joshhansen.net

Category: linguistics

  • Prof. Mark Davies’ ouster at BYU

    Mark Davies was a professor of linguistics at BYU who created tools for analyzing large collections of text, a method known as corpus analysis. He ran a website, corpus.byu.edu, where these text collections were available for anyone to use.

    The site, now at english-corpora.org, and Dr. Davies’ website, describe a process of administrator mismanagement that led to Dr. Davies’ departure in 2020, along with the corpus project and website. See here and here.

    I did my B.A. in linguistics at BYU, and remember watching with interest as the the corpus page developed. It’s disheartening to see that such a valuable academic resource doesn’t have a permanent home at BYU.

    Removing the name-naming text and links, I will quote thus:

    This permanent loss of funding support was a punitive action … after Mark informed the university of serious “financial malfeasance” by the College of Humanities regarding income from the English corpora. Subsequently, administrators at BYU refused to help resolve the issue, which is part of a culture of ignoring whistleblowers and “closing ranks” and promoting “yes men” at BYU.

    It is not overly surprising that BYU would pay such little attention to academic productivity, since the primary mission of BYU is religious in nature, rather than academic. In certain respects, BYU is more like a religious seminary than an actual university. As a result, some people at BYU don’t really understand how to support and protect projects that have real academic importance and significance.

    Of course, there are two (or more) sides to every story. Part of why I unlink the specific callouts is that I have no way of knowing beyond Dr. Davies’ own words.

    But the critique leveled against the university rings true for me. I’ve long since come to feel that BYU did me a disservice by shielding me from critical information about the LDS church, which was not at that time covered in any of the many religion classes I took, or any other class for that matter. It seems unconscionable to have so many professors of such high qualification, and none mention any potential issues with the church they represent, except obliquely, after hours.

    “The glory of God is intelligence; or, in other words, light and truth” – it was all over campus. But the glaring exception is casting light on, and discussing the truth about, the church itself.

    EDIT: The word “ousted” may be too strong – Dr. Davies chose to retire, but the withdrawal of funding was strong pressure on him to do so.

    NOTE: I originally posted this on Reddit, check the discussion there, including a response by Dr. Davies, also seen on his blog.

  • ‘they’ is not a drop-in replacement for ‘he’ and ‘she’, but we could use one

    Singular usage of ‘they’ is well-established in English, going back centuries. Depending on your exposure to it, you may yourself use it regularly, as I happily do. It’s great having a single word that can refer to individuals whose gender is unclear or unspecified.

    However, gender-neutral ‘they’ and its friends ‘them’, ‘their’, and ‘theirs’, do not and likely cannot have the same function as he/him/his/his and she/her/her/hers without major reworking of the language.

    That’s because ‘they’ is also, prominently, the third person plural pronoun. That function is arguably more important syntactically than its usage as a gender-neutral or gender-ambiguous singular pronoun.

    The collision of the desire for ‘they’ to be singular, and the possibility for it to be plural, leads to ambiguities that don’t exist for ‘he’, ‘she’, et al.

    To illustrate the problem, I asked ChatGPT to tell a story about trans woman Sylvia and daughter, Olivia, going on a walk to the grocery store. My prompt indicated use of ‘she/her/etc’ pronouns for Sylvia. I then replaced all uses of ‘she’ that referred to Sylvia with ‘they’, all uses of ‘her’ that referred to Sylvia with ‘them’, etc. See what you think:

    Sylvia and Olivia stepped out of their house on a bright, sunny day. Sylvia had a small list of groceries that they needed to get from the store, and they thought it would be nice to take Olivia along for some fresh air and exercise.

    As they walked towards the store, Olivia chattered away about her day at school and the latest books she had been reading. Sylvia listened attentively, enjoying the sound of their daughter’s voice and the warmth of the sun on their face.

    When they arrived at the store, Sylvia gave Olivia the list and asked her to help them find the items they needed. Olivia eagerly took the list and led her mother through the aisles, pointing out items as they went along.

    As they walked back home, Sylvia felt a sense of contentment wash over them. It was moments like these, they thought, that made all the hard work of being a mother worth it. They felt grateful for the time spent with their daughter and for the simple pleasure of going on a walk together.

    Simply substituting ‘they’/’them’ is not enough; the possibility of plural ‘they’ alone means ambiguities arise from straightforward replacements.

    For example, the first ‘she’ that I replaced with ‘they’ (“groceries that they needed”) could now refer either gender-neutrally to Sylvia, or plurally to Sylvia and Olivia.

    This ambiguity wouldn’t arise if, alternately, we replaced ‘she’ with ‘he’, though of course if there were a son present, for example, a need to disambiguate the male referents would come along with it.

    But the plural sense of ‘they’ in particular strongly constrains singular usage of the pronoun. For ‘he’ and ‘she’, there is no such ambiguity and so they are much more flexible.

    Languages are evolved systems much more than they are products of engineering. It’s easy to think you’ve considered every possible effect of a change when really you haven’t. I would prefer usage of alternative third-person singular pronouns such as ‘zie’ for those whose experience of their own gender doesn’t align with the prevailing categories. Those who adopt ‘they’/’them’ should be aware of the pronoun’s limitations for singular usage. If it’s still adopted, it should be used with care to avoid confusing hearers and readers in contexts where a plural meaning is live in the sentence.

    Of course, real people don’t just replace ‘she’ with ‘they’ without adjusting; additional wording would likely come with the change to clarify who’s meant by it. At least, one would hope, though I’ve seen a few examples of glib replacement with no seeming awareness of how confusing the language was becoming.

    To the degree that it takes added wording and circumlocutions to convey the same meaning as ‘he’ and ‘she’, ‘they’ is a lesser pronoun for singular usage. It simply hasn’t benefited from centuries of language change yet. For that reason, we should adopt a new non-gendered third person singular pronoun instead, working with the language we have, instead of fighting it.

  • Obamanymy

    One of the great things about the impending presidency of Barack Hussein Obama is that his name is awesome. I guess that’s what you get when your last name begins with an open syllable (meaning that it starts with a vowel). I predict that a whole new subfield of onomastics dedicated to the study of Barack Obama’s name will arise. This will be called obamanymy: the study of names derived from Obama.

    Obamanymy

    Of course, the opposition started it out with their [idiotic] chant of “Nobama,” but there are so many more possibilities! For example, here are a few fun variations:

    • D’ohbama (When you do something stupid)
    • Foebama (When the president is your enemy)
    • Gobama! (Cheering him on)
    • Growbama (He helps the economy!)
    • Hobama (When being a hobo)
    • Jobama (Jomama just got superseded)
    • Lobama (When he’s being highly cerebral)
    • Mobama (When you just can’t get enough)
    • Quobama (Doin’ a little quid pro quo)
    • Roebama (When he’s talking abortion)
    • Sobama (That’s how you start a conversation with the president. Sobama, I was thinkin’….)
    • Snowbama (Winter in D.C.)
    • Throwbama (WWE wrestling move)
    • Toebama (When he toes the party line)
    • Towbama (When his car breaks down)
    • Whoabama (When he’s just too cool)
    • XOXObama (Hugs ‘n’ kisses at the end of a presidential directive)
    • Yobama! (To get his attention)

    In fact, these seem to be the only presidents who had a name that started with a vowel that wasn’t commonly abbreviated (unlike James A. Garfield) or omitted: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Barack Obama. (Ulysses S. Grant’s name begins orthographically with a vowel, but phonologically with a consonant.) Some of those would arguably be more fun than others.

    Obama also ends with an open syllable, facilitating creation of new words. In fact, I’ve already done this several times, including obamanist and obamanymy. But obamanyms aren’t the only examples of this phenomenon. In fact, a larger number of presidents have had names that end with an open syllable: James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, George W. [Double-u or Dubya] Bush, Barack Obama. But at least to me nothing quite seems to roll off the tongue and meld with prefixes, suffixes, and compounds and overall lend itself to neologicization like the name of Barack Obama.

    Etymology of Obama’s Names

    Barack == Barak: Arabic meaning “blessing”

    Hussein == Husayn == diminuitive of Hasan: Means “handsome”, derived from Arabic hasuna “to be beautiful, to be good”. Hasan was the son of Ali and the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. He was poisoned by one of his wives and is regarded as a martyr by Shiite Muslims.

    Obama: From a rare [Kenyan] Luo given name, based on a word meaning “crooked” or “slightly bent”. It was possibly originally given to a baby who had an arm or leg that looked slightly bent immediately after birth. It could also possibly have been given to a child who was born in the breech position.

    So, to sum it up, President-Elect Obama’s name augurs a time of good, beautiful, but perhaps crooked or slightly bent blessing for our country. That doesn’t sound too bad 😉