Semantic Compositions

Linguists can play lawyer, too

Mark Liberman, writing on the just-handed-down decision vindicating Arthur Andersen in the matter of destroying documents relating to Enron, asks some (rhetorical) questions about the oddly worded statute in question. I feel guilty about what's about to follow, but mostly because of the inside-baseball nature of the humor involved. To answer Prof. L's questions:

1. What are the plausible parses for 18 USC §1512(b)?

2. What is the the scope of modification of the adverbs knowingly and corruptly in each plausible parse?

See above.

3. Do you think laws might be clearer if lawmakers normally took a couple of linguistics courses?

No; see above.

Your computer

First, a tangentially relevant anecdote. When longtime radio announcer Ted Leitner broadcasts Padres games, he indicates the score differently depending on whether they're ahead or not. If the team is leading, he'll say "It's 6-3, my Padres". If the team is tied or behind, he'll say, "The Dodgers lead your Padres 2-1" (albeit with whatever the current scores and opponents actually are).

SC has to confess that he's never set up multiple user accounts on any of his personal machines. So ever since his highly reluctant conversion to Windows in 2001, there's never been any meaningful distinction between "my documents" and all of the documents stored on his computers.

To judge from this article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Microsoft has caught on to the possibility that in this case, unlike his taste in music, SC is not alone:

Ending a longstanding tradition, Microsoft Corp. plans to stop using the word "my" as the default prefix for such folders as "My Documents," "My Music," "My Pictures" and others along those lines. Starting in the next Windows version, due out next year, folders will be known simply as "Documents," "Music," and so on.

The P-I interviewed Naomi Baron, a linguist at American University, on the significance of this change:

The practice was an artificial attempt to create a personal connection between people and their computers -- "to capture the loyalty of an egocentric population," said Naomi Baron, linguistics professor at American University in Washington, D.C.

"I don't know if we ever, as users, reacted the way that Microsoft hoped we would," Baron said.

"Some people might have, but I think in essence it was just extraneous language," she said.

Prof. Baron is a serious scholar, and undoubtedly there's some truth to the idea that the "my" was just superfluous -- but SC is in a more conspiratorial mood, and would suggest that it wasn't so much unnecessary language as the wrong language. Judging by the number of antivirus, antispyware, and other security programs on his computer, it might be at least as accurate to have a certain ubiquitous icon labeled "Symantec's Computer". And since most of SC's documents are prepared for customers, another familiar folder might better be labeled "Customers' Documents". Given the advent of digital rights management, if your host was prone to downloading music, yet another folder probably would be more correctly known as "Sony/EMI/BMG/Warner's Music".

Alas, the official Microsoft line is rather more petulant -- because "my" has become generic ([only now? -- ed.]), they're walking away from it:

In fact, the very pervasiveness of the prefix is one reason the company is moving away from it, said Jim Allchin, who oversees Windows and related areas as Microsoft's group vice president of platforms.

The company introduced the "my" prefix in part to give users obvious places for storing their own files, Allchin said...

But now, the "my" prefix has become so ubiquitous in the technology industry that it's no longer the distinguishing characteristic the company hoped it would be. In part, Allchin attributed the situation to the tendency of software developers to adopt the common Windows terminology when making programs that run on the Microsoft operating system.

"People got carried away," Allchin said in a recent interview. "Anytime Microsoft does something, everybody wants to do it. ... It became a worthless descriptor."

There are two enormous logical mistakes encapsulated in Mr. Allchin's statement. For one thing, SC is fairly sure that English-speaking people were referring to things they owned with "my" before Microsoft ever existed. Aside from that, Microsoft is responsible for Bob, the Blue Screen of Death, and Clippy, and SC is pretty sure that nobody else ever wanted to take responsibiity for any of them.

But your host is willing to take the lesson to heart. From now on, he'll be sure to look for other people's folders on his computer: Some Other Guy's Pictures, J. Random Hacker's Downloads, etc. Without Microsoft reminding SC that his files are his own, it might not be long before he confuses them for someone else's. Maybe Ted Leitner.

Goodbye to all that

I'm leaving.

No, no, your host isn't abandoning the blog, far from it. But an announcement is long overdue, especially since events are about to overtake SC, and so we might as well get on with it.

Longtime readers are well aware that Mrs. SC is a medical student. In about a week, this will no longer be the case -- she will finally graduate, and be Dr. Mrs. SC. Since readers know her only as Mrs. SC, traditional practice will continue.

However, as with any medical student who has finished the classroom years, there is the small matter of a residency before she can practice full-time. Without going through a long series of rants about the lunacy of the match process by which medical students are scattered across the country, suffice it to say that in the mother of all personal ironies, SC will be relocating shortly to...

wait for it...

Los Angeles.

Yes, this is psychologically traumatic. Now SC will finally have to track down the gentleman who beat him by a number of years to the license plate "RADR HTR" ([that's not an expression of  your host's hate for radar -- ed.]) and do the deal. Now he'll have to go to Padre games by visiting the dreaded Dodger Stadium.

Now he'll have an easy time driving to colloquia at UCLA and USC. So it's not all bad.

But perhaps worst of all, he'll be abandoning his beloved Chez SC. Yes, there have been many things to grouse about, like sprinkler installation and piano-abusing neighbors, but one gradually comes to feel a certain sense of pride in backaches past when the sprinklers are humming along, and even to enjoy exercising one's stereo at the neighbors' obvious invitation.

So your host will be moving in June  into a university-owned apartment, which is a big step backward from home ownership ([you mean "bank owneeship" -- ed.]). While the new place is not quite as devoid of conveniences as universities generally take pleasure in making their housing -- the place has a dishwasher, and is not visibly infested with anything more grotesque than graduate students -- it would feel very, very wrong to refer to this temporary abode as Chez SC. Rest assured that your host elready had solved this dilemma by the time the ink was dry on the rental agreement -- as of mid-June, SC will be officially living in Victory Mansions.

Grocery Store Wars

Apropos of recent posts around here, regarding heirloom vegetables and Star Wars, here's a video that manages to actually combine the two subjects:

Grocery Store Wars

OK, heirloom vegetables aren't necessarily grown organically, but it's good for a few chuckles.

Do you know what it means to pronounce New Orleans?

Mrs. SC reminded your host this evening that he has been neglecting to post on this topic, after remarking on it during their recent trip. So here goes:

Having been to New Orleans twice in the last 5 years, SC is well aware that residents of the city don't pronounce its name to rhyme with "leans" or "means". The second vowel in "Orleans" generally gets more of a lax vowel, as though it rhymed with "pins". That doesn't mean there's just one way to say it, but your host hasn't heard anyone say like that when he's down there.

So he doesn't think it's terribly controversial to observe that residents of the "City of No" -- that's their website address, don't look at SC like that -- tend to snicker at outsiders who pronounce the name as thought it does rhyme with "means'. This caused your host no end of confusion when he visited the New Orleans School of Cooking and received a bag printed with the slogan "We know what it means to miss New Orleans!". Surely they couldn't countenance such touristy pronunciations for themselves?

It turns out that they get a free pass -- witness this informal glossary entry, compiled by Chuck Taggart, a native of the area who gets cited in the local Frommer's (sharp-eyed readers who recall SC's Italy trip may be wondering why he consulted a Frommer's guide on anything ever again -- another topic that still requires elaboration):

NEW ORLEENS - The way silly tourists pronounce "New Orleans".  Natives do not do this.  Exception -- song lyrics, as in "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans", for example, and when omitting the "New", as in "Orleans Parish", which is always pronounced <or-LEENS>.  Confusing, isn't it?

SC had no idea there was a song of that title. He should've requested it during his visit to Preservation Hall, where a performer practically begged the crowd to ask for something other than "The Saints". In any event,  Mr. Taggart later provides further elaboration (using the '@' character to symbolize a schwa):

First off, <new or-LEENS> is generally a no-no.  It's like putting a big, red neon sign on your head that says, "I'm not from around here." As also mentioned above, the two main exceptions are when it's pronounced like that in song lyrics (easier to rhyme, but contributes to the confusion of non-natives) and when "Orleans" stands alone without the "New", as in Orleans Parish.

So of course, there are some exceptions to this rule.  I have on occasion heard some African-American native New Orleanians use the above pronunciation.  I didn't say this was going to be consistent or that it wasn't going to be confusing, did I?

Here are the major standard local pronunciations of the City's name: <new OR-l@ns>, <new AW-l@ns>, <new OR-lee-'@ns> <new AH-lee-@ns>, <nyoo AH-lee-'@ns>.  The fabled "N'Awlins", pronounced <NAW-l@ns>, is used by some natives for amusement, and by some non-natives who think they're being hip, but actually I've come across very few locals who actually pronounce the name of the City in this way.

Searching for the aforementioned song on Google also produced an interesing linguistics tie. Aside from being a jazz standard covered by any number of well-known performers, "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" is also the title of a talk by Geoff Nunberg covering the contributions of philosophy to semantics.

I had a bad feeling about this

Blinger, stop reading now.

Your host went to see the last of the Star Wars movies on Tuesday, and while he can't hope to match The Tensor's detailed critique, there are a few things he just has to get in. Spoilers follow, but hey, you've had a week.

• If SC ever decides to launch a full-scale invasion of Marin County, CA (where Lucasfilm is based), he'll make sure to hook himself up to the biggest, loudest respirator he can find. Why? Because apparently the entire Lucasfilm production staff is terrified of people who can't stop wheezing. First it was Darth Vader, which at least makes sense since most of his organs end up toast ([literally -- ed.]), forcing him onto a respirator. And the Emperor, who's all natural, at least has the excuse of old age (in this movie, he gets exhausted after just about every display of his powers). But it's also the new villain, General Grievous, who is an android and has no such excuse. Yes, there appears to be some kind of little alien inside him, and maybe that bugger also has weak lungs, but for Darth Plagueis' sake, couldn't there be a major villain who doesn't pant like Fat Albert just thinking about gyms?
• And that brings us to the other big problem with General Grievous, which is his voice when he's not busy hacking and coughing. He sounds like Dexter, albeit run through some sort of filter to make his voice more metallic and reverbrant. If you have no idea what SC is talking about, listen to this clip of General Grievous confronting Obi-Wan. Then watch this clip from an episode of Dexter's Laboratory (a show on the Cartoon Network). The stress patterns are identical.
• Can't agree with The Tensor about Count Dooku. As any number of reviewers have pointed out, acting has never been the strong point of the new trilogy. In contrast to the generally wooden and stilted performances, the look on Christopher Lee's face right before he's executed is one of genuine shock and surprise at being sold out by his master (a fact which only he, Palpatine, and the viewer are aware of at that point). His lines beforehand are forgettable, albeit competently delivered, but that stare of incomprehension and horror would have been an accomplishment in any film. Christopher Lee is a fine actor.
• That last point is in fitting contrast to Natalie Portman, who gets far too much to say in the movie and flubs all of it. The only moment where your host felt she conveyed even the slightest sincere emotion is as a dead body being carried on a funeral bier at the end of the movie. No, SC's not kidding about that; the expression on her face is uneasy, and it's far more convincing than the flat deliveries and totally detached persona that accompany what are supposed to be her passionate decalarations of love for Anakin. The woman has no more acting talent than any randomly picked person from the street; if not for being somewhat more attractive than average, there is no way she ever would have survived this long in Hollywood.
• The Tensor asks:

  What's with the Sith names, anyway?  Darth Plagueus?  For evil masterminds who try to seduce you with pretty words, they seem to choose names that fairly scream, "I AM A BAD GUY, DO NOT BE SEDUCED BY MY PRETTY WORDS!"

  He's right -- counting up the movie Darths, we've got Sidious, Plagueis, Maul, Tyranus, and Vader. But it's not just Sith names -- doesn't "General Grievous" scream "bad guy", too? Or even "Greedo"?  In fairness to George Lucas, his inability to avoid cheap and obvious jokes (calling a race of squid-men "Mon Calamari", anyone?), along with the aforementioned didacticism, makes him no worse than Thomas Pynchon, whose Crying of Lot 49 is a parade of gratuitously punny names like 'Rabbit' Warren and 'Mucho' Maas.
• And speaking of Darth Plagueis yet again, how clumsy a piece of writing is the part where he gets his 30 seconds of fame? When Palpatine asks Anakin, "Have you ever heard the legend of Darth Plagueis?", which of course he already knew the answer to, your host immediately thought of a third-rate stand-up comic. "Hey, didja hear the one about Darth Plagueis? His apprentice was a real killer! Ba-da-boom! Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here all week!". Ugh.
• Obi-Wan puts on a fine display of psychic powers, determining that Palpatine has assumed the title of Emperor before he ever has heard anyone else say that it's happened. At least, he refers to him that way before he ever hears anyone say it. Presumably, this is another of those amazing Jedi mind tricks.
• To wrap up the complaints, not long after the beginning of the original Star Wars, we're informed that "the Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us". In the first two of the new movies, and for most of the present one, that same organization is named as the governing body of the Republic. But then, out of nowhere, there are two random references to "Congress" in the middle of Revenge of the Sith. When did they go bicameral?

But SC wants to close on a positive note, since this movie is nowhere near to being as bad as its two predecessors. The opening sequence is a masterpiece, exploding into a battle that you don't see coming (once the dialogue starts, the genius withdraws, fast). Palpatine sells Anakin a bill of goods throughout the movie, making promises he can't deliver on, and by the end, Anakin is with him as much because he's cut himself off from the Jedis and the Republic as because of any active desire to be evil. This sense of unavoidability, that he's been dragged along by forces he didn't really understand until it's too late, undercuts his ability to be a melodramatic pure villain -- but makes him a better tragic figure, and lends credibility to his ultimate act of rebellion against the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. Only the Grauman's Chinese Theater lunatics would call it a great movie, but by the end, Anakin has at least become a Darth Vader we can hate, and that's no small thing.
 

An ugly inheritance

For a couple of years, your host has been noticing an increase in the number of vegetables sold in grocery stores under the label of "heirloom". Heirloom tomatoes, heirloom pumpkins, heirloom corn. The only thing that all of these vegetables seem to have in common is what we might call an utterly hideous misshapenness. But he never knew why ugliness was associated with inheritance ([because nothing this bad happens by accident -- ed.]) until yesterday, when he saw this passage in a flyer from his local Ralph's:

Tomatoes haven't always been the pretty, red things we're used to seeing on the shelves of modern supermarkets. Back in the "old days" they were purple, green, yellow and orange and often misshapen -- but they tasted great! Over the years these tomatoes were so prized that the seeds were saved and handed down from generation to generation. They became valued heirlooms and became known as Heirloom Tomatoes. Our buyers have found the best of these seeds grown by farmers who care about flavor. We think you'll agree that these are the best tasting, most interesting tomatoes you will encounter this summer.

This sounded a bit like a just-so story, and so your host set out to investigate. Here's what he found:

Heirloom vegetables in general are subject to a number of definitions. It turns out that the family connection is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of being an heirloom vegetable. One source suggests that the major criteria are:

• The variety must be 'true to type' from seed saved from each fruit,
• Seed must have been available for more than fifty years,
• The tomato variety must have a history or folklore of its own.

That's not to say that it's entirely a marketing fiction; the USDA's extensive reference on the subject pays tribute to the family-farmed history of heirloom vegetables in its second sentence. A bit more reading of the link illustrates that there's certainly an active community of "seed savers" committed to keeping the vegetable lines propagating, and so even if the inheritance isn't literally passed between family members, it is between generations of interested gardeners.

Once you know how heirloom vegetables got the name, and how they're bred, their appearance makes a lot more sense. There isn't any crossing of varieties (at least not on purpose) to select for the smooth lines that we expect in a grocery store vegetable. In some ways, this comes to SC as a disappointment. It would have been fun to think that the "heirloom" name was meant to suggest that, like an old piece of furniture or costume jewelry, their visual appeal was hard to spot. After all, one man's junk is another man's treasure. Or his heirloom.

Cooperation is a two-way process

SC has been very impressed with some recent comments on an old favorite post, The Totemic Power of Names.A high-school student named Sara, presently employed at Dairy Queen, has been ably making the case that customers who actually get what they ask for sometimes get very upset over this fact. Cashiers aren't mind-readers, and if they have to throw away product because the customer doesn't want to be held accountable, it's them -- not the customer -- who will have to answer to the insidious Darth Manager.

This is a fair point, and so it's time to take another look at the situation, using an old favorite analytical tool, Grice's maxims. Two of the four strike your host as relevant:

First, the maxim of quantity, which says:

1. Make your contribution to the conversation as informative as necessary.
2. Do not make your contribution to the conversation more informative than necessary.

Second, the maxim of manner, which adds:

1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary wordiness).
4. Be orderly.

In the original post, there were a couple of assumptions which were unstated, but not necessarily valid. First, there was an assumption that cashiers wouldn't try to comply with the literal text of a customer's request if it meant making something off-menu. Second, there was an assumption that customers would think along such lines themselves, and omit only words which seemed gratuitously unnecessary to deciphering which of the possible menu items could actually be meant (like the "love" in "Choco-Cherry Love Blizzard").

But these aren't justified assumptions. Under the maxim of quantity, your host assumed that "chocolate-cherry blizzard" was adequately informative to uniquely specify an item on the menu, and that the full statement of "chocolate-covered cherry" was therefore unnecessary, on the grounds that the first was informative enough and the second was excessive. Sara points out that two different recipes are involved here, and only the latter is actually on the menu. At first, SC objected to this on the grounds that he's never seen the other one, and might have added that even if the "Choco-Cherry Love Blizzard" involved the other recipe, he's never seen them both on the menu together to create a potentially ambiguous group of menu items. However, from the cashier's perspective, "chocolate-cherry" isn't informative enough for them to be sure that the customer means that they will be happy with getting the item on the menu, as-is. Perhaps a special order is really what's meant, and so what appears to be informative enough from the customer side isn't actually so from the cashier's.

This brings us to the other issue, the question of manner. Again, the omission of words like "covered" and "love" appears to a customer who actually expects to get what's on the menu to satisfy the condition of being brief, without creating undue ambiguity or obscurity. However, a cashier can't count on the rationality of customers -- while some customers might expect that a brief expression will simply be assimilated to the nearest matching pattern, others will expect to get something different. Thus, Sara brings up the example of a customer who orders a "strawberry Blizzard" when they really want a "strawberry cheesecake Blizzard" (if we really want to be pedantic about it, DQ calls it a "strawberry cheeseQUake Blizzard"). From SC's perspective as a customer, if the only Blizzard on the menu with a name including the word "strawberry" is the one which also includes "cheesecake", then he would have expected the cashier to understand that that's what he wanted. After all, that's what's on the menu. But from the cashier's perspective, assuming that customers are reasonable enough to understand the distinction between what's on the menu and what they said isn't at all safe. After all, it's what they said -- wasn't the cashier listening?

None of this is meant to say that cashiers who really don't speak English should be able to get away with blaming customers for their own failures to understand (except, of course, in non-English-speaking countries). And SC isn't backing down at all from the claim that reciting long strings of marketing-speak is gratuitous and unnecessary. But that shouldn't prevent us from having a little empathy for people who know from painful experience that not everyone says what they mean.

SC's brain, mapped

Oh, great.

Courtesy of the BBC -- the ever-so-trustworthy folks who previously brought you the telepathic parrot -- a story on a study published in the journal Neuropsychology, demonstrating how damage to various brain regions correlates with an inability to grasp sarcasm. Isn't that special?

The ability to grasp sarcasm was tested by reading people stories like so (there were 8 kinds; this is the only one presented in the full paper):

A Sarcastic Version Item
Joe came to work, and instead of beginning to work, he sat down to rest.
His boss noticed his behavior and said, “Joe, don’t work too hard!”

A Neutral Version Item
Joe came to work and immediately began to work. His boss noticed his
behavior and said, “Joe, don’t work too hard!”

They would then be asked two questions:

1. A factual question (assessing story comprehension): Did Joe work
hard?
2. An attitude question (assessing comprehension of the true meaning
of the speaker): Did the manager believe Joe was working hard?

The paper indicates that the sarcastic stories were read only with a "sarcastic intonation", and the other stories with a "neutral intonation". That raises red flags for SC, who is reasonably sure that people exist who say sarcastic things all the time without always giving blatantly exaggerated phonetic cues ([yoo-hoo, over here! -- ed.]).  In fairness, the questions would seem to screen out people who simply can't figure out what's going on -- sarcasm errors were only counted when subjects answered question #1 correctly -- but still, there's more to sarcasm than a snide and flippant intonation. Or a simple mismatch of facts and utterances ([you'd know, wouldn't you? -- ed.]). But who said anything about being fair?

The authors are aware of this problem, and also conducted tests on their subjects' ability to recognize when someone has commited a verbal faux pas, and what a speaker's emotional affect (happy, sad, angry, etc.) is. The working hypothesis here is that people who have a hard time recognizing sarcasm probably have a hard time constructing theories of other people's minds (the researchers use the acronym ToM), which is held by some researchers to be the basis of autism. The figures obtained by these tests suggest that it's at least part of the story:

The relationships between sarcasm and social cognition (ToM, affect recognition) were examined with a correlation analysis. To examine the pattern of correlations between sarcasm scores and the performance in the facial expression and affective prosody tasks, we averaged the two variables into one variable that reflected performance in affective processing. For the entire sample, comprehension of sarcasm correlated moderately but significantly with the Faux Pas scores (r =.247, p = .039) and affective processing (r = .307, p = .011). No significant correlations were found when the different emotions (i.e., anger, happiness) were analyzed separately.

Your host hesitates to embrace the underlying suggestion of the paper, namely the idea that people who don't get sarcasm must somehow be brain-damaged. Not all clueless people actually have brain lesions (or at least, no study exists to prove that they do). An autism activist quoted at the end of the piece seems concerned that people will read about this and think of autistic people as brain-damaged -- which seems like an odd complaint given the symptoms of autism, although perhaps their concern is merely to reject further stigma. But the paper seems pretty sound on its basic finding, which is that there are different brain regions  involved in recognizing propositional and emotional content, then integrating the two.

If you could care less, and therefore presumably want to read more,  the Neuropsychology article can be found here. If you couldn't care less, stop here. If you're undecided about whether or not those two phrases mean the same thing, read Mark Liberman's thoughts on the matter. Or don't.

Scary quotes

Yesterday, your host and Mrs. SC spent much of the day at Disneyland. Before going, we stopped for breakfast at the Original Pancake House, where the following sign was noted by the cash register:

Sorry, "no" credit cards.

It was thus appropriate to come home and see that Geoff Pullum had written about scare quotes thusly:

When a full professor who works in some field like linguistics or philosophy puts a word or phrase in scare quotes, it's about the word or phrase: it's an indication that it may be the wrong one, an expression that ignorant and careless writers elsewhere have used but which really should be eschewed. Professors (well, professors of subjects like linguistics, logic, and philosophy, anyway) write from a standpoint of feeling linguistically fairly secure.

But when a staff member of lower perceived status uses the same device, the semantics is the same — the quote marks mean that this word or phrase may not be strictly correct — but pragmatically it's quite likely to indicate a very different situation, one in which the user feels insecure about whether the right word or phrase has been chosen.

It would seem that Prof. Pullum's typology of scare quotes is a bit incomplete. It's hard to read the sign as using quotation marks to indicate that somebody (the owner?) is actually being quoted, since they're only around a single word and not the whole phrase. Not that it's terribly clear why they'd have felt the need to write "Sorry, no credit cards" as though it was a quote from someone anyway.

But assuming it is a scare quote, they certainly don't mean that it's the wrong word, so it's not the professorial usage. And there's not exactly any uncertainty about whether or not it's the right word -- unless perhaps they were hesitating between "no" and "fuhgeddaboutit". So it's not Prof. Pullum's "staff member" use, either ([that's a regular quote, not a scare quote -- ed.]).

Then again, at least Prof. Pullum's distinctions correspond to intelligible meanings. 18 hours after the fact, your host still can't figure out what the quotes around "no" actually add to the meaning of the sentence.