El or La? Who decides?

I am, for about the 20th time in my life, learning Spanish. I decided to go the vocabulary route this time and got myself a box of flash cards. One of the things I learned is that e-mail is el correro electronico. I've no problem with that, although I really should be shortened to el-C, maybe, in good old American tradition. This is obviously a new word, since e-mail isn't that old. It's masculine (el), I assume, because correro is masculine. So far, so good. But what happens if a noun comes into Spanish that isn't built on a previous noun. Let's say that a word has to be invented for something -- oh, I don't know -- a flist. Would it be el flisto or la flista? The chances are that the item, whatever it is, is neither male nor female, so the choice of grammatical gender is completely open.
I have two questions: First, who decides? Is there a committee set up somewhere that decides, for all Spanish-speaking peoples, what the gender of a noun will be? Second, what are the criteria? Does this committee sit around and debate the issue, with a round of balloting to see what's going to happen?
Here my American language chauvinism shows itself. English got rid of grammatical gender, by and large, 8 or 9 hundred years ago. It's about time Spanish did the same. Then I wouldn't have to learn all those el's and la's.

Language complexity

Was talking to my friend Will Pitkin today about my theory on language complexity and streamlining. He suggested to me that in the beginning, about (whenever language began), people used language to name things in the here and now. "Man," "Woman," "Child," "Television." Scratch that last one. But, Will opined, when people started talking about groups or classes, then things got complex. One could not just say, "Man man man man," for the plural. Well, I guess they could, but when you had a large crowd, it'd get tiresome. So, what people needed was a name for the idea of men in general, and some way to differentiate it from the idea of a particular man. Hence markers, or inflections: Man, men. When we had to talk about something that belongs to man, we can simply stack words, (I believe the cargo cult has a name for their religion: "rot bilong cargo," the road that belongs to cargo), or we can add a marker that says, in effect, "of men." From then on, as concepts became more and more abstract, more ways of marking them came into being.
I still think the priests are in there somewhere.

Regularization

I am puzzled by a tendency I see in language. It's kind of two pronged. The first prong is a slide toward making things regular. In English we see this in past tenses of verbs and in plurals of nouns. The past tense of bake was once boke. The plural of shoe was once shoon. Any new verb comes into English with a past tense that ends in -ed (snorf, snorfed), and any new noun comes in with a plural that ends in -s (glun, gluns). The second prong is a tendency to eliminate unnecessary or complex constructions. Hence the loss of any distinction between shall and will, fewer and less, who and whom.
I am puzzled because I ask myself the question, "Why did languages start out complex in the first place?" Lithuanian, which is kind of a linguistic fossil, has 16 different inflections for all those cases. Latin has 5, German has 4, and English mostly 1, or at most 1 1/2.
If we extrapolate backwards, we end up with very complex languages in the beginning. If we posit, as some of my friends do, we have languages that start out simple, evolve into complexity, and then start becoming more streamlined, less complex.
Why should this have happened? The only answer I can think of at the moment is that language came under the control of the priestly classes, who used it as a barrier to the common folk. There is an analog to this in Medieval Europe, when the common folk were discouraged from reading the Bible. Language was the province of the learned and the priests, who stood to profit from impenetrability.
Rebels of various stripes have long known that literacy is a key to the uprising of the masses. Unfortunately for them, when people become literate, they learn to distrust priests of any sect whatsoever, even the cult of St. Marx.

Laws of language change

I (frequently) remark that there are two laws of language change: 1) language changes, and 2) you can't do anything about rule number 1. I think I need to add a third: 3) language percolates up rather than trickling down.
The "up" and "down" are social/economic/power/education indicators. Those who are on the top end of the spectrum don't really want language to change. They are happy with it the way it is, and have invested considerable time and energy to mastering the nuances of language that mark them as top drawer.
Consider, for instance, the whole dreary who/whom thing. Exactly when do you use whom? The rule is difficult to elucidate and complex in execution. I can do it, mostly, but then, I've spent my entire adult life studying such things.
There are people (gasp) who have not the time, inclination, or energy for such linguistic shenanigans. These people, when faced with a who/whom dilemma, do one of three things: 1) use who in all cases, 2) substitute that for who, or 3) leave who out altogether when they can.
So, the sentence
I know the man whom my sister loves
Becomes
I know the man who my sister loves
I know the man that my sister loves
I know the man my sister loves
The first of these three is still frowned on in some circles, but the second and third have become standard usage.
Voila! Language change.

Paradoxes

At base, language is a way of showing relationships. A normal sentence in what language ever usually consists of a noun phrase, a verb phrase, and a noun phrase. The noun phrases name things; the verb phrase defines the relationship between them. "Ice is cold," shows us the relationship between the object, ice, and the condition, cold.
With me so far? One of the problems with language is that it doesn't put any necessary conditions on any of these relationships (It does, actually, but bear with me). So, you can put a noun phrase-verb phrase-noun phrase combo together that doesn't make sense, such as "The cheese imagined the bookcase." Well, maybe it makes sense in Wonderland, but not in my office where I have both cheese and a bookcase.
We can even put together a combination that is self-contradictory, such as "No generalization is worth a damn." Since that's a generalization, it isn't worth a damn. But wait, if it doesn't hold, then it's okay to say it. Wait! If it holds, then it doesn't hold.
People waste a lot of time worrying about paradoxes such as this.
It helps if we remember that paradoxes are literary constructs, and have no relationship to reality. Outside of language, there are no paradoxes.
Now, doesn't that make you feel better.

Clarity denied

Some years back, the National Council of Teachers of English developed a "doublespeak" department. Doublespeak is a term invented by George Orwell to describe the language used in the novel 1984. There, language is used to confuse, obfuscate, and generally mislead people. The NCTE had tons of fun with the Department of Defense during the Vietnam war, citing example after example of what they considered doublespeak.
Well, doublespeak is alive and well. And it has consequences. Let me explain.
This morning, my local paper carried a story on two alumni basketball players who gave $100,000 to the local university. Nice, no? Okay, but pay attention. Here's what the article said:"the university has developed plans to renovate and expand the off-court facilities within the [arena] to build a sustainable future. [paragraph break] These renovations will enhance space for practice and game day preparation." (Logan Herald Journal, June 18, B-1)
Notice the lack of specificity? That's one good sign that we are being doublespoken. We're not too sure what the loot is going to be used for. The references to "off court," and "enhance space for ... game day preparation" lead me to believe that they are going to gussy up the locker room, possibly with electronic games, TV, a sauna, massage therapy, walk-in fridge, pool table, leather couches, or any manner of gold-plated accessories.
The consequences of doublespeak? If you are not specific, you have no one to blame but yourself if people assume the worst. I don't know that the university is a little ashamed of what the money is going to be used for. Or feels that people might "take it wrong," or "misunderstand." But it's a pretty good bet.
Unless, of course, the writer simply has no idea how to report news.

Punctuation

You can get along without punctuation at all, you know. Don Marquis, a newspaperman, wrote a series of articles in the 20's and 30's that were later collected in a book, Archie and Mehitabel. The purported writer of the articles was a free-verse poet who died and whose soul was transmigrated into a cockroach. The cockroach couldn't make capitals or punctuation on the typewriter, as he actuated each key by diving onto it head first. It's wonderful reading and I recommend it to everyone.
But we are neither cockroaches nor free-verse poets (most of us), and we need punctuation. So, what's the most important punctuation mark? Look at the sentences you've just read and it should become clear. There are lots of periods, to be sure, but they simply serve to end the sentence, and we could probably make do without them. It's the commas that we use mostly. I've written elsewhere about getting rid of apostrophes, and I think that semicolons are the scum of the punctuation world, but commas we can't get rid of (Do you know the joke about the English teacher who fell down, hit her head, and was in a comma for a year?).
Because they are so important, they can be (and are) misused. In fact, there's a whole book about the misuses of the comma: Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.
Are there any simple rules for using commas? Yes: If you have lots of comas in a sentence, re-write the sentence.

Troublesome words

Quick now. what is the difference between ravel and unravel? Or, what is the difference between flammable and inflammable? The answer in both cases is, "There isn't any." Flammable and inflammable both mean, "able to burn," and ravel and unravel both mean "coming apart, as fabric." Which is good, because if Shakespeare had to say that sleep "knits up the unraveled sleeve of care," he'd be in trouble because it doesn't scan well. And how about a good old word like entrance. "But," you say, "that's a common word with no problems." Oh yeah? How about this sentence, "Her words served to entrance me." Ouch. Different word entirely, same spelling. English does that rather a lot. Two words will look alike, be spelled alike, and yet have no relationship to each other. Or, in a related case, take two words that mean about the same thing: base and basis. They came into the language at different times from a common root word. Now, the plural of base is bases. The plural of basis is also bases, but pronounced differently. It would be something like basees, with the long e of bee or peen.
Remember, when you hear the Germans or the Spanish bragging about their languages' regular pronunciation that it's a poor language that has only one way of doing things.

Glitches

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The problem with "grammatical" errors is not that they violate some cosmic law, but that they confuse or, more to the point, distract. We pay attention to the language and not to the meaning. Consider, for instance, the following announcements, which I gathered in yesterday.

The yellow one shows the classic subject/verb problem. The subject (displays) is plural, but the verb (is) is singular. Now, we wouldn't normally say "displays is," so why is it done here? It's clear, isn't it, that the phrase "of affection" is the culprit. It's between the subject and the verb, and the fact that affection is singular (well, non-count) seduced the writer into using the singular verb.

The cure? Try not to put anything between the subject and the verb.

Here's another one, a different problem. In this one, the writer has, unfortunately used the wrong word. It's in the one that goes "A person having any exposed sub-epidermal..." Note that one of the problems is persons that have "other legions." So, if you're going to use the public pool, leave your army behind, or at least, keep them out of sight. The proper word, of course, is lesions.

Palindromes and onomatopoeia

A palindrome, as you no doubt know, is a linguistic artifact that reads the same backwards and forwards. Dad is a palindrome, as are sis, mom, and poop, although palindromes are usually names. The neat thing is that even sentences can be palindromes, such as "Madam, I'm Adam," and "Able was I ere I saw Elba," presumably referring to Napoleon.
What bothers me about palindromes is that the name itself, isn't palindromic. We should have a name such as likeekil, or sameemas, or worddrow (I like that one best).
The same goes for onomatopoeia, or words that sound like the thing they name. Words like buzz, bang, pop, and scrunch are all onomatopoetic. Problem is, how do we get a name that sounds like what it names? The closest we could get, I think, would be to use an onomatopoetic word as a terms for the category in general. In the 19th century, linguists supposed that language began as people imitating sounds. It's known as the Yo ho (heave ho) theory. So, I propose that from now on, onomatopoeia be called "Yo ho." For one thing, it carries the spirit of naming things. For another, it's much easier to spell.

Canine Capers in the Press

My local paper is always a source of delight to me, and today's blog is courtesy of them, or of the caption writer who comments on the photos.
Most "grammatical" errors don't actually confuse people. They may distract for a moment, but generally the meaning of "he done it" is as clear as "he did it."
What leads us into sin is punctuation. And one of the ripest fields for error is the additional information we put into sentences as phrases or clauses. The misplaced modifier or dangling participle. And if you don't like sentence fragments, tough. My favorite dangling modifier is (and I got this on an essay), "Having rotted in the cellar, my brother and I were unable to sell the potatoes." After a little bit, we can figure out that it was the potatoes that rotted, but the concept of the two brothers quietly moldering in the cellar is hilarious.
So look at the caption on the photo I've posted. In case you can't read it, it says, "This Jan. 29, 2009, photo shows the scarred face of Lucas, a pit bull used in Michael Vick's dogfighting operation at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, north of Kanab, Utah." The locative phrase, "at Best Friends Animal Hospital" is in the wrong place, so it sounds like that's where the dogfighting operation was.
I can see it now, a dogfighting operation at an animal sanctuary. The dogs have to wear gloves and can't hit below the belt. The referee stops the fight if one fighter looks dog-tired (sorry, couldn't resist).
The cure is really simple: cut the sentence in two. There's really no reason to try and get it all in one sentence.

Ambiguity

One of the characteristics of any language is ambiguity. Ambiguity means that an utterance can have more than one interpretation. For instance, there's lexical ambiguity ("Replace the pencil," can mean "Put the pencil back," or "Take the pencil away and put another in its place.") Or, there's structural ambiguity (The classic example from Chomsky is "Visiting relatives can be tedious.") Finally, there's situational ambiguity (A letter of reference that says, "You will be lucky if you can get him to work for you.")
In some situations, such as legal documents, ambiguity is disastrous. In others, it can be funny, intentionally or otherwise. For instance, I come into my children's' bedroom and see feather pillows all over the place. I say, "Well, aren't we being good." The situation is strictly speaking, ambiguous, since the sentence can be taken one of two ways: as sincere or as sarcastic. Generally, things like the situation and voice tone can disambiguate the sentence.
One of the interesting things about ambiguity is that when we run across it we don't normally recognize it as ambiguity. Instead, we choose one of the interpretations and simply go with it. Take another sentence from Chomsky: "The shooting of the hunters was terrible." People will choose one or the other of the meanings (but you got them both, right?) and not even see the other one. So strong is this tendency that some people can't see the ambiguity until it is carefully pointed out to them. I've always thought that the ability to see ambiguity is both a blessing and a curse.

Right spelling; wrong word

I try not to make fun of the linguistic foibles of my fellow beings. The reason is that most of what people call "mistakes" are simply other dialects or emerging changes in the language. A case in point: If you go to a supermarket, you'll see a sign that says something like "Express line. Ten items or less." To be strictly in line with traditional usage, it should be "Ten items or fewer." But the distinction is disappearing, so I tend not to fuss about it.
However, there are times when I simply can't resist. So, here are my offerings poking fun at people who mis-use the language. The first is from a sign on the gate of a swimming pool at a university where I taught. The sign read, "This pool for faculty and staph only." I don't recall that I ever used the pool. The second item is from a sign in my favorite hot springs, where I to to (frequently) soak. The sign notes, in part, that people with sores, cuts, open wounds, or other legions can't use the pool. I'm surely glad, because I wouldn't want to share the pool with a legion, especially if it's the French Foreign one.
Laughs aside, there's a reason for these glitches. Though this is hotly debated, I believe that there is a sharp disconnect between our oral language processing and our written language processing. The systems don't talk to each other all that well, and information from one doesn't naturally seep over to the other. So, a person who's a good talker and an intelligent person may not be a good speller. Or may well exhibit the hallmark of modern computer-assisted writing: all the words spelled correctly, but not necessarily the right word.

Weird plurals

I think I've mentioned before that plurals in English can be sort of confusing, because of a number of factors. One is that we borrow wholesale from other languages. The second is that we may or may not borrow the plural form of a noun. Or, what is worse, we may borrow the traditional plural and then gradually trade it for our English s plural, so that for a time a noun may have two plural forms. The plural of cactus was (and still may be in some places) cacti. Other charmers are hippopotami (true!) and stadia (plural of stadium). A cherub is an angel. So is a seraph. The plurals were cherubim and seraphim, but now mostly cherubs and seraphs. But what about a noun like haitus? What's the plural here? Haiti (or is that the country)? Or Quietus? The fact is that I've never encountered the plurals of those two words, and without looking them up, which I am too lazy to do, I guess I'll never know.
The comedian Shelly Berman once did a bit in which he discussed the problem plurals. He came up with kleenex/kleenices; goof/geef; stewardess/stewardi; and my favorite, the plural jacki.

Vowels

Vowels are the troublemakers of the linguistic world. Consonants stay pretty much constant (Not completely true, as German speakers, for instance, have two versions of our "l," and we have three different versions of "p"). Vowels are made by activating the vocal chords, and varying the shape of the oral cavity as the air rushes through it. This gives lots of room for tinkering.
Now, vowel sounds can differ dramatically from person to person, depending on a number of factors. There's even a song about it: "I say potayto, you say patahto..." But there's an interesting subset of vowel sounds that I find intriguing simply because they are so subtle that we might not even notice them. The word roof, for instance. It can be pronounced ruff or roof. The word caught can be pronounced cot or cawt. There's an international phonetic alphabet which was developed to catch these differences, but it's quite cumbersome and a pain in the neck to learn.
The point, though, is that the differences are there, and have some interesting consequences. Where I live, for instance, people don't differentiate between the vowel sounds in pin and pen, sale and sell. Here's the good part. If you don't differentiate in your own speech, you will probably not recognize the difference in the speech of others, who do. So, I am used to seeing signs that say, "For sell."
Does this mean that the people who don't make the distinction are tone deaf? Not at all. Does it mean that they are linguistically challenged? Again, not at all. It's just that their dialect has conflated some sets of sounds. Just normal language behavior.

Pesky plurals

In English, the basic rule for plurals is straightforward: If it's a plural, put an s on it. All new words adhere to this rule. If you invent a word, say, grunch, and you pluralize it, it's grunches. Easy.
Except with Old English words, foreign words, collective nouns, and nouns where you aren't sure whether the situation calls for singular or plural. I want to talk about the last, but let me get the others out of the way first.
Old English had a jillion ways of making plurals. One was to add a suffix: child, children. One was to change the internal spelling: goose, geese. Some have changed over the years (there is a plural of ox that is oxes). Many, especially the familiar ones, stay with us and give us trouble.
Foreign words make foreign plurals. Many of them we have changed. The plural of stadium was once stadia, and the plural of cactus was cacti (still is in some cases). Some stay with us: alumnus, alumni.
Collective nouns are those that indicate a group: congress, parliament. In the U.S., collectives are singular; in England they are plural: congress is, parliament are.
Now the last case. Media began life as a plural. The singular is/was medium. But, over the years, the term media has acquired a new meaning, that of the news disseminators, and it has become, in this sense at least, a collective. So, media is now (in one of its senses) a singular. The media is. In other uses, it might remain a plural. Same with data, which is a plural of datum, only nobody cares, so we can say "The data are" or "The data is" and either one works.