Somewhere around 15 years ago, I started noticing a trend. If the word “meme” had been in as ubiquitous use as it is now, I’d have noticed a meme. I mentioned it to people, but it seemed to register with no one. I kept a little list of examples I’d run into. Over the years, they got more and more numerous. Now of course my list is not on paper (it’s actually an Evernote note). Being a fallen linguist, I would speak of it thusly and ask people this question:

“Have you ever noticed how many movie titles there are of the form … gerund of a transitive verb of Germanic (as opposed to Latinate) origin plus a person or place name?” People answered, “no,” which really meant, “Are you crazy?”  Thinking I could bring them into my world by means of power of persuasion in sheer numbers, I’d mention just a few of the well-known examples: Eating Raoul, Raising Arizona, Leaving Las Vegas, Feeling Minnesota, Waking Ned Devine, Being John Malkovitch, Finding Nemo, Chasing Amy, Boxing Helena, Saving Private Ryan, ….

Non-linguists would acknowledge that maybe there was something there, but, then the conversation would to other things, usually less linguistically interesting. Linguists were only slightly, and I mean slightly, more interested. But there’s no arguing the meme is there and the pattern/process is, to use a linguistic term, realtively productive.

There are variations to be sure, not always precisely gerund + person/place name. Sometimes it’s more a turn of phrase: Trading Places, Being There, Turning Paige, Changing Lanes, …. Still, the main pattern is there (remember, transitive verb, no preposition, preferably with a Germanic root; though one can imagine a few Latinate verbs that would work) and a certain rhythm is there.

Here is the list in its current state and a graph showing the number of examples from the list occurring in each year since 1979. We may have peaked in 2009, but maybe not. If you want to pitch a movie in Hollywood, I urge you to consider the pattern; brainstorm a little: Using Gerund, Writing Title, Pitching Concept, Pitching John Woo, Selling Meemo, Bowling Bowling Green, Thinking Clare-ly, Taking Pains, Wheeling West Virginia, …. Why, the possibilities are mindless.

P.S. Thanks to Louise for the suggestion to blog this, and to Haley for the post title.

My brother just sent me a link to, and I just read: “Chaos in Fourteen Lines”: Reformations and Deformations of the Sonnet by Annie Finch

For the most part I like the article. I knew about the Italian and Shakespearian sonnet forms, and about the volta and the quatrains and the couplet and so on. I didn’t know too much about sonnet forms apart from those two.

Mostly the example sonnets are enjoyable, but I do think Ms. Finch goes a bit far. I definitely believe that sonnets have a certain something and that that something is big. Just that she’s a bit overzealous in finding connections to other even bigger things….

One example: Ms. Finch is not good at arithmetic. That is to say, she starts talking about the Golden Mean (I think she means the Golden Ratio, see Wikipedia’s entry on the Golden Ratio), the ratio seen in nature, implying that there is something numerological and vast and universal and almost spiritual about the form of the sonnet with its 6 and 8 division, but wait, the last couplet is sometimes separated out so the numbers are … 6:8:12. (Okay, so the Shakespearian form of 4,4,4,2 version doesn’t fit this cosmological connection she’s discovered, but hey). But okay, we’ll overlook all that. The only real problem is that the numbers she uses 6:8:12 to show the ratio, to prove her argument don’t hold true in any way. If you use 12, the ratio is wrong and even if she had used 14, perhaps the number she should have used (6+8), it still isn’t right.

The proportion is:

(a+b)/a = a/b

(8+6)/8 does not equal 8/6

On a different note, at one point she says, “Paul Oppenheimer makes a convincing argument that because the sonnet allowed room to struggle with oneself, it marks not only the beginning of modern poetry, but the beginning of the modern idea of our ‘self’ as having a complex internal life.” Whoa. I guess I should do some research and read Oppenheimer, because I gotta figure that people way before sonnets were written in English, way before there was English, there were people thinking that we had a “complex internal life.” Didn’t people like Plato and Lao Tzu imagine a “complex internal life”? They were probably too busy doing math.

So, I may be way off on that last bit, that it’s only in the modern era that we are special enough to think ourselves to be internally complex, but I’m pretty sure about the arithmetic part.

I need to first read some Paul Oppenheimer and see if he can support his view of ancient thought and fuzzy math. And then perhaps I need to write a sonnet that does some fancy math that proves an impossibility, something like the lyrics to “I’m my own grandpa”, and have it published in the Contemporary Poetry Review.

One of the main reasons I bought an iPhone was because I figured I’d be able (eventually) to listen to my favorite Buenos Aires-based radio stations, or any others for that matter. Still surprised Apple has restricted the iPhone’s Safari by not providing access to video, Flash, certain kinds of audio, etc. In any case, …

the first iPhone app I’ve actually purchased: WunderRadio. Via radiotime.com, they stream a large number of web-based radio stations. I get my local Michigan Radio and now I can listen to La2x4, New Orleans’ WWOZ, and any number of radio stations around the world.

Occasional breaks in the stream due mostly to moving out of range of a WiFi and switching to 3G, but hey, I get to listen to a porteño brand of castellano whenever I want.

I am thrilled to announce that “The Catford Tapes: Professor Catford’s Life in Linguistics” are now available to the world. This is a very happy day for me.

The Catford Tapes are a series of eight one-hour lectures given by Ian Catford in early 1985, on the occasion of his retirement from the University of Michigan Linguistics Department. For anyone with an interest in linguistics, from theoretical to applied, from English to Kabardian, from grammar to phonetics, from Henry Sweet to … well, to Ian Catford, these lectures make clear just how fascinating and remarkably broad Professor Catford’s life in linguistics has been. You can read the background and history of the Catford Tapes below.

You can find videos of the lectures at Deep Blue, the University of Michigan’s service providing access to work in research and teaching:

Lecture 1, February 7, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57765
Lecture 2, February 14, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57766
Lecture 3, February 21, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57767
Lecture 4, March 7, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57768
Lecture 5, March 14, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57769
Lecture 6, March 28, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57770
Lecture 7, April 4, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57771
Lecture 8, April 18, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57772

or simply go to Deep Blue’s home page ( http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/ ) and search for “catford”

By the way, as I understand it, this is the first instance of Bentley material being hosted by Deep Blue.

————–
My deepest thanks go to all the following for freely giving their time, advice and effort to promote the project of preserving this treasure and making it freely accessible.

• Ian Catford, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University of Michigan
• John Swales, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Director Emeritus, English Language Institute
• Fran Blouin, Director, Bentley Historical Library, Professor of Information and Professor of History
• Jim Otaviani, Coordinator Deep Blue
• Tom Bray, Managing Producer Media Resources, Digital Media Commons and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art, School of Art and Design
• Greg Kinney and Brian Williams, Associate Archivists, Bentley Historical Library
• Nancy Deromedi, Assistant Archivist, Bentley Historical Library
• David Erdody, Media Development/Services, English Language Institute

————–
Background / History

In 2002, the Catford Tapes had been stored for nearly 20 years at the University of Michigan but it was unclear exactly where and whether anyone was actually benefiting from the fascinating content and story-telling therein. Making sure that the lectures were not lost to obscurity or to failing media or to technology change was important, and so the mission was to have the tapes archived somewhere, somehow, and made available to a larger audience.

The original eight VHS tapes were not, as one might have expected, at the Linguistics Department, but rather at the English Language Institute Library. They were finally found in a cardboard box at the old, about-to-be-demolished NUBS building the very week that the ELI was in upheaval, getting ready to move to its new location. I was given permission to take the original tapes with the intent to more properly archive them. I contacted Greg Kinney at the Bentley Historical Library of the University and Tom Bray for technical advice and help.

The VHS tapes had not been viewed in 17 years but fortunately transfered to digital tapes easily. These masters then became the basis for other derivatives: other digital tape formats, tapes edited with introductory titles, eventually mpeg files and DVDs. Masters, DVDs and the original accompanying handouts, obtained from Professor Catford himself, were accessioned by the Bentley. All along I was supported by John Swales and the folks from the Bentley.

Two missions are better than one. The next step was to see who might host web-accessible versions of the videos. Jim Ottaviani helped coordinate with the Bentley and the ELI to arrange rights sign offs and got downloadable and streaming versions of the lectures into Deep Blue. And here we are today. Follow the links above.

Back in my Russian Club days at Rutgers University, after a bit too much kvas, someone taught me the following, irreverent and hilarious juxtaposition. Irreverent because this is a beautifully layered and perfectly constructed poem, one of Aleksandr Pushkin’s most famous.

So, If you happen to speak Russian and know the tune to Londonderry Air, try singing the following to that tune. Danny Boy never sounded so … interesting.

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.

Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.

In cleaning my office, I came upon the business card of Antonio Balsemin, a card he handed me after he gave my son and me a ride in his taxi during our late summer 2001 stay in Rome. It was a very enjoyable taxi ride. He is outgoing, talkative and clearly a man of many interests. I let him do the majority of the talking since my Italian is passable but has no depth.

Though he happens to drive to be a Roman tassista, really he’s a writer. His passion in life is writing in his native dialect from the Veneto region of Italy. One gets the sense that it is partly to preserve his own past, but it also has a larger purpose.

He realizes as many people do, that in the past hundred or so years, the diversity of local cultures is disappearing as individual cultures and languages die. However, he does something about it. By writing in his own language he keeps one tree alive as the larger cultural deforestation goes on.

Check him out at: http://www.antoniobalsemin.it and check out an article written about him the same month he gave us a cab ride and a fascinating conversation.

A recent exchange with Language Hat, a great blog on language issues had us update links: this blog to Language Hat and an old post on Language Hat that points to an article I once wrote for the Vocabula Review, the online newsletter fighting the unjustifiable fight for linguistic prescriptivism.

I must say that the editor there was kind and open enough to request and publish my article, one which argues forcefully against everything the newsletter stands for. Nevertheless, prescriptivism in English was once based merely on an inferiority complex when comparing English to the “perfect” and, because it’s dead, unchanging Latin, but is now just another excuse for  sky-is-falling-things-aren’t-like-they-used-to-be bigotry. But I digress.

Visit Language Hat.

Been thinking for some time now about an open source project that would allow holders of linguistic corpora to relatively easily put up a web app that allows the world to search them. You know, using Lucene, Spring MVC, TEI.2, stuff like that.

Have recently started in on the work in my “spare time.” Using as sample data some files from the British Academic Written English (BAWE) Corpus. We’ll see how it goes.

I wrote the first implementation of the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English web application in 2001 while working for the University of Michigan’s Digital Library. I just recently finished the rewrite of the application for a new search engine. See the MICASE page and history for some information.