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The 11th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, or How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Alps

ALS, LSA, IPRA and ICAL. It's conference season again and all over the world linguists are garlanding their mantlepieces with acronyms.

11-ICAL is long over but my body clock has only now readjusted itself, giving the memory of the whole event the distant shimmer of a dream.

Aussois

Most visually spectacular: Fiona Hardy, 'Population size and language change: Do evolutionary laws hold for culture?'

Most enterntaining: Aone van Engelenhoven, 'Hide and Seek in the Deer's Trap: Language Concealment and Linguistic Camouflage in Timor Leste'

Most interesting to me personally: Catharina Williams-van Kinken and John Hajek, 'Real-time language contact and change in the Austronesian world: Tetun as a new media language'; Michael Pangalinan, 'Assessing the current status of the Kapampangan "pre-Hispanic" script', Elisabeth Luquin, 'Revisiting the ‘poetic language’ of the Hanoo- Mangyan: Is it a ‘ritual language’?', John Wolff, 'Lessons to be drawn from experience in preparing a dictionary of Indonesian and a dictionary of Cebuano-Visayan'.

Best example sentences: Michael Ewing, 'Conditions as a framing device in Javanese'. ("Actually, teachers generally are extremely refined people", "As for me, if (I)'m with a beautiful woman, (I) the happiest")

Some random things I learnt:

• a noseflute can stop a table tennis match

• Toolbox is officially history, to be replaced by Flex

• French bartenders are unsure about bourbon and coke

• apart from one lone voice there is consensus on the Out of Taiwan Hypothesis

• there are more Austronesian langs in PNG than in the Philippines, who woulda thunk it?

Quote of the week:
“Our partners don’t understand us, our children think we are weird and our grandchildren are ashamed of us” A1 van Engelenhoven

On day four, had a lovely walk in the alps with a jolly bunch of gung-ho fellow conferencors. Saw many k. o. flowers, k. o. caterpillars k. o. goats. Also got k. o. sunburnt. Oh, and delightful marmots, which are Rodents Of Unusual Size.


Off to Canberra tomorrow to seek my fortune. Very excited about the piles of Language & Society tutoring work I scored. Less excited about the task of finding a camp-dog friendly house in a real-estate market poetically described by a Queanbeyan realtor as 'Shit, shit.'

Word sponsorship a-go-go

Last year you may recall that Collins launched a celebrity-driven campaign to rescue obscure English words from oblivion. On the face it there's something raw-prawnian about the whole venture. After all, in any living language words will come in and out of general use with the natural regularity of breathing. When pressed on this point, Collins insisted that they made reference dictionaries (not descriptive dictionaries like OED) and the decision to include or exclude words in any given edition was simply a matter of whether or not there was any evidence of their present use. This has nothing to do with rescuing 'endangered' words, but the campaign was a stroke of marketing genius. Collins succeed in harnessing a prescriptivist ignorance about language change, while drawing attention to their product and satisfying the linguists in one stroke. And it was all a bit of fun actually. Collins now runs Adopt a Word, where you can pay ₤20 to sponsor a word – any word – and the proceeds go to an organisation that assists children with communication difficulties. The celebrities are on board again. David Crystal has sponsored 'linguist' and Jasper Fforde has 'linoleum'.

All this brings me to Dictionary.com's word-of-the-day, a free email suscription that I've had going for over a decade. The formula is simple: a head word, its definition, a few citations of it in the media with dates and links, an etymology. Just recently I've noticed that a sponsored 'Example Sentence' has been included. Yesterday's word was 'hortatory' and the example sentence was sponsored by Prius:

"The mayor's hortatory speech spurred me to organize a carpool with my Prius."
-- Brought to you by the 3rd Generation Prius

A question: If a word is being seriously sponsored (as opposed to whimsically sponsored) does its use by the corporation sponsoring it count as a genuine attestation?

Oh my god

Cesar Montano hot on going global
By Marinel Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 20:49:00 04/29/2009

CESAR MONTANO, award-winning actor-director and TV host, recently went to the United States for a series of meetings with casting directors. “I’m doing a follow-up on several projects that I’m eyeing,” Cesar told the Inquirer in a recent media gathering.

“There’s one film that I really hope to be part of,” he added, “but I’m not allowed to talk about it yet. All I can say is that like ‘The Great Raid,’ it will be shot in Australia.”

“The Great Raid” was a 2005 Hollywood film based on real events during World War II. Cesar played Capt. Juan Pajota, a Filipino guerrilla who took part in the January 1945 liberation of a POW camp in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija. It was directed by John Dahl and featured foreign actors Benjamin Bratt, Joseph Fiennes, James Franco and Connie Nielsen.

As a director and producer, Cesar said he hopes to entice the global film market with a new pet project, “Eskaya: The Quick Brown Fox.” Part of his grand plan is to cast A-list Hollywood actors. “Somebody like Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt,” he declared. “I also wish to talk with Manny Paquiao because I want him for the lead role. I’m now polishing certain details in the script. Sixty percent of the movie will be in English.”

In 2004, Cesar’s first film production venture, “Panaghoy sa Suba,” won 16 awards, including Best Picture and Best Director honors at the International Festival of Independent Films in Brussels, Belgium.

“My goal is for ‘Eskaya’ to compete for an Oscar award,” Cesar said.

He explained that the film’s title is about the ancient Filipino writing system called Eskaya, which is similar to the more popular Alibata. Cesar learned about it while communing with the members of the Eskaya tribe, a cultural minority in Bohol, his hometown.

In Cesar’s story line, a rich and highly successful American gets implicated in a crime. His only chance to prove his innocence is to find the only witness to the crime. He chases after this witness in the forest of Bohol and stumbles upon the Eskaya tribe.

Interesting story

Cesar believes it’s an interesting story. “It will send a message to the world that Filipinos are not illiterate, that in ancient times our ancestors had a very effective way of communicating with each other.”

Cesar, 46, is also busy with the Bohol Film Development Organization (Bufido), which he helped form with veteran filmmaker Maryo J. delos Reyes. The group is hosting “Sine Direk,” a film festival co-produced by APT Entertainment, in July.

Six films, all megged by members of the Directors’ Guild of the Philippines Inc. (DGPI), will be screened in various venues in Bohol. “It excites me to see these notable directors are making good movies and competing against each other,” said Cesar, who is Bufido’s vice president. “The ultimate goal is to invite other countries to join.”

Four years ago, Cesar put up the Panaghoy Children Foundation Inc. (www.panaghoy.org) whose aim is to help underprivileged kids in Bohol through education. Since then, the group has launched feeding programs, as well as medical and dental missions in various provinces in Bohol.

“Recently, I brought several artists there to teach children how to draw,” Cesar said. “To celebrate Earth Day, we taught people how to plant trees. We oriented them on climate change, global warming and the effects of irresponsible garbage disposal.”

How to Script your own Magic-Realist Arthouse Bohollywood Movie

Step 1: Leave Bohol to pursue a film career in Manila

Step 2: Wait till the end of a provincial election cycle then return to Bohol and run for Guv'nor

Step 3: Warm up the campaign by announcing plans to make a film about Dagohoy or the Eskaya

Step 4: Ignore any linguistic data that gets in the way of a crackin' yarn

Step 5: Action!

How to Write your own Philippine Legislation

Step 1. Encrypt your legislation in a wikipedia article:


Step 2. Wait for members of congress to Google it

Step 3. Admire your finished House Resolution:

[click images to see more]

Moving mountains

Did anyone see this article in The Australian the other day?

A few interesting excerpts:

Ms Baird says the name came to her in a dream. "I reckon it was the spirits of the Jaithmathang mob telling me, 'Get it together, this is our place'," she says.

***

Accusing the Victorian Government of being "linguistically and culturally illiterate", he says the Jaithmathangs (a spelling of mystifying origin after being recorded and pronounced since 1844 in variants of Ya-itma-thang or Yatte-mittong) lived outside the area containing the Niggerheads, and the Government "might as well have taken any old name from Arnhem Land".

***

The name change is also opposed by the Mountain Cattlemen's Association of Victoria. Its president, Christa Treasure, says the change is another example of governments "wiping out the white man's history".

***

Ms Baird was supported in the Jaithmathangs name campaign by an elder from the Bangarang people, Eddie Kneebone (who later changed his mind and said Niggerhead was a reminder of the racism Aboriginal people had faced) and Sandy Atkinson, chairman of the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages, who said the change would be a gesture of reconciliation and "a memorial to those people who we believe have long gone"

***

Mr McLeod says the new name is "better than it was", but the mountain had a "proper name" before white occupation, which he knows but will not disclose. He says the Jaithmathang and the Dhudhuroa "walked the same tracks". Mr Murray accepts Ms McLeod's connection to Jilbino, but says it is likely she was a Dhudhuroa woman and Mr McLeod "is Dhudhuroa and doesn't know it"

***

Describing the new name as "culturally offensive" to the Dhudhuroa, and threatening legal and political action, Mr Murray suggests Mt Niggerhead be renamed Mt Dhudhuroa, or Dhudhuroa language alternatives, including Durrubanga (rocky place), or Dalka (mountain)

There's so much of interest in this story, I don't know where to start. When the original name of a place is lost, how do you rename it? Is a dream an appropriate place to start, especially when you are not a traditional owner? If you are a traditional owner and believe you have evidence of the original name, is it your right to withhold it? Why introduce a new name before the native title claim is resolved? Does changing a name 'wipe out' a history or is the change a part of that history? And whose history? Why was a non-standard orthography chosen given that a language centre was involved in this decision?

Conspicuous Verbosity

David Brooks, author of Bobos in Paradise, famously redefined social class as a factor of what you consume, rather than who you are, where you're from or how much you earn. For Brooks, wealth or its lack doesn't guarantee access to a given social groups and all classes develop shibboleths of consumption for guarding their gates.

Perhaps this is why the nouveau riche are, historically and presently, the most ridiculed class in any society. Having acquired purchasing power they purchase indiscriminately, excessively and conspicuously, making complete dicks of themselves in the process. Mocking the nouveau riche is the worst kind of snobbery but it's also the funnest. My view is that rich people are asking for it anyway and the 'nouveau' tag simply presents itself as a defenceless poppy stem begging to be thwacked asunder. You can't open a newspaper these days without seeing disparaging references to 'McMansions' and 'plasma TVs'. Politics of envy? Perhaps, but with the subprime crisis it's now simply shifted to the politics of Schadenfreude ('you foreclosed on your McMansion and you've really gone and stuffed it' etc).

In Australian English the word 'bogan' has a long and interesting history. It currently features as the Oxford Australia Word of the Month but I find the definition too short and vague ('1. A person who is not “with it” in terms of behaviour and appearance, and hence perceived as not being “one of us”. 2. An uncultured and unsophisticated person’) and the etymology too cautious. A more convincing account is provided by Pam Peters on Lingua Franca. Peters has also noticed how the word is now used affirmatively which reminds me of Anna Funder's delightful article on bogan reclamation in The Monthly. She writes:

I didn’t think you could call someone a bogan. Even a bogan, I thought, doesn’t want to be called a bogan. It is a term so derogatory it is double-edged, condemning its user as a snob with something to prove at the same time as slagging off its target. Then again, in a society squeamish about identifying class differences - up or down - maybe everyone has their own private bogan, someone slightly to the west of them.

Funder goes on to provide a whole taxonomy of self-identifying bogans. Ultimately everyone is a bogan in one way or another and it's better to embrace one's inner bogan than suppress it, she suggests.

For me, the term 'bogan' conjures up an image of an unrefined conspicuous consumer and this is probably due to the fact that I reside in the cashed-up bogan headquarters of mineral boom Australia. (Cashless bogans in Western Australia are a rare species indeed.) Or it could be the influence of Kath & Kim.

Anyway, I'm interested in how the bogan practice of conspicuous consumption may have a linguistic analogue in the form of conspicuous verbosity. Mark Liberman would no doubt go straight to the Bogan Corpus and refute this theory over breakfast but here goes:
On the principle of bigger TV preferable to smaller TV and more vehicles preferable to less vehicles I'm hypothesising that in bogan speech more syllables in items of core vocabulary preferable to less syllables (Bogan Australian English is on the left, General Australian English on the right):

absolutely — yes
anticipate — expect (Qantas announcement: 'We anticipate to board shortly')
beverage — drink
expedite— exit (Qantas announcement 'Passengers will be able to expedite the plane in about ten minutes'. Perhaps the sense is 'to exit expeditiously'?)
pardon — what (see discussion of U English on Language Log)

Some may point out that absolutely for 'yes' and anticipate for 'expect' are fashionable prescriptivist bugbears. I'll only say that prescriptivism itself is a kind a parochial flaunting of (perceived) superior usage and is thus the height of boganism — conspicuous usage if you will.

Noice, different, unusual
My partner has pointed out another form of bogan speech on a reality TV show where blended malapropisms are innovated in order to sound more obscure or erudite. Perhaps the underlying principle is more obscurity preferable to less obscurity (?)

Plutonic relationship — Platonic relationship
scepticise — speculate

[Update:
I forgot the classic more-syllables-better examples:

myself (as object pronoun, not adverb)— me
yourself (as object pronoun, not adverb) — you

Eg.
BAE: If you have any queries please contact myself or another member of staff.
GAE: If you have any queries please contact me or another member of staff.

BAE: How about yourself?
GAE: How about you?]