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Posts tagged: linguistics

Languages animate objects by giving them names, making them noticeable when we might not otherwise be aware of them. Tuvan has a word iy (pronounced like the letter e), which indicates the short side of a hill.

I had never noticed that hills had a short side. But once I learned the word, I began to study the contours of hills, trying to identify the iy. It turns out that hills are asymmetrical, never perfectly conical, and indeed one of their sides tends to be steeper and shorter than the others.

If you are riding a horse, carrying firewood, or herding goats on foot, this is a highly salient concept. You never want to mount a hill from the iy side, as it takes more energy to ascend, and an iy descent is more treacherous as well. Once you know about the iy, you see it in every hill and identify it automatically, directing your horse, sheep, or footsteps accordingly.

This is a perfect example of how language adapts to local environment, by packaging knowledge into ecologically relevant bits. Once you know that there is an iy, you don’t really have to be told to notice it or avoid it. You just do. The language has taught you useful information in a covert fashion, without explicit instruction.

K. David Harrison, The Last Speakers (via containslanguage)

The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense. Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers.

Among the works were, for example, a paper published as a proceeding from the 2013 International Conference on Quality, Reliability, Risk, Maintenance, and Safety Engineering, held in Chengdu, China. (The conference website says that all manuscripts are “reviewed for merits and contents”.) The authors of the paper, entitled ‘TIC: a methodology for the construction of e-commerce’, write in the abstract that they “concentrate our efforts on disproving that spreadsheets can be made knowledge-based, empathic, and compact”. (Nature News has attempted to contact the conference organizers and named authors of the paper but received no reply; however at least some of the names belong to real people. The IEEE has now removed the paper).

Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers : Nature News & Comment

If you are wondering how this happens, it is because academic jargon echolalic, and phrases become stock phrases, hat computer programs can replicate things that sound enough like the real near nonsense articles that take hours to decipher. Because understanding all the jargon and insider phrasing is supposed to be a sign of aptitude and experience in the field, no one on these journals dares voice the idea that these technobabble articles are actually nonsense for fear of being seen as just not knowledgeable enough to “get” all the complicated insular language. As a result every just kind of glances at these things, sees the words that look right, and nods it along.

Non-peer reviewed journals are of course more susceptible, but because of the culture of jargon and drivel and fear of sounding not in the know enough, even supposedly peer reviewed journals fall pray to these revealing hoaxes.

At least they were removed before some professor assigned them to their students to analyze for class.

Juggalo Translation; He Wasn’t Even Calling Her Ho-Titty Trust Me I Have Been A Juggalo For Thirty Years

stormingtheivory:

fayghost:

Gamzee Essay number one.

A lot of people are in a lot of disagreement about what the fuck Gamzee is actually saying and what we’re supposed to take away from it. I’m here to help shed some light on the issue. My credentials to do so? Well, I’ve been a juggalo for thirty years.

Not really, but I’ve been doing a lot of research and I’m an Amurrcan that grew up around the sort of low-income troublekids that ICP markets itself too, I had a friend show me some of their music when I was a kid! And of course nowadays I’ve done my extensive journeying through juggalo lore to learn more about everybody’s least favorite sodaclown.

So basically you’re just gonna have to take my word for this one, right? Or not!! I am not your earth human mother.

GAMZEE: MOTHER FUCK WHO’S ALL THIS FRESH PIMP RYDA I GOT MY WICKED PEEP ON FOR SUDDENLY? IT’S A MOTHER FUCKIN NINJALICIOUS HO-TITTY MIRACLE JACKED UP IN THIS BITCH ASS MOTHER FU—

Okay just look at this, just look at it, for one! It’s fucking ridiculous. It doesn’t actually sound much like anything gamzee’s ever said before? It’s hyperbolic to the extreme, I’m sure it’s meant to be “look at how funny he talks” more than anything. Narratively this is a hugely awkward place to be putting in weird jokes about how hot aranea is or whatever.

Most people are hung up on “Ninjalicious Ho-Titty” but with this sentence structure he’s not even calling her “ninjalicious ho-titty.” Let’s break this shit down.

MOTHER FUCK WHO’S ALL THIS FRESH PIMP RYDA I GOT MY WICKED PEEP ON FOR SUDDENLY?

Pretty basic. “MOTHER FUCK” (expletive) WHO (subject) ‘S ALL (auxiliary verb) THIS FRESH PIMP RYDA (person, this is just, another way to say person, i promise you it means nothing? Not that hussie is going to be anywhere near using urban/rap lingo as anything other than a big joke but yeah “fresh pimp ryda” is basically just a way to say person.) I GOT MY WICKED PEEP ON FOR SUDDENLY (saw)

Translation

WHO ARE YOU?

Not wow who’s this hot lady!!! no. A “pimp ryda” is not a term for a hot lady. A fresh pimp ryda is not actually a phrase anyone really recognizes at all. Hussie is just slamming a bunch of perceived lower-class words together to make gamzee look kind of stupid and incoherent and well??? Checking the fandom response, it’s working?? blugh.

IT’S A MOTHER FUCKIN NINJALICIOUS HO-TITTY MIRACLE JACKED UP IN THIS BITCH ASS MOTHER FU—

Here’s where the contestion is. What’s he saying??

The subject here is not Aranea. The subject is “It,” and gamzee messes up his grammatical references, sure, but he’s never referred to a person as “it” before. What’s he talking about? Literally, “It!” What’s going on, what’s happening, the situation, man, which is all up and being “A MOTHER FUCKIN (expletive) NINJALICIOUS (Very ninja, ninja being ‘homie’ or relevant to the posse but I don’t actually think. It’s intended to really be hinting at anything) HO-TITTY (same tone as “wicked bitchtits) MIRACLE JACKED UP IN THIS (here in this) BITCH ASS MOTHERFUCKER (where I am currently)”

What he’s saying is

WHAT’S HAPPENING??? THIS IS STRANGE AND I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. ALSO I AM A JUGGALO, IN CASE YOU FORGOT?

Like I’m not hugely surprised people are having a hard time pulling what he says apart or are making fun of him or are immediately interpreting everything he says as objectifying/misogynist because it’s hip hop lingo and what has anyone ever ELSE done about black music and its propagations and its vernacular am I fucking right??? haha

But the point here is that Gamzee doesn’t talk like everyone else, he’s very confused, he’s very upset, he spills a bunch of jargon, it sounds funny, Aranea talks about how disgusting he is and then mind controlls him. Gamzee always had difficulty communicating and this was undoubtedly related to his upbringing. he’s always spoke sort of wrong, his dialect being a mashup between highblood scripture and lowblood vocabulary. Linguistically, he walks a line a lot of real people do on earth when they grow up in low-income/urban places and then to have a bunch of middle-class people call them “uneducated” sooo. Come on, people, don’t miss that you’re doing that here, and don’t miss that hussie is playing off this lower-class social phenomenon and speech patterns to make a big joke out of them.

Either way? This is the wrong time to be vilifying Gamzee for how he speaks because it’s exactly the justification Aranea is using to remove his speaking privledges, which is an absolutely concerning thing for her to be doing. Do not repeat the whole Tavris debacle, fandom, I’m begging you.

And that’s Clown Essay part 1.

This is a good analysis. I honestly assumed that body language alone was enough to convey that Gamzee was upset and freaking out over being mind controlled, but apparently that’s not something people pick up on? I don’t know, sometimes Homestuck fans confuse me a little.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a joke about low class language alone necessarily, even. We know that quirks get more pronounced and text gets less readable the more upset people are. The more upset Karkat is, the more lurid his metaphors become, the more upset Vriska is the more letters turn into 8s, and so on. Gamzee is just following that pattern here, and as usual the comic is setting up a funny situation with a darker undercurrent to it—that long string of incoherent text and Aranea’s reaction is funny, but also disturbing the more you think about it. The comic is extremely good at setting up those uncomfortable laughter moments, really.