Today I have a special treat for you listeners. It's time for a yellow card question, but instead of our usual theme song, we have a podcast in production since January 2007. That's right, like finely aged wine, very moldy cheese, or those dirty socks that got lost behind the dresser, this podcast is of the finest caliber producible by dusty musty forgotten dark corners.
And now, while that plays in the background, let's get on with the show! The one and only yellow card question of the hour, pulled from this perfectly normal deck of electronic cards -- there's no computer special effects here, folks -- well, not very special anyway -- I mean, it's just like a really short python script that picks a random element from an xml file full of questions, and formats it in a yellow-background div element floating in the center of the page, pretty kludgey, really. The text is generally formatted badly, because there's an extra space for some reason in places where there is a line break in the original printed cards, but the actual line breaks in the electronic version is just dependent on html formatting. For example, take a look at this one: In the printed card, there was a line break between "make" and "the", and so you can see here a little extra space between those words. And then we end up with "place" on a line all by itself. It really loses the poetry of the question. So I would like to make the world a better place by fixing the yellow card script to make the formatting a bit prettier. If I could do that, my life would be complete. I've heard it said that there are other issues in the world, riots, flooding, earthquakes, drought, fires, more flooding, violence of diverse kinds, and even diseased kittens dying slowly. But I can't change the world or rescue every kitten, so I gotta take small steps with what I've got.
Clean cup, clean cup! Move Down! The theme song of the day is 中国话[mp3], by S.H.E, a Taiwanese girl band. It's one of the most popular hits these days, occupying place number 7 in Baidu's list of most popular songs. Play it the video below, or open the mp3 link above.
So what is it about, you ask? Here is a complete translation, but the chorus says
全世界都在学中国话 孔夫子的话越来越国际化 全世界都在讲中国话 我们说的话让世界都认真听话
The whole world is learning Chinese Confucius's words are gradually globalizing The whole world is speaking Chinese The language we speak makes the world all listen carefully
It's celebrating the rise of Chinese as the next global lingua franca! (In case you missed the CCTV news, it's just a matter of time. China is doing a lot to promote Chinese language and culture worldwide, most notably the Confucius Institutes. Many of my students major in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, a field that is growing, but not as quickly as the government and these students hoped.) The more off-the-wall lines in the song are references to tongue twisters, classical tone scansion, and philosophy parables.
So what were we doing here again? Oh yeah, the question!
If you could live perfectly well without sleeping at all, what would you do at night?
Well, I have often wished I didn't have to sleep so much. I've never managed on less than about 8 hours of sleep average, unlike some older brothers we know. This means that they have dozens more hours each week to make bank working long hours, read lots of books, shop online, and still have time for a family/social life. All I seem to have time for is reading the internet and watching youtube movies. If I didn't have to sleep at all, I might find the time to grade papers, write a thesis, or even take a shower occasionally.
a Computational Linguist, or a Corpus Linguist, or a Cognitive Scientist of Language, or a Luxury Car Salesman. And I'm moving to La Jolla, California. I am such an egotist.
Three two one roll it! ♫It's Howdy Doody time, it's Howdy Doody time♫-- Cut! That's not right. Try that again. ♫Em Eye See! Kay Ee Why! Em Oh You Es Ee! Mick♫-- Cut cut cut! That's not right either! Where did our theme song go? Oh, we didn't have a theme song? How did that happen? How did we already get to our 4th episode without a theme song?! Well, we don't have time to put anything together now. How about we just adopt one. Okay, here it is: Skullcrusher Mountain from the crazed mind of Jonathan Coulton.
Let the show begin! Doopity doo! Bring forth the cards of golden hue! Voila! Exclaim some more! Woohoo!
And the one and only card of the day!
"If you could speak any other language that you don't speak already, which language would you like to speak?"
Ooooh! This is a good one. Well, if Standard Chinese counts as a language I already speak, the next ones on my list would be:
- One or more Wu dialects. There are a bewildering number of mutually unintelligible Chinese languages spoken in this province and in the area just north of it. These Wu dialects maintain some interesting features of Classical Chinese, and of course do all kinds of interesting things different from each other and from the other Chinese languages, while the vocabulary is apparently mostly cognate with the other Chinese languages. I would at minimum like to understand better how the phonology of a couple dialects work, and it would be cool to actually be able to communicate in one.
- An Amerindian language. Mostly because they are morphologically and syntactically so different from the languages I know now, and I need some balance.
- Arabic. I took a semester of Arabic, but it wasn't really enough to get much beyond the phonology and spelling. Arabic has really cool morphology, and it offers an interesting language & power comparison with Chinese, in the coexistence of colloquial and standard languages.
- An African tone and/or click language. An African language to add to the typological balance, clicks because they are just awesome, and tones so I can understand comparisons with Chinese.
Well, seeing as how it has been two weeks since the last yellow card question, it must be time for a new one. But I'm kinda tired, so I'm not feeling up to putting on my clown suit and magician's hat. All right fine, I'll put on my yellow raincoat and rollerblade onto stage. Okay? Are you happy now?
Now, it's time for the yellow card. (Applause) Here, from my amazing stack of questions, special for today, exclusively for this audience, we have a question! (I try a bit too hard to look excited, and almost lose my balance. Audience applauds.) A special question that you've all been waiting for, chosen randomly and without the possibility of a rigged card draw! (Applause)
"If you were given one million dollars, what would you buy?"
Well, I think I would buy two things.
One is Liner's system of mail tubes, so we could climb into little capsules and be sucked to another continent in a few seconds. I think that wouldn't cost very much if I drove a hard bargain and had it made in China.
With the money left over, I would assemble a linguistics (or cogsci) department that pays attention to neuroscience and cognitive psychology and explores language in its cognitive and social context, that neither ignores linguistic theory nor takes any of it too seriously, that does take real languages and linguistic diversity seriously, that has plenty of quantitative experimental research (both corpus-based and psycholinguistic) but still has room for more exploratory (but still empirical) research, and that has people working on the whole spectrum of phenomena from phonetics to discourse structure and pragmatics. Oh, and they should let me study there.
My two most likely options for school next year have radically different language requirements. First, take a look at the one for UCSB linguistics:
The foreign language requirement. Students must demonstrate knowledge of one research language before receiving an M.A. and a second research language before advancement to candidacy for the Ph.D. A research language is a language with substantial relevant literature on linguistics. Knowledge can be demonstrated by one of the following methods of examination within the student's area of interest: (1) English translation of a 500-word passage, chosen by the examiner, to be produced within one and a half hours with the aid of a dictionary and with no more than 8 points of erroneous comprehension (2 points for each major error significantly affecting meaning; 1 point for each minor error). (2) A 1,000-1,500 word English summary, written over a single weekend, of a substantial linguistic article chosen by the examiner. The faculty member in charge of exams for a particular language will specify a sample of material comparable to what can be expected on the exam. Translation and summary exams may be taken in May or October on a date to be set by the examiner. (3) A research paper that not only independently fulfills a course or degree requirement but also contains copious references to linguistic literature in the foreign language of interest, with the understanding that the works referred to shall be lent to the examiner for verification.
In other words, you have to be able to understand academic articles written in two languages other than English. I don't meet that requirement yet. Now look at the one for UCSD cogsci:
Language Requirement. The main goal of the language requirement is to give all students firsthand experience with some of the differences in structure and usage of languages and the several issues involved in the learning of second languages. This requirement can be satisfied by demonstrating satisfactory proficiency, by prior study in a language (e.g., two years of high school study), or by satisfactory completion of one quarter of study in a language course approved by the department.
"Two years of high school study" or "one quarter of study"! All UC undergraduates have to have more language courses than that! The theoretical bent of the two departments is fairly similar, and they have a high emphasis on empirical work, but UCSB being a linguistics department and the UCSD program being a cogsci department makes a lot of difference.
People keep asking me about the differences between China and the United States. Usually when people ask me about those differences, I say something similar to what I said on my other blog, i.e. essentially that there isn't a very big difference, and the differences are getting smaller. But for everything there is a season, and the time has come to get detailed about the differences I have observed.
People here speak Chinese, and people in the United States speak English. Okay, yes, I know that's kind of obvious, but we have to start somewhere. Of course, that statement is a terrible simplification. Chinese people typically speak two languages: their local dialect, and the standard dialect. For people in Zhejiang province, the difference between their local dialect and the official dialect is something like the difference between French and Spanish, or maybe even the difference between English and German. In addition, university students have typically been taking English classes since they started middle school, some of them since primary school. So even those who have difficulty speaking and writing English can still read English fairly well. So whereas in the USA, most of the multilingual people are immigrants or children of immigrants, multilingualism is fairly widespread in China, even though there are quite few foreign-born residents.
In the USA, toilet paper is in bathrooms; in China, toilet paper is on tables in restaurants. In the USA, fairly large paper napkins are widely available in eateries, cafeterias and fast food restaurants. In China, what is available to wipe your hands or face in such places is either a roll of toilet paper, or what westerners could easily mistake for kleenex tissues. In at least one dining hall here, you are given one such tissue/napkin when you buy your food. And yes, almost all public bathrooms are BYOTP (Bring your own toilet paper), and most are squatty potties.
In China, it's not very polite to touch food with your hands, and if you do touch food with your hands, you must not lick your hands. You must use your limited supply of tissues. However, it's quite all right to spit bones out onto the table, and to slurp soup from your spoon.
Chinese students typically choose their major only once, before they start college. The students of one major take all the same classes, live together with four or six per room, and typically eat and socialize together. American students typically change majors multiple times, and not uncommonly transfer from one college to another. They have many general education classes with students from other majors, and might or might not choose to live with and socialize with people they know from class. If three students have to share a bedroom, they think they have it bad.
They don't have Mexican or Italian food here. The closest Middle Eastern food is one hour away. On the other hand, you can get a dozen dumplings (any way you like) or a bowl of fresh noodle soup for 3 RMB (about 40¢), and you can eat like a king for 20 RMB ($2.50).
There may also be other differences, but those are the obvious ones.
Apparently, the post I wrote last week was my 100th post. Yay! I think that deserves some kind of celebratory/nostalgic review of these past two years (has it really only been two years?), but I see blogger has got some new features coming that will make such nostalgia easier. Perhaps once I check them out, we can have a proper party.
Critics among you may also note that the weekend is over without my posting the promised Chinese post. Well, I didn't say when each week I would write such a post, so there. I promise you I've already started. I've written five sentences. Be patient.
Soy profesor de inglés, y dos de mis clases de inglés son clases de escritura. Les dije a aquellos estudiantes que escribir en inglés a menudo por communicación es hábito muy bueno. Además, les di tarea de escribir un diario en inglés, una página cada semana.
Mi nombre chino es "Lixing", que refiere a un modismo "cuerpo trabajar duro". Es decir, haga esfuerzos si mismo según lo que predique. Porque yo tambien debo practicar escribir chino, voy a escribir un ensayo en chino cada semana. Porque mi chino falta mucho, no puedo escribir un ensayo tan largo, pero con empezar pequeño y lentamente seguir mas largo, espero que pueda aprender a escribir ensayos buenos.
Mi familia no pueden entender chino, y quiero dejarles entender mis palabras. Entonces, voy a traducir a inglés. Porque también quiero practicar español, voy a traducir mis ensayos a español tambien. En esa manera puedo hacer un pequeño corpus lingüístico paralelo.
I'm an English teacher, and two of my English classes are writing classes. I told those students that frequent writing in English for communication is a very good habit. In addition, I gave them homework of writing a journal in English, one page a week.
My Chinese name is "Lixing", which refers to the maxim "body work hard", meaning diligently practice what you preach. Because I also need to practice Chinese, I'm going to write a post in Chinese each week. Because my Chinese is pretty limited, I can't write a very long essay, but by starting small and slowly writing longer, I hope I can learn to write decent Chinese posts.
My family can't read chinese, and I want to let them understand my words, so I will translate into English. Because I also want to practice Spanish, I will also translate into Spanish. This way I can make a small parallel linguistic corpus.
I would have thought that people who were asked to read stories about Jurgen mit Füchse und Hühner and Günter Müller der Hürdenlaüfer, rather than feeling sad, would have busted up laughing. I think I also would have a hard time keeping a straight face with my eyebrows taped together.
This sentence appears without warning as if it there were no sarcasm involved: "By eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the circumscriptional appelations are excised."
Mann, W. and Thompson, S. (1988). Rhetorical structure theory: Towards a functional theory of text organization. Text, 8(3):243–281.
This paper, unfortunately, seems to only dip into humor with this one line, and then continues on in language that one could mistake for obfuscatory verbosity.
I gave my students the assignment of find Google search strings with one asterisk (like '"the * ran"') that would catch results where all the words in the wild card slot were of the same part of speech. So for example, many students used something like '"the * ran"' for catching nouns. (There is a wrinkle that recently Google changed how they interpret the asterisk, so that now it can match more than one word. Please ignore those results.)
Well, one student came up with the pattern '"he talked *"' for catching adverbs. Now, of course that slot could be filled with an adverb, but always? or even most often? I had expected 'about' or 'with' to show up most, but if you look at the results, in nearly all the results, you do indeed get an adverb in the wildcard slot, and 'about' comes right after. What gives? Why do people so consistently slip an adverb between 'talked' and 'about'?
The history of languages worldwide and especially the history of English clearly show progress towards increasingly superior forms. Whereas we can expect these patterns to continue as we progress, Dialectical Diachronicism advocates revolutionary efforts to further these changes and accelerate our progress:
1) Regularization of plural and tense paradigms (not paradigmata). No more of this "octopi/octopodes/octopuses?", "syllabi/syllabantes/syllabuses?", "kleenexen/kleenices/kleenexes?" and "moose/meese/mooses?", nor such monstrosities as "dived/diven/dove/doved/doven?" and "drunk/drinken/drunken/drinked/drank/dranked/drunked/dranken?". All plurals shall use the +/z/ morpheme, and preterite and past participles (regardless or use) shall use +/d/. Spell them as you see fit.
2) Furthermore, no more special treatment for [3RD.SG.PRES].
3) As be already the norm in common speech, 'them' be the proper pronoun for use for an animate individual when their gender be unknown or irrelevant.
4) The shortage of verbal morphology and the inexorable advance towards pro-drop thenecesitate a reanalysis of subject pronouns as prefixes. (Some members of the committee thave recommended that wego through a period of weanalyzing them as clitics. Itshall be put up for a vote at the next meeting.) The details thebe still being worked out.
English speakers of the world, wefind ourselves at a crucial moment in history: now. When a friend who thebe ignorant of the revolution thespeak the unenlightened way, warn them sternly. When an enemy thespeak in the unenlightened way, quote Vogon poetry at them. In a few short years, weell speak an even more superb language, even cooler than now, and weell reminisce, saying "Yremember how wespeaked back then? Webeed so unenlightened and whack."
Given the widespread use of the "a whole nother" construction, one would expect 'nother' to show up in other constructions, but after much highly scientific introspection about my internal grammar, I was convinced, though puzzled, that it did in fact not work in other constructions.
I was talking with slowlane tonight, though, and she said, "He's got a full nother week." There it is--a perfectly sensible utterance. Where else does 'nother' already appear in the wild? How else shall 'nother' be used?
Googling 'nother -whole' doesn't show much of interest, but buried in the hits of the surname Nother and "'nother" at the beginning of a phrase, are "some nother stuff" and "some nother wierd things." Furthermore, '"a * nother" -whole' turns up "a hefty nother thing", "a good nother 20 years", "a totally nother context", "a single nother person", and "a couple nother questions", among others.
See, see the anxious sky Marvel at its big puce depths. Tell me, Biker do you Wonder why the horse fly ignores you? Why its foobly stare makes you feel drowsy. I can tell you, it is Worried by your vlegoromious facial growth That looks like A cream cheese. What's more, it knows Your pulcritude potting shed Smells of paramecium. Everything under the big anxious sky Asks why, why do you even bother? You only charm feets.
So this week two items of junk mail slipped past my mail reader's filter. You know why? They stole my idea! It looks like they're using a Probabalistic CFG to generate a soup of sentences.
Any fancy mobile phone calculates.
The tall balloon arrives as soon as whose shining slopy door run or maybe mine green purple ram sleeps.
Her well-crafted expensive red golden gun stands-still.
Her daughters red camera lies while his brothers soft boots makes sound.
Her little purple noisy car is thinking.
Our children little recycle bin run.
Mine hairy bra stares.
Their fancy table stares and perhaps the beautiful picture calms-down the time that his golden baby stinks.
Mine stupid camera stinks or any given well-crafted silver hairy bottle is angry.
His brothers round shining round-shaped baby stares.
Any given smart noisy silver beautiful mp3 player falls the time that our red computer fidgeting however, their small bluish soda calculates.
