Category: Uncategorized
Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log
LanguageLog has converted its content into a book. Aha! Why didn’t I think of that? (wink)
How many words in English?
My colleague and coworker Jesse Sheidlower has written on the question of how many words are in the English language.
David Sedaris
While I think listing him as your favorite author is not to your credit and while I think he is somewhere on the spectrum between being the Bennet Cerf or the James Thurber of our generation—talented but never surpassing mere cleverness and doomed to be forgotten by all but people who buy Trivial Pursuit for…
Towards a more public fuck
Last week Amy Rosenberg quoted me in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the slow trend towards more public use of the word “fuck.” For once, a supposed trend is true. That I am a linguist is not true, however.
The Failure of Self-Reporting
There are three recent articles that demonstrate something that’s hard to get across. It’s this: people are bad witnesses to their own behaviors. Anyone who has ever done an academic study with human subjects knows about this. In response to questions, people say things that cannot be supported by evidence, things based on opinion, false…
Tabloids and Television
The similarities between the last episode of Hustle (from the third season, not yet shown in the US; check your BitTorrent for local listings) and the Jared Paul Stern nuttiness are interesting.
Nicknames
Stephanie Rosenbloom quoted me in a New York Times article about nicknames today: “We all have a choice.” So very, very true.
Honey on Sell
Here’s an illustration of a Southern vowel merger. I took the photo at the farmer’s market in Raleigh, N.C., in February.