Reanalysis

As promised, here is a linguistics-related post. I’m sorry.

I had the opportunity to listen to a native Flemish speaker speaking English the other day, and I found it interesting to see what kind of insights I could gain into the syntax of Flemish and Dutch by observing her grammar mistakes in English.

For example, at one point she said, *“I didn’t heard about that.” This is a consequence of the nature of negation in English. To negate a verb, you have to use the auxiliary verb “do”, in whatever tense the original affirmative verb is in, as well as insert the negative particle “not” and put the main verb in infinitive tense (“I heard it” -> “I did not hear it”). One used to be able to just put in “not” after the verb (“I heard not it”), but this is a highly marked form in English nowadays, almost to the point of being ungrammatical. So I figure in Flemish, negating a verb doesn’t work like this; instead, my guess is that you just put in a negative particle and leave the verb alone. The incorrect English negative sentence might be a result of the speaker’s incorrect analysis of “didn’t” as a negative particle of sorts, possibly because that’s exactly what it looks like in affirmative sentences with certain types of verb (“I hear it” -> “I didn’t hear it”).

Incidentally, I’m also guessing that such a negative particle would involve the sound “n”. I don’t see any reason why this would be the case, but the presence of a “n” sound in lexical items with negative meaning is observable in an astonishing variety of languages, including some that aren’t even remotely related to each other. I wonder if it’s something innate in humans, like that a “n” sound intuitively means “opposition”?

Turns out I was right (on both counts): the particle “niet” is added to negate a sentence, without modifying the main verb or inserting an auxiliary (“Ik hoor ‘t” -> “Ik hoor ‘t niet”). If the verb has an indefinite object, negation is different: the particle “geen” is added before the object (“Dat is geen maan” = “That is not a moon”, lit. “That is no moon” and yes that is a Star Wars reference shut up).

I think if I get bored I might end up learning some Dutch. It’s a pretty straightforward language to a speaker of any other Low Germanic (or even West Germanic) language such as English.

Randoms

See, this post isn’t about linguistics. Can’t say the same for the next one, though. Sorry. I don’t want it to be like this any more than you do, but for some reason my brain has decided that language and linguistics are irresistibly fascinating, and won’t let me forget it.

Before I got on the plane, I was walking around in JFK (which is an awful airport, by the way) and the music playing over the PA system was shockingly reminiscent of the period background music from Bioshock. Seeing as how I was about to get on a plane, and keeping in mind the way the plot of Bioshock starts, it was a bit creepy. But then I realized I’d be all right if the plane crashed in the Atlantic Ocean and I survived, because I could go down into Rapture and kick some ass. Then if I survived and got back out… ELECTRO BOLT, BITCHES.

While I was on the plane, the in-flight movie was “Stardust”. I enjoyed it mostly because it is loaded with cameos from top-notch British comedians. I spotted Peter O’Toole (supposedly the greatest British stand-up comic ever), Ricky Gervais (The Office, the real one), David Walliams (Little Britain), and no fewer than three Green Wing alums (Sarah Alexander, Julian Rhind-Tutt and the unfortunately underutilized Mark Heap). Of course the movie itself was good in the “so bad it’s good” way. It was good empty entertainment and there were lots of British comedians.

While the plane was on approach to land, I was looking out the window. The plane descended into the cloud cover, and I figured we’d break out below the clouds eventually, exposing a typically Belgian overcast winter morning. But no; while the plane was descending through the clouds, somehow it hit the ground. I wondered what the ground was doing all the way up in the clouds. Turns out it was snowing, so the ground was completely white, and the visibility was so bad that I literally could not see the ground we were rolling along. I was surprised they even let the plane land in that kind of visibility.

After the plane landed, I breezed through immigration using my Belgian ID card (you hold it up and they wave you through), and I felt good about it. Then I waited for an hour for my luggage to come out. It didn’t. Then I waited in line at the “you dumbasses lost my luggage” counter for an hour. End result: I won’t have my stuff till at least tomorrow.

My cat is purring furiously at me. He is so getting lolcatted when I get my hands on a camera.

I almost have a mullet. Fortunately it’s going away tomorrow.

I’m going to stop writing now because I’ve just passed the 22 hours awake mark and I may lose control soon.

Letdowns

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never been so eager to get out of the States and go home — home being Belgium. I much prefer living in Europe to living in the States. But really, what Belgium is up to now just goes to show that every country is an idiot in its own way. Maybe Belgium’s idiocy bothers me less than the States’ idiocy because I’m used to it (and find it kind of endearing in a weird way) — it’s the dumb I know over the dumb I don’t.

Just as American society is fairly deeply divided along racial lines, despite claims and misguided efforts to the contrary, Belgian society is divided along lines near and dear to me — language. (You saw that coming, right…it’s all I write about these days.)

For as long as Belgium has existed, there’s been a minority of people who see it as an artificial construct that was put there for the convenience of France and the Netherlands. To some extent, that’s true of Belgium’s origins — France and the Netherlands just sort of dumped all their Catholics in the middle and disowned them. Throughout its history, Belgium has been a unified label put on two distinct linguistic communities: the French speakers and the Dutch speakers.

I realize very well how huge a language barrier can be. You can’t have a unified society without communicating, and you can’t communicate without a common language (see how “communicate” and “common” come from the same root? dammit I’m doing it again). So yes, inevitably a “society” containing two linguistic groups will subdivide on linguistic lines. I’m not surprised or upset about that. What I do object to is how much of a problem some Belgians turn it into.

On both sides of the language barrier, there are separatist parties that advocate dissolving the Belgian state as it currently is, either replacing it with two separate countries corresponding to Flanders and Wallonia, or merging Flanders with the Netherlands and Wallonia with France. That second option is what I can’t understand no matter how hard I try.

Nobody can argue (or I hope nobody would try) that Belgium, however ad hoc its formation may have been, has developed a very distinctive national identity. At risk of verging on patriotism (which is something I promised myself I’d never engage in, for any country), I’d say the Belgian national identity is one to be proud of. It’s a diplomatic center of Europe, it’s culturally rich, internationally respected, and wouldn’t hurt a fly (even if it could). Separatist parties want to throw away this identity and be subsumed into another country. I don’t know what has to be going through someone’s head for them to want that. Also, I can’t help but find it a little bit akin to Ann Coulter opposing voting rights for women. I’m sure the analogy doesn’t hold up, but still — “In the interest of [Flanders/Wallonia], we would like its status as a distinct geopolitical entity to disappear!” It doesn’t have the same forehead-slapping irony as Ann Coulter, but it’s still bizarre.

The current failure to form a coalition government has aggravated this issue. It also shows that a rather disconcertingly high proportion of Belgians are in support of separating Flanders and Wallonia. Fortunately, there are some practical concerns that prevent this from happening in the short term, the biggest one being: what do you do with Brussels?

Brussels is a separate administrative region from Flanders and Wallonia. It’s actually completely surrounded by Flanders, but is separated by only a few kilometers from Wallonia. It’s officially bilingual, and most inhabitants speak both languages at least somewhat well. It’s tiny relative to Flanders and Wallonia, so probably doesn’t merit being its own country. It’s uniformly bilingual, so you can’t draw a line to separate the two linguistic communities. Neither Flemish nor Walloon separatists would say, “You guys can have Brussels, we don’t want it.” So what can they do?

So, as much as I whine about the States doing idiotic things, Belgium does idiotic things too. It’s a bit of a letdown when I think about it, but I still can’t wait to go back.

I promise I’ll write something non-language-related one of these days.

Because I'm bored (and Twiter is down)

Fun fact of the day: dative shifting in English is generally restricted to verbs of Germanic origin; verbs of Latinate origin usually can't undergo dative shift.

Dative shift is a process by which a transitive verb that has an oblique argument in dative case can be transformed into a ditransitive verb, with the original oblique argument being promoted to an object, and the original object being demoted to a second object. For example: dative-shifting "I gave a book to him" (object: "a book", oblique: "to him") gives "I gave him a book" (object: "him", second object: "a book").

In English, dative shift is better referred to as "benefactive shift"; the transformation can only happen when the oblique argument plays the semantic role of a beneficiary of the verb. For example, "I said things to him" can't be dative shifted: *"I said him things" is ungrammatical. It can also be applied to obliques that I'm not sure are considered dative case, e.g.: "I did a favor for him" -> "I did him a favor".

However, the verbs I've been using as examples so far are of Germanic origin. Here are some Latinate verbs that have a semantic beneficiary: transfer, distribute. They can't be dative shifted: "I distributed the stuff to them" -> *"I distributed them the stuff", and "I transferred things to him" -> *"I transferred him things". I've definitely heard the sentence "I'll transfer you some money" uttered by someone, so I guess at least in some cases (that is not a pun because if it were it would be TERRIBLE) dative-shifting a Latinate verb is OK, but in general (as shown by the example with "transfer"), it's not.

I've also heard learners of English erroneously dative shift verbs that can't be dative shifted. I wonder how native English speakers learn to make the distinction. Certainly not knowledge of etymology. Maybe it's just something you memorize. Man do I feel sorry for learners of English if that's the case. And they thought the irregular verbs were bad enough.

I've spent a semester doing crap like this. Also, as I've mentioned, I'm bored. AND I AM A HUGE NERD, IT CANNOT BE DENIED

Le langage

Man, looking at my schedule for next semester you wouldn't guess I'm a CS major.

• Linguistic analysis
• Natural language processing
• Topics in Language Study: Historical linguistics
• Either Language and Culture or Elementary German I
• Oh, by the way: Algorithm design and analysis

I might forget how to code. I guess that's the consequence of having finished all but one of the required CS classes and wavering between three possible minors/double majors, all of which involve linguistics.

On a completely unrelated topic: StarCraft II demo videos are recommended watching. That game needs to come out right soonish.

Philadelphia

I have returned from Philly, victorious. The paperwork is in; I should have a new passport in my hands by the end of this week. I won’t rest truly easy until I’m actually holding it, but I’m almost there.

While I was scoping out the location on Street View, I thought the area where the giant scary building is looked kinda nice — old and “full of character”, much like some parts of downtown Brussels. Even as I got off the plane, my spirits were high even though I was running on not nearly enough sleep. Like in a lot of airports, there is a bridge from the airside terminal (where the planes pull up to) over a roadway to a landside terminal, where all the ticketing counters and things are. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a staircase down to a railway platform in the middle of the bridge, so I probably didn’t even take 100 steps between getting off the plane and onto the train platform. Better yet, there was a sign on the platform that said trains were scheduled to leave at 11 and 41 minutes past the hour, and at the time it was 10:37. Perfect.

Right on time, the train showed up. OK, now, is there some law in this country that says that any and all heavy rail systems are required to be OLD AND BUSTED? Seriously. I’ve been on Amtrak, Caltrain, the Chicago ‘L’, the NYC subway, and now the Philly subway and regional rail. They are all seriously OLD AND BUSTED. I don’t get it. It’s possible to make an unbusted heavy rail system. I’ve seen it happen. I’m starting to feel like legislation against decent heavy rail systems must be the underlying cause.

So I got on the old and busted train. At least it was electrified, and with overhead wires, no less. I did like how it had a window in the front that passengers could see out of; I stood there and watched as we clattered and rumbled into Central Philly. I got off at a SERIOUSLY old and busted station, then wandered around like an idiot for a little while, looking for a way to get on the subway. During my wanderings, I wandered into the Amtrak station adjoining the SEPTA (the Philly public transport company) station. The Amtrak station is really huge and nice and shiny. I don’t understand why such an old, busted system gets to have such nice stations. Anyway, I eventually found the subway station (you have to go out in the street and walk for a block or so). Things took even more of a turn for the worse: it turns out Philly’s subway system is one of those where everything about it — trains, stations, general vicinity of station entrances — smells like pee. Or, if you’re lucky, urinal cakes. The floors in all the stations were suspiciously slippery. The first subway station I was in seemed to have a few permanent residents in the form of piles of blankets with legs sticking out of them, slumped in corners.

When the train came (pretty soon after I got there; I’ll give the subway points for frequency of service), it reminded me a lot of the ‘L’. They probably use the same rolling stock, produced in the 70s by Old, Busted & Partners, Inc. Again the train had a window in the front, so I sat in the front seat and it was fun (I’m like that about trains, always have been — 電車 was one of my first words as a kid (“train” in Japanese)). It could have been more fun if there weren’t so many incredibly sketchy people on the train. There were all sorts — enormous fat guy who takes up two seats, smells like a football team’s locker room and breathes really heavily; crazy homeless guy in stained winter jacket who sits rocking and talking to himself; two disheveled slightly psycho-looking guys intently engaged in a conversation that sounds utterly inane (“So I said to him, you know, that’s how it is! Right? That’s just how it is!” “Yeah, well, sometimes that’s not how it is.” “But that IS HOW IT IS! That’s just HOW IT IS!” “Maybe he doesn’t think so.” “Yeah, well, I’m TELLING him, THAT’S HOW IT IS! Right? That’s just HOW IT IS!”); a guy whose appearance would be the paragon of stereotypical black fashion if not for the fact that he’s white; etc. I’ve never been on a public transport system whose clientele had such a high concentration of whackos before.

I arrived at the place a good 45 minutes early for my appointment (nominally at 12). The deal is, you can go into the building and check in no more than 15 minutes before your appointment. So I had a bit of time to kill.

The blocks immediately surrounding the Customs House looked decent. From standing at an intersection and looking down the streets, though, I could see that if you went a block in either of two directions, you’d be in an end of town where you shouldn’t be. Philly shares that trait with Pittsburgh — neighborhoods can go from super-nice and upscale to super-ghetto within the space of a few paces (in Pittsburgh, the border between Point Breeze (uber-rich) and East Liberty (uber-poor) is Penn Ave. It’s a very strange sight). Brussels has its share of shady neighborhoods, but at the least the transitions are gradual. You don’t have a restaurant with $30 appetizers next to an old apartment building whose fire escape is about to fall off, like you do in Philly.

I took one of the directions that looked all right – towards the river. After a couple blocks, I was at Penn’s Landing, which seemed to be some kind of tourist attraction. (Look it up on Wikipedia; I can’t be assed to describe it.) I wandered in and looked around. It was deserted except for a homeless guy sleeping on a bench over on the other side. (It was 11:30 on a Monday morning.) I had bought a prepackaged sandwich from the train station, so I took it out and leaned against a railing, taking in the view (which was really quite nice in one specific angle; if you looked the other way you saw a battleship and a bunch of heavy industry, which wasn’t so nice) and eating.

Suddenly I realized shit was going down. Seagulls were circling and landing near me in droves, screeching at me, batting at each other with their wings to gain position. For a second I thought I’d accidentally wandered onto the turf of some kind of fucked-up gang consisting of, well, seagulls, and I was wearing the wrong colors, or I wasn’t a seagull, or something. I wasn’t thinking straight. Pretty soon I realized that the cause of the commotion was my sandwich. Wondering how the balls the idiot birds figured out that it was food, I started to slowly shuffle towards the exit, which involved trying to shuffle through a ring of seagulls who were all cawing impatiently at me.

I’d just take the time now to note that that was the only moment of my time in Philly where I actually felt like I was physically in danger. I went through a lot of less-than-upscale areas with a lot of not-necessarily-above-suspicion people, but I was only actually scared of being harmed when I was surrounded by a bunch of goddamn birds.

I crammed the remainder of the sandwich into my mouth, choked it down and then made an anime-style “smash” maneuver where I fanned out my arms and yelled “HYAAA”. All the asshats took off at once and flew away from me, so I was briefly surrounded by a low-flying, flapping, screeching explosion of birds. I felt way badass, like I was a Master of Birds or something, until I realized what it must look like to an outside observer.

With the way clear, I made my way to the exit of Penn’s Landing. When I got there, I looked back and saw something very weird. As I’d been walking, seagulls had been landing around me again but keeping their distance. When I got to the exit, all the seagulls had landed, and were standing perfectly still, all of them facing the same direction (not towards me). It was bizarre. I went towards the closest one and pounced at it. It hopped unconcernedly away from me and resumed standing stock-still and staring. It was like I’d caused them all to go on standby or something. I left Penn’s Landing, figuring that they might reset once I was gone.

It was time to go to my appointment, so I went back to the Customs House. The whole process went remarkably smoothly, except for one close call with failure, entirely not my fault. The guy I was dealing with asked for my application, photos, driver’s license, previous passport, yada yada. He did a bunch of shuffling and stamping of papers, then asked me how I wanted to pay. I gave him my credit card and signed the receipt, etc. Then it seemed like he was done with me. However, he’d never mentioned my birth certificate, which as you may recall is the whole reason I had to go to fucking Philadelphia in the first place. I said, “Uh, I was told that since that passport was issued when I was under 16, you’d need my birth certificate.” He said, “Yeah, do you have that?” Of course I did, but I had to resist the urge to ask, “And when exactly where you going to ask me for it?”

I left the Customs House slightly reeling with relief; barring failure of the postal service, I will have my passport in time. After my whole hilariously improbable ordeal, I was done. But at that point it was about 12:45, and my flight was scheduled to leave at 6, so I had plenty of time to kill. I went back towards Penn’s Landing, and on the way noticed something I’d just walked straight past before — a Belgian café. My hopes went through the roof and then I saw the place was closed with no posted opening hours. Then I was very sad. Still, I went to the window and looked at the menu. “Frietjes” with Belgian mayonnaise…waterzooï…moules (I don’t even like the damn things, but seeing them on the menu made me happy anyway) — I thought, “Man I wish I could have some Belgian food”, then I thought, “Holy shit I CAN in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS” and there, I was happy again. And an enormous beer list. There were three sheets of paper, covered in tiny letters, listing beers. Most of them were Belgian, but there were also a few English ales and beers from local Pennsylvanian microbreweries. They didn’t have Steendonk (my favorite), but they had some good ones — Hoegaarden, Grimbergen, a few varieties of Kriek. Then at the end, there was a small section listing Amstel Light, Budweiser, Coors Lite, Corona, and such things. I was disappointed until I saw the section heading (I am not making this up): “T&A TV ad beers (i.e. water) – heck, we’ll serve you it, if you’ll pay $4 for it!” Basically that place is my favorite and it should be in Pittsburgh instead.

Feeling a bit cheated but still gleeful on the inside, I went to Penn’s Landing and pounced at seagulls and admired the view for a little while. When I got bored, I set a course away from the river, in the direction of the station where I needed to get on the train to the airport. Forgive the crudity, but at that point it became clear that I would need to visit a lavatory before long. I found a public one at Penn’s Landing, but quickly backed out when I realized that people lived in it. I found a pillar with a tourist map of downtown on it, and found that the visitor’s center (i.e. “HALP IM A TORIST”) was the nearest place likely to have a public bathroom. I went that way.

The HALP IM A TORIST center is on a big plaza-type thing, on the far side from where I entered. As I was about to toward it, I realized that on my right was a building I’d seen before. It was “The Bourse” — a touristy food court/arcade type thing. I knew it from GYLC. On the drive from DC to NY, we’d stopped in Philly for lunch, here at the Bourse (which to me always suggests “treasury” — that’s what the Belgian treasury building in Brussels is called; it’s a cognate with “disburse”, “reimburse”, “bursar” and “purse”, in case you were wondering). I went into the Bourse and remembered the good times of GYLC. Man those were good times. Sigh. Anyway, I availed myself of the “facilities”. On the way, I passed a glass door with a sign on the inside. I glimpsed the sign and it said, “Please tap lightly on ass and someone will let you in”. It turned out there was a decal strategically placed over the letters “gl”, but I was amused anyway.

I really had no more reason to stay in Philly, so I hopped on the Piss Train subway and then the Old & Busted Line train to the airport. Nothing else interesting happened after that, so I now conclude my account of this trip, which was basically the longest errand ever and did not feel like a day trip at all.

IT ENDS UP I WIN

Update on the Passport Saga

At the risk of jinxing it, things seem to be looking up. I successfully got the original consular report of my birth (which is a cheap, shitty little piece of paper, by the way, kind of like social security cards) and successfully got an appointment at the Agency in Philly. As long as the flight to Philly actually gets me there successfully, I should be OK.

Jesus, the things I gotta do to get out of here.

Update: here is the building where the magic will happen. It's big.