languagehat.com

OK, it should be “no left temporal lobe,” but my title is punchier. Anyway, Grace Browne writes for WIRED about a remarkable case study:

In early February 2016, after reading an article featuring a couple of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who were studying how the brain reacts to music, a woman felt inclined to email them. “I have an interesting brain,” she told them.

EG, who has requested to go by her initials to protect her privacy, is missing her left temporal lobe, a part of the brain thought to be involved in language processing. EG, however, wasn’t quite the right fit for what the scientists were studying, so they referred her to Evelina Fedorenko, a cognitive neuroscientist, also at MIT, who studies language. It was the beginning of a fruitful relationship. The first paper based on EG’s brain was recently published in the journal Neuropsychologia, and Fedorenko’s team expects to publish several more.

For EG, who is in her fifties and grew up in Connecticut, missing a large chunk of her brain has had surprisingly little effect on her life. She has a graduate degree, has enjoyed an impressive career, and speaks Russian—a second language–so well that she has dreamed in it. She first learned her brain was atypical in the autumn of 1987, at George Washington University Hospital, when she had it scanned for an unrelated reason. The cause was likely a stroke that happened when she was a baby; today, there is only cerebro-spinal fluid in that brain area. […] Over the years, she says, doctors have repeatedly told EG that her brain doesn’t make sense. One doctor told her she should have seizures, or that she shouldn’t have a good vocabulary—and “he was annoyed that I did,” she says. (As part of the study at MIT, EG tested in the 98th percentile for vocabulary.) The experiences were frustrating; they “pissed me off,” as EG puts it. “They made so many pronouncements and conclusions without any investigation whatsoever,” she says.

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Boy, is this a handy site (and a natural for LH): Linguist names.

How often does this come up? You encounter a name of a linguist that you need to say out loud, and you have no idea how to say it. The goal of this page is collect some names that have presented this sort of problem either for me or for other linguists.

People who are linked without comment have included IPA transcriptions of their name pronunciations on their websites. NB: If people pronounce your name differently from how you’d like it to be pronounced, or if you’ve ever been asked how to pronounce your name, that’s a hint that you should put that information on your website. It is more likely to reach the target audience if it’s on your site than on mine. Roman Jakobson–you’re off the hook on this one.

As I scrolled down, I kept thinking “Huh — I never would have guessed.” Who knew that William Labov says [ləbˈoʊv]? And I would have pronounced Katherine Demuth’s surname like the painter Charles (/dɪˈmuθ/) if it hadn’t been for Maria Gouskova informing me it was [dˈiməθ]. Gouskova modestly doesn’t include her own name on the list, but on her homepage she conveniently has it in both English ([məˈɹijə ɡuˈskoʊvə]) and Russian ([mˠaˈrʲijə ɡˠusʲˈkˠovˠə]) versions, with audio files. (Thanks, Y!)

Mark Liberman at the Log posts about Lau, Geipel, Wu, & Keysar, “The extreme illusion of understanding” (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2022), whose abstract reads:

Though speakers and listeners monitor communication success, they systematically overestimate it. We report an extreme illusion of understanding that exists even without shared language. Native Mandarin Chinese speakers overestimated how well native English-speaking Americans understood what they said in Chinese, even when they were informed that the listeners knew no Chinese. These listeners also believed they understood the intentions of the Chinese speakers much more than they actually did. This extreme illusion impacts theories of speech monitoring and may be consequential in real-life, where miscommunication is costly.

Mark says:

In the first phase of the study, 240 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were paired, and given 12 pragmatically ambiguous phrases […] Both speakers and listeners tended to overestimate the success of the verbal disambiguation […].

In the second phrase of the experiment,

We recruited 120 native English-speaking Americans as listeners. Each American listener was yoked to a Chinese speaker and was presented with an English version of the phrases and meanings. The procedure for the American listeners was identical to that of the Chinese listeners, except that they heard the speakers via audio recordings.

A similar overestimation of understanding persisted:

Next, we report the most surprising finding: the illusion of understanding persists even when the listener doesn’t know the language.

[…]

On average, American listeners who did not know Chinese identified the intended meanings 35% of the time, which was better than chance (25%) […] Though American listeners were less accurate than Chinese listeners, […] they still overestimated their success by 30pp, believing that they succeeded 65% of the time […] The Chinese speakers overestimated here as well. While Chinese speakers indicated that the American listeners would understand less (50%) than the Chinese listeners (70%),[…] they still overestimated the American listeners’ understanding by 15pp […].

I’m surprised at how surprised I am that people would think they could understand so much of a language they don’t know; I thought I was more cynical.

Faithful link-provider Trevor sent me a BBC story about a parliamentary first:

The popular Welsh word cwtch has been used for the first time in the UK Parliament. It commonly means a hug or cuddle but has no literal English translation. Brecon and Radnorshire MP Fay Jones said cwtch while questioning Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the House of Commons on 5 January. It is the only time the word has been recorded in Hansard, which publicly publishes a record of all parliamentary debates verbatim.

The Conservative politician was criticising Wales’ Covid regulations last Wednesday and said: “On Friday, I will be holding my team meeting in the local pub because under Welsh government rules we are not allowed to go to our socially distanced office. We cannot do Parkrun and we cannot watch outdoor sport on the touchline – but we can cwtch up together in the clubhouse to watch it.” […]

Ms Jones tweeted: “Absolutely delighted to learn this morning that my use of the word ‘cwtch’ in the Commons last week was the first time that word has ever been used in Parliament.” In 2019, another Welsh MP, Rhondda’s Chris Bryant, was making an ultimately unsuccessful run for election as Commons Speaker when he said that MPs “need more of a cwtch” – although he said it in interviews outside the chamber.

I was, of course, intrigued by the word; fortunately, the OED added it in December 2005:
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Having finished my latest Pelevin novel, Generation «П» (1999), I’m simultaneously amused and a bit disappointed — I’m glad I read it, mind you, but it signals what from my point of view is a descent from a generalized mystico-sociopolitical madness grounded in history (Russian and Soviet) to a ripped-from-the-headlines version that made him even more popular at the time and that he has continued ever since. I’ll let Mark Lipovetsky provide a general description (from his chapter “Postmodernist Novel” in Russian Literature since 1991 — see this post):

When Generation “P” (translated in English as Homo Zapiens and Babylon) appeared, the majority of Russian critics contemptuously attributed the novel’s unprecedented success to its political relevance — a fantastic version of the 1998 “default” of Russia’s economy and the subsequent resignation of the government – as well as to Pelevin’s recognizable parodies of numerous TV commercials. It was the first of Pelevin’s novels in which the writer displayed his unique sensibility to the “political unconscious” of the given moment and his ability to materialize phantasms hidden in political rhetoric by captivating and grotesque plots and images. However, what initially seemed well-packed journalism, is today almost universally acknowledged as one of the most impressive snapshots of, if not monuments to, the first post-Soviet decade.

Furthermore, when rereading Pelevin’s novel today, one cannot fail to notice its prognostic aspect. Even on a surface level, the novel presents a shrewd political forecast for the 2000s. In Generation “P,” a graduate from the Literary Institute trained to translate poetry from languages he does not know, a character without features but with a “pile of cynicism,” Vavilen Tatarsky, a virtual non-entity and pawn on the chessboard of invisible mighty players, becomes a copywriter, first for commercial then subsequently political advertisements, and as a result rises to the position of the supreme ruler of the media space, the living god and head of the ancient Guild of Chaldeans secretly ruling post-Soviet Russia.

Lipovetsky goes on to analyze the mythological and political aspects, which don’t interest me very much (not to mention that the politicians and businessmen of the day have long been forgotten); what does, and what kept me reading with pleasure, is Pelevin’s unquenchable linguistic humor, which keeps coming up with gems like these:

Эти агентства множились неудержимо — как грибы после дождя или, как Татарский написал в одной концепции, гробы после вождя. ‘These agencies multiplied irrepressibly — like mushrooms after rain, or, as Tatarsky wrote in a conception [i.e., outline/plan for an ad — I don’t know what this would be in English], like graves after the Leader [i.e., Stalin; he changes griby posle dozhdya to groby posle vozhdya].’

МАЛ, ДА УД АЛ [a slogan for a condom] ‘SMALL, BUT THE PENIS IS RED’ [a slight deformation of the saying мал, да удал ‘small but bold’ — i.e., don’t judge a person by outward appearance]

Седера Луминоса [a play on Сендеро Луминосо ‘Sendero Luminoso’]

кока-колготки, кока-колбаски, кока-колымские рассказы ‘Coca-pantyhose [kolgotki], Coca-sausages [kolbaski], Coca-Kolyma stories’

Mercedes is transformed into Merdeses (to get merde) and then Merde-SS

«Богоносец Потемкин» [ship name Godcarrier Potemkin, with богоносец ‘God-carrier, bearer of a religious mission’ a play on броненосец ‘battleship’]

That’s just a random sampling; he tosses them off the way Mozart tossed off tunes. The ads are also hilarious even if you don’t know the originals he’s riffing off, and I loved the bit where Tatarsky calls a friend late at night because he’s having a bad acid trip — the friend gives him a mantra to repeat, Ом мелафефон бва кха ша [Om melafefon bva kkha sha], which he later admits is a slight alteration of the Hebrew phrase od melafefon bevakasha ‘more cucumber, please’ (which is especially amusing because the friend urges him to repeat it while drinking vodka, cucumber being a traditional zakuska). Pelevin’s obsession with drugs (especially hallucinogenic), organized crime (and its jargon), and Buddhism (in what I’m guessing is a very idiosyncratic version) can become wearying, but I never get tired of his jokes. (Incidentally, the name Vavilen is derived from Vasily Aksyonov + Vladimir Ilich Lenin, which is a good joke in itself; it also sounds like Vavilon ‘Babylon,’ which winds up being a reason he gets elevated to godlike status.) Of course, most of the jokes will be lost in translation, but it’s a fun read anyway. Oh, and the “P” in the title stands for Pepsi… but of course we can’t help but think of Pelevin as well.

As with the polyglot story, I wasn’t expecting to post Imani Perry’s What Black Women Hear When They’re Called “Auntie”, even though it was very much language-related, because I was weary just thinking about the hot takes it might provoke from people who had no experience with the issue and yet would instantly form doggedly held opinions about it, but it was so brilliantly written and showed such a nuanced understanding of how to approach difficult areas of language that I thought what the hell, I’ll go for it. Herewith some excerpts:

In the spring of 2017, I noticed that young Black people on social media were referring to congressperson Maxine Waters as “Auntie Maxine.” It was a nickname given in response to her witty, acerbic, and wise comments about Donald Trump. A digital public sphere, horrified by his behavior, delighted in Waters’ giving him hell.

That nickname was a harbinger of something that has since become widespread: a renewed use in public of the word auntie in reference to Black women. I must admit, I didn’t like it at first. I was irritated that a congressperson was being called “Auntie” instead of by her professional title. That is a sign of my own formalism, rooted in the culture of the Black South. I am always wary of those who might diminish the hard-earned professional standing of a Black person.

Perry mentions “other distinguished Black women [who] have rejected being called Auntie” and continues:
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Not directly language-related, but this is such an amazing selection of freely accessible books I can’t resist passing it along for anyone interested. Click on the URL, then when the book page comes up click on “Contents,” and you can download the pdfs. And, wait, here’s some language-related stuff: Old Church Slavonic Grammar, by Horace G. Lunt, and Slavic on the Language Map of Europe: Historical and Areal-Typological Dimensions, edited by Andrii Danylenko and Motoki Nomachi, not to mention A “Handbook” to the Russian Text of Crime and Punishment by Edgar H. Lehrman. Via Martin Krohs at FB.

I wasn’t originally planning to post Jessica Contrera’s Washington Post story (archived) about a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages; after all, I’ve done a bunch of posts about polyglots (e.g., 2007, 2008, 2015, 2020, and of course Michael Erard’s Babel No More). But I soon realized this was exceptionally well done — Contrera spent months with her subject, 46-year-old Vaughn Smith, and interviewed all sorts of people about him — and I couldn’t resist sharing it. Here are some excerpts:

“So, how many languages do you speak?”

“Oh goodness,” Vaughn says. “Eight, fluently.”

“Eight?” Kelly marvels.

“Eight,” Vaughn confirms. English, Spanish, Bulgarian, Czech, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Slovak.

“But if you go by like, different grades of how much conversation,” he explains, “I know about 25 more.”

Vaughn glances at me. He is still underselling his abilities. By his count, it is actually 37 more languages, with at least 24 he speaks well enough to carry on lengthy conversations. He can read and write in eight alphabets and scripts. He can tell stories in Italian and Finnish and American Sign Language. He’s teaching himself Indigenous languages, from Mexico’s Nahuatl. to Montana’s Salish. The quality of his accents in Dutch and Catalan dazzle people from the Netherlands and Spain. […]

How did he get this way? And what was going on in his brain? But also: why was he cleaning carpets for a living?

To Vaughn, all of that is missing the point. He’s not interested in impressing anyone. He only counted his languages because I asked him to. He understands that he seems to remember names, numbers, dates and sounds far better than most people. Even to him, that has always been a mystery. But his reason for dedicating his life to learning so many languages has not.

His origin story:
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I recently looked up the abbreviation Z”L (= Hebrew ז״ל for זכרונו לברכה zikhrono livrakha ‘of blessed memory’) and found the ” between the letters referred to as a “choopchik” (so spelled). Needless to say, I was intrigued, and googled up the Haaretz article “Word of the Day / Chupchik” by Shoshana Kordova:

If you’ve been in the market for a handy, versatile word that can refer to a wide variety of objects, look no further than chupchik. This word, pronounced CHOOP cheek, is defined as a protrusion or protuberance but is often used to mean just about any small item or part of an item whose name has escaped you or that doesn’t necessarily have a name. […]

Chupchik comes from the Russian word for “curly forelock,” originally chubchik, according to the Hebrew etymology site Hasafa Haivrit.

Chupchik actually features two chupchiks in the word itself, in the form of the apostrophe that come after the letter tzadi (which makes a double appearance here) to turn it into the “ch” sound that features so prominently in sentences like “Chuck chowed down on Chinese food.”

What a great word! (I decided to use Kordova’s spelling as more scientific-looking.) Its Russian forebear is чубчик, diminutive of чуб ‘forelock’; when I looked it up in my Webster’s New World Hebrew Dictionary, there were so few words under “CH” and they were mostly so piquant that I thought I’d list them all (giving only the entry form and definition):
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Orrajt (Eng Title: Alright) is an “Award Winning Maltese Short Film – 2021” about “The uphill bilingual battle George needs to face as being both an English and Maltese speaker.” The Maltese is not subtitled, which is fun and shouldn’t cause a problem — the English dialogue makes it clear what’s going on. It’s only nine minutes, and it’s a sympathetic look at a problem a lot of people have to deal with in this increasingly multilingual world. (It was shot in the Beggars Inn Pub, which looks a little rowdy for the likes of me but is certainly photogenic.) Via Slavo/bulbul at FaceBook.

And if that doesn’t interest you, I present HamBam: The Hamedan-Bamberg Corpus of Contemporary Spoken Persian:

The HamBam corpus contains annotated recordings of contemporary spoken Persian, compiled as part of a cooperation between Bu-Ali Sina University in Hamedan, Iran (team coordinator: Mohammad Rasekh-Mahand), and the University of Bamberg in Germany (Geoffrey Haig). […]

The corpus was primarily designed for investigations into the impact of information structure on word order variation in spoken Persian, but is freely adaptable to other research questions, including research on prosody, referential density, or usage-based approaches to grammar.