Language Log
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''Language Log'' is a collaborative language
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...
maintained by
Mark Liberman Mark Yoffe Liberman is an American linguist. He has a dual appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, as Trustee Professor of Phonetics in the Department of Linguistics, and as a professor in the Department of Computer and Information Scienc ...
, a
phonetician Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
. Most of the posts focus on
language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
use in the media and in popular culture. Text available through
Google Search Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the most-visited website in the world. The ...
frequently serves as a
corpus Corpus is Latin for "body". It may refer to: Linguistics * Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts * Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files * Corpus linguistics, a branch of linguistics Music * ...
to test hypotheses about language. Other popular topics include the descriptivism/ prescriptivism debate, and linguistics-related news items. The site has occasionally held contests in which visitors attempt to identify an obscure language. Denham and Lobeck characterized ''Language Log'' as "one of the most popular language sites on the Internet". it received an average of almost 21,000 visits per day. In May 2006 Liberman and
Geoffrey Pullum Geoffrey Keith Pullum (; born 8 March 1945) is a British and American linguist specialising in the study of English. He is Professor Emeritus of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. Pullum is a co-author of ''The Cambridge Gram ...
published a compilation of some of their blog posts in book form under the title ''Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log''.


Specialties

''Language Log'' was started on July 28, 2003, by Liberman and Pullum, a linguist then at the
University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...
(now at the
University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
). One early post about a woman who wrote ''egg corns'' instead of '' acorns'' led to the coinage of the word '' eggcorn'' to refer to a type of sporadic or idiosyncratic re-analysis. Another post about commonly recycled phrases in newspaper articles, e.g. "If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z", resulted in the coinage of the word ''
snowclone A snowclone is a cliché and phrasal template that can be used and recognized in multiple variants. The term was coined as a neologism in 2004, derived from journalistic clichés that referred to the number of Inuit words for snow. History and ...
''. Both phenomena are common topics at the blog, as is ''linguification'', or the use of metaphors that turn factual observations into claims about language in general (many of which are false). The blog has a number of recurring themes, including the difficulty of transcribing spoken utterances accurately, misuse or misunderstanding of linguistic science in the media, criticism of the popular style guide ''
The Elements of Style ''The Elements of Style'' is an American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary ...
'' by
E. B. White Elwyn Brooks White (July 11, 1899 – October 1, 1985) was an American writer. He was the author of several highly popular books for children, including ''Stuart Little'' (1945), ''Charlotte's Web'' (1952), and '' The Trumpet of the Swan'' ...
and
William Strunk Jr. William Strunk Jr. (July 1, 1869 – September 26, 1946) was an American professor of English language, English at Cornell University and author of ''The Elements of Style'' (1918). After revision and enlargement by his former student E. B. White, ...
, and complaints about what the contributors see as the pedantry of ill-informed prescriptivists, including that of some copyeditors (one of the blog's tags is "prescriptivist poppycock"). In addition, the site has critically addressed opinions and theories related to the
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people' ...
concerning the relationship between culture, thought and language. Another common topic on the blog is the handling of
taboo A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...
language in the media. Regular contributor Arnold Zwicky wrote a series of posts describing which words are considered
obscene An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin ''obscēnus'', ''obscaenus'', "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be us ...
in various publications, paying particularly close attention to the way these words are "asterisked" in the different media forms.


Becky Award

The Becky Award is a tongue-in-cheek award given out by the site. It is named after the sixteenth-century humanist Johannes Goropius Becanus, who claimed to have proved that the language of Eden was
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
(his mother tongue). The award for 2006 went to Louann Brizendine for her bestselling book, ''The Female Brain'', which makes two principal claims: that women use language very differently from men, and that the causes of these differences are hormonal. ''Language Log''s contributors quoted ''
Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
'' ("riddled with scientific errors"), tracked down references in little-known journals, and presented counterarguments using the same referenced sources that Brizendine's claims drew from to demonstrate their lack of scientific reliability.


Contributors

In addition to Liberman and Pullum, a number of other linguists contribute to ''Language Log'': *Adam Albright, a morphologist, phonologist, and assistant professor of linguistics at
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
* Eric Baković, a phonologist and associate professor of linguistics at the
University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...
. * David Beaver, a
semanticist Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and compu ...
and professor of linguistics at
University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...
*Steven Bird, a computational linguist and associate professor of
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...
at the
University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...
* Lila Gleitman, a professor of linguistics at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
who specializes in psycholinguistics *
Daniel Jurafsky Daniel Jurafsky is a professor of linguistics and computer science at Stanford University, and also an author. With Daniel Gildea, he is known for developing the first automatic system for semantic role labeling (SRL). He is the author of ''The ...
, an associate professor of linguistics at Stanford University who specializes in statistical models of human and machine language processing *
Victor H. Mair Victor Henry Mair (; born March 25, 1943) is an American sinologist. He is a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania. Among other accomplishments, Mair has edited the standard '' Columbia History of Chinese Literature'' and the ''C ...
, an
Indo-Europeanist Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical pro ...
, Sinologist and professor of
Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the ...
and Chinese literature at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
* Norma Mendoza-Denton, a
sociolinguist Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...
and assistant professor of anthropology at the
University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...
*
John McWhorter John Hamilton McWhorter V (; born October 6, 1965) is an American linguist with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects, and Black English. He is currently associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches Amer ...
, a fellow at the
Manhattan Institute The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (renamed in 1981 from the International Center for Economic Policy Studies) is a conservative American think tank focused on domestic policy and urban affairs, established in Manhattan in 1978 by Anto ...
and former associate professor of linguistics at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, specializing in
creole languages A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. Wh ...
*
Geoffrey Nunberg Geoffrey Nunberg (June 1, 1945– August 11, 2020) was an American lexical semantician and author. In 2001 he received the Linguistics, Language, and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistic Society of America for his contributions to Natio ...
, chair of the ''
American Heritage Dictionary American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...
'' usage panel and a professor at the
UC Berkeley School of Information The University of California, Berkeley, School of Information, also known as the UC Berkeley School of Information or the I School, is a graduate school and, created in 1994, the newest of the schools at the University of California, Berkele ...
* Barbara Partee, a semanticist and Professor Emerita at
University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...
*
Bill Poser William J. Poser is a Canadian-American linguist who is known for his extensive work with the historical linguistics of Native American languages, especially those of the Athabascan family. He got his B.A. from Harvard in 1979 and his Ph.D. from ...
, a phonologist and adjunct professor of linguistics at the
University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...
*Chris Potts, an associate professor of linguistics at Stanford University who specializes in
semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...
,
pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...
, and
syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
*Philip Resnik, a computational linguist and professor of linguistics at the
University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Mary ...
*
Roger Shuy Roger Wellington Shuy (born January 5, 1931 in Akron, Ohio) is an American linguist best known for his work in sociolinguistics and forensic linguistics. He received his BA from Wheaton College in 1952, his MA from Kent State University in 195 ...
, Distinguished Research Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus of
Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...
and a specialist in language and law. *
Sally Thomason Sarah Grey Thomason (known as "Sally") is an American scholar of linguistics. She is a prolific contributor to academic journals and publications specializing in the field of linguistics, as well as a guest lecturer at different universities arou ...
, a professor of linguistics at the
University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
who specializes in contact-induced language change and
Salishan The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by ag ...
linguistics *
Benjamin Zimmer Benjamin Zimmer (born 1971) is an American linguist, lexicographer, and language commentator. He is a language columnist for ''The Wall Street Journal'' and contributing editor for ''The Atlantic''. He was formerly a language columnist for ''The ...
, research associate at the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
and consultant to the ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
'' * Arnold Zwicky, visiting professor of linguistics at Stanford University and
emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
professor of linguistics at
Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...


Coinages

* '' eggcorn'' * '' nerdview'' * '' recency illusion'' * ''
snowclone A snowclone is a cliché and phrasal template that can be used and recognized in multiple variants. The term was coined as a neologism in 2004, derived from journalistic clichés that referred to the number of Inuit words for snow. History and ...
''


References

{{reflist


External links


''Language Log'' current site''Language Log'' archive (old site)Publisher's site for ''Far From the Madding Gerund''
American blogs Linguistics websites Internet properties established in 2003 2003 establishments in the United States