Tag Archives: language

From my blogroll: Language Log, again

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Had too much fun reading this morning to write a blog post myself.

Over at Pubrants, agent Kristin Nelson has posted a query from one of her writers, Lisa Shearin, along with comments about what it was about the query that worked. Nice contrast to Evil Editor, whose material is drawn from queries that don’t work quite so well.

I’ve also been looking through the archives at Language Log, a blog I added to my blogroll yesterday after my eggcorn post. What a pleasure. I love the ‘net!

UPDATE: Mark Liberman has collaborated with Geoffrey K. Pullum to publish a “best of” Language Log as a book, Far from the Madding Gerund :)

Eggcorns, hooray!!!

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Here’s a fun read: Mark Peters in The Chronicle of Higher Education, writing about eggcorns.

So what’s an eggcorn? Originally, the word “eggcorn” was just an amusing misspelling of “acorn.” Linguists — especially those on the Language Log blog — noticed that “eggcorn” made a kind of intuitive sense and was an apt guess if you didn’t know the real spelling.

. . . All eggcorns makes sense on some level. For example, the eggcorn “girdle one’s loins” is far more understandable than the archaic “gird one’s loins.” “Free reign” — an extremely common misspelling — expresses a similar laxness to “free rein,” and there’s a kind of exclamatory kismet between “whoa is me!” and “woe is me!” Another eggcorn, “woeth me!” makes an old-fashioned-sounding word even more so. And since a rabble-rouser may eventually cause some rubble to exist, “rubble-rouser” is a nifty invention.

Lots more examples in the article, plus the delightful revelation that one Chris Waigl has an Eggcorn Database.

I know a fellow who used to coin them on purpose. Two of my favorites: “get to the crux of the biscuit” and “low dog on the scrotum pole” :-D

The grey squirrel of grammar

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Here’s a companion piece to the Eliza Doolittle post I wrote yesterday.

“The grey squirrel of grammar” is the pairing of “there is” with a plural subject, e.g. “there’s five plates on the table.” Like the North American squirrels that now make Britain home, it’s here to stay, says Michael McCarthy, writing in The Guardian. But he’s okay with that. He sees it as an example of acceptable bad grammar — it’s not worth getting fussed about since we all understand what is being said.

He’s a bit tougher, however, when it comes to written language or constructions where bungled grammar interferes with clarity . . .

“The Eliza Doolittles of the early 21st century”

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From the always-interesting New York Observer, Jason Horowitz has written an article about “the Affect.”

From the San Fernando Valley, where some think the accent has its origins in the infamous Valley Girl, to the soap stores of Soho, young women are communicating differently. But unlike their Cockney counterpart, they don’t peddle wilted flowers in the London markets. They have college diplomas from Georgetown and Penn, and respectable addresses in Kips Bay and wherever else laundry machines in doorman buildings spin Theory pants and Michael Stars shirts in a black and pastel blur. They sell advertising space and plan events in New York City. They practice law (uhhhhm, ob-juhk-tion?), trade stocks (baiiiigh? seh-uhhhl?), and eat at swanky restaurants (sew guuuuuhhhd.) This Affect, however, is not inherited from parents, though it’s an effective tool for extracting money and presents from them. It’s not even picked up in the playground — except in its more posh precincts. It’s caught from other proudly upper-middle-class girls who love nothing more than to linger on a vowel.

The article includes some observations by John V. Singler, a sociolinguistics professor at New York University, who listened to recordings of the Affect.

There was more pitch range than usual. Usually the extremes of pitch change for emphasis, and this wasn’t the case. In terms of the amount of pitch variation, in ordinary sentences and not in places of emphasis. I hadn’t noticed that before.

Other signature characteristics of the Affect are glottal stops in place of “t’s” and that “high, rising intonation contour, more commonly referred to as “uptalk” — the seemingly contagious practice of lifting the end of every phrase to create the effect of a question.”

On the one hand, Horowitz notes, professional women are paying voice coaches to help them unlearn this accent. (I guess it’s an accent? lol)

On the other hand, it may represent the latest in the ongoing drift of spoken English, or, as Horowitz slyly notes, “The time may not be far off when mothers will be reprimanding their children for not inserting a ‘like’ before an adjective.”