Obama's Tango Conspiracy?

(screen shot from MSNBC's video)

Having nothing whatever to do with linguistics, nonetheless I feel compelled to report what seems like an entirely unreported snub by US President Barack Obama to the President of Argentina Cristina Kirchner. Watch MSNBC's video of the second photo shoot and you'll see Obama walk across the entire group to go shake hands with Canada's PM Stephen Harper (who missed the original shoot), but he passed right in front of Kirchner who raised her hand out to shake Obama's, but he ignored her entirely (creating a somewhat awkward moment), shook Harper's hand, then refused to make eye contact with Kirchner afterwords. I count that as two snubs.

Watch the video at Olbermann's "Countdown" site and at about 40 seconds in you'll see the moments I'm talking about. MSNBC's footage seems to be the only one with a wide enough angle to show the snubs.

The relevant frootage is here:
April 2, 2009; #5 "Obama meets the world press"

(psssst, this has nothing to do with anything; just random rumor mongering...which is fun, ya know...)

Family Guy Linguistics

(screen shot from Family Guy via Hulu)

The most recent Family Guy episode ("Family Gay": Season 7, Episode 8 ) relied on some interesting linguistics in two separate jokes.

First, when Peter enters his brain damaged horse, 'Till Death, in a race, it runs amok in the crowd and the announcer on the loud speaker says the following (about the 5:50 mark on Hulu):

What's this? It looks like 'Till Death has taken a right turn and is heading into the stands. Dear god! I could describe the horror I am witnessing but it is so unfathomably ugly and heart rendering that I cannot bring myself to do so, although I do posess the necessary descriptive powers. Haw, well at least the horse raced past the class of visiting deaf second graders...oh no! Dear god he's going back oh I know you can't hear any screams but I assure you they are signing frantically just as fast as their little fingers can shape the complicated phonemes necessary to convey dread and terror.

Having never studied the linguistics of sign language, my first reaction was to ask, are there truly phonemes in sign langauge? In spoken language, a phoneme is a conceptual clustering of phonetic segments into a single group. For example, in English the segment /p/ can occur with a little extra burst of air called aspiration (typically at the beginning of words), or not, like at the end of words (try saying the words "pat" and "tap" with your hand in front of your lips and, if you're a native speaker if English, you should be able to feel the little burst of air that accompanies the /p/ in "pat" but not in "tap"). So, there is a difference in how we articulate /p/ depending on where it occurs in a word. Nonetheless, we still consider both versions of /p/ to be "the same sound." We say there is a single phoneme [p] with two phonetic realizations, aspirated and unaspirated.

But this use of "phoneme" is based on spoken language. How does this relate to signed languages like ASL? After a quick bit of Googling, I've discovered that the term "phoneme" is in fact used to refer to segments of signed language by various sign language scholars, though it is used more as a conceptual borrowing than as a term referring to sound. The most relevant discussion I found was in an abstract for the paper "Sign language phoneme transcription with PCA-based representation" by Kong, W.W. and Ranganath, S. (from the National University of Singapore). They "first apply a semi-automatic segmentation algorithm which detects minimal velocity and maximal change of directional angle to segment the hand motion trajectory of signed sentences. We then extract feature descriptors based on principal component analysis (PCA) to represent the segments efficiently. These high level features are used with k-means to cluster the segments to form phonemes." According to this approach, phonetic segments are roughly approximated to sign language as feature sets composed of "minimal velocity and maximal change of directional angle" and phonemes are approximated as k-means clusters of those feature sets. Cool stuff, for sure. But it's not clear to me if this computational approach is consistent with the natural way humans actually perceive and analyze sign language segments. I'm still looking for more on that topic.

Nonetheless, there remains the issue of the Family Guy writers getting the nature of phonemes fundamentally wrong. Phonemes convey no meaning (excusing for the moment the weak possibility of sound symbolic associations). The writers, who were clearly willing to do a little research (even if a very little), could easily have substituted "morphemes" for "phonemes" in the script and would have had the same joke without the error. And just how complicated are the signs for dread and terror anyway?

(pssst, I've clearly spent too much time reading linguistics because when I first read "the horse raced past the class of visiting deaf second graders" I assumed it was a garden path sentence similar to Bever's famed example "The horse raced past the barn fell." It took me several reads to realize that, nope, "raced" is not a reduced relative clause, but rather a run-of-the-mill past tense main verb. A nice example of construction priming, eh? I'm primed to read any "X raced past Y" clause as being a reduced relative).


Second, the writers went out of their way to construct a joke not only based on conversational pragmatics, but based on EXPLAINING Gricean maxims (about the 9:50 mark on Hulu.com).

Lois: Peter, what exactly did they inject you with?

Peter: Oh all sorts of things. Hepatitis vaccine, a couple of steroids, the gay gene, calcium, a vitamin B extract...

Lois: What did you just say?

Peter: The gay gene. I assume that's the one you meant even though it wasn't literally the last thing I said when you said what did you just say, it's just that clearly (it) was most unusual... (note: the pronoun "it" was reduced to near imperceptibility).

In this exchange, Peter explains that, under normal circumstances, after listing a set of items and someone asks "what did you just say" he would interpret "what" as referring to the most recent item in the list (presumably because of the semantics of "just"). But in this case, one earlier item was more "unusual" than the others.

Let's re-explain this using conversational pragmatics and Gricean maxims, okay?

Peter lists five items. He believes that one of the five items is controversial while the other four are not. He believes Lois believes this too. The controversial item is in the middle of the list. Peter believes he articulated each item clearly such that Lois could properly hear all items. He believes Lois believes this too. So, when Lois asks "what did you just say," Peter believes 1) that she heard the most recent item clearly and 2) that this item has little informational value. He believes Lois believes this too. Peter believes Lois is not flouting conversational norms. He believes Lois believes this too. Therefore, Peter believes Lois is trying to make her contribution (her question) informative (maxim of quantity). He believes Lois believes this too. Peter believes that repeating a well heard, uncontroversial item has no information value. He believes Lois believes this too. Thus, he infers that "what" must refer to some item other than the last one. He believes Lois believes this too. Peter believes there is only one item on the list that meets the information value requirement. He believes Lois believes this too.

This is a long-winded way of saying the same thing Peter did, but we linguists have to make things complicated and technical. It's our job.

Taco Bell Grammar

The grammar of my recent Taco Bell receipt is remarkably interesting. Here's my faithful transcription of the actual receipt pictured above:

THANK'S FOR CHOOSING TACO BELL 3009
HAVE YOU WON YOUR $ 1000 YET ?
IF YOU DON'T PLEASE ASK A CASHIER
HOW YOU CAN . . .
WE APPRECIATE YOUR BUSINESS
PLEASE LET US KNOW HOW WE DID IT
CALL US AT ( 510 ) 844-0764
OR CALL THE MANAGER.

Linguistically, there are some obviously interesting and not so obviously interesting features of this receipt.

1. They used an apostrophe for "thanks"
2. An unnecessary space between "$" and "1000"
3. An unnecessary space between "yet" and the question mark
4. Incorrect verb choice in the conditional clause ("do" instead of "have")
5. Extraneous pronoun "it" at the end of a clause
6. Unnecessary spaces after and before "(" and ")"

(1) is a common typo/error/misunderstanding. (2), (3), and (6) seem to be some spacing convention of the receipt format, but the convention is unpredictable because the "$", "?", "...", "(" and ")" all follow it, but the " ' ", "-", and "." do not (a tokenizer could be built to account for this fairly easily because the only thing that hinges on this is correctly identifying 1000 as a dollar amount and the "510" as an area code). (4) and (5) seem to be legitimate grammar errors.

My guess is that each Taco Bell can personalize the message and the local manager either made the mistake or failed to identify and correct the mistake.

Finally, and perhaps most compelling of all, at the bottom, they got the Bagging Summary wrong. There were three items, not two.

A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be…

(screen shot from Hulu's State of the Nation feed)

"And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma."
U.S. President Barack Obama, State of the Nation speech (Feb 24, 2009)

My first reaction is to agree. I think this is a great vision of the future of our country. But President Obama was wise to note the problem of increasing costs of tuition. When I started state college in California in 1989, I spent $198 on tuition per semester. It jacked up to almost $1000 per semester by the time I graduated four years later. The same school now charges over $2000 per semester to attend. This same school was free when I started elementary school.

But what does Obama’s vision of increased post-secondary school training really mean? Is this feasible? The realist in me is forced to think of what this means to actual day-to-day classroom teaching. Does this mean overcrowding post-secondary institutions with sub-par students? That's not good. Are we to expect post-secondary institutions to lower their standards to admit all these new applicants, or are we to "hope" that secondary schools manage to train their students for the post-secondary world?

I know of what I speak. I spent 12 years teaching at colleges and universities. I taught at a community college in California, two private colleges in New York state as well as two public universities on the East Coast. None of these were elite colleges. I had a few "rich" students whose parents were paying their full cost of college but the vast majority of students were working-class or poor students who were in-debt just to get to school every day. This experience gave me a very good sense of the skills and needs of the "average" college student in America. Most were poorly prepared and that affected my day-to-day lesson plans.

The sad truth is that there is an emerging class of private colleges whose business model is based on recruiting exactly the kinds of students Obama just reached out to: those unable to obtain "normal" admission to colleges. The average private college in America looks nothing like Harvard or Stanford. Far from it. They look like businesses.

• They charge $10,000 to $20,000 per year for tuition.

• They tend to focus on one or two vocational majors (like occupational therapy or veterinary technician).

• They tend to have 1000-4000 students.

• They tend to employ large numbers of part-time adjunct faculty (cheap labor and my bread and butter for 12 years).

• They tend to skimp on “non-essential” courses.

I believe President Obama really wants to attain his dream of educational opportunities for all. I believe he genuinely wants to reform teacher training and incentives. But in order to make those dreams a reality, we’re going to have to look at what happened to college tuition between 1975 and 1995, because those were the dark days. In 1975, Obama’s vision would have been feasible. After 1995, his vision became a nightmare.

Can we really expect all Americans to attain post-secondary education under current circumstances? I suspect not.

UPDATE: the AP has published a story addressing this very issue and contains a variety of perspectives here.

UPDATE 2: the Chronicle of Higher Education has a related story on the increasing costs of college here (HT Daily Dish).

Bale's Accent Grammar

(pic from TheCinemaSource.com)

Exactly what happened to Christian Bale's accent during his famous rant now buzzing around the interwebs? Listen to this 2002 interview with the "Welsh born" actor, then listen to the famous rant here. In the 2002 interview, he quite clearly has a UK accent (though it's not clear to me exactly what variety since I'm not good at placing UK accents; also, he spent relatively little time in Wales, so knowing his birthplace is not much help). Then, in the rant, he has largely what I would call a American English/California accent, but it breaks occasionally (into what, I'm not sure). It might be the case that Bale's famed intensity as an actor engulfed him so much that he was still "in character" when ranting, I don't know.

I never studied the factors of accent change, but it seems like an interesting topic. According to Bale's Wikipedia page, he moved around a lot as a kid, and according to Bale himself in the 2002 interview above, he still moves around a lot as an adult, so he moves between many speech communities.

I'd be curious to know how phonologists have modeled accents. Is a person's accent simply the accumulated total of word pronunciation norms, or do we have a model of a holistic accent in our head that we are trying to approximate when pronouncing sentences (an accent grammar, if you will)? This seems like a non-trivial distinction.

Pleasant Surprise at LSA

Being a cynic by nature, I am typically underwhelmed by linguistics conferences (I suspect that I'd be equally underwhelmed by other academic conferences too, but I'm a linguist). The Linguistics Society of America's huge annual meeting was held in my backyard this last week in San Fransisco so I attended a few sessions. Unfortunately, I largely had the same experience I typically have: squirming in the audience while smart, accomplished professionals drone on about their topic of choice. The problem is the format: 20 minute presentations with 10 minutes for Q&A. That's a tough set to play. Only academics and professional comedians are ever asked to perform under those kinds of conditions, and professional comedians get hundreds if not thousands of times more experience before they get good at it. Professional academics get maybe one or two chances a year to perfect the art of presentation.

Nonetheless, occasionally there is a person who has a talent for presenting complex information in a helpful and productive way, and I was lucky enough to see one presentation at the LSA by just such a linguist: Chris Golston of CSU, Fresno. He and co-author Tomas Riad presented an OT account of metrical phenomenon. By all rights, I should have been half asleep. I am neither a phonologist nor an OT adherent. But Chris, who was the primary presenter, was engaging, funny, and damned good and getting me to understand what the issues were and what their solution was. He is a natural teacher. His students at Frenso probably have no clue how lucky they are to have such a good teacher.

Their Presentation: Chris Golston (California State University, Fresno), Tomas Riad (Stockholm University): A constraint-based view of English meter.

What Is a Word?

(picture definition of the "word" zazen)

The nature of a word's meaning has been an Achilles Heel, stumbling linguistics for hundreds of years. For example, Pāṇini's 4th Century Sanskrit grammar Astadhyayi (Aṣṭādhyāyī - अष्टाध्यायी) appears to have accepted that "the authority of the popular usage of words … must supersede the authority of the meaning dependent on derivation. The meanings of words (the relations between word and meaning) are also established by popular usage" (more here).

The Urban Dictionary is a great example of this kind of approach to dictionary making and now The Photographic Dictionary is trying to use pictures to define words (HT: Daily Dish). It's an interesting project, linguistically as well as artistically. I doubt these pics have been normed for their "meaning" (to be fair, it's more of an art project than linguistic research), but it's a good move towards functional definitions of words. I'd prefer to see multiple pictures (and videos??) for each word that have been normed to some extent for the meanings they are supposed to represent. For example, when I looked at the picture definition for the "word" zazen (above), a word I had never seen before, I did not feel that one picture helped me understand the meaning of the word. If anything, it confused me because I could imagine any number of conflicting meanings associated with that one pitcures. No one meaning was salient. This is classic function/structuralist linguistics. Cognitive semantics grew out of exactly this kind of problem.

And, for the record, my answer to the question in this post's title is this: I have no idea. See Princeton's Construction Site for more on my confusion.