Baseball Linguistics

In honor of the Detroit Tiger's home opener today, I thought I would share some links to posts about baseball and language.

Earlier this week, Ben Yagoda at Lingua Franca wrote about the "pluralification of sports-teams names" in a post titled Play Ball(s). Yagoda noted that "things started to change dramatically in the ’80s. Today, the norm is to talk of (for example) a Yankees game and a Yankees fan; the use of 'Yankee' in those contexts is pretty much limited to the over-50 set." His post included an Ngram chart comparing "Cub fan" to "Cubs fan."

Here is one comparing "Tiger fan" to "Tigers fan." The results are similar to the "Cubs, Cub" results in that "Tigers fan" showed an increase in usage around the '80s; however, "Tiger fan" is still the dominating version whereas "Cubs fan" took over from "Cub fan."

Be sure to check out the full post at the link above.

And here are a couple more:

NPR's How Baseball Explains The Nature Of Language

Wikipedia's Glossary of English-Language Idioms Derived from Baeball

Linguistics Definitions as Edited by Up-Goer Five

The Up-Goer Five Text Editor

The 12th Day of Christmas (a linguist's version)

On the twelfth day of Christmas, 
my true love gave to me 
Twelve dialects humming, 
Eleven parsers parsing, 
Ten words aligning, 
Nine lemmas leading, 
Eight memes a-morphing, 
Seven sounds a-switching,
Six /i/s a-lowering, 
Five right-branchings, 
Four helping verbs, 
Three French phones, 
Two purple wugs, 
And a sentence as a parse tree!

Linguistics:√ Fun:√

I love these post-it notes that came with a book I ordered. Too bad they don't sell them; I would order a carton.

And check out these fun posters from the same company

Images from Cascadilla Press

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "Z"

zeugma Traditionally of cases of coordination in which one element would not form a construction on its own. E.g. one cannot say They said that so what; there fore there is a zeugma in They said that [[they were coming] and [so what]]. Often extended to include syllepsis.

zoonym A word for a kind of animal. e.g. fox.

Zuni A genetically unclassified language of New Mexico in the USA.

Definitions from: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, Second edition, 2007
Image credits: "Z" signal flag from Wikipedia

Wow, Do I Ever Love Language!

And I could not have produced a video that contains so many perfectly executed examples of the reasons why.

Thanks to Superlinguo for bringing this video to my attention.

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "Y"

'yes-no question' One which has a simple positive or negative answer. CF. closed interrogative, polar interrogative.

yod The sound[j] written as y e.g. in English yet [jɛt]. Hence yodization (also 'yoticization' etc.) is a sound change or other process resulting in [j].

Yurok California language related to Algonquian within Algic.

Definitions from: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, Second edition, 2007
Image credits: sharelike.me

(Not So) Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "X"

There are not too many words or concepts in the study of linguistics that begin with the letter "X"; thus I am unable to present a brief list to go along with the current series of definitions. Without a doubt, the most important to theoretical linguistics is "X-Bar Theory".

The above x-bar structure images are from the Linguistics Department at Bucknell University. There are also online lecture notes about syntactic structure at this Bucknell link. These notes provide a brief but clear description of heads, specifiers, complements and adjuncts.

For a more detailed look at syntax and X-Bar Theory, I highly recommend "The syntax of natural language: An online introduction using the Trees program" by Beatrice Santorini and Anthony Kroch of the University of Pennsylvania.

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "W"

'wanna-contraction' The reduction in American English of forms like want to or going to in I want to (wanna) do it or I'm going to (gonna) do it.

wh-form Any of a class of words in English that typically begin with wh-: e.g. who, which, why. Also of phrases that begin with such words: e.g. which book, what people.

Thence extended, by linguists whose native language is English, to forms that play similar syntactic roles in other languages.

'whimperative' Coined in the 1970s for a sentence that has the form of an interrogative but the force of an order or instruction: e.g. Why don't you shut up?, meaning 'Shut up!'.

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

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "V"

verbal dueling In sociolinguistics, a term which refers to the competitive use of language, within a game-like structure, with rules that are known and used by the participants. It is a genre of verbal play - a ritual dialogue in which each speaker attempts to outdo an opponent by producing an utterance of increased verbal ingenuity. It has been noted, for example, in the ritual exchanges between warriors in classical epic texts as well as in the trading of insults between present-day street gangs.

vocal organs The collective term for all the anatomical features involved in the production of speech sounds, including the lungs, trachea, oesophagus, larynx, pharynx, mouth and nose.

Definitions from: A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Sixth edition, 2008
Image credits: Clipart Etc.

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "U"

Umgangssprache German for 'colloquial language'.

'unfilled pause' An interval of silence in speech: i.e. a pause not 'filled' by a hesitation form.

uvular Articulated with the back of the tongue against or approximated to the fleshy appendage (or uvula) at the back of the soft palate. E.g. the 'r' in French is variously a uvular trill or, more usually, a uvular fricative.

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

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "T"

there-insertion A term used in transformational grammar for a transformation which relates pairs of sentences by inserting a there-element, such as A baby is in the bath -> There is a baby in the bath. The latter type of sentence is often referred to as existential.

tip The end-point of the tongue, also known as the apex; used in the articulation of a few speech sounds, such as the trilled [r].

truth conditions A term used in logic and semantics for the conditions under which a sentence is true. For example, Snow is white is true if and only if snow is white.

Definitions from: A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Sixth edition, 2008
Image credits here.

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "S"

schwa The mid-central vowel of e.g. the second syllable of matter: in phonetic notation [ ə ] ([matə ]) . Also spelled 'shwa'.

selective listening Selective attention to an individual speaker, e.g. in a crowded room where many people are talking.

shifter Jakobson's term for words like I, you and others whose interpretation involves person deixis.

speech error An accidental error in speech: cf. slip of the tongue.

Definitions from: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, Second edition, 2007
Image credits: Wikipedia - Braille representation of letter 'S'

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "R"

rhotic A term used in English phonology referring to dialects or accents where /r/ is pronounced following a vowel, as in car and cart. Varieties which do not have this feature are non-rhotic (such as received pronunciation). Vowels which occur after retroflex consonants are sometimes called rhotacized (they display rhotacization).

right dislocation In grammatical description, a type of sentence in which one of the constituents appears in final position and its canonical position is filled by a pronoun with the same reference, e.g. I know her, Julie; He's always late, that chap.

rim The edges of the tongue, the extent of whose contact with the roof of the mouth can affect the quality of several sounds, such as [s] and [l].

Definitions from: A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Sixth edition, 2008
Image credits: Wikipedia - Flag semaphore representation of letter 'R'

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "Q"

quadrisyllabic Having four syllables. A word such as dictatorship is thus a quadrisyllable.

quantifier floating Proposed syntactic process by which a quantifier is detached from its phrase. E.g. in Birds can all fly, the quantifier all is seen as having 'floated' from its position as a determiner in All birds can fly.

'queclarative' Coined in the 1970s for an utterance which has the form of an interrogative (or 'question') but the force of a statement (or 'declarative'): e.g. 'What use is that?' meaning that it is no use.

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

Alliterative Rooster

My teenage boys have a new favorite condiment - Sriracha Chili Sauce.

I was unsure about the standard pronunciation, so I looked it up and came across a New York Times article titled "A Chili Sauce to Crow About ".

The pronunciation, according to the article is: SIR-rotch-ah.

But that is not the only reason I mention Sriracha.

My favorite part of the article is the author's alliterative description of the origin of the sauce -

"... an American sauce, a polyglot purée with roots in different places and peoples."

"Polyglot purée", as a description of the sauce, is based upon the incorrect perception that the sauce is Vietnamese or Thai in origin.

pol·y·glot

adj.
Speaking, writing, written in, or composed of several languages.
n.
1. A person having a speaking, reading, or writing knowledge of several languages.
2. A book, especially a Bible, containing several versions of the same text in different languages.
3. A mixture or confusion of languages.

Definition from thefreedictionary.com.

Photo from NYT article.

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "P"

pandialectal A term used primarily in dialectology and sociolinguistics to characterize any linguistic feature, rule, etc., which is applicable to all the dialects of a language.

paronymy A term sometimes used in semantic analysis to refer to the relationship between words derived from the same root. It is especially applied to a word formed from a word in another language with only a slight change: French pont and Latin pons are paronyms and the relationship between them is one of paronymy.

politeness phenomena in sociolinguistics and pragmatics, a term which characterizes linguistics features mediating norms of social behavior, in relation to such notions as courtesy, rapport, deference and distance. Such features include the use of special discourse markers (please), appropriate tones of voice and acceptable forms of address (e.g. the choice of intimate v. distant pronouns or of first v. last names).

Definitions from: A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Sixth edition, 2008
Image credits: Wikipedia - Greek Pi

Linguistics Links Worth a Look

Why Study Linguistics? - An informative slideshow produced by the Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies.

50 Years of Linguistics at MIT - A link to 11 MIT linguistics lectures.

Dyslexie, A Typeface Designed To Help Dyslexics Read - A video explanation about how dyslexics read and how this typeface created by a dyslexic designer improves the reading experience for those who suffer from dyslexia.

Shapecatcher: Unicode Character Recognition - Draw a character in the "drawbox" and this site will provide a list of the most similar unicode characters. The database has 10,877 characters currently. Great for IPA.

North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns - Tons of information, dialect maps and dialect samples.

Random Linguistics Definitions Beginning with the Letter "O"

obligatory (Element) that cannot be deleted from a syntactic or other structure. E.g. in She left quickly, neither the subject (She) nor the verb (left) can be removed from the construction: cf. She quickly, Left quickly. Therefore both are obligatory. But She left is complete without quickly: therefore the adverb is optional.

Oghams Alphabet attested by inscriptions in the British Isles from the centuries after the collapse of the Roman empire. The letters are formed by groups of one or more lines inscribed horizontally to the left or right of, or diagonally across, a vertical line or the edge of e.g. a stone. The precise origins both of the system and of its name are uncertain.

Definitions from: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, Second edition, 2007
Image credits: symbol and alphabet.

Language Fun with Savage Chickens

Love these Useless Mutants.