Bird communication and taboo language, all in one strip:
(Hat tip to Victor Steinbok.)
Archive for August, 2009
Bird rage
August 4, 2009pertain toward
August 3, 2009Caught in a radio interview while I was half asleep: pertain toward where I would say pertain to (dictionaries give to as the appropriate preposition here). I’ve googled up some more examples — maybe 50 relevant ones, for example:
Trust seems to pertain toward your overall (longterm) feelings about someone. On the contrary, you can “believe” someone or something for a single instant or in reference to a specific idea. (link)
Students who wish to apply for any type of financial aid (except merit-based scholarships and non Work-Study student assistant positions) must:
1. be enrolled in classes that pertain toward their degree plan each semester… (link)I have heard the term “dog ear” a few times, and was wondering what exactly is “dog eared” and how does it pertain toward weapons? (link)
Make sure that if you are calling up consumers, you check the “do not call” list and follow the laws and regulations that pertain toward telemarketing. (link — from Donny Lowy, Secrets of Ebay)
My speculation is that some speakers see toward as a more elegant, more serious variant of to, at least in some abstract (rather than motional) uses, and toward might then be encouraged some by the register of pertain.
There are cases where to and toward are both possible, and are close (though not necessarily identical) in meaning, as in relate to/toward [someone].
My search for examples of pertain toward ‘pertain to’ pulled up one somewhat different sort of example, from the “official Gillian Anderson website”, in an interview with the actor Gillian Anderson by Rod Dovlin dated 8/29/97:
QUESTION: So, what have drawn from your past that you’re able to pertain toward your character?
GILLIAN: The ability to pretend. I was a good liar as a child.
This appears to have pertain toward ‘make pertain/pertinent to’, a causativization of intransitive pertain: you’re able to make something from your past pertain to/toward your character.
Causativizations of intransitives are pretty common, though they are often disparaged when people see them as innovations, as in an e-mail exchange initiated by a comment from Peter Sagal (of NPR’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me!), who complained about Sarah Palin’s using progress as a transitive verb, as in this excerpt from her resignation speech:
It’s pretty insane – my staff and I spend most of our day dealing with THIS instead of progressing our state now. I know I promised no more “politics as usual,” but THIS isn’t what anyone had in mind for ALASKA.
Phil Resnick googled up some examples from more formal contexts, and Mark Liberman noted that the OED has an entry for transitive progress, with cites, in a variety of contexts, going back to 1780 and continuing through 2002 (plus some usage commentary on the verb).
Transitive pertain to/toward hasn’t made it into the OED, though.
Automatic cleanup
August 3, 2009Over the years, bloggers on Language Log and elsewhere have catalogued ways of avoiding taboo and other offensive vocabulary in print. These range from handcrafted strategies, like circumlocution and euphemism, through a variety of substitution techniques, to partially automated avoidance schemes (straightforward blocking of postings and messages containing the offending items, several types of asterisking schemes, and the like).
Here’s an automated substitution scheme reported by Martin R in a comment on my “bad bingo words” posting:
My son used to hang out in a chatroom where bad language was modified automatically. “Fuck” became “hug”, “fucking” became “hugging”.
To which PaddyK replied:
I like the “hug” filter concept! “If you don’t get your hugging donkey over here right now I’ll hugging kiss you!”
Aside from how silly-sounding the hug substitutes are, and the very real possibility that such substitution could simply invest hug with an obscene aura it didn’t have before, this simple example illustrates some of the (well-known) potential complexities in automated filtering (for some related complexities, see the Language Log postings on automated asterisking in iTunes — for instance, this one).
Here’s the problem: if the filtering routine just does substring replacement, then for fucked and fucking you’ll get huged and huging instead of hugged and hugging. So either the routine has to incorporate some spelling conventions of English, or the dictionary for replacement has to have separate entries for all the forms — a solution that’s probably necessary in any case, to avoid absurdities like replacing the turd of Saturday with something else (or using four asterisks, or blocking the message entirely).
Bad bingo words
August 2, 2009From the annals of taboo avoidance: a blog with a list of words that might be blocked in certain contexts. Such lists are very common, of course, but this one has several amusing features, starting with the fact that it’s a block list for chat rooms for on-line Bingo players. Paddy K, the blogger at Swedish Extravaganza, explains:
As you may know, if you can be bothered to remember pointless details like this, I work in a company that produces online Bingo games. In each Bingo game is a chat, and the chat has a bad language filter. This means that the chat master can decide which inappropriate words will be blocked from appearing in the chat window.
(This list is in English, but there apparently is a Swedish version of the list as well. Hat tip to Victor Steinbok.)