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  • Macmillan Dictionary Love English Awards: update 5 and final

    Posted by on January 25, 2012

    We’re almost there, with just five more days of voting left. Over 23,000 votes have been cast in the last two months, showing love in abundance for the useful, entertaining (and sometimes a bit weird) English language-loving websites and blogs that are in the running.

    If you have been nominated, results will be officially announced on February 1st and there’ll be award badges to download then.

    It’s worth taking the time to look through the lists of websites and blogs that’ve been chosen: plenty of great resources to bookmark.

    Thank you for all the votes so far!

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Recent Comments

  • Posted by Stan to Apostrophe apostasy on January 26, 2012 Stephen: Fascinating. Thank you for the lesson! Jonathan: That's a clear and articulate demonstration of the importance of pragmatics. Imaginary examples are so much a part of the tradition of education, it's easy to overlook how unlikely or misleading their contents can be. Kevin: I'm sure you're right. It was highly speculative on my part. I'm struck by the superficial parallel, though, and I wonder if the same forms have cropped up elsewhere in fictional or real-world usage.
  • Posted by Laine to Open Dictionary word of the week: digitalist on January 25, 2012 Susie, I haven't heard 'born digital' before - good one! Perhaps you could add it to the OD? http://www.macmillandictionary.com/open-dictionary/submit.html
  • Posted by Susie Teacher to Open Dictionary word of the week: digitalist on January 25, 2012 ...and 'born digital' refers to a document of any kind which was originally digital - as opposed to something which was originally in another format, like a photograph or a letter which was later presented digitally.
  • Posted by Kevin Sullivan to Apostrophe apostasy on January 25, 2012 Stan: I don't think the two -s mophemes (plural then possessive) are from "The Lord of the Rings." There isn't any drawn out Andy Serk-hiss.
  • Posted by Jonathan Marks to Apostrophe apostasy on January 25, 2012 About ambiguity (see Michael's comment on 23rd January) It's not only guardians of linguistic purity that dream up imaginary sentences, of course. This practice has a respectable pedigree in linguistics. Remember Chomsky's "Visiting relatives can be boring"? Two different deep structures, two different meanings - and both of them true, but has this sentence, or one like it, ever actually caused confusion? David Brazil, in 'A Grammar of Speech' (OUP 1995) distinguishes between indeterminacy and ambiguity. Indeterminacy is a pervasive (and in fact, as he argues, a necessary) feature of language as a decontextualised product. "She remembered the groceries in her car", for example, is indeterminate in at least two ways. For one thing, it could mean either "She remembered the groceries that were in her car" or "While she was in her car, she remembered the groceries". And for another thing, "she" and "her" could refer to the same person or to two different people. But if you study what Brazil calls 'used language' - language which has actually been produced in the course of a purpose-driven communicative process - you find that ambiguity rarely arises, because interlocutors are generally cooperative (they abide by Grice's maxims) and draw on co-text, prosody, paralinguistics, context and shared knowledge in interpreting what they hear. In the process of interaction, indeterminacy is unproblematic and ambiguity is averted - or, if it does arise, it can be resolved through 'negotiation of meaning'. Ambiguity is somewhat more likely to arise in writing than in speaking, because there's less extralinguistic information available, and less prospect of remediation. And ambiguity in writing is less likely to come to light, because although the results of the writer's work are documented, the results of the reader's work aren't. And ..... re. Stan (today): The German Rechtschreibungsreform (spelling reform) of 1996 was (still is) a complete pig's ear. And anyway, as you say, and as Nudel'n shows, the folk do as they please. re. Stephen (today): The Cyrillic soft sign (usually) represents palatalisation of the consonant it follows and, similarly, Czech and Slovak (Slavonic languages written in the Roman alphabet) also use a diacritic which is similar, but not identical, to an apostrophe to represent palatalisation of d and t, and l (Slovak only). This is a tall-letter variant of the háček (which I hope you'll be able to see on the letter c in that word!)

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