Category: Linguistics

sub·men·tion (noun informal): 1. A post about someone or something on a personal website where one neglects (accidentally or on purpose) to either send a webmention and/or syndicate a copy out to an appropriate social silo. 2. Such a post which explicitly has the experimental microformat rel=”nomention” which prevents webmention code from triggering for the attached URL. 3. Any technologically evolved form of apophasis (Greek ἀπόφασις from ἀπόφημι apophemi, “to say no”) which sends no notifications using standard Internet or other digital protocols.

Origin
Early 21st century: a blend or portmanteau of subliminal and webmention.

Pronunciation
submention /ˈsʌbˈmɛn(t)ʃ(ə)n/

Related
subtweet

📺 ‘The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump’: 27 Psychiatrists Assess | The Last Word | MSNBC on YouTube

Watched 'The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump': 27 Psychiatrists Assess | The Last Word | MSNBC from youtube.com

In a new book, 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts asses President Donald Trump's behavior. Do his impulses explain his decisions? The book's editor Dr. Brandy Lee and Tony Schwartz, co-author of Trump's "The Art of the Deal," join Lawrence O'Donnell.

📺 Ron Perlman Talks President Donald Trump Speech Patterns | AM Joy | MSNBC on YouTube

Watched Ron Perlman Talks President Donald Trump Speech Patterns | AM Joy | MSNBC from youtube.com

Joy Reid is joined by actor and author Ron Perlman, and Columbia University professor of linguistics John McWhorter, on the bombshell statements and run-on sentences from Donald Trump’s recent New York Times interview.

👓 Ergodic | John D. Cook

Read Ergodic by John D. Cook (John D. Cook Consulting)
Roughly speaking, an ergodic system is one that mixes well. You get the same result whether you average its values over time or over space. This morning I ran across the etymology of the word ergodic.
I’d read this before, but had a nice reminder about it this morning.

👓 Allow me to explain why we don’t need words like ‘mansplain’ | The Guardian

Read Allow me to explain why we don't need words like 'mansplain' by Liz Cookman (the Guardian)
The man-shaming portmanteau undermines feminism’s message of equality

👓 Is It Racist To ‘Call A Spade A Spade’? | NPR

Read Is It Racist To 'Call A Spade A Spade'? by Lakshmi Gandhi

What happens when a perfectly innocuous phrase takes on a more sinister meaning over time?

Case in point, the expression "to call a spade a spade." For almost half a millennium, the phrase has served as a demand to "tell it like it is." It is only in the past century that the phrase began to acquire a negative, racial overtone.

Historians trace the origins of the expression to the Greek phrase "to call a fig a fig and a trough a trough." Exactly who was the first author of "to call a trough a trough" is lost to history. Some attribute it to Aristophanes, while others attribute it to the playwright Menander. The Greek historian Plutarch (who died in A.D. 120) used it in Moralia.The blogger Matt Colvin, who has a Ph.D. in Greek literature, recently pointed out that the original Greek expression was very likely vulgar in nature and that the "figs" and "troughs" in question were double entendres.

👓 Steven Pinker Explains the Neuroscience of Swearing | Open Culture

Read Steven Pinker Explains the Neuroscience of Swearing by Matthias Rascher (Open Culture)
Pinker talking about his then new book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, and doing what he does best: combining psychology and neuroscience with linguistics. The result is as entertaining as it is insightful.

👓 Trump used to be more articulate. What could explain the change? | STAT

Read Trump used to be more articulate. What could explain the change? by Sharon Begley (STAT)

STAT asked experts to compare Trump's speech from decades ago to that in 2017. All noticed deterioration, which may signal changes in Trump's brain health.

STAT reviewed decades of Trump’s on-air interviews and compared them to Q&A sessions since his inauguration. The differences are striking and unmistakable.

Research has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the health of Trump’s brain.

👓 Eagles point the way | Jeremy Cherfas

Read Eagles point the way by Jeremy Cherfas (jeremycherfas.net)

I rant regularly when people abuse Latin binomials by adding an unnecessary article in front of them, like people who refer to "the acanthomyops latipes". As I said at the time:

While I happily refer to the Skidelskys, I would never dream of calling them the Edward Skidelsky and the Robert Skidelsky. How hard is it to use a Latin name as a name?

Now I have a new term with which to beat people over the head. Thanks to a very informative article by Geoffrey K. Pullum over at Language Log (Glenn Frey and the band with the anomalous name) I now know not only that the band was called Eagles, not The Eagles, and also that such a thing -- "which takes no the" -- is called a strong proper name.

P.s. The comments on the Language Log post reveal that many bands, some of which I've even heard of, apparently have strong proper names, Talking Heads being my favourite.

Reminds me of people using the hoi polloi…

Installing Google’s IME so I can type Japanese hiragana on my keyboard more easily https://www.google.co.jp/ime/

Installing Google’s IME so I can type Japanese hiragana on my keyboard more easily https://www.google.co.jp/ime/

The vowel "R", and other linguistic curiosities

Watched The vowel "R", and other linguistic curiosities by Aaron Parecki from YouTube
A vowel? Yep! I'll show you spectrograms of various words to illustrate how "R" is just as much a vowel as "E" and "I". Of course there's also the vowels "Y"...