Focus and Presupposition on Anglophone grizzly bears?

WARNING: This is a ridiculous post. This is what happens when term papers stress me out, and I somehow end up trapped wandering through the Wikipedia labyrinth.

According to Wikipedia, grizzly bears speak English:


My Question: Are grizzly bears bilingual?

I ask this because the article doesn't just state that they speak English, it states that they "also speak english." The problem is that there's no previously mentioned language. They speak English in addition to Inuktitut? French? Grizzly?

Now, it could be the case that "also" is contrastively picking out "grizzly bears" among other speakers of English, as opposed to contrastively picking out English among the languages grizzly bears speak, but since this is an article on Grizzly bears, I don't think this is what the vandaliser had in mind.

Another possible option is that the predicate "speak English" is being contrastively picked out, among the other things that are normally predicated of grizzly bears, such as "being listed as threatened in the contiguous United States, and endangered in parts of Canada." This is probably the most likely, but I've copied and pasted the paragraph for your analyzing pleasure, in case the Wikipedia article gets fixed, erm, I mean edited, before you get a chance to see it.

Moral of the story: Everything you find on the Wikipedia is always true.

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Legal status

The grizzly bear is listed as threatened in the contiguous United States, and endangered in parts of Canada. In May 2002, the Canadian Species at Risk Act listed the Prairie population (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba range) of grizzly bears as being extirpated in Canada^[10]. In Alaska and parts of Canada however, the grizzly is still legally shot for sport by hunters. On January 9, 2006, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to remove Yellowstone grizzlies from the list of threatened and protected species. In March 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service "de-listed"the population, effectively removing Endangered Species Act protections for grizzlies in the Yellowstone National Park area. Grizzly bears also speak english.

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FURTHER NOTE: Ursus arctos horribilis are also awesome, according to the sidebar.

Bemoaning the Loss of English Subjuctive

The New York Times published an article today about efficiency in the workplace. The book is called The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. This is what Po Bronson had to say about it:

'“It’s not saying the ‘20-Hour Workweek,’” Mr. Bronson explained. “That would be something that lots of people can live. It’s 40 hours a week versus four. It’s very important in the tech world that consequences are exponential, not geometrical.”'

So what does he mean? Does he mean that in the tech world, concequences are defined as being exponential, not geometric (declarative reading)? Or that the tech world isn't going to care unless the consequences are exponential (subjunctive reading)?

Now, if English still had a subjunctive in regular use, I would know: if he meant this subjuctively he would have said "It’s very important in the tech world that consequences be exponential, not geometrical." Since he didn't, this is declarative. Unfortunately, I think he might actually have intended this to be read subjunctively.

Now, I know what you're thinking: wait a minute, aren't linguists supposed to be all desciptivist and shun prescriptivism? Well, to that I say two things:

1. I come from an intensely prescriptivist background. It's not that easy to throw off, you know!

2. The main reason I'm posting this is to talk about language change. What happens when a change causes confusion? Doesn't it usually ultimately fail? Or, something comes in to take its place?

It seems to me that the loss of the subjunctive is too far along to reverse itself. Once language change gets going in earnest, there doesn't seem to be any stopping it. But if situations like this keep coming up, where I can't figure out from context which of two ambiguous meanings was intended, can we expect to see something come in to take its place? Maybe a slightly awkward injection of a modal, like "It’s very important in the tech world that consequences should be exponential, not geometrical"?

I beat up Michael, but *I beat up him

A data set I came up with during yesterday's car trip:

(1)

a. I beat him/them/you up (twice a week).

b. *I beat up him/them/you (twice a week).

c. We beat each other up (twice a week).

d * We beat up each other (twice a week).

e. We beat ourselves up (twice a week).

f. *We beat up ourselves (twice a week).

g. Jon and Michael beat each other up (twice a week.)

h. *Jon and Michael beat up each other (twice a week).

(2)

a. I beat Michael up (twice a week).

b. I beat up Michael (twice a week).

(3)

a. I beat the/a boy up (twice a week).

b. I beat up the/a boy (twice a week).

(4)

a. I beat all the boys up (twice a week).

b. I beat up all the boys (twice a week).

c. I beat all boys up.

d. I beat up all boys.

e. I beat boys up (twice a week).

f. I beat up boys (twice a week).

(5)

a. I beat each boy up (twice a week)

b. I beat up each boy (twice a week)

(6)

a. I beat his brother up (twice a week).

b. I beat up his brother. (twice a week).

(7)

a. I beat someone up (twice a week).

b. ?I beat up someone (twice a week).

(8)

a. ??I beat no one up.

b. ??I beat up no one.

c. I didn't beat up anyone.

d. I didn't beat anyone up.

So what's the generalization? At first I thought that the elements that cannot appear outside of 'beat up' were the elements that require some kind of antecedent, or discourse context, in order to be meaningful, but doesn't the data in (6) also require a previously established reference for 'his'? But then again, maybe that doesn't matter because 'his' is not an argument of the verb...

Someone has probably already figured this out. Perhaps I will google it...

Post-nominal 'of'-phrases

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A question for L1 English speakers: Do you agree with the judgments given below?

(113)*The imposition of the government of a fine
(114) The government's imposition of a fine

These are stolen from David Adger's 'Core Syntax', by the way. The generalization is that Agents cannot be realized as post-nominal 'of'-phrases, but for me, in my[1] brand of English, (113) is grammatically well-formed. It's just stylistically disgusting. Is this just me, or do other people get this too?

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[1] evidently nonstandard

Fun with derivational morphology!

Do you suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia?

"It's a word we in the media like to trot out today: paraskevidekatriaphobia [pronounced pair-uh-skee-vee-dek-uh-tree-uh-FOH-bee-uh] -- the excessive, and sometimes morbid fear of Friday the 13th.

"We like it, first, because it's such an impressive-sounding word -- it takes some doing to make all those syllables trip elegantly off the tongue".

Interesting tidbit: "The word 'paraskevidekatriaphobia' was devised by Dr. Donald Dossey who told his patients that 'when you learn to pronounce it, you're cured!'"

Not getting what 'got' means...

So, I was wondering....what does 'got' mean? It seems to be able to substitute for a passive, but has, er, got, some strange restrictions...

(1) I got kicked.
(2) I was kicked.
(3) I just got kicked.
(4) ?I just was kicked.
(5) I was just kicked.
(6) *I got just kicked.

On a slightly-less-intense note...

I was taking a look at adorable, hippie, webcomics shirts, and came across the following phrase:

(1) (*)It's even made by American Apparel, who believes in fair labor practices.

Now -- leaving aside the thorny issue of whether or not American Apparel is an ethical company -- to me, this is an ill-formed sentence. (Hence, the asterisk.) I much prefer one of these:

(2) It's even made by American Apparel, who believe in fair labor practices.
(3) It's even made by American Apparel, which believes in fair labor practices.

I think this is because I require "who" to refer to people. One can treat a corporation, such as American Apparel, as a group of people, in which case "who" is appropriate but, crucially, plural. (viz. sentence 2.) One can also talk about a corporation as an inanimate entity, in which case I don't permit "who" to be used.

What do you think? Native English speakers, is sentence 1 grammatical for you?