Nasal sounds

A couple of weeks ago, I was down with a horrible bug that gave me runny nose and sore throat.

So while I was nursing the bug, I went for dinner with my friends (at Botak Jones, that oh-so-sinful place that does nothing to help a sore throat. Photos speak for themselves here here and here. Courtesy of KL). I was telling them I’m going to Hong Kong in July to look for KL, who’d be on a summer program there, and how I am probably going to stay in Kowloon area. See, the Chinese equivalent of Kowloon is jiu-long, with a velar nasal sound -ng at the end of long. However, with my blocked nose, they heard, jiu-lou, which means “9th floor”. They paused, and made a comment about how awfully precise I am. That was then I had a true phonology epiphany, that when you have a blocked nose, you can’t produce nasal sounds. Contrary to what people always say about how you sound like you’re talking through your nose, that is not true. In fact, you’d be producing pure non-nasal (i.e. oral) sounds when you have a blocked nose. I mean, I learnt about this in year 1, but that day was the first time I experienced it for myself.

Now I do thing phonology and phonetics is a fun subject. I wonder why I hated it so much in year 2.

Youtubing “English Language”

I was surfing Youtube, and I came across this video, which summarizes what I said previously about the word fuck.

My favourite line from the video - “out of all of the English words that begin with the letter F, fuck is the only word that is referred to as “the F word”.” (Grins) Makes you think, huh.

And something cute:

Sort of reminds me of that Parts of the Brain song by … Pinky and the Brain. (See below)

One of the project groups showed it in our Psycholinguistics class… and for a person who hates neuropsych, this video was actually pretty fun and interesting! Sort of like a crash course to neuropsych, and seriously, you really only need to remember the song when sitting for a neuro paper.

(Now I have no abso-fucking-lutely idea where this post is going.)

Anyway, just a couple of videos to share I guess.

Transitive verbs

It’s certainly heartening to see a two-year-old grasp the concept of transitive verbs, particularly one that involves animate agent and undergoer. Here’s what happened:

Me : (nibble on niece’s chubby arm) Who bite mei-mei? (dimunitive for younger sister; which technically is an endearment for my niece.)

Niece: Yi-yi (endearment for aunt)

Me: Yi-yi bite who?

Niece: mei-mei.

In the past, a couple of weeks ago, she didn’t understand transitive verbs like that. All verbs then were intransitive consisting of only one argument. Now it seems almost like a milestone in her language learning. I guess ditransitive is the next step. One day she’d stop uttering “cut mama mei-mei” (which sounds strangely like a case of child abuse) - which actually stands for : mama cut cai4 for mei-mei. Well, baby steps, literally.

Profanities

Recently I was told to not swear so much, particularly using certain “four-lettered words”.

I don’t see why we can’t use profanities.

Does it change who we fundamentally are? Does spouting fuck and shit make us bad people?

From a linguistic point of view, for the lack of a better word, that’s bollocks. Words in a language like English is arbitrary, that is, its form (pronunciation, spelling) has nothing to do with its meaning. So why is it that fuck is profane, and copulation not? Is there something in the palatal plosive /k/ that makes fuck an undesirable word? That’s a pretty big claim, isn’t it?

Then they may say that it’s the idea and concept that’s put across that’s bad i.e. I shouldn’t be talking about sex when I’m trying to express exasperation. Meaning shift anyone? Just like how the word gay, which innocently meant “happy” in the 50’s has now acquired a more negative meaning, the sense to a word can change. Fuck need not only mean sex. From what I see, and what corpus evidence will duly prove, fuck has multiple senses and functions that are unrelated to the sexual act, like fuck being an interjection of speech. I don’t see what’s so different between “fuck I dropped the bowl!” and “oh no I dropped the bowl!”.

Oh then we can look at the sociolinguistic point of view, that the use of fuck and other profanities indexes undesirable values, which is, in simpler terms, the use of profanities equates a person to the likes of baddies. Which brings me back to my first question, does using profanities fundamentally change who we are? Perhaps gangster were the ones who started using profanities, but who’s to say that anyone who uses fuck is a gangster, or condones the act of being a gangster? To make such loose arbitrary connections is being pretty narrow-minded and subscribing to stereotypes, no? It’s just like claiming “all blondes are stupid” or “all girls like to cry”. Just because they co-occur doesn’t make them facts.

So I still don’t see why we can’t use profanities. Or why in the first place those words are singled out to be called profanities. What’s so different about them? Isn’t this some kind of discrimination? Who decides, anyway? Some stuffed-up clergy? Seriously. It’s the same thing with Singlish isn’t it? Always fearing that it’ll spill over to the oh-so-sanctified “formal” contexts of language that we can’t be left alone to codeswitch in peace. Who’s to say that I can’t keep my fucks out of my essays? (Oh, but I did write an A essay with fuck.)

So as crap as this shit is, it’s worth all da spunk in this fucking world, so suck it. (Or for the innocent eyes, for as weak as this argument may seem, it’s still worth everything I stand for in this world, so take it or leave it.)

Deictic terms

That day I was trying to irritate my friends by speaking to them in entirely deictic terms.

So I did you know, then. They were like, what? And I sort of “that” and “this” and kinda did things.

I love deictic terms; they are so ambiguous. They can refer to all things (i.e. no fixed referent) and yet at the same time refer to nothing (i.e. when out of context). They can mean so much (e.g. when a pronoun replaces a 4534-word noun phrase) and so little (e.g. the pronoun I, which is a semantic prime and cannot be explained in other words). So, I love deictic terms.

And I feel a need to justify my love for prime numbers; they are about as self-centred as I am. They are only divisible by two numbers in this world, themselves and 1. They don’t give parts of themselves to other factors; it’s all-or-nothing when it comes to getting parts of them. That’s how I would like to work mostly; all-or-nothing. No half-fucking around. So see why I like prime numbers?

In English, please.

That day I was in Semantics in Generative Grammar tutorial, and one group was presenting their answers to the class, and a girl blurted out, “sorry, I can’t read this in English.” Which was quite funny considering we were analyzing an English sentence. However that comment made me feel like Charles Eppes from Numb3rs, how the FBI will always asking to explain himself in plain English. If you knew what Semantics in GG is all about, I guess you’d feel the same way too. It’s tough and incomprehensible to laymen, which makes me feel a sense of achievement.

And during sociolinguistics class I was momentarily stumped when people started talking about Kress and Van-something, from Critical Discourse Analysis. Which I didn’t take, and neither have I taken Cinematic Discourse. So I couldn’t understand what they were trying to do with those theories (which don’t make a lot of sense to me) and I asked my friend, what have I been doing in linguistics for the past 3 years? It seemed that most of the class knew what was going on apart from me. So I really wonder what I’ve spent my time on for the past 3 years in college. It felt like I was missing out on something. But then again, it’s not like I’m interested in that side of sociolinguistics - to try to make sense of things based on an arbitrary framework that fails half the time. It feels too much like literature to me; trying to find intention from pieces which may not even encode that kind of intention in the first place, and reading them in ways that the theory and framework dictates. It just isn’t in me to do such things I guess. Maybe I just like to stay at the word and sentential level of things - morphology, syntax, semantics, and even phonology. Or maybe I just don’t like to study human behaviour that much. (That’s why I’m not in sociology.)

Liver-intestine inch-break

So I’m writing this 2800-word essay on “The Chinese Obsession with Innards: An NSM approach to Chinese set phrases”. I picked out 3 set phrases (chengyu) to analyze, all involving the innards, such as the intestines or the liver or both.

The one above is a gloss of 肝肠寸断, which literally means the liver and intestines breaking off at inch-pieces. Quite the gruesome imagery, I know. Yet this constitutes one of the deepest emotions - the feel of devastation, extreme sorrow and grief. It is usually used in the contexts of death, and lost love.

I was trying to look for actual examples of this phrase in use from Google, and I was brought to this really interesting page where someone tries to compile a list of 100 most 肝肠寸断 forum signatures (but this list was entirely subjective). I picked out a few interesting ones (translations provided below each entry):

1. 你在做什么？我在仰望天空。30度的仰望是什么？是我想念她的角度。为什么要把头抬到30度？为了不让我的眼泪掉下来……
   Q: What are you doing?
   A: I’m looking at the sky.
   Q: What’s with the 30 deg angle of elevation?
   A: It’s the angle which I think of her.
   Q: But why 30 degrees?
   A: So that my tears wouldn’t fall.
2. 爱情就像乘法，其中一项为零，其结果永远为零
   Love is like multiplication, if one of the variable equals to zero, the result will always be zero.
3. 走的最急的是最美的景色，伤的最深的是最真的感情
   The most beautiful sights often leave the fastest, just has the deepest love often hurt the most.
4. 都说牛郎和织女是最痛苦的，一年只会一天；我说他们其实是最幸福的——有谁364天都被思念着呢？
   Everyone says that the Cowherd and the Weaver are pitiful because they meet only once a year, but I say they are the most fortunate because whoever else is being pined after by someone for 364 days a year?
5. 知道吗，男孩站在女孩的左边是因为那样可以离她的心更近一些
   You know, a guy should stand to the left of the girl so that he’ll be closer to her heart. (Aww.)
6. 地球之所以是圆的，是因为上帝想让那些走失或者迷路的人能够重新相遇……
   The Earth is round because God wants those who have lost their way to be able to meet again.
7. 爱情就像两个人在拉猴皮筋，疼的永远是后撒手的那个
   Love is like two people tugging hard on a rubber band; the last to let go hurts the most.
8. 如果你看到你自己的影子，别怕，那是因为你的背后有阳光！
   If you see your shadow, do not fear, for that means the sun is behind you.
9. 结婚那天你一定要来做我的伴郞，因为我们承诺过要一起走进婚姻的殿堂.
   Please be my Best Man at my wedding because we once made a promise to enter the matrimonial church together. (Aw.)
10. 我颠倒了整个世界，只为摆正你的倒影.
    I turned the whole world around just to put your shadow the right side up.
    

(I apologize for the really strange translations; I just randomly did it.)

I really like 5 and 7. One’s so sweet and one’s so real, I guess they both appeal to different sides of me.

PS: Ok, I’m thinking that 9 is weird. “伴郞” refers to the Best Man, but that usually is on the groom’s side, right? A bride does not usually have a Best Man, right? So if it’s “my” best man … then … (please draw your own conclusions) Man, that just made it sadder. 

No mood to blog leh

And what does leh mean anyway? Trying to coerce the addressee to agree/empathize?

A (playcheat) NSM approach:

I think this:
It is good if you think like me
It is good if you think like what I say
So I say this
I say this so you will think like what I say

-brainburn-

Oh but I learnt a new word today: buttcall.

Buttcall refers to the act of accidentally sitting on one cell phone (that is tucked in the back pocket of one’s jeans/pants/skirts/shorts) and thereby accidentally calling someone.

-ahhh-

PS: What if I wind up doing NSM for my honours thesis? -shock-

I was so touched on Valentine’s Day …

(backdated post, I know)

because I saw subject-verb agreement on a graffiti on a bus.

It’s so heartening to see grammatical young people after all.

(And since this was a graffiti placed on a public transport, I don’t see why I can’t take a picture of it and place it on the net, since it’s technically public domain information. Technically.)

In-operation?

I saw this sign in the university a couple days ago and I went “What?! Right under the noses of the grammar sticklers in Arts?!” 

Seriously, someone explain to me the function of the hyphen in this case. Is it some norm I do not know about?

PS: The sign has been removed today, although the traffic lights are still not functioning. I wonder why.