Dinner-time experiment, Dutch-wise

Last Wednesday in the Language in Context Research Group, and repeated this Friday in the English Language Research Group, a talk by Claire Cowie and Ross Pirie on ‘topic restrictors’ or ‘viewpoint subjuncts’ in English. The most interesting one, in the discussion afterwards anyway, was -wise – as in ‘Your performance was quite good, choreography-wise–.

German does the same thing, they can use -weise, apparently. Says Erik. But in Dutch, you can't do -wijs or -wijze. Despite some prompting from Claire and Miriam, I couldn't think of the Dutch equivalent off-hand. I have since, I think. It is technisch.

The rest of this blog post is a cop-out: the text of the e-mail I sent Claire. (Claire is from South Africa, which is why there's no translations of the Dutch as I think she'll cope with her L2 Afrikaans. If you don't have an L2 Dutch or Afrikaans, tough.)

On a completely different note... I've been thinking about what Dutch does in the absence of a "-wise" type particle. It took a while, but I think I've found our equivalent: "X-technisch (gesproken/gezien)". I did a little Google search, which came up with the following. (What one doesn't do to avoid marking first-year essays.)

Mostly, the hits are for "technisch gesproken/gezien" by itself, which may or may not have anything to do with technique. Probably quite similar to English "technically (speaking), ..." - from "The XCV-25 is technically a solid machine" to "The Berwick football team plays in the Scottish league, even though Berwick is technically in England."

Some examples from Dutch (10 each for gezien/gesproken, and some without a verb). I've not glossed or translated them as I think you'll cope in most cases (and you may not be interested enough to care anyway)...

(1) ... het behoort, compositorisch-technisch gesproken, tot de periode van Schumann of Brahms, met hoofdvormen en rondo's...
[still retains some of the "technique" meaning; the technique of composing]

(2) Ik vertel elke dag precies wat ik eet-technisch heb uitgevreten.
[a clear example]

(3) Evolutie-technisch gesproken blijkt een erectie tevens een goede methode te zijn om het zaad van de man bij de eicel van de vrouw te krijgen.
[fairly technical again]

(4) Mechanisch-technisch gesproken dan.
[I'm waiting for a 'techniek-technisch gesproken'...]

(5) Het enige voordeel dat promovendi hebben boven hun leeftijdsgenoten in het bedrijfsleven zijn de vrije dagen. Nou ja, CAO-technisch gesproken dan.
[CAO=collective employment contract]

(6) A/D-converters zijn namelijk voor een deel gebaseerd op kansberekening indien het signaal 'ruis' bevat (datacommunicatie-technisch gesproken dan).

(7) ...maar verder gewoon alleen kijken zonder getuigen, eigenwaarde-technisch gesproken.
[this was something about watching porn: only without witnesses, self-respect-wise]

(8) Carrière-technisch gesproken is het opnemen van ouderschapsverlof dan ook de beste manier om je kansen om zeep te helpen.

(9) Sinds de invoering van FUWAVAZ is de hoofdverpleegkundige geen onderdeel meer van het primaire proces. P&O-technisch gesproken dan. Voortaan heet hij of zij "operationeel of tactisch manager".
[P&O=personeel en organisatie (HR)]

(10) Als je een fotograaf bent die puur portretjes maakt, die geen eigen studie heeft, ben je een bijna niet te grijpen persoon, belasting-technisch gesproken.

(in the first 210 of 14,700 Google hits for "*technisch-gesproken")


(11) Juridisch-technisch gezien kan thans bijna alles, maar het gaat erom wat wenselijk is.

(12) Medisch-technisch gezien kunnen we heel veel, maar als we dan thuis komen, moeten we ineens terugvallen op niet-professionele hulp vanwege bezuinigingen.

(13) Medisch-technisch gezien speelt allereerst het probleem van de afstoting.
[these two could actually be proper 'technique' ones: as regards medical technique...]

(14) Belasting-technisch gezien wel ja.

(15) Literair-technisch gezien is hij eerst en vooral een round character i.p.v. het gebruikelijke flat character.
[also techniquey]

(16) Aangezien ik licentie-technisch gezien één jaar recht heb op alle updates die uitkomen, zal ik waarschijnlijk binnen enkele maanden naar versie 7 overgaan.

(17) Een knoeier ben ik schaak-technisch gezien.

(18) Doel hiervan is inzicht te geven in de mate waarin per artikel de kasbudgetten, budgettair-technisch gezien, een andere aanwending zouden kunnen krijgen.
[I would have 'budget-technisch', but maybe for some people there is a constraint that this only attaches to adjectives? Although there are examples with nouns, and even one or two verb roots (2 and possibly 17).]

(19) Juridisch-technisch gezien is ingrijpen in de ziekenfondsverzekering, respectievelijk de WTZ, relatief eenvoudig.

(20) Hij is verzonden, dus morgen of maandag komt hij er al aan. Besteltijd-technisch gezien dus dik in orde.

(in the first 80 of 111,000 Google hits for "*-technisch-gezien")


(21) Nee, dit is arbo-technisch niet toegestaan als er mensen in moeten werken.
[arbo=Health & Safety regulations]

(22) Dit is juridisch-technisch niet correct omdat nog andere vreemdelingen zich soms kunnen beroepen op het statuut van staatloze.

(23) Dit is registratie-technisch niet mogelijk.

(24) Ik ben het wel met je eens, dit is markt-technisch niet slim.

(25) Dit is begrijpelijk, maar proces-technisch niet logisch.

(26) Ruim twee weken in el casa de mi padre e mi madre. (Dit is Spaans-technisch vast niet helemaal goed, maar fijn is het wel.)
[I like this one]

(27) Dit advies is weliswaar juridisch-technisch niet bindend, maar algemeen gaat er een groot gezag uit van hetgeen de Commissie hierin stelt.

(in 95 Google hits for "dit is * technisch niet")


A wide range of sources, from blogs/forums to legal and parliamentary documents. Appears to be reasonably evenly spread over Dutch and Belgian web addresses.

So there.

Lunchtime experiment: the FOOT/STRUT split

Someone on Language Log does breakfast experiments, but I did a lunchtime experiment today.

Necessary terminology: This is about vowels in English. People tend to discuss these referring to standard lexical sets, keywords that represent all the words with the same vowel. J.C. Wells is often credited with the introduction of standard lexical sets (in his Accents of English from 1980), but I've read something by J. Catford from 1957 that used the same idea already. I don't know if Catford stole it from someone else. Anyway... The standard lexical sets relevant for today are STRUT, FOOT and GOOSE.

Background for the experiment: Apparently I sound Northern English sometimes. This is because I use the [ʊ] vowel in STRUT words where Southern English, Scots, and Americans use the [ʌ] vowel. Southern English and Americans also use the [ʊ] vowel, but they do that in FOOT words. Northern English also uses [ʊ] in FOOT words, so they lack a distinction that Southern English and Americans do make. (Historically, the North is right, and the others introduced the distinction, which is therefore called a FOOT-STRUT split.)

Scots, as said, use [ʌ] in STRUT words, but they don't use [ʊ] in FOOT words. Instead, they use [ʉ], which is the sound they also use for GOOSE words. (English and Americans use [u]. The Scottish [ʉ] is further front, a mixture between [u] and [i] almost.) I think that historically FOOT and GOOSE were distinct, so that the Scottish system represents a FOOT-GOOSE merger, but I'm not 100% sure on this. I'm sure Wikipedia will know. Look there.

So, in summary: Southern English and American have a three-way distinction STRUT - FOOT - GOOSE. Northern English has a two-way distinction STRUT=FOOT - GOOSE, and Scottish English has a two-way distinction as well, but it goes STRUT - FOOT=GOOSE.

What do I do?

The HTML for that last sentence: What do <I>I</I> do?

The experiment: Simple. Record myself speaking, measure the acoustic properties (first and second formant frequencies) of the vowels with Praat, and plot in a graph to see what they're doing. The words were luck, butt, buck, pun, shut (STRUT), look, book, cook, soot, foot (FOOT, obviously), and Luke, chute, lute, fool, rule (GOOSE).

The result:


In this gorgeous graph (F1 on the inverted Y axis, F2 on the inverted X axis, both in Hz), there's the five STRUT words in green, the FOOT words in blue, and the GOOSE words in pink. I've also added five standard vowels – which I must confess I didn't get the formants for from my own recording, but from Wikipedia. They may not accurately represent where these vowels are in my system, but you get the general idea.

So it's obvious I have a Scottish-type system for these vowels: STRUT - FOOT=GOOSE. The realization for FOOT=GOOSE is also pretty Scots, because it's the [ʉ]. But whether I have the Northern English realization for the STRUT vowel (rather than the Northern English system where STRUT=FOOT) is not as clear. The STRUT vowels are all over the place. There's two that are where [ʊ] should be, more or less: luck and pun. Then there's shut and butt which look like they are [ɵ] (I think this is a very cute vowel) or maybe just boring old [ə]. I have no idea what buck is doing. It looks like it is where [ɛ] should be (or [œ] 'cause it's rounded), but that's way too far front (I probably measured wrong). Somewhere at the same height, but further back (say around 1250 Hz for F2) is [ʌ].

So? Well, yes, no one cares. But it's got numbers and graphs so surely this is evidence that linguistics is actually a science? Surely?

Sounds and images of yore

Кубанские казаки
About two years ago during an episode of Zomergasten on Dutch television, they showed a fragment of a Soviet propaganda movie from the late 1940s. It was a very catchy song with people working hard and happily in the fields, harvesting grain to the benefit of the Soviet Union and the international socialist revolution. At random intervals since, I've been trying to get my hands on that fragment, and finally I struck lucky tonight. So from Кубанские казаки (Kubanskije kazaki), the 1949 movie by Иван Пырьев (Ivan Pyrjev), this is the song "Убирай! Загружай!" ("Ubiraj! Zagružaj!"):

Also note the rows and rows of combine harvesters. Later Stalinist propaganda, among other genres, would have them exchanged for all sorts of armoured vehicles.

Pre-SED recordings
James told me about a most interesting endeavour by the Germans during World War I. In their prisoner-of-war camps, they would go and record all sort of cultural events: songs, poetry, word lists... all on early grammophones. The recordings are currently being digitized at the Humboldt University in Berlin and some examples are available on their website. Under Tonbeispiele > Stimmen der Völker you can find songs in French and Malagasy (including a picture of the soldiers, presumably in French service), some Russian balalaika and mouth music, the parable of the Prodigal Son in Estonian, and a word list in Chuvash (a Turkic language spoken in the Ural Mountains).

Not on the Humboldt University website, but from that collection nonetheless, are the recordings of a prisoner of war from Alderley Edge, near Manchester, retelling the parable of the Prodigal Son. (This was possibly a set text for the German philological researchers.) People from the Manchester Museum have retrieved the fragments from Berlin, and they are available here.
The links include a transcription which is alright, even though it misses some of the instances of definite-article reduction, especially after words ending in an alveolar stop.
These recordings are now 90 years old, and a good 35 years older than the data from the Survey of English Dialects on which we base our ideas of traditional English dialects.
Although I suppose the language of the 1950s NORMs was more conservative than that of the 1918 soldier, given the apparent time hypothesis and even taking into account lifespan change. Still, they recordings are really old and very special indeed, so worth a listen.

Moving around

I'm being very good and keeping up with my New Year's resolution of being more active.

Dancing
On the dancing front, the past couple of weeks have seen the Annual Dance, at which I danced pretty much everything, and Linda's birthday ceilidh, at which I didn't. Together with Katie we also managed to put together a display dem for Newcastle, with nice music and some interesting dances. Miraculously it seemed to work on the first night of practices, and we almost hit the lines halfway through sixteen bars of poussetting too. This is very encouraging for Newcastle, especially after all the headaches with the SUSCDF dem at the end of last year.

Dancing on Thursdays has been a bit slow on several fronts. The social programmes I write don't tend to work, even though I've made them significantly simpler since the Annual Dance. There seems to be a fair amount of turnover from week to week, so every week there's people who don't actually know what they're doing. The new plan is to write a social programme of four dances with one extra. Maybe that way we can fool the Time Gods into allowing us five dances per evening? Also, my dancing has been very intermittent, usually because of some sort of injury or (like this week) trying not to be ill. This week I had dem class off (no display practice, only technique) so I decided to go to Dunedin instead, where I danced about half because the balls of my feet started hurting. Not good. I have now ordered new dance shoes, including shockproof insoles, from James Senior (because Dancewear doesn't appear to do them), so they should be arriving by the end of the month. I'm hoping they'll hurry up and get them to me by Newcastle – one can always hope.

The Hot Cross Bun
The birthday dance I wrote for Linda, which seemed to go down well both with experienced dancers and with beginnery types. It is an 8x32 Reel, but because of the odd progression (3-1-2) it's not suitable for ‘once and to the bottom’ encores. Then again, it can be done (as we did when we demmed it for Linda) as a 3-by.

1-8. Cross, cast, turn left (4 bars) to face first corners.
9-16. Set to corners and change places right hand. Corners now back-to-back in the middle dance half a reel of four with first couple.
17-24. Corners dance another half reel of four with second corners. This starts with men facing men, ladies facing ladies, and ends with the corners facing first couple again. Set and change places right hand.
25-32. First couple turn left hand (4 bars) to end in 2nd place on the wrong sides. All set and cross.

Athletic endeavours
On the swimming front it's been a solo effort for the past two weeks. Last week that wasn't too surprising seeing as Linda was probably too busy preparing for her party; no idea why no one else was there yesterday. Either way, it meant less faffing around and more swimming lanes. Last week I did 55, and yesterday I did 41 (although it might have been 43, I tend to lose count if I'm not paying too much attention). In both cases, I added another five which I timed, in the never-ending race to qualify for the fast lane. Last week it was 2.45 for five lanes (33 seconds per lane), and yesterday I managed 2.36 (just over 31 seconds per lane). The fast lane is 30 seconds or less per lane. It'll be a while before I can do that without actually racing for it.

It mightn't have been such a good idea to have tried that yesterday, what with me not being very happy with my stomach (or vice versa). So despite the personal best time in the swimming, the rest of the day was not very good and food didn't actually stay in. (You really wanted to know that, didn't you.)

The other athletic endeavours on the frozen version of a pool are going okay as well. Last week Jen and I had a different teacher who tried to teach three levels at the same time, and it went reasonably alright. Today it was just me, but we had our old teacher back, the one who says [arəms] and on the surface doesn't seem to be too convinced we can all do what she wants us to do. She was very good at giving advice this week (maybe she wasn't there last week because she went to that seminar in Sheffield they talked about, and maybe the seminar was about teaching?) and I even got a compliment that my skating was coming along really well. Also, the skate shop was finally open, so I spent more money on footwear.

The disagreement between myself and my stomach had settled by this morning, so that was no longer bugging me. Now just a good night's sleep tonight, and I'll be all set for more activity next week (i.e. the same as last week, plus actually doing some dancing again).

Because blogging is long overdue

More entries to follow later today, hopefully, but this linguistic one is inspired by a tv commercial. (And yay for the NOS showing the World Allround Speedskating Championships over the internet, just plugging Nederland 1 through online.)

The commercial is about some sort of toilet cleaner, and the point is that bleach doesn't get rid of limescale ("it just makes it white"), but Product X does.

Met bleek krijg je kalkaanslag niet weg.
/mɛt blek krɛɪx .../

Now apply phonotactic rules: do some voicing assimilation and get rid of geminates.

[mɛtplekrɛɪx ...]

Now parse again.

/mɛt ple krɛɪx .../
"Met plee krijg je kalkaanslag niet weg"

The fact that there is a toilet bowl ("plee") on the screen when they say that sentence doesn't help...