Linguistic dark matter

[Jonathan Lighter]

I guess the phrase "junk statistics" was created partly to cover compounds
of results and hoopla like this one.


JL

On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Federico Escobar <
federicoescobarcordoba at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Federico Escobar <federicoescobarcordoba at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Linguistic dark matter
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On the cairn of justified complaints into which this thread on dark matter
> has become, let me toss another chuckie.
>
> In D. Bolinger's *Language - The Loaded Weapon*, I was delighted to find
> this quote: "Language is a stage built over a graveyard from which fossils
> rise and dance at night" (p. 103). So I Googled it, thinking I'd find page
> after page of hits.
>
> There were none.
>
> I've become so overly reliant on Google as a search engine (and I think
> others on the list have too, as the phrase "raw Google hits" has become a
> staple part of posts), that I usually take it for granted that zero Google
> hits means zero hits on the Internet.  I tried Blekko, a search engine that
> was discussed some time ago, and sure enough a hit came up (it did when I
> looked up the first chunk: "Language is a stage built over a graveyard from
> which fossils"). Blekko gives credit to Yahoo, but there are no hits either
> on Yahoo. So it seems Blekko extorted the sentence from the Internet's dark
> matter. I've tried a couple other 0 Google hits searches on Blekko, and,
> sure enough, there were a handful of hits (also credited to Yahoo, while
> Yahoo itself yields no hits).
>
> So it seems information on the Internet is not coterminous with what's
> available on Google. We all know that, of course, but Googling has become a
> handy reflex that may have expunged plenty of information.
>
> Let me wish everyone a good weekend.
> F.
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: Linguistic dark matter
> >
> >
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> >
> > When did they stop?
> >
> >     VS-)
> >
> > On 12/18/2010 12:37 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> > > But I think it does matter, Jon, if future researchers start relying
> > > on questionable data.
> > >
> > > Joel
> >
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> >
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