To google - why it is a regular verb - Part 1

In my earlier entry Google - worldwide genericide, there was a list of verbs "to google" in other languages, and I noted that all the verbs that show regular verb inflection. Why are they regular verbs? Let me show you here what happens when a new verb enters our language by looking at language acquisition of children learning English as their first language.

Preschool children (age 4 to 6) start talking in sentences, and they also start using their knowledge of morphology quite cleverly and productively. They encounter numerous new words everyday, but they somehow figure out the new words' parts of speech and how to inflect them.

We often see children make errors like breaked or comed - they overgeneralize the regular verb inflection rules to irregular verbs to make past tense. Unfortunately for children acquiring language, ten most frequent verbs in English, which could also be equivalent to ten most frequent verbs that the children need to learn early in life, are all irregular verbs (be, have, do, say, make, go, take, come, see, get). Regular verbs come lower in frequency, but children, when they make past tense, apply productively the regular verb inflection rule, adding -d to the verb, to new verbs they encounter.

Berko (1957) has shown in experiments (so called wug test) with preschool children the over-application of regular inflectional rules of nouns and verbs in nonsense words.

Number of nonsense monosyllabic words were made up, and pictures to represent the nonsense words were drawn on cards. A text, omitting the desired form was typed on each card. Children, and also adult subjects as control group, were shown the cards and the text read, and were induced to say the nonsense word in the inflected form. Here is an example of the question forming past tense.

This is a man who knows how to RICK. He is RICKING. He did the same thing yesterday. What did he do yesterday?
Yesterday, he ..............................

Over 76 percent of the children answered RICKED. They apply the regular inflection rule to the nonsense word. The percentage is higher of adult subjects. They are applying regular suffixing rule to form the past tense.

Inflections of irregular verbs, on the other hand, are memorized, stored in their memory.

In the human mind, the memory and rule interact in a fairly simple way (Pinker 1999) - if a word can provide its own past tense form from memory, the regular rule is blocked, but elsewhere, by default, the rule applies. That's why adults and children can inflect the nonsense word because there are no memorized inflected forms that is stored in the memory.

A new word "to google", which has no memory stored information on its past tense, has to be inflected in regular form.

(to be continued)

Berko, J. (1958) The child's learning of English morphology.  Word, 14, 150-177
Pinker, S. (1999) Words and Rules  New York N.Y. : Harper Perrenial

"television" and "fernseher"

The Oxford English Dictionary shows that "television" is first recorded in 1900.“Television” consists of “tele” and “vision,” a combination of Greek “telos” (far) and Latin “visio” (see).

A German word for “TV” is “fernseher.” It is the word combined with “fern” (far) and “seher” (seer). German and English belong to the same language family as West Germanic (“the Germanic group”), so that their basic words are often identifiable.

What we found here is that, on arrival of a new word, German has retained method of word formation by replacing “television” with their own lexical stock. English would also have done the same thing, and put it “ferseer,” but instead they borrowed “television” just as it is, adapting a continental vocabulary.

It is interesting to observe the different stance towards borrowing. One of the contributing factors that led English to a common international language would be the borrowing of diverse words regardless of regions and nations. This is not to say German is not appropriate for global language, but flexible nature of English in adapting multiple languages would undoubtedly have been and is a necessary step to the present global status.

Works Referred 
Horobin, Simon. How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Google strikes back - the resistance Genericide 04

Companies should be happy if their products are widely used by consumers and rejoice their success, but paradoxically, when their product trademark starts being used widely in a generic sense, the companies' trademark lawyers would furiously start trampling them out. The trademark loses its power when it is generified and defines an action or function that does not specifically refer to the using of the product.

Although they have admitted the word to become a verb, Google has pressured the lexicographers in defining the word. The company specifically wants 'to google' to mean

'to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web'

and Webster has done so in defining the word (Merriam Webster). So by definition, it does not include search with YAHOO or Bing or any other search engine (but unfortunately it does not faithfully reflect the reality).

In 2006, the year when the word 'google' entered dictionaries, Google clearly stated in their official blog (which seems to me an unavailing try) the guidelines for proper using of the word 'google' (Do you google.).　The company also has successfully pressured and made Sweden remove the word 'ogooglebar' meaning 'ungooglable' in English from their language vocabulary (Ungoogleable removed from list of Swedish words). The Language Council of Sweden was pressured from Google on the definition of the word, and the council was fed up with the language controlling from Google that they decided to drop the word, and shows their displeasure towards the giant.

Google trademark lawyer is constantly fighting with the uncontrollable evolution of the word (Google calls in the 'language police').

Whether the company tops want it or not, when words start evolving among people, it is unstoppable, language is a natural object.

Old English, a different language?

The development of the English language is usually divided into several stages.

     ----------
     Old English (c. 500 - c. 1100)
     Middle English (c. 1100 - c. 1500)
     Early Modern English (c. 1500 - c. 1800)
     Late Modern English (c. 1800 - Present)
     ----------

Of course, people of the Middle Ages did not find themselves speaking “Old English or Middle English”: these divisions are a creation of modern scholars on the basis of linguistic feature and changes.

Interestingly, or naturally, they have all “English” in each period, showing that English was "English" from the start. Yet, it is often said that Old English is unaccessible, extremely hard to read as it is more like a German. Even native speakers of English have tremendous difficulty understanding it. It is a completely different language despite the fact that it is called “English.”

Related to this, Simon Horobin poses an interesting question:

“English has been in use for 1,500 years; during that time it has changed to such an extent that the form of the language used by the Anglo-Saxons is unrecognizable to contemporary English speakers. Today we refer to this language as Old English, but should we perhaps think of it as a different language altogether? Modern Italian is descended from the Latin spoken by the Romans, but these are considered to be different languages. Might that not also be true of Old English and Modern English? (2)Yes, Italian comes from Latin, but the latter is not referred to as “Old Italian,” so do other Romance languages, such as French, Spanish, Romanian. They do not share the consistent naming, diverging into one distinct language.

The terminology employed in the history of English implies how much later people stress and cherish the historical continuity of their mother tongue. Hence, the division of English historical evolution not only results not only from the meticulous analysis of linguistic changes, but also from a desire to claim the coherence and identity of English. 


Works cited:

Horobin, Simon. How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Google - A worldwide Genericide 03

Google is a company specialized in Internet related services and products, and their search engine is used world-wide. When people want to search for information on the Internet, they 'google' it.

Yes, Google is also a victim of genericide, and the word 'to google' is used as a transitive verb meaning 'to search for information about something or someone on the Internet using the Google search engine.' A lot of people use the verb 'to google' to refer to 'looking up on the Internet', so they could be using bing or YAHOO, and it does not necessarily mean to use 'Google'.

The verb 'to google' entered Merriam Webster dictionary and Oxford dictionary in 2006.

What is amazing about Google is that the search engine has diffused globally and the generification of the word 'to google' has also become world-wide (How do you say google in other languages).

Here are some 'google's in other languages.

German : googlen
French : googler
Italian : googlare
Spanish : googlar
Dutch : googlen
Portuguese : googlar
Turkish : googlemek
Russian : googleet
Japanese : ググる guguru

Google genericide is pandemic, it is thoroughly world-wide... It is unstoppable.

Also, what is notable about all these verbs is that the verbs inflect in regular pattern, non of them are irregular verbs.

Check the regular verb endings in the above given languages.

German : -en
French : -er
Italian : -are
Spanish : -ar
Dutch : -en
Portuguese : -ar
Turkish : -mek
Russian : -ti

They are regular verbs because they are language generated by human beings. The reason? to be continued in the later articles.

to Photoshop - Genericide 02

Photoshop is a trademark of Adobe, and it is a widely used photo manipulation software. This trademark has become a victim of genericide, and it is commonly used as a verb too. Internet articles and tabloids talk about "photoshopped celebrities". Here are some examples of article titles with Photoshop used as a verb.

21 Celebrities before and after they were Photoshopped.
(http://www.lifebuzz.com/photshopped-celebrities/)

This is what happens when you Photoshop celebrities into your holiday party.
(http://twistedsifter.com/2012/03/photoshopping-celebrities-into-holiday-party/)

Tool reveals how much celebs and models are Photoshopped.
(http://www.boredpanda.com/photoshopped-celebrities-before-after/)

Although flattered by the popularity of the software and the usage of the trademark, Adobe does not allow the trademark to be used as common nouns or verbs. The company has press released the guidelines of the usage of the trademark.
https://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressmaterials/pdfs/photoshop_guidelines_pr.pdf

The official release does not seem to have stopped the abuse. There is now an entry of 'Photoshop' in Merriam Webster Dictionary.

transitive verb
to alter (a digital image) with Photoshop software or other image-editing software especially in a way that distorts reality (as for deliberately deceptive purposes)

As a generic verb, it also carries a touch of negative nuance. According to the dictionary, the first known use was in 1992.

Words, or language is a natural object. When it starts evolving, it cannot be stopped.