This morning, I stumbled across this story, relating some completely absurd events happening at an elementary school not too far from me:

GREENWOOD VILLAGE – When Carole Altman opened her daughter’s yearbook from Belleview Elementary, she expected to see her message congratulating her daughter on completing the 5th grade. What she did not see is what angered her.

“What has been done here, in my opinion, is un-American,” Altman said.

The Parent-Teacher Community Organization at Belleview Elementary established a yearbook committee. The committee sent a letter to parents asking them to pay $5 to publish a message to congratulate their students. The letter stated the message will include “all of your wonderful words.”

Altman and her husband submitted this message: “So proud of you Remy for achieving fantastic grades, participating in so many wonderful after school activities and surviving so many of the Belleview teachers’ liberal teachings. You are what you believe you can be. Aim high, always. Love, Mom & Dad.”

“What was taken out was surviving the liberal teachings,” Altman said.

She wanted her daughter, years from now, to appreciate how well she did in school even though Altman felt teachers were biased.

“Despite all the liberal teachings and so forth, she’s come out with a good education,” said Altman.

Obligatory rant

First, I’d like to point out that this was in an elementary school yearbook. For those of you unfamiliar with the American education system, that means that the kids involved were probably in the 8-10 years old range.

The main subjects taught here are English, math, music, gym, and the basics, and I sincerely doubt that there’s much room for heavy bias. So, unless there were some seriously strange questions on math quizzes (”Bush leaves a Big Oil lobbyist’s office going 35mph…”), I’d be willing to bet that the parents are a bit hyper-sensitive here.

No matter what the teachers were doing, this seems like an incredibly asinine thing to put in an elementary school yearbook, and I’m more than a little shocked that there are people so politically hostile that they have to take cheap shots at teachers in an elementary school yearbook.

Alright. I feel better now. Sorry about that, now back to the Linguistics…

“No no, I clearly meant something else that nobody understood…”

Now, the Altmans’ cute little jab was removed because, surprise, the yearbook editors felt that the elementary school yearbook was “just not an appropriate forum for political statements.” That seems reasonable to me, but the Altmans just had to keep fighting it, and in doing so, they resorted to one of the most common-yet-reprehensible tricks in the publicist’s book: Redefining the definition.

Altman says it was not political.

“The word liberal means loose. We have to take what the definition of liberal means. I didn’t say Democrats,” she said.

Webster’s Dictionary defines liberal in part as “not orthodox.”

Altman says that is what she meant that teachers were not using established and structured teaching practices in her opinion.

“That’s not political unless the reason why they took it out was they put a political spin on it,” said Altman. “Since when is the word liberal or conservative always to mean political?”

District leaders still believe Altman’s motives were about politics.

So, basically, Altman is arguing that she didn’t mean “politically liberal”, but instead, “loose”, and thus, her statement was politically neutral.

Many meanings, one understanding

There are many words that have more than one meaning, and when talking or reading, we have to pick the right one from context.

Sometimes that’s pretty straightforward. If somebody says “The cock chased the hen around the shed”, nobody’s going to argue that “cock” is an obscenity, because the context makes it fairly explicit that we’re discussing a male chicken. Similarly, if somebody calls a gay man a “faggot”, that person would be hard pressed to argue that he meant that the man was a small bundle of twigs (the original meaning of “faggot”).

There are cases, though, where an argument could conceivably be made for both the controversial meaning and the innocent one. Giving the Altmans the benefit of the doubt, we’ll pretend that “liberal teachings” was actually meant to mean “unorthodox”.

The problem, though, is that when something’s ambiguous, people will tend to assume the worst. Even if a farmer is standing next to a donkey when he says it, “kiss my ass” will likely be seen as insulting. Most importantly, even if the teachings at Belleview were unorthodox and the Altmans were just innocently pointing that out, people will see it as a political statement. There’s still the possibility that somebody could be using the “unorthodox”, politically neutral meaning, but in general, “liberal” is now a political term, and when people specifically mean “unorthodox”, they’ll say that instead.

When a statement is made, the speaker will have an idea about what they meant to say. That’s not really the most important part, though. In order for the communication to work, the listener has to understand as well, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll read the same meanings from the same words. If you’re going to use a common word in an uncommon way, it’s your responsibility to communicate that somehow. If you choose not to, you’ve waived your right to complain when somebody “misunderstands” you. Sorry, Mrs. Altman.

A common deception

Mrs. Altman is not alone in using this pretty transparent defense. Many people will go back to antiquated, obscure or alternate definitions of words when their remarks come back to bite them, claiming their words were innocent and without controversy. One particularly shameless example of this came from Elizabeth Hoffman, the former President of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

During a well-publicized case of sexual discrimination filed by a female ex-member of the school’s football team, Hoffman argued that when a football player told the girl to “get off the field, you f***ing cunt”, “cunt” was being used as a term of endearment. (link) Hoffman attempted to play it off using her background in Medieval studies, claiming that in Chaucer’s days, it wasn’t a negative term. Of course, this enraged a number of faculty members both because of the implications, her defense of the indefensible, and her psuedo-scholarly explanation. She was replaced not long afterwards, and although the football team and coaches never really faced appropriate justice, there’s at least a great deal more sensitivity in campus athletics because of it.

No matter your feelings on her specific case, this is another situation where somebody has tried to disguise their intent by playing off of unusual or old definitions.

It can be innocent, but usually they’re just covering their backs

Sometimes, especially with non-native speakers, mistakes like this can happen innocently. Somebody uses a word without the knowledge of its other connotations, and gets burned by a hyper-sensitive reader, listener, or even worse, the media. In that situation, it’s not only understandable, it’s completely forgivable.

However, when somebody uses a word, knowing full well how it’s usually used, then later hides behind strange, antiquated or unusual definitions to defend themselves, it’s generally just a sleazy and ineffective publicity trick.

So, Mrs. Altman, I might recommend that you look into getting a publicist. If you’re firing off gems like this and your child is still that young, it sounds like you’ll have a lot of controversial comments to distance yourself from in the future. It’s your right to say them, but if you’re going to try and hide from them afterwards, you’re going to need to do better than this.

In English, when you want to express that a container is completely airtight or sealed, you can talk about it being “Hermetically sealed”. Although the term sounds very scientific, the origin is actually rooted not in science, but in Alchemy and Spellcasting.

Hermes Trismegistus (’Hermes the Thrice Majestic’) was the Mythical founder of both alchemy and astrology, and a God of Ancient Greece. Several very important alchemical texts are attributed to him (including the Emerald Tablet), and for some Greeks, he took the place of both the Greek God Hermes and of Thoth, the Egyptian God of writing and science.

As you may have figured out, origin of “hermetically” comes from the Latin form of Hermes’ name (’Hermeticus’). Hermes’ name is associated with this concept because he was purported to be able to magically seal a box or chest in such a way that it could never be opened. [Thanks, Wikipedia] Later on, in the 17th century, Hermes’ name became linked to secrets and seals. The term “Hermetically Sealed” was then popularized by an invention called the Magdeburg Hemispheres, which used a vacuum to remain sealed no matter the force applied to take them apart.

So, what sounds like a nice, scientific Latin term is really a relic of Ancient Alchemy. Aren’t word origins awesome?

Some site news

A few major things are happening in the world of Linguistic Mysticism, most of which involve some form of bragging.

I’m proud to report that this site has now surpassed 21,000 unique hits. Thanks to all of you who read the site and link to me in all sorts of different ways. It really does my heart good to know that people enjoy the site.

I’m even more proud to report that I’ve gotten a flurry of publicity and links over yesterday’s post about LOLCode, including (I’m quite proud to say), a link from the Language Log. I’m just bragging, really, but it’s very neat to see that the world’s most famous language bloggers have noticed me.

Speaking of the site, I’m sure some of you have noticed the slightly tweaked layout, design and color scheme. I hope you like them, but I’m certainly open to suggestions, ideas and complaints. Comments and emails are welcome.

Finally, I’m going off to a conference for a few days, but I’ll be back and posting on Monday.

So, thanks again for reading, for linking, and for commenting. I appreciate it.

Now, off to bag up my shampoo and contact solution, hoping they don’t leak in my luggage on the plane. Where’s Hermes and his magical seal when you need him?

Some days, I feel like I’ve spent too much time in Academia and have begun to lose touch with the way the rest of the word understands language. The biggest barrier between the public and heavy grammar description, in my mind, is the terminology.

Each and every native English speaker reading this can use past participles, gerunds, and can distinguish transitive verbs from intransitive verbs, simply by virtue of being native speakers. However, when you couch it in fancy grammar terms, it seems insurmountable or confusing.

Part of my goal here is to make the most mysterious aspects of Linguistics less mysterious to the general public, and to that end, I’d like to discuss and explain a bit of Linguistics and grammar jargon today that you’ll see come up from time to time.

Transitive Verbs and Intransitive Verbs: Not as scary as they sound

First, just for grins, let’s look at the Linguist’s definition of this concept, taken from pg. 171 of Thomas E. Payne’s Describing Morphosyntax:

…
A transitive verb is one that describes a relation between two participants such that one of the participants acts toward or upon the other. An intransitive verb is one that describes a property, state or situation involving only one participant.
…

As you can see, when it’s presented in a very complex, jargon-filled way, it seems very complicated, and thus, intimidating. Really, though, it’s not that difficult a concept.

Sometimes, in the action described by a given verb, one person is doing something to or towards another person. These are verbs like “to hit” (Stacy hit John), “to see” (I see penguins). In linguistics terms, we say that these verbs take an “argument”. This means that in addition to having a subject (a do-er/“agent”) , the verb also has an object (a do-ee/”patient”). When a verb represents somebody doing something to somebody else, it’s called a “transitive verb”.

Intransitive verbs are, as the name implies, not transitive. The actions in intransitive verbs are performed by a subject, but just in general, and are not directed at anybody or anything. Some examples are “to sleep” (I sleep after dark) and “to smile” (He smiled). You’ll never see an intransitive verb with an object (*”I sleep John” or *”I smiled her”). So, if a verb doesn’t take an object, it’s considered “intransitive”.

So, here’s a quick quiz: Are the bolded verbs being used as transitive verbs or intransitive verbs?

1) John ate the cake.
2) Varinia hugged Spartacus.
3) Lisa sang in the shower.
4) The Mona Lisa hangs on the wall.

Answers (No Cheating): Because they both take an object, numbers one and two are transitive, and three and four are not.

You might be wondering why I phrased the question as I did, adding “are the verbs being used as transitive or intransitive verbs”. Well, all but one of the example verbs could be used either transitively or intransitively (’to hug’ is always transitive). Here are the other possibilities for the other three:

1) John ate quickly last night.
3) Lisa sang “Con te partiro”.
4) I alwayshang paintings with duct tape.

As you can see, some verbs can be used both transitively and intransitively. As a speaker of English, you quickly begin to learn when a given verb can be used either way (like “to eat” or “to sing”), and when you can’t (like “to smile” or “to whip”).

While we’re on the subject and explaining strange grammar terms, there are some verbs that are what linguists call “ditransitive”. This means that they can “take two arguments”, or, in plain terms, they can have a subject and two objects. Examples of verbs like this are “to give” (I gave John a book) and “to bake” (John baked Susie a cake). Ditransitive verbs are common in English, and more information about them is available at the Wikipedia page on Ditransitivity.

Transitivity in Modern Culture

This can be a bit of a dry topic, and I’m sorry I can’t make the explanation more interesting. However, the distinction can be interesting, and can show up in very interesting ways.

Let’s look at the verb “to facebook“. It can have two completely different meanings depending on how it’s used.

Used intransitively, it means ‘to access the facebook’. An example might be the sentence “I was up until 3am facebooking”.

However, when used transitively, it shifts meaning. “to facebook somebody” means ‘to look somebody up or communicate with them via the Facebook’. For instance, you’ll hear sentences like “I facebooked that cute brunette from the LSA convention” or “You should facebook her before you ask her out”.

So, as dry as the explanation may seem, transitivity can definitely be relevant, even to the most grammar-resistant of young internet users.

Conclusion

So, now you understand what the difference is between a transitive verb and an intransitive verb. If you’d like more information, Wikipedia’s transitivity page has some good links, and any linguistics textbook will discuss it in more depth.

In addition to being able to better understand grammar talk, you can also use this newfound skill to better understand when to use “who” versus “whom”. Perhaps the greatest benefit of all is the coolness factor of discussing verb transitivity at parties.

However, I must warn you: Pick up lines involving intransitive verbs and the phrase “I won’t take any argument” will be punished swiftly, decisively, and transitively.