The bibliographical database of linguistics:

The BLonline database provides bibliographical references to scholarly publications on all branches of linguistics and all the languages of the world, irrespective of language or place of publication. The database contains all entries of the printed volumes of Bibliographie Linguistique/Linguistic Bibliography for the years 1993-2000 and an increasing number of more recent references.

(Via wood s lot.)

I didn’t actually watch the Super Bowl the other night (I care almost nothing about football), but out of some vestigial loyalty to family tradition I checked in on it now and then, and I happened to see an exciting moment at the end of the second quarter. It was a touchdown pass from New England quarterback Tom Brady to David Givens, described by Kevin Hench thus:

This was a clinic in read and recognition as Brady went through his progressions, surveying all the way from one side of the field to the other before finding Givens at the right edge of the end zone. Philly corner Lito Sheppard got caught leaking toward the middle just as Brady located Givens and delivered a perfect strike for the Patriots’ first touchdown.

And here’s what the TV announcer said of Givens as the replay was being shown: “He had nowhere to really else go.”
That is perhaps the single most astonishing sentence I’ve heard a native speaker of English utter (in terms of grammaticality, I hasten to add); it’s so bizarre I had to retype it because I automatically moved the “really” as I was copying it. By comparison, the Murray Chass sentence I analyzed here is a model of construction. There are two words independently misplaced: “else” should come immediately after “nowhere,” and “really” should… well, really, it could go almost anywhere other than where it is and make better sense. But the latter is less of a problem—if you delete “else,” you get “He had nowhere to really go,” which any copy editor would emend to “He really had nowhere to go” but which is a plausible verbal bumble of the kind we all find ourselves making. It’s the “else” that baffles me, and I’d love to hear one of the Language Log mavens or other linguabloggers try to account for how it got there. This is the kind of thing that makes me very skeptical of efforts to derive sentences from little NP-VP nodules that get lexical items inserted before being extruded from the assembly line and out of our mouths.
Update. Language Logger Mark Liberman takes up my challenge and does a bang-up job; I think his conclusion makes perfect sense:

The announcer started to put together the simple cliche “He had nowhere else to go” (689 whG). He decided to modify else with really: “He had nowhere really else to go”. Then in the excitement of the moment, his sequential preferences (“nowhere to”, “to really”) pulled “really else” over past “to”.

(And “mavens” wasn’t a dig, honest, just the aftereffect of reading too much Safire!)

Transblawg has an entry about the secret language used in the German village of Frammersbach; the “language, known as Welschen, is probably hundreds of years old and was started by traders who didn’t want their agreements to be understood by others.” The interest lies not so much in the rather simple-minded form of Pig Latin used (“take the consonants from the beginning of a word and put them at the end, followed by an ä”) as in the fact that there are “a large number of similar secret ‘languages’ used in Germany”—and presumably elsewhere. There must be studies on this subject; I wonder how much deformation of the standard language or dialect is necessary to make sure outsiders don’t understand you?

A Eurozine article by Mischa Gabowitsch examines the problems of Russian translation.

To the casual observer, almost fifteen years after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the demise of the Communist regime, the Russian translation market may seem to be booming. Indeed, according to the statistics of the Association of German Booksellers, Russia has been among the top ten buyers of rights on translations of German books for most of the past decade; and the Russian State Statistics Committee tells us that in 2001, translations made up about a third of all fiction titles published in the Russian Federation (though, in 2002, they only accounted for just over 13 per cent of the total number of copies of fiction and non-fiction titles.)
Translation, however, is of course much more than a market. It is a skill, an organised activity, and ideally a process of cultural synthesis and creativity. Concerning all of these aspects, translation is in a wretched state in contemporary Russia. In order to understand why, we first need to consider the status and role of translation in the Soviet Union, all the more so since critics of the low level of most literary translations done nowadays sometimes look back to a reputed ‘golden era’ of translation…
The overwhelming majority of translations published in Russia today are of execrable quality. Words and whole sentences are routinely mistranslated, names are misspelled, and translators’ or editors’ notes on difficult passages, even when they exist, are often simply wrong. This state of affairs is due to a number of factors, some of which are rooted in the Soviet heritage. There are still very few people who have spent sufficient time abroad to have gained proper knowledge of a foreign language. While there is now a considerable Russian diaspora in countries such as Germany and the United States, few Russians manage to master their new language and not forget their mother tongue, let alone keep up with the break-neck speed of transformation of the Russian that is spoken, and written, in Russia. And even among the truly bilingual, only very few are prepared to work as translators into Russian for fees that are ridiculously low by Western standards.

There is an interesting analysis of finances, transportation problems, and “cultural accessibility.” I am bothered, though, by this attack on an author I’m very fond of:

This paves the way for those Russian authors who look to foreign countries mainly to enhance their prestige at home, or to gain symbolic capital abroad by acting as self-styled representatives of Russian culture where there is no-one to disclaim their simplistic and cliché-ridden generalisations. Tatyana Tolstaya, a well-known writer who spent many years in America, is an example of a ‘biased cultural translator’ who likes to write ironically and pejoratively about Russian exceptionalism while in the United States, but happily engages in West-bashing back in Russia and sees no harm in promoting extreme nationalist writers in a TV show she co-anchors.

Does anybody know how much truth there is in this? (Via wood s lot.)

This fine site has everything you’re likely to want to know about lingua franca (Wikipedia), “a mixed language… [formerly] used for communication throughout the Middle East.” The Prefatory Note says:

I am happy to present the fourth edition of the Lingua Franca Website…

A transcript of a valuable lecture delivered on April 22, 2002 by Professor Roberto Rossetti at the University of Nantes, France, has been included. Of particular interest are the Bibliography and Chronologies which follow his lecture, and are given a separate listing on the Index. Even individuals who do not read French readily will be able to make good use of these careful listings. Some additional texts have been added and annotated.

A new section called “Conversazioni” contains materials received from colleagues which I have slightly annotated and edited. It seems to me that these may give encouragement to younger researchers to expand our knowledge of this area, and also demonstrate how the Internet can increase knowledge. As King Solomon said: Iron sharpeneth iron; and a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

A brief sample:

“Spagnoli venir … boum boum … andar; Inglis venir … boum boum bezef … andar; Francés venir … tru tru tru … chapar.”
‘The Spaniards came, cannonaded, and left. The English came, cannonaded heavily, and left. The French came, blew their bugles, and captured [Algiers].’

(I can’t remember where I found this link; if you sent it to me, let me know and I’ll provide credit.)

Frequent commenter Tatyana sent me a link to this “Brief Dictionary of Medieval Bulgarian Geographical Names and Expressions”—something of a misnomer, since this long and detailed list can hardly be called “brief.” The question is, what is its status? It’s associated with the “Djagfar Tarihi,” about which this page says:

There is much controversy and resistance to the publication of the “Djagfar Tarihi” annals. The leading allegations are that the compilation was composed by an office of the Russian NKVD/KGB/FSB at an undefined time with a purpose of splitting the Türkic ethnic groups into opposing camps, that it was written by an unknown person claiming to be only a savior of the annals, that it is a false compilation with no historical merit, that Ibragim Mohammed-Karimovich Nigmatullin is an unknown fictional personality.

In support of these allegations there is no known systematic study addressing the authen[ti]city of the compilation, no known systematic review and study of the materials…

The site doesn’t refute any of these “allegations”; it simply goes on to take the validity of the document for granted:

“Djagfar Tarihi” (“History by Djagfar”) is the only known assembly of ancient Bulgarian annals that reached us. As many other Bulgarian sources, “Djagfar Tarihi” has a difficult and tragical history.

The collection [was] compiled in 1680 under the order of the leader of the Bulgarian liberation movement, seid Djagfar, by the secretary of his office in the eastern part of Bulgaria, Bashkorostan, by the name of Iman…, including in the collection the most valuable Bulgarian annals: “Gazi-Bardj Tarihi” (1229-1246) by Gazi-Bardj, “Rightful Way, or Pious acts of Bulgarian Sheikhs” (1483) by Mohammed-Amin, “Kazan Tarihi” (1551) by Mohamedyar Bu-Ürgan, “Sheikh-Gali Kitaby” (1605) by Ish-Mohammed and some others…

Does anybody know if this is true, or even plausible? Claire, you read medieval Turkic stuff—any enlightenment to shed? I don’t want to immerse myself too deeply in the geographical stuff (which I love) if it’s going to turn out to be a hoax.

A critical essay by Marjorie Perloff on Nancy K. Anderson’s The Word That Causes Death’s Defeat:

Since no translation can quite capture the particular poeticity of Akhmatova’s verse, the best solution may be a bilingual edition (we have one in Kunitz, and in Hemschemeyer’s two-volume edition of the Complete Poems); I wish Anderson had given us one, framed by her very fine and useful biographical narrative, as well as her commentaries. As it stands, the problematic translation is not saved by the elaborate apparatus of critical essays, notes, and appendices. Indeed, the “critical” essays tend toward running commentary and explication rather than any serious analysis of poetic form. The assumption seems to be that these late, great poems need no justification and that, in the case of Poem Without a Hero, Akhmatova’s epic sweep and Pushkinian irony are self-evident. Anderson’s focus, accordingly, is on sources and influences, on biographical reference and allusion.

As literary criticism, then, The Word That Causes Death’s Defeat is unremarkable. But the compelling story of Akhmatova’s life—and of her astonishing modernist poems, still so little known in the West—makes this a curiously appealing book: a collage testament, so to speak, to the workings of poetic power.

I like Poem Without a Hero better than Perloff seems to, but I agree with her about the relative merits of the translations she excerpts (though all are hideously inadequate), and it’s an interesting read.

Also: The Places of Anna Akhmatova. (Both links via wood s lot [02.04.2005].)

A NY Times article by Nicholas Wade describes “a signing system that spontaneously developed in an isolated Bedouin village”:

The language, known as Al Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, is used in a village of some 3,500 people in the Negev desert of Israel. They are descendants of a single founder, who arrived 200 years ago from Egypt and married a local woman. Two of the couple’s five sons were deaf, as are about 150 members of the community today.
The clan has long been known to geneticists, but only now have linguists studied its sign language. A team led by Dr. Wendy Sandler of the University of Haifa says in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today that the Bedouin sign language developed spontaneously and without outside influence. It is not related to Israeli or Jordanian sign languages, and its word order differs from that of the spoken languages of the region.

The article goes on to make comparisons with Nicaraguan Sign Language (see my entry for a couple of excellent comments by Leila Monaghan) and makes some dubious assertions about the implications for “innate grammatical machinery”; see Mark Liberman’s Language Log post for appropriate skepticism (focused on the reporter, not Mark Aronoff, the quoted linguist). My thanks to dinesh rao for the link!

Felicity Rash conducted “research into linguistic politeness in German-speaking Switzerland (GSS) and into one type of politeness in particular, namely the speech acts of greeting and leave-taking denoted by the German verb grüssen” and reported on the results in “Linguistic Politeness and Greeting Rituals in German-speaking Switzerland” (in Linguistik online):

Greeting “properly” in GSS involves more than merely saying grüezi and adieu. Just as with the formal and informal pronouns of address, Sie and du respectively, levels of formality are strictly observed: thus grüezi (grüess-ech in western regions) is generally accompanied by Herr/Frau + family name; salü/sali, hoi, hallo, tschau + first name are informal greetings, and are used more by young people than old. Leave-taking formulae include ade/adieu or uf widerluege for people with whom one is on formal terms, and tschau, tschüss, salü/sali for people with whom one has an informal relationship. Both initial and terminal formulae are often followed by mitenand or zäme (both meaning ‘together’) if two or more people are greeted. A greeting is generally accompanied by a hand-shake or, when close friends greet, kisses on alternate cheeks (usually three). Leave-taking formulae are frequently accompanied by other pleasantries, such as schöne Tag [have a nice day], schöne Namittag [have a nice afternoon], schönen Aabig/Aabe/Obe [have a nice evening], schöne Fiirtig/Fiiraabig [have a good day/evening off], schöns Wochenend [have a good weekend], schöni Fäschttäg [Happy Christmas], schöni Wienachte/Oschtere [Happy Christmas/Easter], e guets neus Jahr/guete Rutsch [Happy New Year]; en Schöne [have a nice one] is considered uncouth by some people. Such good wishes are generally answered with danke/merci gliichfalls [thank you and the same to you]; indeed many of my informants stressed the importance of this particular formula.

All of my adult informants used a selection of the above formulae and most agreed that it is never enough to just say grüezi to a person one knows: one should always mention the interlocutor’s name and it is usually possible to say something topical, even if it is only in recognition of the time of day, as in schöne Namittag. Many informants felt it polite to offer a Gelegenheitsgruss or an Arbeitsgruss if the other person was obviously occupied with a specific task (see section 2.2.xii-xiv below). Otherwise wie gaht’s/goht’s [how are you], with initial greetings, or schlaf guet [sleep well], with leave-taking, make suitable adjuncts to the basic formulae. One informant told me that in the canton of Wallis it is usual to say gueten Aabe/Obe from 1.00 p.m. onwards. In all other regions the evening begins much later, from about 5.00 p.m. or when the working day has ended…

Many people from both urban and rural areas stressed the differences in greeting habits between people from the different environments: many town-dwellers claimed: ‘Auf dem Land grüsst man mehr als in der Stadt’ [People who live in the country greet more than those who live in towns], and village-dwellers said: ‘In der Stadt wird nicht gegrüsst’ [People in towns don’t greet one another]. In fact, the rural/urban difference is chiefly a matter of whether or not one greets strangers: wherever one is it is normal to greet a person one knows, but in rural areas of Switzerland, as in Britain and many other countries, one is more likely to greet strangers if one encounters them on a country walk or in a small village. Hanna Hinnen points out another fundamental feature of greeting conventions in rural areas: inter-family feuds in small villages are more acute than in towns, and they can often continue for years. In her study of the village of Feldis in Graubünden, Hinnen reports on families who have not greeted one another for ten years or more. She tells of one child who would be told at the meal table whom she was allowed to greet and whom she should ignore: ‘Mein Vater sagte jeweils am Tisch, wen man grüssen durfte und wen nicht. Manchmal durfte man dann einen plötzlich nicht mehr grüssen. Das gab so ein Sippengefühl, das durfte nicht gebrochen werden’ [My father would tell us at meal times whom we were allowed to greet and whom not. Sometimes we were suddenly told not to greet a person. There were family bonds that one was not allowed to break]. (Hinnen 2001: 173).

Comparisons were made with other countries. America is seen as a land where people ask after a person’s wellbeing without necessarily being interested in the answer: in Switzerland, apparently, people really want to know the answer when they ask: ‘Wie geht es Dir?’ [How are you?]. Italians were recognized by two informants as more open and genuine than the Swiss. Finally, as one nun remarked, God is disappearing from greeting formulae in Switzerland but not in Germany: ‘In Deutschland sagt man noch Grüss Gott’ [in Germany they still say Grüss Gott]…

Interesting stuff. (Via Transblawg.)

From akuaku, a most enjoyable Russian limerick:

Говорят, что у нас на Урале
Деревянный компьютер собрали.
Без гвоздей, топором!
Винт, модем, сидиром!
Мышь живую в сарае поймали.

Govoryat chto u nas na Urale
Derevyannyi kompyuter sobrali.
Bez gvozdei, toporom!
Vint, modem, sidirom!
Mysh’ zhivuyu v sarae poimali.

The brilliant version by frequent commenter Noetica (a literal translation is in the extended entry):

They made in the Urals, it’s said,
A PC that’s wooden, instead.
With no nails, just an axe,
And with cheap hardware hacks –
Like the mouse, which they caught in the shed.

(Via Avva. The slang term vint for ‘hard drive’ is apparently from Winchester, “the name of one of the first popular hard disk drive technologies developed by IBM in 1973.”)

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