SILLY LINGUISTICS THE MAGAZINE FOR LANGUAGE LOVERS

Volcanoes
and
Rising Seas
ORAL TRADITIONS IN AUSTRALIA STAND THE TEST OF TIME

How did
language
first
evolve?

THE MAGAZINE FOR LANGUAGE LOVERS : ISSUE #47 : APRIL 2022

 Table of Contents
03
Asterix and Obelix – playing with languages
By Giulia Raus

06
How did language first evolve?
By Steve the vagabond

10
Volcanoes and Rising Seas: Oral Traditions in Australia
Stand the Test of Time
By Rebekah Bradshaw

15
OULIPO: French literature at its finest
By Valentin Pradelou

18
The Office Phrasebook : Michael Scott’s Elements of
Eloquence
by Joana Bourlon

24
How Corpora Changed Linguistics
By Óscar Torres

Cover photo by Feri Feri from Pexels, Photo by Nick Wehrli from Pexels
This week's page numbers are in German!

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 3 \ drei

By Giulia Raus

Who doesn’t know Asterix and Obelix, the magic duo that stops
the Romans from conquering France - at the time known as
Gaul. Through adventures and fights the two help their small
village to survive the greedy but silly Romans. The existence of
this comic book marked many generations and entertained
with its witty jokes and naughty stereotypes of many
populations and became an international success.

As a linguist, a translator, and a teacher myself I find this

fascinating and I would love to share with you a little insight
into the nature of the names used in these books, and how we
can play with languages and make them enjoyable to everyone.

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
4 \ vier

My dad used to collect the comic books adapt these clever names into other
when I was younger, and we used to read languages?
them together. Of course, the comic book
used to be in Italian, and each name was We must consider that the perception of a
translated to make sense in my language. foreign language is different from
What I found out during my bachelor’s population to population, accents and
period, studying French culture, is that letters perceived might slightly change
Albert Uderzo (illustrator) and Robert and the hidden meaning in each name
Goscinny (writer) didn’t name the loses its impact as its hidden meaning
characters randomly but mixed Latin may not be picked up by someone from a
Greek and French to create a perfect one- different culture. Let’s take Italian and
word description for each character. English (the other two languages I work
with) into account and let’s see how the
Starting from Asterix, the main character, translators adapted the names. The
his name could have a double meaning, desinence of each category didn’t
from the asterisk (*) used in writing or change in Italian or English as the sound
from the Greek word “aster” meaning works in both languages and it is kind of
“star”. The same for Obelix, which name representative of this particular comic
refers to the “obélisque” punctuation sign book.
that can be associated to the asterisk but
also a massive rock that he used to carry We have the Romans represented with
on his back. The fascinating world of names in -us, the Greeks with the ending
names doesn’t end here. The first thing in -os and British with the ending in -ax.
that catches our eye is definitely the The actual names of each character didn’t
famous termination in -rix (roi) used to change much between the two
indicate the names of kings such as languages, the fun arrives when English
Vercingétorix, other names terminate in - makes his entrance, and the translators
af always referring to kings or people with have to work on a way to make the jokes
power in relation to Olaf the Norwegian understandable and relatable in English.
king.
For instance, the name Agecanonix in
Each population represented in the comic Italian changes to Matusalemix and in
and then in films has a linguistic trait that English it changes to Geriatrix. In each
represents them and stereotypes them a way the name indicates a very old person
little. The Egyptians are represented with which is easy to understand thanks to
names often ending in -is such as witty wordplay (geriatric – from the Greek
Numérobis and the Goths (Germans) geras – old person) or matusalemix (from
ending in -ic like Périféric. These the cultural knowledge that mathusalem
examples come from the French version was a very old man from the Bible’s Old
of the books, but how did translators Testament).

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
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Ordralfabetix in Italian is Ordinalfabetix

and in English becomes Unhygienix - here
the meaning changed completely but it
still clearly represents the type of
character that we are going to see, this
one is a fishmonger and the way he sells
the fish might not be the healthiest ever
seen (unhygienic) in French and Italian
his name literally means alphabetical
order, which could indicate the way he
sells his food or how he selects people
that will buy his food.

As you had the chance to see, each name

represents the essence of these
characters and also the intention of the
writer. The main goal of this comic book
was in fact to make the Romans look
ridiculous and dull compared to the
mighty villagers of Gaul. Gluteus maximus
for instance, shows clearly how the name
not only is roman, due to his ending in us,
but also that the character is literally
named after a butt.

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
6 \ sechs

How did
language
first evolve?

BY STEVE THE VAGABOND

Photo by Oyster Haus from Pexels:

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 7 \ sieben

I t is a question that has intrigued us for

as long as humanity has been around.
takes countless generations to end up at
the situation we have today.
Some ancient myths talk about gods
bestowing the gift of words upon us. We What is the point of half a wing, this video
are fascinated by this very complex thing asked? Why did wings evolve in the first
that we do pretty much effortlessly. It is so place? What is the use of a few feathers
effortless for us that we often don’t even sticking out of your limbs if you can’t fly?
realise how amazing it is. I think we, as Well, it didn’t start out with flying. Early
humans, are always asking questions and birds used those little feathers to climb up
trying to understand our world, and to places that would have been impossible
language is an essential part of the human or very difficult to get to otherwise. They
experience. used their clawed legs, and their small
feathers together to get to safe spots up
People often wonder what it would be like trees and away from predators.
to have telepathy. Well, no need to wonder.
We have it already. We can communicate This would have been a massive
complex ideas just by making sounds, or as evolutionary advantage. Evolution works
I am doing now, writing them down using through small changes that happen
a system designed for capturing spoken randomly in certain individuals of a
word on the page. It is no surprise to me species. Those changes that provide an
that our ancestors must have come up advantage in life are often passed on to
with all sorts of explanations for how it future generations. The individuals with
must have come about. bigger feathers and more feathers would
have had an advantage and that propelled
But did it really just pop up out of those feathered individuals forward until
nowhere? No, that doesn’t seem likely. As their descendants eventually had enough
much as humanity might have a lofty feathers and big enough feathers to allow
opinion of its own place in the world, we them to fly.
are just as subject to the forces of nature as
any other species. There must be an Now, what does this have to do with
evolutionary reason for how languages language? Well, it shows that evolution
ended up developing. I was watching a can take us, looking back, to
video about birds and how they evolved. unanticipated places, and the
Every living thing alive evolved from an development of language is once such
older form. But looking at modern birds, occurrence. Those first feathered
you realise that if they evolved from older dinosaurs couldn’t fly, but they could
forms then that means that one of those climb trees well, and that would
older forms didn’t have wings. They didn’t eventually lead to the emergence of such
just pop up out of nowhere already having species as eagles, who lead quite different
wings. Evolution is a slow process that lives to their dinosaur ancestors.

Photo by Scott Webb from Pexels

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
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Like flight, language didn’t pop up out of The ability to create a wide range of sounds
nowhere. And it didn’t emerge fully formed. (only being able to make a “b” sound would
But then, like in the flight example, what is probably not be that useful), a social group
the use of half a word? Language developed so you had other members of your species
by building on what had come before. to talk to, and finally, the cognitive abilities
Complex language seems to be unique to us, to realise that those sounds that your fellow
but that doesn’t mean that other species humans were making actually meant
can’t communicate. Dogs bark, yelp and something. Babies pick up language almost
whine. Cats meow, growl and purr. These effortlessly and it really is a marvel at how
are all examples of communication. good they are at doing it. We all pick up our
first language just by sitting around other
Our earliest ancestors probably evolved people and listening.
language by taking already existing
biological tools like the throat and tongue Our ancestors were probably not as good
and using them for another purpose. We at picking up language, but they probably
know that parrots can mimic language quite were able to work out that when a member
well. Humans are not the only ones who can of their group made one sound it meant
make complex sounds with their own something, and another sound it meant
mouths and throats. Birds can make all sorts something else. All species seem to
of sounds and even what could be called communicate in one way or another. Many
music. While parrots may be able to mimic supplement this communication with
language, their ability with it, even when sound. Wolves, for instance, might howl
taught over a number of years is minimal in and other wolves might pick up the howl
comparison to even a 3 year old child. So the and howl in return. They are clearly
ability to make sounds was an important recognising the sound and responding to it.
part, but it was not the only thing required.
The ability to create a wide range of sounds Dogs too respond to sounds made by other
was merely the first step along the long road dogs and by us. They can be taught to
to language. recognise certain words, which to them are
probably just another sound. If wolves and
We don’t have all the answers yet, but we dogs do this, then certainly our ancient
can make some good guesses. In the ancestors did too. As human cognitive
beginning it was probably quite abilities grew, and as our bodies changed
rudimentary, but as it became a useful tool, over time, two things probably happened:
like feathers on a dinosaur, it probably we were able to make more types of
became more complex. Before language sounds than we could before, and we were
could have arisen, there are 3 absolutely also able to recognise those sounds in other
essential things that were required. humans.

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 9 \ neun

Humans seem to want to make themselves Where language went to once it had
stand out and push themselves away from arrived is a story for another day, but its
the brutish and chaotic lives of the animals emergence started a whole new chapter in
of this world. “We are special. We are the story of humanity.
clever. We created language solely through
our amazing intellect,” some would say.
Language was probably neither a solely
intellectual creation, nor was it just
random. It probably emerged when all the
pieces of the puzzle came together.

Initially language was probably little more

than sounds, but the sounds humans
could make were used to make the first
words. Maybe the first words were
something like “ma”, “tu”, “ak” and so on.
But when people started using those
sounds in specific situations, they would
have gained a certain association and
meaning with the other people around
them. Even if all they could do was say
things like “move”, “danger” or “deer”, it still
would have been a very useful thing and it
would have been very evolutionary
advantageous for anyone who had the
right genes to continue on the language
journey.

Whatever the genes that we need to

produce and understand language are,
they were obviously evolutionarily
speaking extremely useful and they spread
throughout the human population. We
have yet to find a single languageless
society in the world. All humans are able to
use language, no matter the location on
Earth, culture or education level. It seems
to be rooted in our very DNA. It might be
the very thing that allowed us to eventually
conquer every part of this amazing world
we live on.

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
10 \ zehn

Volcanoes and
Rising Seas
ORAL TRADITIONS IN AUSTRALIA STAND THE TEST OF TIME

BY REBEKAH BRADSHAW

Photo by Yulia Gadalina on Unsplash

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 11 \ elf

A s a means of communication, writing is only relatively recent. Earliest known examples

date back to Mesopotamia around 5,500 years ago. Before this, all societies relied on word of
mouth as the sole means of passing on information. From the Bible to Beowulf, the Epic of
Gilgamesh to the Iliad, many classic works that are read today have their origins in oral
tradition. Even as literacy has increased in modern times, oral tradition remains a significant
form of communication for many cultures across the globe.

As members of a literate society, it can be difficult to fathom how the bards of old were able to
recite epic poems thousands of lines long whilst we struggle to remember the shopping list.
Storytellers rely on the structured nature of oral tradition, a set of rules guiding them in their
retelling. Within the bounds of these rules, however, is a dynamic tradition, adapting itself to
be retold in different contexts, always relevant to each new audience. These unique
characteristics of oral tradition lend an unexpected longevity to something as transient as the
spoken word. We are now beginning to consider just how long lasting these traditions can be.

Until European arrival in 1788, there were no writing systems in place across the continent of
Australia. Over more than 50,000 years, the 250+ language groups on the continent developed
a strong oral tradition. This multifaceted tradition is expressed through the Law or
“Dreaming”, in Songlines, ritual, and dance. It concerns the nature of and relationship
between all things, and how people are to live, through stories of a distant past that exists
simultaneously in the present. In recent times, scientists have sought to provide ages to stories
from the Aboriginal Dreaming by linking them to known geological events. Their current
findings suggest that some stories could be over 35,000 years old, well exceeding what has
generally been thought possible for the lifespan of an oral tradition.

When the First Australians set foot on their continent for the first time, it was a very different
place. For a start, the coastlines were much further out, as sea level was about 80 metres lower
than it is today. Over the next fifty to sixty thousand years, sea levels fluctuated quite
dramatically, reaching their lowest point of 130 metres below current levels at the peak of the
last ice age 20,000 years ago, and rising again to flood the continental shelf before landing at
current sea levels around 6,000 years ago. An archaeological dive off the Pilbara Coast found
stone tools 14 metres below the surface of the water, proving that communities were living in
these ever-changing coastal environments. Indeed, stories from all around Australia's coasts
tell of the ancestors of current communities living in areas that are now under water.

Photo by Nindy Rahmadani on Unsplash

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
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In Queensland, Aboriginal peoples today will tell you that their ancestors used to live around
what is now the Great Barrier Reef. In the Gulf of Carpentaria, the people know that the
Wellesley Islands were not always islands, but connected to the mainland as a peninsula. They
tell the story of how the seagull woman Garnguur dragged her raft across the neck of the
peninsula, causing it to flood and separate the islands from the mainland. Not a strictly
scientific account, but all of the main details are there: sea levels were once lower, and then they
rose, changing the coastline. We can be fairly confident that these oral traditions do actually
refer to observed events in the past (rather than, say, being made up in more recent times and
sharing coincidental similarities with a past event). Stories from all over the continent, from
places quite geographically distant from each other, corroborate on the key details, but also
include their own local contexts to suggest that they all developed independently of each other.

Using our current knowledge of sea level fluctuations, and when different parts of the coast
would have been inundated, we can estimate that some of these oral traditions are between
7,000 and 13,000 years old. Also impressive is the fact that these histories don't just record a
single event, observable over a lifetime. They contain a "before-and-after" that would have
required several generations to develop.

Scientists have recently discovered that a story of a volcanic eruption could be older still – and
quite possibly the oldest surviving oral tradition in the world. In what is now the state of
Victoria, the Gunditjmara people share the story of four giant ancestral beings who travelled
across their Country in the distant past. One of them stopped and crouched on the ground,
transforming into a volcano and spitting out his teeth as lava. The volcano is called Budj Bim.
Archaeologists have known since the 1940s that humans were living in the area at the time of
volcanic activity, as they found a stone axe buried under volcanic rocks near the neighbouring
Tower Hill volcano. Now, potassium-argon dating of rocks from both Tower Hill and Budj Bim
have revealed that they both formed around 37,000 years ago in a series of rather rapid
eruptions. People living in the region at the time would have witnessed these peaks form out of
the ground, reaching heights of tens of metres in just a matter of months – certainly a very
memorable event. Whilst we can't be certain that the Gunditjmara's tale is also the same age,
we know that they were living near the volcano at the time of its eruption, and we also know
that no other eruptions have occurred at the site since.

How is it that oral traditions in Australia have been able to last as long as they have?

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 13 \ dreizehn

Researchers think it has something to do with the way that knowledge is encoded in these
traditions.

The continent of Australia being quite geographically isolated, Aboriginal peoples have had
over 50,000 years to foster their oral traditions, and are well known today for the longevity
and sustainability of their cultures. Furthermore, members of each distinct language group
are deeply connected to their specific patch of the continent: their "Country". In other parts of
the world, groups of humans have been fairly mobile, migrating across continents over
millennia. In Australia, genetic testing suggests that groups occupying a certain Country
today are directly related to those who lived there tens of thousands of years ago. Aboriginal
peoples know their Country deeply, and have done for a very long time. It turns out that this
is quite advantageous to the keeping of oral tradition.

You may have heard of or tried a memorisation technique known as the Method of Loci: map
out a route through a familiar location, visualising an item to be remembered at each point in
order on your route. When it comes time to recall that shopping list or those notes for your
presentation, all you need to do is return to that location in your mind, finding everything
right where you left it. The method works so well because of the brain’s strong association
between place and memory.

On a much larger scale, oral traditions of the Aboriginal Dreaming are mapped in Songlines,
vast networks of routes tracing the journeys of ancestral beings across the landscape. Natural
landmarks act as loci on these routes, each landmark associated with a Dreaming narrative or
part of a narrative. Song, dance, story, and ritual help maintain the connections between a
Songline and its loci. The story of Budj Bim is probably only a small part of a Songline that
may stretch hundreds of kilometres and pass over the Country of multiple different language
groups. For millennia, Aboriginal peoples have used Songlines to navigate the continent, and
to access extensive knowledge about species of plants and animals, the changing of the
seasons, and important laws and customs. Songline networks can even be mirrored in the
constellations. These oral traditions remain daily relevant – as Aboriginal peoples continue to
spend time “on Country”, they remember and relive their Dreaming, and are able to pass it on
to those after them. In this way, an event initially only of interest to a geoscientist becomes
encoded in a sacred lore, structured but dynamic, and firmly rooted in place, allowing it to
live on in the minds and words of many for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years.

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14 \ vierzehn

Of course, the impacts of the last two centuries in Australian history cannot be ignored.
Europeans have forced Aboriginal peoples from their lands and removed children from their
families, interrupting ancient connections to Country and Songlines – but Aboriginal peoples
have fought hard to keep their Dreaming alive. The ongoing campaign to recognise
Aboriginal land rights is a crucial step in supporting the continued survival and flourishing of
one of the oldest oral traditions in the world.

Further Reading:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/oral-tradition
https://www.science.org/content/article/aboriginal-tale-ancient-volcano-oldest-story-ever-
told
https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2016/09/how-oral-
cultures-memorise-so-much-information/
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/songlines-indigenous-
memory-code/7581788
https://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preserve-history-of-a-rise-in-sea-
level-36010

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 15 \ fünfzehn

lipo
u
O

French literature at its finest

By Valentin Pradelou

Writing a book is an expression. Actually, you’re free to let your mind wander, as long as
you have a reader. But what if there were constraints to the writing process? Not usual
constraints, no… Mathematical constraints? Would you read a book made out on a
series of constraints? If yes, keep reading, you should be interested in what I have to tell
you today.

OULIPO is a French-speaking literature group. They want to discover language’s

possibilities with writing games. And it goes without saying: they usually have a good
sense of humor. Who are they? Why do they do that? How does it work? Let’s get into it.

Wikipedia offers a pretty good summary of their story and characteristics. I'll base the
article on it, and some other books or internet sites I'll mention later. Let's go!

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
16 \ sechzehn

OULIPO? What's this?

OULIPO is an acronym referring to a literature group created in the 20th century and
still existing. This acronym means ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or in English
"workroom of potential literature". The meaning of the title is followed: this group aims
at working on potential literature by using constraints. This literature group was indeed
created in the middle of the 20th century. The goal was the following: discovering
language's new possibilities and a renewing of writing with games. Mathematical games.
It may sound a bit strange for a literature group, but it's actually their motto. These
challenges, constraints, games (call it whatever you want) tend to using hints and
finding new solutions to write stories. The idea is actually to break the habit to renew
writing. Raymond Queneau even said that the members are like "rats building their own
maze from which they try to get out".

There are a lot of members (because once you get accepted into the group, you can't
leave, we'll see that a little later), but the most famous ones are Raymond Queneau,
Georges Perec or Italo Salvino, pretty famous French speaking writers. So far, no
problem, a literature group is composed with writers. However, OULIPO also has
different members: Olivier Salon was for example a mathematician and poet, and
Claude Berge was a pure mathematician! (he actually developed a mathematic theory,
the graph theory).

Some examples of constraints

We've said it, OULIPO members write books based on constraints in order to explore
literature potential. What constraints, you might ask? Let's discover the OULIPO's
internet site, especially the tab with a list of constraints:
https://www.oulipo.net/contraintes/document19666.html. One is, to me, pretty
interesting (but man, how could you even write things with this challenge). The
monovocalism. You're free to use any consonant you like, but only one vowel! Georges
Perec wrote one entitled What a man with only the a, or Jacques Jouet wrote one only
with the e (Ce fêlé de mec, "this crackpot dude"). If you find this crazy, follow the link and
you'll discover some crazier ones. For example, tautograms. Do you know what this is?
It's a text in which every word starts with the same letter. The example given is from
Georges Perec, let's take a peek at it: Ca commença comme ça : certaines calomnies
circulaient concernant cinq conseillers civils coloniaux (...). We can give this translation: "It
began like this: certain slanders spread about five colonial civil counselors". We could
this is only a "formal challenge", like you just have to find words starting with the same
letter and put them together. But no! The text has a sense! Frankly, this is incredible.

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 17 \ siebzehn

The same author, Georges Perec, is also a big worker in potential literature. Maybe
you've already heard or read about him, he wrote an entire book without the letter e,
entitled La disparition ("the disappearance"). The book is pretty hard to read as a lot of
words are old or very special to match the constraint of "no e". However, the entire book
has a meaning, a real story, and it's full of humor! I have to say, the constraint is hard,
but the book remains very good. I haven't read a lot of books from OULIPO members,
but I can tell this one is very interesting and funny. By the way, fun and humor are a
cornerstone for OULIPO. I'd like to emphasize it in a last paragraph.

A fine sense of humor

Despite their goal of mixing mathematics and literature, looking pretty serious, OULIPO
members seem to have a big sense of humor. First, because every book I've read from
OULIPO members were funny.

Second, their rules are very special as well. Do you know how to become a member of
the group? You have to be elected and everybody has to vote for you, but you must not
have ever asked to be a member of the group. Once you're a member, you can't leave it,
as I said earlier. Actually, you can. But you have to commit a suicide in front of a court
bailiff. Did I mention they had a fine sense of humor?

If you decide to not leave the group, then you'll belong until you pass. Does it allow you
to leave the group? No! But how will you attend the group reunions? Don't worry, you're
"excused on account of passing". They play with the subject of death, and they remain
funny (at least to me, I guess).

As we’ve seen, OULIPO is a very special and fun literature group. And we have only
scratched the surface of their different activities. In future articles, it would maybe be
interesting to take a peek at one piece of an OULIPO author. It’ll maybe show us how
thoroughly these authors work.

Thanks for reading!

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 18 \ achtzehn

the
f f i c e
o bo o k
h r a s e
p

Michael Scott’s Elements of Eloquence

by Joana Bourlon

Photo by Anthony A on Unsplash

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 19 \ neunzehn

If you haven’t seen the US series The Office and don’t know who Michael
Scott is, let me introduce him by using one of his lines: “Hi, I’m date Mike,
nice to meet me”.

Let me also tell you that Michael Scott has the loveliest coffee mug with an
inscription on it that reads “World’s Best Boss”. He bought this mug himself.

The Office’s Michael Scott is the regional manager of a failing paper

company named Dunder Mifflin, based in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The
character played by Steve Carell is both an embodiment and a denonciation
of the most absurd and sometimes even backward behavior one can meet in
the workplace. Indeed, at times Michael Scott can be disrespectful towards
people different from him. Just as an example, he once had to announce
some bad news to a colleague (played by Craig Robinson) and decided that
putting a ream of paper in his shirt was a good idea to protect him from a
potential punch.

Other characters have tried explaining to him why some of his behavior is
not appropriate, but Michael does not seem to be able to understand what’s
being said to him. I guess that’s why he is rather accepted around the office
after all. He also displays an array of good qualities that perhaps
counterbalance at least partly his absurdity: he trusts his employees and
rarely micromanages them (or should
I say “micro-gements” them), he’s
always energetic, he has a high
opinion of (almost) all of his
coworkers and he is generally trying
to make things right (after it’s usually
him who messed up in the first place).

All that being said, the character’s

lines are written in a way that reflects
his good and bad sides and renders
him both absurd and endearing. To
support this claim, let's have a look at
a couple of his elements of eloquence.

Photo by Pablo Varela on Unsplash

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
20 \ zwanzig

“Who knows how words are formed”

Michael Scott

Throughout the series Michael coins his own words by confusing, replacing
or adding some morphemes unintentionally. Sometimes it’s really subtle,
sometimes not at all.

For instance, in the episode The Delivery, Michael qualifies the chances of
two of his subordinates getting together as “insurmountainable”, instead of
“insurmountable”. Let’s break down the existing word into its building blocks
to see how and why one can come up with ‘insurmountainable’.

Insurmountable is composed of four morphemes: three affixes, out of which

two prefixes and one suffix, and the root of the word. In and sur, as is
always the case with prefixes, are both placed before the stem word mount,
while able finds its position, as is always the case with suffixes, after the
base word. The root mount is a free morpheme, i.e. it has its own meaning
and can stand by itself. In fact, the verb mount, finds its origins in the (Old)
French word monter for climbing or going up.

So in the example of insurmountable and insurmountainable, Michael

replaces one free morpheme with another. In fact, mountain consists of its
root mount and its suffix ain, so after all Michael is just adding a second
suffix. Personally, I find insurmountainable’s affixal symmetry very elegant.

Another example of Michael adding morphemes can be found in the season

3’s episode The convention, where he makes the point that a real
relationship can’t be forced and “it should just come about effortlendlessly”.
Here he adds the free morpheme “lend” resulting in a pseudo-word (or a
neologism if it catches up) with a compound morpheme: we end up with
“effort” and “lend”, two free morphemes. My guess is that by adding ‘lend’,
the idea is that the little to no effort needed in order to do something
effortlessly is loaned and not owned. In any case, the irony of complicating
the word ‘effortlessly’ is delicious.

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Let’s also have a look at one term Michael Scott invented and that I really hope
catches on. In the season 4’s episode Fun Run, after doing something stupid
and horrible and not assuming his responsibility (sorry for the wordiness, I’m
really trying not to spoil the show for people who have not seen it yet), Michael
is sure that there is a curse lingering around the office and says that he is not
superstitious, but a ‘little-stitious’.

In order to understand why little-stitious is not such a preposterous word and

why it would be nice if it caught up, let’s have a look at the morphemes and the
etymology of the noun superstition. It’s composed of one prefix: super
(meaning ‘over’) and one bound morpheme: stition. Stition, at least to my
knowledge, is not an actual word, and contrary to a free morpheme, it cannot
stand by itself. But apparently, stition can be traced down to the Latin verb
“stare”, translated into English by “to stand”. So is it really so crazy to replace
the prefix ‘super’ with a free morpheme, such as ‘little’, in order to avoid the
verbosity of saying ‘little superstitious’?

So far, we've had a glimpse of Michael's talent for creating words. Let's now
look at his proficiency in distorting idioms and phrases.

Michael in a doggy-dog world

Merriam-Webster defines malapropism as “the usually unintentionally

humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase, especially the use of a
word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the
context”.

What the dictionary leaves out is that Michael Scott is the king of
malapropisms. Let’s have a look at some examples.

In the Prince Family Paper episode Michel says that “The business world is a
doggy-dog world”. Here, the dog-eat-dog world (meaning a highly-
competitive environment where people would do anything to succeed) is
replaced by the similarly sounding (but literally much cuter) doggy-dog world.

The Stress Relief Episode provides us with the following line: “Cut off your nose

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to spider face” instead of “cut off your nose to spite your face” meaning to do
something that you think will hurt someone without caring or realizing that it
will hurt you as well.

Of course, Michael also gives us the textbook example that is incidentally the
one used by the Merriam-Webster dictionary to illustrate malapropisms.
Here's an extract of the phone conversation Michael is having with his boss
during the episode Secret Santa:

Michael Scott: David guess who I'm sitting here dressed as.
David Wallace: I'm not going to guess. You can either tell me or I'm going to
hang up.
Michael Scott: I'll give you a hint. His last name is Christ. He has the power of
flight. He can heal leopards.

Michael's lines are written in a brilliant way that often distorts words or
phrases to achieve humorous effect and reflects his personality. In "spider" of
his misuses, people understand what he means. The opposite is not always
true though. But that's a story for another time.

Going Further

The second part of this article’s title was directly taken from the very
instructive and enjoyable The Elements of Eloquence : How to Turn the
Perfect English Phrase by Mark Forsyth. Unsurprisingly, malapropisms and
morphological analysis of modern made up words did not make it into a book
about classical rhetoric.

The 17th time I’ve seen The Office, I decided to jot down the unusual things
Michael was saying. Some made it into this article as the examples you just
read. Others, such as “very comedically humorous” or “tell him to call me asap
as possible” did not make the cut. I double checked my notes with the
Michael Scott’s memes that are all over the internet, as well as with a list of
Michael's Botched Phrases from an office fandom page.

If we consider “effortless” as the stem of “effortlessly”, the “lend” in

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effortlendlessly can be considered as an infix, a rather rare phenomenon in

English. If you want to go beyond infixes, you can read Catherine Muxworthy’s
article on Expletive Infixation from Issue n°39.

Lastly, I’d like to leave you with a quote from Holly Gustafson’s Book Review
from Issue n° 22 : “Nobody knows everything – one of the pleasures of
language is that there is always something new to learn – and everybody
makes mistakes”.

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How Corpora
Changed Linguistics
By Oscar Torres

A long time ago in a German forest far, far away, two brothers who by chance
happened to share the surname “Grimm” noticed something odd. They had
roamed far and wide their Northern European, homelands and even a bit
further to collect stories. Although they were surprised with how some stories
were so similar –they did study Germanic and Norse cultures, after all—one of
these brothers who we’ll call Jacob (or Jakie for friends) noticed a strange
pattern.

The old chap realized that every time a German word finished with the strong
S sound, like in “Fuß”, that same word would have a T in Swedish (“fot”) and
English (“foot”). And this would happen with other consonants as well,
discovering correspondences with German fricatives (sounds like the F or S
where the air only slightly comes out) and Swedish or English plosives
(sounds where there’s a hard stop and air gets expelled forcefully, like P or T).

The interesting thing about it was that he could only notice it because he had
inadvertently made a comparative corpus of folklore in Germanic languages
and spent enough time reading and writing them down to notice it. Today,
we’ll be talking about why collections of texts like the Brothers Grimm’s are
key to our modern understanding of linguistics and will only continue to grow
in importance.

So, what exactly is a corpus?

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A corpus (“corpora” in plural) is essentially a bunch of specifically selected text

samples, be it written or spoken, that linguists use to study patterns or test theories.
They’re not exactly new, as historical linguistics has used collections of manuscripts
to understand how languages arrived at their current state since the dawn of time,
noting little changes in spelling over centuries. However, the understanding that we
have of them nowadays has only existed since the 1960s, coinciding with the rise of
computers, the internet, and statistical analysis.

In the olden days, linguists like our dear Jakie had to research using the traditional
“horizontal” or “line-by-line” reading. This meant long, arduous hours comparing
and making a tally of each time he noticed that a German P matched with a
Swedish F. With statistical software, however, linguists during the 60s and 70s
could read “vertically” to find patterns.

Imagine a spreadsheet with thousands of samples of text in each row, and all they
had to do to find hundreds of matches was pressing a button and the program
would “align” every instance of the word “apple” in the different languages to see
that Eastern Germanic languages would spell it something like “affel” or “apfel” and
Western Germanic languages would have something like “apel” or “apple”. Jakie
sure would have loved to have this back in the 19th Century.

Corpora are often used to compare languages, but they can also be used to track
the changes in a language as they occur by taking recordings every year, to help
create standardized guides for learners of a language by finding the most common
(or “normative”) vocabulary, and so much more.

The corpus revolution

Let’s say we are a group of linguists prior to the 1960s who want to test a theory.
Let’s say that all adverbs in English can be made with an adjective and the
termination “-ly”. If we have enough funding, we could probably buy a couple dozen
general or purpose-specific dictionaries and study them long and hard over the
course of a few months to test our theory. We might reach a conclusion, but we
wouldn’t have nearly enough real-world data to conclude that we are actually in the
right without statistically significant evidence.

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But what if we have access to computers that we can just spill all the data into and
have it churn out results? Obviously, it would be quite a bit more efficient in terms
of time and money. Add the fact that soon after PCs arrived the internet made
corpora not only easier to work with, but also easier to access and compile, now
that large databases and digitized versions of documents and texts were available
to a previously unimaginable extent.

Millions, billions, and we’re getting close to trillions of words in a single corpus can
be accessed in seconds. These databases kept growing while linguists reached a
moment of “crisis” as the previous methods were rendered inadequate to study
data at this scale.

Previous researchers’ main obstacle was acquiring the amount of data to be able to
demonstrate theories or extract conclusions, but researchers in the ‘90s had to
develop new methods in all subfields and paradigms in linguistics to adapt to the
sheer magnitude of the data. All of this led to changes in the quality criteria for
evidence, the emergence of new patterns that had not been thought of previously,
the possibility of testing previously assumed theories, and the questioning of the
philosophy around knowledge itself.

Final word

Linguists who lived and did research as the field changed have collaboratively paved
the road for us newcomers in terms of developing tools to work with corpora and
syllabuses that include training for them. Not to mention the fact that they had to
adapt all their previously existing methods “on the fly” to be able to continue doing
research.

The main point I extract from all this is that it is nearly impossible to carry out
research in linguistics without a proper training in what corpora are and how they
are used. Corpora are a resource that is taken for granted from the perspective of a
student who is arriving to the field, and the fact that there is still much more to
explore and understand about their possibilities leaves many doors open for a
dissertation or thesis.

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To conclude, the pioneers from the past century left us with so many questions, and
now it’s our turn to answer them. What does it mean to be “right”? How many
matches do I need to say that something is significant? In what contexts? When do I
stop adding data? What samples can I use that won’t skew my results? These and a
long etcetera of questions are issues that we are still dealing with nowadays, and
we probably will still deal with for years to come.

April 2022, Issue #47 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 THANKS FOR READING
SILLY LINGISTICS ISSUE
#47
W i t!
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