Yo - Ve, Xe, Ze, Zhe

I don't know about you, but the above attempts at creating gender-neutral, singular pronouns give me the heebee jeebees.

Here are some more of the ridiculous constructs:
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Ann Curzan, an English professor at the University of Michigan, recently wrote about the subject of singular they at Lingua Franca. Here are some excerpts from her post: 

"I tell students that they are welcome to use singular they in writing for my class, but they should footnote it the first time they use it and in the footnote explain their rationale for using singular they." 

"This footnote accomplishes at least three things: It shows readers that the author is consciously making a choice to use singular they; it informs readers about legitimate reasons for using singular they, even if they disagree with its use in this context; and most importantly, it asks students to be careful, self-conscious writers, reflecting on and explaining their choices in their writing."

Curzan's approach to singular they is commendable. Please pass it on.

Image credit

Chart via Wikipedia

The Sound and the Shapey - Conclusion

The results of the poll from the post, The Sound and the Shapey -

The blue shape is a kiki and the green shape is a bouba. 91.8%

The results of the poll from the post, The Sound and the Shapey 2 -

The shape on the left is a takete, and the shape on the right is a maluma. 91.3%

The overall results of both polls in the previously mentioned posts illustrate what is called the Bouba-Kiki Effect; that is, the mapping of certain shapes with certain speech sounds is not an arbitrary one.

Jessica Love at The American Scholar explains that, "across multiple studies, with participants from different cultures, boubas (and other words formed with the so-called 'rounded' vowels in boo or bow) are linked to smooth, curvaceous objects, while kikis (and similar words) are associated with jagged angles and objects sharp to the touch."

The Bouba-Kiki Effect is sometimes considered a form of synesthesia, which is defined by Merriam-Webster as follows:

1 : a concomitant sensation; especially : a subjective sensation or image of a sense (as of color) other than the one (as of sound) being stimulated 2 : the condition marked by the experience of such sensations

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Comments from the previous posts.

From idiomatico: "Sounds in which you have to round yours lips ("b") suggest rounded forms in any language. It's something that I smell."

- I love the way he extended the synesthesia aspect.

From Marcelo García Facal:  "There has been much literature about the effect of "defaults", meaning, how the fact that the option "The blue shape is a kiki and the green shape is a bouba." is chosen by default has an effect on the choice respondents finally make."

- This is the reason I posted a different version of the poll in The Sound and the Shapey 2. 

Interestingly, the results were still very similar.

Pronouns Playing with Plurals

I couldn't resist throwing a bit of alliteration into the title for the added wordplay effect.

Thank you, Steve, for bringing this comic to my attention.

Comic by Jesse Tahirali.

Wine and Wordplay

Thank you to 22 Words for bringing this video to my attention.

The Sound and the Shapey 2

A variation of last week's post regarding the mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects.

One of the above shapes is a takete and one is a maluma; which is which?

Please participate in the following poll only if you are not familiar with the experiment. There is not a right or wrong answer. Again, no cheating, please (i.e. no google searches). I will reveal more about the experiment later in the week.
  
Special note: There were a some comments for last week's post that I did not publish because they might have given something away. I will mention the comments from idiomatico and Marcelo García Facal in my follow up post.

The Sound and the Shapey

The following shapes were used in a well-known psychological experiment regarding the mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects. The original experiment was conducted in the late 1920s; it has been repeated since then with slight variations.

I have included a poll below to see what my readers think. There is not a right or wrong answer.

Please participate only if you are not familiar with the experiment. Also, no cheating, please (i.e. no google image searches).

I will reveal more about the experiment next week.

Songs of Love & Grammar (& %*# - :@; etc.)*

From James Harbeck's book Songs of Love & Grammar:

Dim innuendos

A sweet musician in a bar said, "Boy, I think you're #."
I said, "Girl, you're a ♮, but I don't want to harp."
She said, "Well, here's the key so you can get into my ♭."
The rest of it I can't repeat, so I'll conclude at that.
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Sharp, natural, flat. I didn't think it would be wise to try to include a repeat typographically - it doesn't really work without the rest of the bar lines.
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Harbeck's book is filled with over 100 pages of delightful poetry that turn grammar and punctuation lessons into fun, little love ditties.

My only complaint is that the title is a bit misleading; there seem to be almost as many songs about symbols (see Dim innuendos above), signs, and abbreviations as there are about grammar, so I added to the title of this post * & symbols, signs, and abbreviations.

Either way, it is a highly entertaining book and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys having fun with language.

You can read more excerpts from the book at Harbeck's blog Sesquiotica, (which, by the way, happens to be one of my favorite blogs).

Also, make sure to check out Harbeck's Word Tasting Notes. These notes cover the visual aspect of words, how words feel in the mouth, the semantics and etymologies of words, and more. 

Restroom Legalese

From a restaurant in northern Michigan.

6 Cartons of Anaphora

A wife asks her husband, "Could you please go shopping for me and buy one carton of milk, and if they have avocados, get 6."

A short time later the husband comes back with 6 cartons of milk.

The wife asks him, "Why did you buy 6 cartons of milk?"

He replies, "They had avocados."

What makes the above joke humorous is actually called zero anaphora or gapping.

The Summer Institute of Linguistics defines anaphora as the "coreference of one expression with its antecedent. The antecedent provides the information necessary for the expression’s interpretation. This is often understood as an expression 'referring' back to the antecedent."

For example, in the sentence, "John rode his bike to town so he wouldn't have to worry about finding a parking spot", "he" is an anaphoric expression that refers back to the subject "John".

Zero anaphora is defined by SIL as "the use of a gap, in a phrase or clause, that has an anaphoric function similar to a pro-form*. It is often described as “referring back” to an expression that supplies the information necessary for interpreting the gap."

*A pro-form is a word, substituting for other words, phrases, clauses, or sentences, whose meaning is recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context.

Now, look at the first line of the joke again:

A wife asks her husband, "Could you please go shopping for me and buy one carton of milk, and if they have avocados, get 6 [gap]."

The gap leaves open the possibility of referring back to either noun phrase, "avocados" or "one carton of milk". However, it makes more sense to start the anaphora resolution process by looking at the nearest antecedent first.

Now go return those five cartons of milk and bring me my six avocados, silly man.

Avocado image via.

Chomsky Comics

The Adventures of Noam Chomsky by Jeffrey Weston is a series of comics based on Chomsky's political views. While I don't follow Chomsky for his political views and I prefer not to state mine, he is a brilliant linguist and I found this particular comic from the series rather chuckle-worthy.