polyglot conspiracy

I was sent to purchase some edible goods for ye olde tap company’s 9-hour tech rehearsal Friday night, so I ended up at Giant #378 in Washington, DC. As I was watching the items being rung up, I noticed that something interesting came up on the screen:

This came up for baby carrots, and my friends and I were stumped as to what could POSSIBLY be the reason for this severe mangling. It wasn’t until the next morning when I realized that someone probably had gotten creative in calling baby carrots “carrettes,” with that -ette dimunitive suffix. It literally came to me in my sleep (I have very sweet dreams, obviously). Anyone else ever seen or heard this? Is my hypothesis about its origins correct?

Also, there is now a convenience store on VA Hwy 29 called “Wi-Not Stop.” To me, this seems like a horrible place to stop because there’s no wifi, but I guess in the middle of Virginia this doesn’t carry those implications. Still, wi not “Y-not” or “Wy-not”? Why knot????

Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber mentions something interesting in his post about yesterday’s NYT article about email between students and professors as sometimes crossing acceptable boundaries (which I posted differently about over at SocioCMC):

One thing it didn’t mention: even though universities give students email addresses, it’s often the case that students won’t use them. Instead they prefer their free hotmail or yahoo or gmail addresses. No problem as such there, except that sometimes the students pick the kind of addresses for themselves that aren’t exactly professional-quality. Frankly it feels a bit odd to correspond with, e.g., missbitchy23 or WildcatBongs about letters of reference or what have you.

This harks back to my post about the symbolism of email accounts. It extends beyond the chosen username for these accounts; I think people are probably automatically prejudiced against non-”official” domains (like yahoo.com) and it often doesn’t matter how “adult” the username might seem. This isn’t necessarily a conscious thing, but I think it’s there. It also has to do with the fact that free accounts often end up in the spamboxes of institutionally-issued accountholders, so they come to associate those free accounts with spam.

Moral: choose your email provider carefully.

OK, so lately I’ve been hearing people - both in my real life, like my friends, and also on the radio, like NPR experts - say that they got something “offline,” meaning that they got it from the internet. Example 1: I got the bus tickets offline. Example 2: If you’re getting used books offline, you don’t really know what the quality will be. Example 3: I usually get my news offline.

This use of offline throws me, because when I hear someone say offline I think they mean NOT on the internet, as in opposite of online. As in, “Oh, so you got the tickets at the bus station?” and “But can’t you see the books you’re buying in the store?” and “How much does the newspaper cost you everyday?”

I’m not playing a good laissez faire linguist on this one: I’m saying that this usage is confusing. And the confusion comes from a mix of factors.

1. The phrase “got/bought it off (of) PROVIDER” is in common usage.

1a. In this construction, off really means from.

2. If you get something via the internet, one option of how to talk about it is to say that you “got it off the internet.”

3. If you get something via the internet, another option of how to talk about it is to say that you “got it online.”

4. BUT: “online” is not the same as “the internet.” Online is an adjective or adverb (as is offline), and when you say you “got it off ____,” you expect a noun there. So while “got it online” sounds ok (short for “got it while I was online,” or adverbial modification of “got”), “got it off online” sounds weird, because online isn’t something you can get something else off of.

5. If you find yourself about to use the “get it off online” construction, you realize the above point about halfway through. You want to make this sentence work, though. So you skip the “on” part and go straight to the “line,” a perfectly fine noun from which to get something.

6. This forms offline. But it seems that here off represents the preposition that really means from, while line represents what’s left of online, but it’s been nominalized. Which sort of makes sense, I guess, if you think about the compound on + line in the first place. But the “line” still isn’t the provider of whatever you got; it doesn’t really refer to any entity at all.

Alternative and more sophisticated interpretations will, of course, be gladly entertained. I’ll get your suggestions later offline. And by that I mean online. Wheeeeee the conundrum continues!!!

#7:

…RIGHT THERE, PENETRATION, BALL MOVEMENT…

-Not heard, but rather seen, on closed captioning to a basketball game on a TV across the bar

Also, for bonus, a random thing I thought of yesterday: Are babying and mothering the same thing?

Posting’s gonna be really light the next few weeks, y’all. I know it has been all semester so far, which I attribute to a complete and utter lack of motivation to read anything but the New York Times, Slate, email, and PhD program websites since finishing up the ol’ MA. I’m traveling a bunch this next month: potential grad schools, tap shows, American Idol tryouts, exotic vacations to pristine islands - you know, the usual. I ask you to take a cue from Simple Minds (simpler than YOURS, at least) and don’t you forget about me. I’ll be back.

Also, I would randomly like to add that I for one am thankful for the whole Cheney shooting thing, because it gives people jokes to make about my favorite huge orange jacket. Which I think puts them at ease around it, whereas otherwise they usually feel awkward/overwhelmed and/or simply blinded.

Somehow or another, I happened across the LJ community Who Got In, dedicated to users posting any information one might have about being admitted/rejected from grad schools. You might know that I myself am currently in the same throes of obsessive email-checking and PhD program online application status-checking. However, I would never post information on my blog about what programs I had or had not gotten accepted to, or even where I applied (until I actually start going somewhere, of course). Mostly because a) that’s personal!, and b) someone in some way connected to the admissions process might see this blog (hey, it could happen), and I’m not about to advertise personal feelings regarding individual departments (e.g., Fuck you, University of Somestate, I didn’t want to go to you anyway! All your linguist are belong to me! wOOt!).

I will, however, contribute to the relieving/heightening of fellow applicants’ anxieties by posting anonymously what I’ve heard from where. Why? Because I believe that both suffering and jealousy are highly constructive.

Uh, actually because I think it’s kind of cool that all over the place, there are people just like me sitting around wondering when ol’ U of Wherever is going to email/call/mail me and share the good/bad/promising news, and that there’s a way we can allow each other to get clued in to parts of the process that we aren’t otherwise privy to. Like whether other people got in or not. Honestly? Bless the internet for enabling a place where somewhat taboo topics aren’t taboo at all anymore.

People who’ve applied to linguistics programs, here’s your thread. There is also The Grad Cafe, for the same purposes only just a list of what people have contributed, and it looks like there’s a forum in the works. Commiserate away.

Bryan Curtis has a piece in Slate (there’s also a podcast available) about how cell phones currently enjoy status as “most-employed technological device in horror stories” (my words, not Curtis’).

In the recent months, cell phones have become newly terrifying. Our once-mundane cellular-inspired fears—of brain cancer, of terrorists using them to detonate remote devices—have been replaced by more gruesome visions. Horror maestros from Stephen King to Takashi Miike have taken our ambivalent post-9/11 feelings about cell phones (they played a crucial role in nearly staving off a terrorist attack, but they were also the source of incredibly painful goodbyes) and reworked them into a vehicle for evil—ghosts, plagues, and rampaging psychos. The cell phone, in their hands, is not a tool of empowerment but another instrument of terror. Humanity’s going to hell, and you don’t dare call your mother.

He cites King’s Cell, about cell phones that turn people into zombies; When a Stranger Calls, wherein a girl forced to babysit to pay for her overage charges is terrorized by a maniac calling from a cell phone; and Miike’s 2003 film One Missed Call, in which teenagers hear their own dying words from a few days in the future via their cell phones. He gives an interesting explanation of why cell phones are such the perfect object to be the latest scary thing:

After all, we already hate cell phones. We hate the reception, hate other users, and hate our billing plans, and it comes as no surprise when the above are revealed to be the work of a demonic force from the beyond. But what really bugs us is that cell phones clumsily merge the public and private spheres—what sociologist Hans Geser has called a “transspatial version of particularistic communalism,” and what the rest of us call rudeness…King’s zombified hordes resemble the cell-phone users plodding down urban sidewalks, each grunting to his own tune and oblivious to the world around him.

Moreover, as King notes, the cell phone is the only truly populist menace. For all the attention lavished on the dark corners of the Internet, the Web remains a fairly rarefied domain. Cell phones reach across race, class, and gender—they’re an equal-opportunity device.

I appreciate when pieces like this come out to comment on and sort of document a cultural trend; I’m really interested in how technologies are represented in narratives (film, novel, music) as well as media reports. Just goes to show that we’re always scared, to a certain degree, of new technologies (HAL, anyone?). With cell phones, it seems to become clear that we’re not scared that they’ll turn on us themselves, but that we’ll turn into something different just by having them around - and that we’ll turn into something we don’t like, quicker than we can know it. I think a similar fear is also deeply at the root of why people get all upset about online linguistic conventions, but that’s an entry I’ll need to think more about.

And as I speak, NPR is doing a review of Firewall. Yah.

…easily forgotten, I know, in the craze to advertise your product in a way that screams “I am hip! I am of the text messaging era! Use me 2 txt ur bf 2 brk up w him!” Coupled with the oft-heard defense* that “But written Hebrew doesn’t need vowels” it’s understandable that people rush to eliminate our little AEIOU(Y) friends for the sake of speed or, in this case, coolness.

But sometimes, sometimes, to get your point across, I think it is imperative that you let one or more vowels stick around. I speak of the Motorola SLVR. Apart from being really, really pissed that I already bought a ROKR (because let’s face it, the SLVR is a beaut), I don’t understand how this name got past the Executive Committee on Nomenclature. Because to me, this name screams SILVER, not SLIVER, which it’s supposed to be. I only know it’s SLIVER because my friend told me so (apparently this was a big Super Bowl ad thing; I wasn’t there). And I didn’t believe him at first, except then I saw the picture and the phone was indeed slim and black rather than shiny and chrome.

Agreed that you can do away with the E, which no one really needs in order to figure out that the last part of the word is -ER. Same with the vowel part of other last syllables, like -OR or -LE. Those mostly end up taking schwa sounds; not hard to figure. But that first syllable is tough - and even more so with SLVR because you have nothing to tell you whether the L should cluster with the S or the V. Hence RAZR and ROKR and PEBL, all sensible compromises with the impulse to eliminate all vowels. I know adding the I would take Motorola over the seeming 4-letter limit (not to be underestimated; recall the CW), but it might have been worth looking for another usable word.

Not that it really matters, in any way, to the world. I was just annoyed.

*never actually heard.

[UPDATE: Apparently Benjamin Zimmer at Language Log was thinking similar thoughts today, if not precisely. He has a post up about e-dropping here.]

King Alfred tagged me to meme away. Not something I’d usually do (it’s kind of weird to answer personal-ish questions on what’s basically a non-personal-ish platform), but what the hell - it’s raining out and I’m totally bored. People I tag: don’t take it personally. Perhaps you will only comply if it’s also raining out where you are. That is fine.

Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot.
1) Jeni
2) Anastasia
3) Haligweorc
4) King Alfred
5) polyglot conspiracy

Next select five people to tag
1) Noncompositional
2) Subjunctivitis
3) mike pope
4) Emerging Communications
5) HeiDeas

What were you doing 10 years ago?
February 1996: Freshman year of high school. I was probably bummed that I didn’t get asked to the traditional February “Sweetheart” dance, while pretending not to care because hey, nerdy smart kids don’t care about stupid things like dances. Puh-lease. Listening to a lot of Indigo Girls, trying to be a good little burgeoning feminist slash pseudo-hippie. Pissed that I couldn’t take a journalism class until my sophomore year, resented ease with which I completed most coursework, discovered kinship in the freak show that normally constituted German classes at my HS. Spent most of my time dancing with my dance company, at places like nursing homes, shows in Branson, MO, and competition in San Jose, CA.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
February 2005: Starting my second semester of Grad School Round 1. Enjoying philosophy of language, structure of ASL, and language + identity. On February 4 to be exact, my dear friends The Late Night Players came into town and we celebrated one of their birthdays. Lots of gelato cake, puns, and anagrams involved.

Five snacks you enjoy:
1) Triscuits + brie
2) Banana
3) Yogurt
4) Veggie booty (not kidding, I LOVE that shit)
5) Apple

Five songs you know all the words to:
1) Spanish Pipedream by John Prine
2) Most Indigo Girls songs 1989-2000 (see above)
3) Palmcorder Yajna by The Mountain Goats
4) Most Ani DiFranco songs 1991-2003 (recall: good little feminist)
5) Famous Blue Raincoat by Leonard Cohen

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1) Hire a masseusse
2) Eliminate some debts (seems to be a popular answer)
3) Buy some habitat, somewhere (though a million doesn’t really go that far in most places I want to live)
4) Donate to all the people I always want to donate to but don’t have the money for
5) Pay for my friends to travel with me

Five bad habits:
1) Over(self)indulgence
2) Touching my hair
3) Laughing too loudly
4) Obsessively checking Myspace
5) I’m not telling you that!

Five things you enjoy doing:
1) Tap/dancing
2) Eating + cooking
3) Knitting
4) Sweating (is that really something I do, or just something that happens?)
5) Sleeping
There are of course other things that should be obvious to any reader of this blog.

Five things you would never wear again:
1) Jeans that don’t fit me
2) Shirts that don’t fit me
3) T-shirt of coffeeshop I used to work in
4) Black t-shirts from concerts. Actually, black t-shirts most generally.
5) My heart on my sleeve (OMG JK LOL!!! I had to do that. C’mon, there’s no wordplay in this meme!)

Five favorite toys:
I don’t have an iPod, DVD player, or digital camera, the things most people would probably consider obvious candidates for “favorite toys,” but there are things that *I* find fun and consider superfluous, however useful:
1) French press
2) Rice cooker
3) Tap floorboards
4) Motorola ROKR
5) PowerBook? Kind of not superfluous, though.

Not that linguistics and politics don’t go nicely together, but I just had a puzzling experience on Amazon. I was searching for an atlas of languages/languages of the world type book/compendium, and found The World Atlas of Language Structures (Dryer et al. (eds), 2005), which looks like a) a fabulous reference to own, but b) more expensive than I can handle ($495?! That’s my plane ticket to visit a prospective grad school or Hawaii, thank you.).

But the weird thing is the “Better Together” section of this page where Amazon recommends to you a companion book for the book you’ve found (like Don’t Think of an Elephant would go with What’s the Matter with Kansas? or Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think). The book it recommends to go with The World Atlas of Language Structures? Jimmy Carter’s Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis (I can get them both for $510!!). I honestly don’t know how Amazon’s matching system would’ve come up with a book about morality in the US to be desired by people who would desire a comprehensive book of all documented linguistic structures in the world. I’d understand it more if the book were about global politics or ethics, but not just America’s. Maybe once Lakoff made the link between linguistics and politics so salient in 2004, the partnership just stuck in the database. Or maybe only one person has ever actually ordered the World Atlas, and that one person also bought Carter’s book.

Anyway, if anyone has a good recommendation for a thorough but not too weighty atlas of languages/languages of the world type book/compendium, please let me know.