Language Log

An interesting recent review article (Wooster et al., "Animal cognition and culture mediate predator–prey interactions", Trends in Ecology & Evolution 2024) argues for bridging the academic silos of "predator-prey ecology" and "animal cognition and culture":

Abstract: Predator–prey ecology and the study of animal cognition and culture have emerged as independent disciplines. Research combining these disciplines suggests that both animal cognition and culture can shape the outcomes of predator–prey interactions and their influence on ecosystems. We review the growing body of work that weaves animal cognition or culture into predator–prey ecology, and argue that both cognition and culture are significant but poorly understood mechanisms mediating how predators structure ecosystems. We present a framework exploring how previous experiences with the predation process creates feedback loops that alter the predation sequence. Cognitive and cultural predator–prey ecology offers ecologists new lenses through which to understand species interactions, their ecological consequences, and novel methods to conserve wildlife in a changing world.

Oddly, there's nothing in the article about communication, which would seem to be a relevant aspect of "culture", and relevant to studies of "cognition" as well.

[This is a guest post by Denis Mair]   

  Cai Xutie was a Taiwanese woman who ran a family farm with her husband in a village near Jiayi in central Taiwan. She was a rice farmer and had never attended a public school. After her husband died in middle age, she sold some of the land, moved to Taipei with her children, and bought a modest apartment. Because of economic pressure, she helped to set up a number of revolving credit pools, which were used by economically disadvantaged people in the 1950s and 60s to obtain credit when they couldn't get it from banks.

There is a discussion on Linguistics Stack Exchange whether wristwatch in Chinese came from the French:

The first two panels of yesterday's SMBC:

In recent weeks and months, we've been having many posts and comments about Taiwanese language.  Today's post is quite different:  it's all about the difference between Mandarin as spoken on the mainland and as spoken on Taiwan.

"Words of Influence: PRC terms and Taiwanese identity", by Karen Huang, Taiwan Insight (8 November 2024)

What is a ‘video clip’ in Mandarin Chinese? In Taiwan, a video clip is yingpian (影片), while in China, it is referred to as shipin (視頻). Similarly, tomatoes are called fanqie (番茄) in Taiwan, but xihongshi (西红柿) in China. These vocabulary differences between Taiwan Mandarin (Guoyu 國語) and PRC Mandarin (Putonghua 普通话) are expected. After all, it is natural for different dialects of a language to have some differences in their vocabulary—just like how ‘rubbish bin’ in British English is ‘garbage can’ in American English.

A serious volcanic eruption on Flores Island has been going on since October 30:

The Pusat Vulkanologi dan Mitigasi Bencana Geologi (PVMBG) reported that eruptive activity intensified at Lewotobi Laki-laki during 30 October-5 November, which included a major eruption resulting in fatalities. The large explosive eruption began at 2357 on 3 November, generating pyroclastic flows that traveled down the flanks in all directions, ejecting ballistic projectiles, and forming a large vent within the summit crater.

And recent news reports tell us that the eruptions continue, e.g. "Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki continues to unleash towering column of hot clouds", AP 11/8/2024.

I was curious about the name "Lewotobi Laki-laki" — what language is it, and why is it so long?

[This is a guest post by Michael Witzel]

A few months ago you published a discussion of whimsical surnames. Since then I have paid attention and have found new ones in  almost every news broadcast.

It is said that there are 1 million (!) surnames in the German speaking area of some 95 million people (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Alsace, Luxemburg, Eupen in Belgium and some 1 million remaining in Poland). I leave aside the many millions of German immigrants in America  etc., such as the notorious politician Witzel in Rio de Janeiro. Also, many Jewish names are the same as “regular German” names (;like Schuster =Shoemaker, head of the German Jewish Central Committee).

What I found is that almost all (hair) colors, animals, etc. are used, just as are designations of occupations, etc.. etc.

Below are two lists of nominations for Japanese buzzword of the year.  Each has 30 entries, and from each list one will be chosen as the respective winner.  Since the two lists are already quite long and rich, I will keep my own comments (mostly at the bottom and focusing on phoneticization) to a minimum.

"From cat memes to Olympians with too much rizz, these are Japan's 2024 buzzword nominations"
The topics nominated for this year’s buzzwords of the year ranged from new banknotes and Olympian quips to political scandals and rice shortages.  By Yukana Inoue, The Japan Times (Nov 5, 2024)

Japan's 2024 buzzword nominations focused on money and the Paris Olympics, according to a list of nominations released by the organizer of the annual event Tuesday.

News on “uragane mondai” (slush fund scandal) dominated headlines this year after Liberal Democratic Party factions were found to be underreporting the sales of fundraising party tickets.

Other money-related terms included “shin shihei” (new banknotes) — the country recently redesigned the ¥10,000, ¥5,000 and ¥1,000 notes for the first time in 20 years — and “shin NISA” (new NISA investments), a tax-exempt investment program launched this year that aims to entice people to move money from savings to investments. NISA stands for the Nippon Individual Savings Account.

For basic facts, see below.

Thanks to AI and our Japanese colleagues, the study of Peru's mysterious Nazca lines has made a quantum leap forward.

AI Revealed a New Trove of Massive Ancient Symbols
The 2,000-year-old geoglyphs offer clues to ancient Nazca people and their rituals
By Aylin Woodward, Science Shorts, WSJ (Nov. 6, 2024)

Anthropologists have spent decades documenting a mysterious collection of symbols etched into the Peruvian desert, depicting everything from human decapitation and domesticated animals to knife-wielding orcas.

In the past century or so, 430 of these geoglyphs have been found. Now, an analysis using artificial intelligence has nearly doubled the number in just six months.

Constructed primarily by ancient South American people known as the Nazca millennia ago, the geoglyphs, which can be as long as a football field, are concentrated on a roughly 150-mile-square area called the Nazca Pampa. The Nazca people created the geoglyphs in an area unsuitable for farming, removing the black stones that pepper the desert to reveal a layer of white sand beneath. The contrast between tones yielded the geoglyphs.

Much of their mystery lies in how challenging it is to spot them.

“These geoglyphs have been around for at least 2,000 years, during which time dust has accumulated on the white lines and areas, causing their colors to fade,” said Masato Sakai, a professor of anthropology at Yamagata University in Japan and lead author of a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailing the new discoveries.

The symbols fall into two categories. Larger figurative geoglyphs, known as the Nazca Lines, average about 300 feet in length, Sakai said, while smaller ones, akin to marble reliefs, average just 30 feet.

That's all I've got, so far, for linguistic commentary on the U.S. election results.

According to the OED, the etymology of ballot is

< (i) Middle French ballotte (French †ballotte) small ball (beginning of the 15th cent. as †balote), small coloured ball placed in a container to register a secret vote (1498) or its etymon (ii) Italian (originally regional (northern)) ballotta, †balota small ball (13th cent.), small coloured ball placed in a container to register a secret vote (1313; < balla (see bale n.3) + ‑otta ‑ot suffix).

And the entry for -ot  says "Forming diminutive nouns. (No longer productive.)"

The suffix -ot was apparently never very productive in English — the OED lists only

piet "The magpie, Pica pica"
nysot "A wanton young woman; (also) a fool or simpleton."
carlot "A churl, carl, peasant."

I was surprised to see that the OED's list of -ot words doesn't include bigot, which is why I'm taking you down the bigot rabbit hole.

This is a story we've been following for well over a decade (see "Selected readings").  Improbable as it may seem that the Korean alphabet might be adaptable for writing an Austronesian language of Indonesia, there are some promoters of this idea who continue to push it enthusiastically:

"An Indonesian Tribe’s Language Gets an Alphabet: Korea’s
The Cia-Cia language has been passed down orally for centuries. Now the tribe’s children are learning to write it in Hangul, the Korean script."  By Muktita Suhartono, NYT (Nov. 4, 2024)

These fourth graders are not studying the Korean language. They are using Hangul to write and learn theirs: 

Cia-Cia, an indigenous language that has no script. It has survived orally for centuries in Indonesia, and is now spoken by about 93,000 people in the Cia-Cia tribe on Buton Island, southeast of the peninsula of Sulawesi Island in Indonesia’s vast archipelago.

"To what extent is science a strong-link problem?", Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, 10/30/2024 [emphasis added]:

Here’s a fascinating and worrying news story in Science: a top US researcher apparently falsified a lot of images (at least) in papers that helped get experimental drugs on the market — papers that were published in top journals for years, and whose problems have only recently become apparent because of amateur sleuthing through PubPeer.

I’m going to wane philosophical for a minute. In general I’m very sympathetic to Adam Mastroianni’s line “don’t worry about the flood of crap that will result if we let everyone publish, publishing is already a flood of crap, but science is a strong-link problem so the good stuff rises to the top”.

The author's discussion of crap publications in top science journals is worth reading and discussing, but this morning let's focus on waning (and waxing) adjectival.

Following up on Rapscallion, here's another culinary pun with a lexico-musical connection:

When two names far apart
Share a PIE start
That's a *móri…

[image or embed]

— New-Cleckit Dominie (@ncdominie.bsky.social) November 3, 2024 at 11:57 AM