On the Linguistics Trail

Language can mean so much if you write what you really mean and know what you really want to say.

So with my title, it is "linguistics" trail as in a noun form and not "linguistic" as an adjective. This is extremely important because if I had said linguistic trail, it would mean that I would be writing this piece linguistically.Which I really am. But here I am trying to write more on the scientific study of the language and so therefore it is "linguistics".

Thus I am really being a linguistician and not so much a linguist.

If you ask me, I will prefer the word "lingusitician" to "linguist" anytime, reason being that the first succinctly shows that I am studying one language while the second somehow connotes studying several languages at the same time.

Forms of words are the most linguistically challenging. In one sentence, I could actually highlight the subtle differences among them : Let me present (verb) you with the presentation (adjective) slides for presentation (noun).

Thus we have Administration Managers or Technician Managers and never the adjectival forms of Administrative or Technical. This would mean , in the very unlikely event, that the people so employed are administrative or technical, implying some sort of robotic, mechanical or systemic processes within the person himself.

It is like saying I have a wormy (adjective) manager rather than a Worm (noun) Manager. The former denotes someone snivelling and squirmy while the latter will be appropriate use for a company who specifically employs someone to take care of "worms" (either in the computer or agrarian sense).

Quantifying or pluralising words with the "s" must be judiciously done as in some countables or uncountables. Water and salt are almost invariably never pluralised but we can have chairs or tables, these being quantifiable objects.

Hyphenation and spacing somehow have gone out the window with much of the writing I have witnessed nowadays. Instead of hyphenation, we could write it as one word too.

So if I say he was knocked out, this is an action phrase much like space out while knockout and space-out are nouns. Two pairs of sentences will illustrate this clearly: The welterweight was knocked out early in the first round. It was a complete knock-out the moment the welterweight stepped onto the ring. Dick has a hard-on. Dick is usually hard on himself.

And then there is that perennial problem of spacing or not spacing out words. He baths every day. His bath is an everyday affair. One shows habit of action while the other is a descriptive one.

Americans and Britons will probably be at loggerheads with what I have just enunciated above. This is because the two have very divergent cultural biases and thus the use of the English language. As it is, the way the words are spelt can be as colorful as my use of the word here.

Don't expect the Americans to say "storm in a teacup" but "tempest in a teapot" instead. To the Britons, it is "two/ten a penny" while for the Americans, it is "dime a dozen".

But the line of demarcation must surely have dimmed somewhat over time. Because we are having American vacations on British holidays sometimes and taking the elevator or the lift always. Our British resumes are just as good as the American curricula vitae.

If you can catch my drift just from the discussion above, "congratulations" or should I say "jolly good fella"!

Finally many confusible words are used interchangeably when their meanings are not what they are intended for. The colonists settled down in America as opposed to the colonialists colonised America. Or even this ubiquitous surprise trap: "felicitate" and "facilitate".

In the old days, words were sometimes even more subtly nuanced like an "idiot" is a notch below an "imbecile" or "inoculate" had a very different meaning from "immunise". Somehow over the years, they were assimilated as one and became synonymous.

In fact some words are very contrary to what they mean in the past. Something known as catachresis. Counterfeit used to mean a copy of and degenerate meant branching off from an original copy and not the deterioration we have come to associate it with these days.

Then there are words we just cannot seem to identify with because they somehow seem incredible or absurd. Just in case you want to know, we do have "prettify" and "decorous" in the English language, verb and adjectival forms of "pretty" and "decorum" and even "pandemoniac" for pandemonium.

Even in Science, the myriad of confusible words abound : meiosis vs mitosis, centrifugal vs centripetal and genotype vs phenotype. This is ever the more important in Science. That crucial subtle difference means scientific research or investigation can take a turn for the worse or maybe even leading to failure.

Once we can cleanse ourselves of such obfuscation, we will certainly pave the way for clearer and better communication and to really mean what we say and know what we want to say.