Noncompositional

I was surprised and very happy about the sudden interest on LL in “yeah no” (initial post and the aftermath)since I’ve also been paying attention to the little guy in some recent research (following up, in a sense, from two earlier posts of mine here and here. I won’t reveal too much now (have to keep you in suspense!) but there’s one use of it which is really cool, and which is illustrated by LL’s own Geoff Nunberg on NPR.

Get yourself an archived recording of Talk of the Nation on June 2nd, 2004. It’s a discussion between Neal Conan and Geoff Nunberg on his then-new book Going Nucular. At about 10m30s into the session, they’re taking calls, and you’ll hear this:

JIM: Well, three categories here. I’ll do them real quickly. First I guess I’ll call it the category of the cachet of erudition. ((dozens of seconds omitted; some talk of the word robust included near the beginning))

CONAN: Any thoughts on those, Geoffrey?

Mr. NUNBERG: Yeah. No. I think ‘robust,’ for example, is an instance of one of those vogue words that for one reason or another is just picked up and people like the sound of it. You’re right. I don’t know if it’s erudition but there’s a kind of pleasure in saying a word like that and everybody plugs into it.

This sort of thing happens not infrequently on NPR (and other radio talk shows, I presume). It might even be getting to the point where “yeah no” (and sometimes just “no”) is almost just a question-uptake marker more than anything else. Listen for it. Other good places to listen for it: asymmetric social contexts, especially where one person constantly feels the need to maintain a non-disagreement or positive-alignment stance with other people there, either just in order to be nice (think job interviews) or to prevent themselves from being misunderstood (think any academic context).

It’s too bad that neither Burridge and Florey, nor Moore’s thesis from what I saw, take up the task of comparing “yeah-no” and “no-yeah” to the use and distribution of yeah and no individually. Maybe I’m just too much of a lexical semanticist. But, if they had, they might have found what I did in going through a bunch of LDC mixer corpora (as well as some more natural conversations): namely, that in most but not all cases there’s not a whole lot special about the combination in and of itself. It doesn’t seem to fulfil any core function that either “yeah” or “no” aren’t observed to do on their own (assuming you assign some combination of propositional and discursive meaning to each yeah and no when they do appear on their own, and also when they appear in combination). There may be cases where it is appropriate or even ideal to use both, as many of Mark’s readers pointed out (like in responses to negative or leading questions), but the resulting “meaning” is not really anything beyond what you might expect by putting the two together. I think that’s the case with most of the examples in the two LL posts. However, Australia could be a completely different story. In particular, if you have access to the Burridge and Florey article, check out the “athletic” use, which to my ears is actually rather strange.

Finally, it may interest my more sociologically- or CA-minded readers (all none of them?) that this sequence of words was analyzed by Schegloff in a 1992 paper, “Repair After Next Turn: The Last Structurally Provided Defense of Intersubjectivity in Conversation”, Am. J of Soc. He also looked at just “no” in “Getting Serious: Joke->Serious ‘No’” (2001, J of Prag.), but this “no” can also be combined with “yeah” resulting in a very similar effect. This is the use that I don’t think any of the LL-responders has mentioned, where you say something joking as a sort of ice-breaker, and then “(yeah) no I just wanted to ask you about….” This is as opposed to Mark’s (right-on, by the way) characterization of the “no” as indicating “divergence from (perhaps shared) presuppositions or expectations” — note the similarity to “intersubjectivity” in Schegloff’s title.

As far as eggcorns go, I admit that this is a stretch. In fact, it probably isn’t one at all. It’s probably better analyzed as some sort of idiom blend between formal aspects of “take X for granted” and meaningful aspects of “take advantage of X”. I first heard this while listening to parts of the Switchboard corpus, but in that case the speaker corrected himself.

A: It’s interesting, I really hadn’t given any thought at all to things like buttons and seams, but I guess I’ve just begun to take that for advantage that buttons are not going to be sewn on, I mean, took that for granted that buttons are not going to be sewn on very well.

A google search reveals a small number of attestations (below). These all seem to be paraphrasable with “take X for granted,” but with the restriction that what you are taking for granted is something positive, and something which “gives you an advantage” or which could potentially be (improperly) taken advantage of. Compare this with the possibility, probably only available in formal writing, of “take X for granted” meaning “assume” (e.g., From here on I will take it for granted that {Bi: i in I} is a partition, and rely on this in statement and proof of results.)

The big issue is that “granted” and “advantage” really don’t sound alike, except for the rhyme of the stressed syllable and following bit of the next syllable ([ant@]).

Put the energy to good use, but don’t take it for advantage and push the horse too hard too fast. (link)

Brandy: It’s pretty good. Some schools should have it because people talk a lot about people. I’m not sure exactly why but maybe if someone got to understand what someone else was going through every now and then, they wouldn’t take it for advantage but they would try to understand a person and actually reach out to them instead of hurt them. (link)

Always willing to lend a helping hand but dislike those who take it for advantage (link)

this movie is so awesome it makes me think how good we all have it and take it for advantage i like it even though it ends differently than the book its still way cool and all philosophical like ([link(http://www.gnovies.com/discussion/fight+club.html))

What a wonderful gift God has given to us and we take it for advantage everyday (link)

Treasure your friends and do not take them for advantage. (link)

Consider what are likely values for X in the phrasal template (nascent snowclone?) I X and I vote. Such a declaration is commonly seen on bumper stickers and sometimes in the windows of people’s places of residence. In my experience (at least the experience that I think I can recall), it’s most commonly I own a gun and I vote and I’m in the NRA and I vote. But that could just be because a house near where I used to live had such a sign up in his or her window. I briefly considered that this was more of a right-wing thing to say. But if you search on google you’ll find slogans like I’m Indian, I game and I vote, I have a dog and I vote, and I’m undead and I vote, none of which really leads one to believe that the voter in question leans one way or the other politically. Well, maybe the last one…

Let it be known that other(s) have noted and commented on this pattern, including this criticism. Others seem to be aware of the template and modify it consciously.

In any case, it seems that the non-humorous ones tend at least to be proclaiming that the person holds some fringe (I’m Pagan and I vote) or at least controversial (I’m Pro-Choice and I vote) stance. What’s interesting is what you can tell about a person from the bumper sticker beyond the two stated facts.

Okay, so I really have only one case in mind, and that’s the following bumper sticker I saw recently in Berkeley. I don’t recall the sort of car it was on, but the sticker was green, and it read

I eat tofu and I vote.

Given the connection in the West (or at least California) between tofu and vegetarianism/veganism, and (thereby?) with environmentalism, and in general progressive attitudes, I read this as a statement of progressive, or possibly just tree-hugger values. But for what class of people could you draw such a connection? And here’s where the issue of the significance of tofu-eating comes in. There are people for whom tofu eating is nothing special, myself included, but nonetheless there is at least for some people (again, myself included) a recognition of the indexicality of tofu, especially (or exclusively) among people for whom tofu is something quite special. And it is this latter group’s recognition of the specialness of tofu that lets one understand the significance of the bumper sticker. Of course it’s not so simple as all that - it’s not necessarily just about individuals who happen to eat tofu, but the historical context in which they eat it. The grown child of an immigrant from a tofu-eating nation might feel just as home with tofu as the grown child of people raised in a tofu-is-new culture. Nonetheless, the social significance of eating tofu, or at least the recognition of a historical significance, might somehow persist in the later generation, such that the driver of that car might have dietary habits observably no different from (say) mine, though it would be entirely misleading (in intent, though not in literal meaning) to put that bumper sticker on my own car.

On the other hand, if a bumper sticker were to read I eat rice and I vote we would have a rather different situation.

At the beginning of the Double Jeopardy! round of today’s Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek noted to one contestant, “Robin, I see red on you and red in front of you: let’s try to get rid of one of those this round.”

Robin had a negative score, and was wearing a red shirt. Thank goodness for specific indefinites.

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This is not what I promised in an earlier post, but the topic is basically the same.

Now, I’m not widely read in (epic) fantasy novels, though it is often my preferred genre. Nonetheless, I think I can make a tentative generalization, which is that in any fantasy world where some either exotic or ancient race speaks a language unintelligible to contemporary folk, then there is somehow an inordinate amount of polysemy, connotation, or complexity to the words and sentences involved. Or, alternatively, it is approximately the same amount as in the modern language (usually “English”), but it is highlighted in such a way as to make it seem rather different from anything that might be familiar.

Just to pick a couple examples from Tad William’s book Shadowmarch (which I’m currently in the middle of reading; no spoilers):

The lady’s high house was called Shehen, which meant “Weeping.” Because it was a s’a-Qar word, it meant other things, too–it carried the intimation of an unexpected ending, and a suggestion of the scent of the plant that in the sunlight lands was called myrtle–but more than anything else, it meant “Weeping.”

…all the way down to the thrice-blessed fence that the mortals called Shadowline, and that the Qar themselves called A’shish-Yarrit Sa, which meant “Storm of Silence,” or, with a slightly different intonation of voice or gesture of the hand, “White Thoughts.”

I suppose that the second example is supposed to be significantly different from, say, tonal languages like those found in China and Africa. In this case, we are supposed to understand that the two meanings for A’shish-Yarrit Sa are somehow semantically related (in some deep way incomprehensible to mere humans). Either that, or somehow we’re dealing with a pun, or maybe just some philosophically interesting near-homophony which, perhaps, native speakers of Qar don’t even care about.

Now, this sort of thing is not in and of itself completely horrible. But for me, without an actual system apparent behind the words and their meanings, which could, with time, be discerned by the reader (and yes, this requires many more tokens in the books), it just seems…well, laughable.

Just over a year ago I wrote about Anderson Cooper’s description of America’s growing population. Seems it’s about time for me to do sort of the same thing, only with an ad I saw while over in Chicago for the annual meeting of my professional organization. On one of the L trains there was an advertisement for a new book, The Chicago “L”. The ad read something like,

Make a connection to the over 10 billion riders of the Chicago “L”

That was surprising. I thought the current population of the earth was around 6 billion! Anyway, it’s quite clear what is meant, namely that over 10 billion rides have been taken since the opening of the L in 1892, no doubt many involving repeat customers. Fair enough - but do different rides by the same individual require making a new connection with them for each new ride? Sure, some days the trip is special, but whatever connection this book lets me create with, say, Janice Smith going to work on June 3rd, 1985, will probably also work for her going to work on June 4th. Just a guess, of course.

Similarly strange is what is apparently on the blurb (from Amazon):

More than 10 billion people have ridden the “L,” which now carries half a million people a day over 222 miles of track.

Now, I’d like to claim that more than one thousand people read this blog, but somehow I think I would get called on it…

One interesting thing that came out of this was a little research I did into estimations not of the world’s current population, but of the sum total of humans who’ve ever lived. One estimate puts it at just over 100 billion. More than I would have guessed. And according to the same source, about 11 billion people were alive between 1900 and 2002. So hey, theoretically (maybe?) it’s possible that 10 billion individuals have ridden on the L.

The other day in the class I’m TAing, the professor said, “by the end of the semester, there are ten questions that you should be able to answer like that.” That got me thinking, what is up with the phrase “like that” and its meaning, namely ‘with ease’. For one thing, it’s really hard to represent in writing. You could use typographic emphasis: he can do it like that. Or you could add a word to make it clearer: she finished it just like that. Or, you could notice that it’s sometimes (often?) accompanied by a snap of the fingers, so could have: “You should be able to answer it like that,” he said with a quick snap of the fingers.

And on that note: it seems likely to me that what we have here is a phrase that was at some point rather dependent on a concurrent snap (either timed with that, or perhaps, for dramatic effect, just before that) to make any sense, but over time the association became conventional enough that the gesture was no longer needed. And in fact you could say like that along with any appropriate gesture that indicates speed, ease, or some similar idea. It’d be interesting to see if, in the absence of any gesture, it is regularly or obligatorily replaced by some prosodic cue.

Then I checked the OED entry for like, and lo and behold, there was a meaning! But it wasn’t what I was expecting:

[...] of the nature, character, or habit indicated; spec. (usu. accompanying the crossing of the speaker’s fingers) as an indication that two people described are very friendly or intimate

The first written attestation for this use is from The Great Gatsby. For me, if I want to express that meaning, I’d have to use the finger-crossing gesture - no amount of facial or intonational gymnastics seems to get it quite right. Which is interesting, since my first associations with that particular gesture are the “hope” and “nyah nyah I can break my promise” meanings.

This morning as I was walking to campus, I thought about the meaning of share. There are, broadly, at least two cases where you can describe some situation as involving sharing. One is where there is some individual K who has ownership/possession/control over a particular item (call it a “resource,” though it could be a toy truck). K allows some other people to make use of that resource, potentially as though it were their own, but with the understanding that the resource still belongs to K. If the people K is sharing the resource with eventually decide they don’t need to use it any more, then K goes back to having full use over it. The other situation involves joint ownership or “usership.” Two or more individuals have access to some resource, either because it is public (e.g., computers in a library) or because they acquire it together, and agree to some arrangement that lets each of them use it approximately whenever they want to. If it ever happens that one of the individuals decides they don’t need use of that resource any more, and if they have joint ownership (i.e., not a public resource) then there may have to be some negotiation to see what happens to the resource (e.g., they exchange money so that one person has paid the full price of the resource).

In thinking about these two different situations (which, yes, can be found in a good dictionary), I thought: when can you say something like I’m sharing X with her? Certainly if you are K above, then you can say this. And if you are one of the individuals in the second situation, then you can say this as well. Okay, how about I’m sharing my X? Again, okay if you’re K, but not if you’re in the second situation. That makes sense. How about I’m sharing his X? At first, I thought maybe that didn’t make sense. If Jason shares his bike with me, then it doesn’t seem like I could say I have a bike I can use — I’m sharing Jason’s. So I checked Google (so far I’ve just looked for “sharing his X”).

Turns out there’s a lot of sharing other people’s stuff, but it’s not the meaning I was looking for: there’s a sense of share that has to do with informing or communication: I can share the findings of my research with your, or share Jason’s email from last night. But, in all the examples, I did find a few of the type I was after. One was pretty normal:

I do feel a need to at least be nice to Dave Winer while I’m sharing his potato chips. (0xDECAFBAD)

And the rest seemed to come from creative writing blogs and websites.

And yes, I’m sharing his room with him. (Jueann’s Project and Diary)

It’s not that he’s verbally telling me not to say too much. I’m sharing his body, and his brain, just for the moment. (One To Many)

I flew with Mr. Eagle again today I think it must be the same one that I flew with last time he seems not too worried that I’m sharing his space.

Yes, it’s just anecdotal evidence, but I swear, several times I’ve been looking for slightly oddball constructions, and nearly all the hits are from some sort of creative writing - serial stories on blogs, fanfiction, and so forth.