It's been a year since Congress debated national-security letters, one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law enacted in the wake of September 11. The letters are orders that allow the government – without a judge's approval — to secretly demand records from businesses and other groups. Academic librarians have been among the most outspoken critics of the orders, saying they could violate their patrons' privacy rights. Standing squarely behind them has been Sen. Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat.
The senator, now chairman of the Judiciary Committee's Constitution subcommittee, is sending strong signals that he may support legislation to rein in the government's use of national-security letters. On Wednesday he led a Senate hearing on the topic during which he railed against the secret orders. He cited a recent report by the Justice Department's inspector general, who found 48 violations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's use of national-security letters from 2003 to 2005.–Andrea L. Foster
26 Responses to National-Security Letters Revisited
dw - April 6, 2012 at 1:04 am
Surely thou art mistaken?
mrk2psu - April 6, 2012 at 8:47 am
Type into internet ’art is a verb’. A number of explanations.
wall8305 - April 6, 2012 at 9:34 am
Really interesting. However, at least two of the “nonverbs” in your list are, and have been, used as verbs for some time. Since probably the ’20s at least, some of the filthy rich have “summered at the Hamptons” and we are regularly admonished to have our cars “serviced.” No? (Not a grammarian, but I play one in the classroom.)
calgrad - April 6, 2012 at 9:35 am
There’s a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon where Calvin expresses his opinion of using too many words as verbs: ”Verbing weirds language”
theart - April 6, 2012 at 9:52 am
Also “bird” and “design”.
yabba - April 6, 2012 at 10:21 am
Public discussion of grammar is in roughly the state that public understanding of chemistry would be if the periodic table still read “air, water, earth, fire.”
That’s a very optimistic view of the public understanding of chemistry …
11182967 - April 6, 2012 at 11:07 am
Aw, c’mon, Pulliam. Yes, it might have been better for her to say “Art is an action” or “Art is an activity” or just “Art is active.” But one of the glories of English is the ease with which nouns become verbs–and how quickly this can happen. The specific actions covered by the verb “to tebow” may be several and inexactly defined, but we all pretty much know what’s implied. No one would have trouble understanding the verb “to graffitti” (“They graffittied all the cars in the train.”), and while I understand that one “throws” a pot it’s probably only an accident of history that one does not “pottery.” May you be spared an equation between pickiness and Pulliamitis through which could come the charge that the flexibilty of English is being pulliamed to death.
Chris Marrou - April 6, 2012 at 11:43 am
And one may winter in various subtropical locations. But though spring and fall are already verbs, they are never used to described spending most of the season somewhere.
aicaiel - April 6, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Birding is fun. I had never birded in the Caribbean; however, on my recent vacation, I birded there every day.
The bird is designed for flight.
aicaiel - April 6, 2012 at 12:16 pm
And many more of such examples may be obtained by “Googling.”
Jonathon Owen - April 6, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“But one of the glories of English is the ease with which nouns become verbs–and how quickly this can happen.”
But it’s important to note that it hasn’t actually happened with the noun “art”.
katisumas - April 6, 2012 at 1:48 pm
1. As DW above (or below!) succintly puts, “thou art mistaken”. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, not too long ago “art” was a indeed a verb, the second person inflection of the verb “are”.
2. However, since “Art is a verb” was the title given to a lecture by an artist, we have to see it as a METAPHOR as well as a PUN. It stands for the notion that art is an action not a thing, that art is in the doing (oops, not a use of a verb you approve of!). However, I think my interpretation of this statement lacks any aesthetic value and as well limits its meaning. It is possible to interpret “Art is a verb” in more ways than one. We use metaphors because of their ability to carry more meaning than literal statements.
Do you actually think that the person who created this (I think wonderful) metaphor does not know what a verb is?
Hey, Geoffrey Pullum, how about a blog about metaphors? Or are you opposed to them? All of them? Are you advocating wiping out a good chunk of literature such as the likes of James Joyce? And of course all of poetry? How dare e e cummings come up with “what of a much of a which of a wind”, and on top of this not even knowing to capitalize his own name!
Incidentally, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, languages change all the time. And amazingly they change in the most democratic way because anyone who opens her/his mouth, or, now, puts her/his fingers to a keyboard, is contributing to the dynamics of language change. Obviously, if it were up to you we still would be speaking Proto-Sanskrit…
old nassau'67 - April 6, 2012 at 3:03 pm
“It’s actually hard to find short, simple nouns in English that cannot be used as verbs…” Doesn’t this sentence contain two, unless someone has nouned or verbed, or is nouning or verbing, somehow?
“It [grammar] is in the state that public understanding of human biology would be in if. …there were no Darwin.” Species, like parts of speech, would be fixed, static, and unchanging: “The prevailing concept …..that was current hundreds of years ago.”
or “….if there were no Wegener.” Continents etc. etc. etc.
Galileo, Pasteur, any scientific giant.
jffoster - April 6, 2012 at 3:13 pm
The point of the post original, or one of the main ones anyhow, was that the metaphor intended, as you noted, to indicate that art involves action. But that’s the traditional “definition”, or characterization of a verb, and the traditional definition won’t wash. Verb is a syntactic and in many languages morphological, category. That is, it is a grammatical category. It is not a semantic one.
jamesebryan - April 6, 2012 at 4:06 pm
But we certainly spring forward and fall back ;)
yabba - April 6, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Though actually – he said to himself – this stuff should be more accessible than chemistry. Anyone should be able to follow the reasoning above. There’s no need for preliminary learning about atoms and elements and electrons. The few special words – “syntactical”, “semantic”, “heads of verb phrases (predicates)” – are not really essential to understanding the point. The raw material – the list of words – is stuff all native speakers and advanced learners of English know. On that basis, this should be much better known than chemistry. But it isn’t.
nordicexpat - April 6, 2012 at 5:00 pm
I do agree with your (and Pullum’s) point, but I think it is only fair to note that someone like Langacker wouldn’t say that categories like nouns, verbs, etc. aren’t semantic in nature. All linguists say that the traditional notional definitions are inadequate. Not all say that semantic definitions for nouns, verbs, and other categories are not possible in principle.
beedhamm - April 7, 2012 at 5:01 am
From the OED definition of “verb”:
1. Grammar. That part of speech by which an assertion is made, or which serves to connect a subject with a predicate.
Now put “Art is” in front of “That part …” and then read through. There you go. Ruminate. Reflect. Connect. Release the urge to pound the lectern …
Art is wonderful, as in full of wonders, as is grammar.
Irina Rapaport - April 7, 2012 at 7:00 am
best for me…”door”…as in while riding his bike he was doored …even better when translated in other languages, my case romanian…”a usa”
Michael Owen Sartin - April 7, 2012 at 10:09 am
I ♥ harts’ hearts.
dispatchrabbi - April 8, 2012 at 4:38 am
Interestingly enough, I can give many citations for “art” as a verb exactly in the way that is marked ungrammatical in the table. At this time, it’s still a fanciful construction that counts as playing with language by wantonly verbing a noun related to the verb that would normally be used. (Another example: “I cannot brain today.” with “brain” in place of “think”.) But it’s being quickly transitioned to jargon.
I think that the reason that “art” as a verb has caught on in the places where it has (specifically art communities online) is that people don’t exactly know what verb to use to generally describe what people in those communities do. “Drawing” isn’t exactly right, nor is “painting” or “digitally painting”, since people can work in any number of media. So people use “art”, as in “I’m going to art tonight.” or “I haven’t arted in three days.” Or even “My arting has improved significantly over the last three months.” (This one is particularly interesting, since one could use “art” instead of “arting” without much meaning change. Though I have a sense that this refers to the creation process of art, and not the final product.)
wclibrary - April 8, 2012 at 11:36 am
Antimeria.
Google it.
Used to be a rhetorical trick. Now considered an agent of linguistic change.
Very common over the centuries, although much more rapid, like almost everything else, since around the 1750s.
Language is historical and thus unruly.
yabba - April 8, 2012 at 7:44 pm
verb, my arts!
jcowdery - April 9, 2012 at 5:52 pm
I’m with you, and I lament the trendy word “musicking” among musicologists. It’s rooted in the usage of a very smart guy named Christopher Small, but we have “music making” which has a nice shade of meaning: music is something you make, not just something you do. For Prof. Small, see
http://books.google.com/books/about/Musicking.html?id=1lOx9nr0aHkC
studentteacher - April 9, 2012 at 6:28 pm
Yes, word play along that line. Perhaps the talk was around ideas of we create, we respond to art, therefore we are …two cents from a poet
dank48 - April 11, 2012 at 2:16 pm
. . . “art” was a indeed a verb, the second person inflection of the verb “are”.
“Art” was the second-person singular of the verb “to be.”
Actually, I think “Art is a verb” and so forth may be considered figures of speech, utterances not to be taken literally.