Body loses Supreme Court appeal

Updated 2 months, 3 weeks ago

Source: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/

This morning, I appealed the somebody-vs.-someone story to the Supreme Court of the United States. The decision came quickly — details are below.

A few days ago ("Less body in your lexicon?", 11/11/2009), I gave evidence confirming that someone and everyone are more formal than somebody and everybody (because the __body / __ one ratio is an order of magnitude larger in speech than in academic writing). But I also offered evidence that the __one forms are taking over from the __body ...

26 comments on this story

PRO

50% positive

Showing 22 relevant reactions out of 26.

Kenny Easwaran 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

I wonder if you'd find more examples of this sort of phenomenon with words connected to science or technology - originally there is some vernacular word for the thing, but as people become more familiar with the technology or science, the technical word catches on. Unfortunately, I can't think of any good examples to test the theory out on.

At any rate, it also strikes me as being reminiscent ... See all content Hide content

Daniel Cavanagh 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

dan lufkin, that's a good idea about twitter, or rather sms in general. every1 vs. everybody? i suspect sms has been around long enough for that to have had an effect, at least amongst the young

also, 'everyone' is phonetically shorter and (arguably) easier, which is always important

Portia 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

I'm young (21) and some-/everyone appear hundreds of times in my Gmail log, and some-/everybody only about 20 each.

Army1987 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

Re "I can't think of another documented example of a case where the language as a whole is trending away from the vernacular rather than towards it — can you?":

Not in English, but in Italian I've seen some old poems with words such as "mo'" or "fratte" with footnotes "translating" them as "adesso" and "arbusti" (meaning "now" and "bushes"). That surprised me as the former are still somewhat ... See all content Hide content

Graeme 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

Thanks Mark; yes I meant that, according to teh SCOTUS data, 'some/…..' had become much more common, yet seemingly not at the expense of starving 'every/….' of appearances. Your Times data seems to confirm and extend this to 'any/….'

Perhaps some of this change in style has been accelerated by a preference for ungendered terms. What synonyms have fallen into relative disuse; ... See all content Hide content

Jerry Friedman 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

Or without appearing to appear to assign blame. And it doesn't have to be blaming. One I remember was many years ago, when my brother showed me something he had written, and my comment was, "Somebody's been reading Tom Robbins." (My brother was quite pleased.) Naturally, I heard a similar sentence yesterday, but I can't remember it now.

I always use "somebody" in the sense of "we both know ... See all content Hide content

marie-lucie 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

I am not a native speaker, but after 45 or so years living in NA English, I agree with Geoff Nunberg and with David Dantor's wife. It is not a hard and fast rule, but it seems fairly general. I would add that a heavily stressed "somebody" rather than "someone" can be used in order to pointedly avoid referring to a person by name, as in "Somebody left their socks on the floor", said to the person who ... See all content Hide content

David Cantor 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

Just for fun, I asked my wife what the difference was in her use of English between Someone and Somebody. For her, Someone is used when referring to a specific and defined group "Someone in this room committed the murder," while Somebody fit better with an undefined group: "Somebody left a mitten on the sidewalk."

Not sure that I distinguish these in that way, but I thought it was interesting

Geoff Nunberg 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

Speaking of "Goodnight, my someone," which as The Coming of the Toads notes is a whole lot better than "Goodnight my somebody," Dwight Bolinger suggested in Meaning and Form (which I could have sworn I had a copy of somewhere) that the difference between someone and somebody is that the forms in -one are marked for closeness to the speaker and individuation, and thus preserve some part of the sense ... See all content Hide content

Graeme 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

Can anyone/body comment on the dramatically higher absolute usages in recent decades compared to say the 19th century?

Is there some synonym that has dropped put of usage?

uberVU - social comments 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by interests: Language Log: Body loses Supreme Court appeal http://bit.ly/1Ukzle...

Adrian 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

"I can't think of another documented example of a case where the language as a whole is trending away from the vernacular rather than towards it — can you?"

I'd put the trend towards spelling pronunciation in that category.

[(myl) Hypercorrections and spelling pronunciations are certainly cases where the language moves away from the vernacular, but in both cases, it's moving towards ... See all content Hide content

Ben Bolker 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

@DaveK, ditto (I think?) for "… xx and me" to "… xx and myself", which seems not wrong but unnecessary (and driven by the same sort of concern) to me (?)

DaveK 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

I can't think of another documented example of a case where the language as a whole is trending away from the vernacular rather than towards it — can you?

There are the grammatical hypercorrections such as "between you and I" which result from a vague feeling that "me" is a vulgarity–but I hope they don't represent a trend.

David Eddyshaw 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

The old form

'twas

for 'it was' has been replaced by the uncontracted form; similarly with

on't

and quite a number of others

Jerry Friedman 2 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

I can't think of another documented example of a case where the language as a whole is trending away from the vernacular rather than towards it — can you?

Not documented, but if I were looking for some, I'd try albeit versus though and although, and had I versus if I had, etc. Speaking of those forms and having used if I were above, I've heard that the subjunctive is making a comeback in Britain—both ... See all content Hide content

Good night, my some-corpus one « The Coming of the Toads 2 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

[…] | Tags: Grammar, Language Log, Meredith Willson We’ve been enjoying a discussion over at Language Log on the difference between the words someone and […]

Daniel Ezra Johnson 2 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

Ben, you took my example, and it says you did so at 11:31 when it's still only 10:39, too.

[(myl) For some reason, our server didn't "fall back" with everyone else for the daylight-savings-time shift. I've adjusted the time manually for now…]

But I'll still mention the work by Haddican, Richards, and Taylor on "The past and present of body/one variation". Finding the same shift ... See all content Hide content

Benjamin Zimmer 2 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

I can't think of another documented example of a case where the language as a whole is trending away from the vernacular rather than towards it — can you?

Going back a few centuries, one could argue that something like that happened with the death of thou/thee and the rise of you as the singular second-person pronoun.

Dan Lufkin 2 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

Maybe trying to cut down character count foreshadowing Twitter.

caroleeilertson 2 months, 4 weeks ago on Twitter

Somebody trending away from the vernacular? RTlanguagelog

Body loses Supreme Court appeal http://bit.ly/1Ukzle

languagelog 2 months, 4 weeks ago on Twitter

Body loses Supreme Court appeal: This morning, I appealed the somebody-vs.-someone story to the Supreme Court of th... http://bit.ly/1Ukzle

Twitter Facebook

DASHBOARD

PRO
MY KEYWORDS

PRO
- ubervu
- Apple iPhone
- Nexus One
+ Add
ADD
CANCEL
TOOLS & WIDGETS