Illustrating the Oxford Comma a.k.a. the Serial Comma and the Harvard Comma

Each of the following illustrations has been making the rounds lately. For your viewing pleasure, here they are in one place.

As best I can tell, credits for the Ayn Rand and God illustration are here and credits for the JFK and Stalin illustration are here.

Grammar Obsession Defined

In honor of the current Grammar.net contest for the Best Grammar Blog of 2011.

Thank you Logophilus for bringing this extremely hilarious video from ragan videos to my attention.

P.S. Don't forget to vote for A Walk in the Words at the contest link here.

Update on Contraction Retraction

Back in January, I posted about a linguistic phenomenon that I observed and was unable to label. The original post titled "Contraction Retraction - A Phono-Morpho-Syntactic Phenomenon" can be found here.

Following are some relevant excerpts from the post:

What happens when a person starts to utter a contraction and then for some unknown reason decides to utter the two word phrase instead of the contraction?

If I start to say "don't" and change midway to "do not" what comes out of my mouth sounds an awful lot like "dough not".

Transcribed phonetically below.

don't = /dont/
do not = /du nat/
dough not = /do nat/

I decided to update the post because of a recently received reader comment:

It's called allomorphy (according to my linguistics professor). And it's not limited to contractions. It happens with a lot of words. What you're witnessing is the minor change in a word [do] as its instance is changed from "don't" to "do not".

Think about "photograph" versus "photography". [fo-tow-graph] versus [fo-tau-graf-ie]. The morpheme "photograph" has the same meaning, even in "photography", but because the pronunciation is different, it is a separate allomorph.

Here is my response:

Not to argue with your professor (and I am certainly no expert), but during my MA program in linguistics I never heard an analysis of contractions that presented the phonetic changes as allomorphy.

SIL International’s Glossary of Linguistic Terms defines an allomorph as one of two or more complementary morphs which manifest a morpheme in its different phonological or morphological environments.

With allomorphy, I have always understood the phonological and morphological environments to be limited to the words in which they appear.

To me, the phrase “do not” contains two separate free lexical morphemes and when they are contracted it is like combining the two lexical morphemes into one phonetic form.

Based on the broad phonetic transcriptions I presented, I would say there is deletion and assimilation through contraction but not a different form of one morpheme that would be considered allomorphy.

The most common type of allomorphy in English involves plural and past tense suffixes, for example; the past tense “–ed” suffix can be phonetically realized as /t/, /d/ or / əd/.

The example you have given comparing “photograph” /fotogræf/ to “photography” /fotɑgrɑfi/ is an example of root allomorphy (or stem allomorphy, depending on whom you ask) that is similar to “hymn” /him/ versus “hymnal” /himnəl/.

Regardless of whether or not the act of contracting is considered a form of allomorphy, I would still regard the phenomenon I have described as a different matter. As a matter of fact, upon further thought, I believe it involves more than just phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax; it also involves psycholinguistics. The phenomenon involves the process the brain is undergoing as it chooses initially to verbalize the contraction but switches midstream to an altered, un-contracted form of the initial phrase.

I now welcome more input and data from anyone who has experienced or witnessed this "contraction retraction" or has other thoughts about the processes involved.

Grammar.net's Best Grammar Blog of 2011 Contest

As previously announced, A Walk in the WoRds was hand-picked as a pre-nominated finalist for Grammar.net's Best Grammar Blog of 2011 Contest.

Well, the contest has officially begun and votes will be accepted between September 26th and October 17th, 2011.

The list of nominees includes numerous outstanding blogs, many of which I read and link to regularly. Congratulations to each of you.

To support this blog with a vote, please click here and enter a check mark next to A Walk in the WoRds then scroll to the bottom of the page and enter the captcha to submit your vote.

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "B"

B = Bayt (Arabic)

Bayt = House

bahuvrihi In grammar, a Sanskrit term describing a type of compound in which an entity is characterized without either of the constituents directly naming it; also called an exocentric or possessive compound. Examples include loudmouth (a person 'whose mouth speaks loudly') and scarecrow (an object whose job it is to 'scare crows').

broad A term used in the classification of types of phonetic transcription. A 'broad' transcription is less detailed than a 'narrow' description.

Definitions from: A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Sixth edition, 2008

Image credits: Panel of Thoughts

The Language of Comics - Links

I have been meaning to share this entertaining post from Sentence first titled "comic book grammar"...so here is the link. It talks about typographical patterns as standardized forms that represent moods, sounds, punctuation and the like in comic strips.

Included in the post are related links, including my favorites: Grawlixes Past and Present and Blambot Comic Fonts and Lettering.

Smoking Hot Phonemes /θænk ju:/

From a 22 Words post titled "Phonetically Accurate Gratitude"

“OK, so it’s actually not quite accurate since the T-H is voiced in “than” but not in “thank,” but close enough.”

I love that 22 Words noticed the voicing.

theta is voiceless

eth is voiced

To add further phonetic analysis, the way the sign is written the individual words would read as /ðæn/ and /kju:/
when in reality the expression of gratitude is a combination of the words
/θænk/ and /ju:/

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "A"

adhortative = exhortative

.....exhortative (Particle etc.) used in enjoining or encouraging an action by a group that includes the speaker: e.g. let or let's in Let's go.

'aptote' Obsolete term for a noun which, unlike others in the relevant language, is not inflected for case.

arhyzotonic Having the accent elsewhere than on the root.

atonic (Word, syllable, vowel) not accented.

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

Image credits: Panel of Thoughts

Verbing Kevin Bacon

From r2szoo2

Grammar.net Contest for The Best Grammar Blog of 2011

I am pleased to announce that A Walk in the WoRds has been hand-picked as a pre-nominated finalist in Grammar.net's contest for The Best Grammar Blog of 2011.

Thank you for the honor, Grammar.net.

The voting begins on Monday, September 26th and concludes on Monday, October 17th.

[Infographic provided by Grammar.net]

Humorize and Verborize

The Verbing of America

The verbing of America
Is getting out of hand,
Yet many nouns are also verbs,
Like toast and rake and land.
When I first heard hospitalize,
I thought it was a crime;
Why don't we apartmentalize?
We will -- just give us time!
If when we change a noun to verb
To come up with our `verbing,'
Why can't I, when I'm using herbs,
Refer to it as herbing?
For if I call myself a cook
, The verbal form is cooking;
And if I give someone a look,
It's also known as looking.
I give a gift
But I'm not gifting.
You get my drift,
Or am I drifting?
I get a bill
Because of billing,
But taking pills
Is never pilling.
I place a pin,
And I am pinning.
Play a violin --
Is it violining?
But play a fiddle,
And you're fiddling;
Or is this getting
Much too piddling?
Planting some seeds
Is always seeding,
And pulling weeds
Is surely weeding;
If drawing blood
Is always bleeding,
Why does a flood
Not lead to fleeding?
I'm wined and dined
But never beered.
I've eyed someone,
But never eared!
Turn on a light,
And I am lighting.
Turn on a lamp,
And it's not lamping.
If I can verbalize
A needle,
And egging on
Can mean to wheedle,
And I am doodling
With a doodle,
When I cook pasta,
Can't I noodle?
With all these punctuation marks,
I'm doing quite a lot of dotting;
But if I were to use a dash --
Don't you agree that I am dashing?
But comma-ing and period-ing?
And yet I can italicize
And sometimes must capitalize.
I Anglicize -- but Germanicize?
Or Swedicize, or Gaelicize?
With this I could go on and on,
Really ad infinitum;
Whether I lick these word problems,
I sure cannot beat 'em.
Our language is an enigma
In how its words are used;
And that is why, in verbing nouns,
We ought to be excused.

Credits to UPenn

Contractional Language Change in the Movies

1968 Charles Portis novel

1969 Henry Hathaway film

2010 Coen brother's film

I realize I am way behind the times, but I just saw the Coen brother's remake of True Grit. The lack of use of contractions in the movie jumped out at me so much that I googled the phenomenon immediately. The number of returns on the subject emphasized how behind the times I am. There have been numerous posts about the subject, beginning in December 2010.

Here is an excerpt from Mark Liberman's Language Log post:

What about the current movie version? Does it really avoid contractions entirely, or limit them even more than Portis did? Would such contractionless speech really be an accurate reflection of the way Americans talked in Arkansas and Oklahoma in the 1870s?

I don't know what Portis intended, and I don't know what the Coen brothers did. But I know that that informal American speech in the 1870s was far from contractionless, and in fact I suspect that it had roughly the same proportion of contractions as it does today. Therefore, what Portis (and the Coens?) did was either false archaism or poetic truth — or both.

If you are interested in further analysis of contractions in the 2010 movie as well as some comparisons of contraction usage in the 1968 novel to two other novels, Tom Sawyer and Swan Peak, I highly recommend the Language Log post.

Additionally, Grammar Girl has a related post that covers more about the history of contractions, "there were even contractions before the 1600's, but they usually weren't indicated with an apostrophe", and when to use contractions.

CSI Phonetics Humor

Thank you lesserjoke.

Robot Pidgins

"Australian scientists have invented a new breed of robots called Lingodroids, programmed to make, use, and share language."

Discover magazine, September 2011

According to the article, Lingodroids are programmed with an alphabet of beeps and are able to pair the beeps (or letters) to form syllables. These syllables can then be combined to form words.

It is through game play that words are created.

In one of the games mentioned, two Lingodroids meet in an unfamiliar place. One of the Lingodroids creates a name for the place and shares that name with the other. The other Lingodroid then adds the place name to its lexicon.

From my interpretation of the article, all Lingodroids are equipped with the same phonetic abilities but they do not start out with any lexicon, let alone a shared one. It is through contact that they build individual and shared lexicons.

In this way, the language resembles a pidgin. However, with a true pidgin, each speaker enters the contact situation with a native lexicon.

I wonder what would happen if two Lingodroids with a shared lexicon ran into two other Lingodroids with a different shared lexicon. Would it be the start of a creole?

Please note: There is a difference between pigeons and pidgins, despite the intentionally homophonous illustration (sorry, I couldn't resist).

Pidgin language (origin in Engl. word `business'?) is nobody's native language; may arise when two speakers of different languages with no common language try to have a makeshift conversation. Lexicon usually comes from one language, structure often from the other. Because of colonialism, slavery etc. the prestige of Pidgin languages is very low. Many pidgins are `contact vernaculars', may only exist for one speech event.

Creole (orig. person of European descent born and raised in a tropical colony) is a language that was originally a pidgin but has become nativized, i.e. a community of speakers claims it as their first language. Next used to designate the language(s) of people of Caribbean and African descent in colonial and ex-colonial countries (Jamaica, Haiti, Mauritius, Réunion, Hawaii, Pitcairn, etc.)

Image credits

To My Readers Whom I Like (which is all of you) - Happy Labor Day Weekend

Hope you have enjoyed your summer.

Once the school year resumes, I plan to get back to some more in-depth posting. In the meantime, here is an image with the Facebook "Like" button in numerous languages.


P.S. I hope you continue to Like this blog.

Image from 22 Words via The Daily What.