.

The Oxford English Dictionary mentions that oops is “perhaps a natural exclamation,” but some of its first appearances suggest that, along with whoops, it might derive from the phrase up-a-daisy. Up-a-daisy has been used as an utterance of nonsensical encouragement for children since the 18th century, especially upon lifting them into the air or coaxing them back on their feet after a tumble. Its first known appearance in print comes in the letters of Jonathan Swift, as “up-a-dazy,” in 1711. Over the course of the 19th century, it evolved into upsidaisy. Many of the earliest appearances of oops! and whoops! show up in the context of accidental slips and falls, suggesting that they may be related to up-a-daisy. (The prostitute in 1922’s Ulysses says “Hoopsa!” when Leopold Bloom trips walking up the stairs.)

Many other languages have similar expressions. An Italian found in error might say, “ops!” while a Frenchman who’s made a faux pas might say, “oups!” In Spanish, one can say opa, but just as common are huy and ¡ay! A Russian who’s made a goof might exclaim, “ой” (pronounced oj), while a German blunderer might blurt out, “hoppla!”

The first appearance of oops as a noun (meaning an occasion on which one would say “oops”) seems to be from 1938. The passage, found in Alexander Alland’s The Artistic Animal, describes four apparently seasick vomiters in the toilet: “At every rising wave, oops … In the trough a dozen oopses.”

ESL, EFL, Etc. and Location, Location, Location

ESL - English as a second language
EFL - English as a foreign language
TESL - Teaching English as a Second Language
TEFL - Teaching English as a Foreign Language

If a language is a foreign language to a speaker, it seems obvious that it would be that speaker's second language (or third or forth), so why the differentiation?

The answer is location.

English is considered a foreign language when it is taught or learned in a non-English speaking country; it is considered a second language when it is taught or learned in an English speaking country.



Thanks to 22 Words for bringing this uproarious video to my attention.

However, if the class mentioned in the video is truly EFL, I would think the enrollment counselor would not be speaking English. It would be more semantically correct if the class was ESL, but it wouldn't be as humorous.

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "G"

G = Gimel

Gimel = Proto-Sinaitic Glyph

Glyph = Staff Sling

glossolalia 'Speaking in tongues': i.e. uttering sounds under condition of religious ecstasy that are believed, wrongly, to be in unknown languages.

gnomic Used in timeless statements.E.g. the present tense (eat) is gnomic, or has a gnomic use, in Cows eat grass. Cf. generic.

grammatology The study of the nature, history, etc. of writing systems.

graphology A study of the written forms of language modelled on phonology as the study of their sound systems.

Definitions from: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, Second edition, 2007

Image credits: Panel of Thoughts

Say What You See Someone Saying

National Geographic Channel recently aired a 3-part special titled Brain Games which featured a segment about a speech perception phenomenon called the McGurk effect.

Here is a user-submitted recording of that segment from You Tube:



And here is a segment about the phenomenon from BBC TWO (this one is easier to view and I think it does a better job demonstrating and explaining what is happening):

The gist of the McGurk effect is that when a person's eyes see something different than what the ears hear, visual perception frequently overrules auditory perception. In other words, sight tells a person what to hear even if it is incorrect.

While not exactly the same, this reminded me of a gag children used to play when I was in elementary school. Person A would mouth the words "olive juice" to Person B. Thus, Person B would think that Person A had said "I love you".

Word Status Decline

If you have ever wondered how a word can lose its hipness-status, along with its meaning, here is a clue:

Also, check out the full article titled "Hand-Crafted Hype: How ‘Artisan’ Food Became Forever Debased" at Grub Street New York for an enlightening account of how artisan became "irredeemably passé".