Linguist’s analysis of body cam footage of George Floyd in Derek Chauvin trial | Hacker News Reader

Linguist’s analysis of body cam footage of George Floyd in Derek Chauvin trial

languagejones.com

47 pointstazjin81 comments

"I ain't do no drugs" acceptable english to this author

"I ate too many drugs" something nobody says according to this author.

I have spent time in drug harm reduction. The phrase "I ate too many drugs" I have heard more than once. Especially in online drug communities

This author tries really hard to prove that he didn't say "I ate too many drugs" to the point of absurdity. Who knows what he said? Nobody really. There isn't a reason to conjure reasons to pidgenhole a dead man's words to fit a narrative

Especially considering one of the two things isnt even factual if you read the autopsy. Floyd definitely was incredibly intoxicated

I can't find the phrase on google.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22I+ate+too+many+drugs%22+-...

Maybe time to switch? Loads of results on DuckDuckGo

Loads of results on both Google and DuckDuckGo. But they all seem to reference the alleged George Floyd quote, so meh. Strangely, limiting the search by date doesn't work for me on either Google or DuckDuckGo: Limiting the search to before May 24, 2020 still shows tons of obviously current news sites and tweets. This is surprisingly useless.

I get "About 8’370 results (0.71 seconds)" when I click your link. Seems something is broken on your side.

Did you look at the actual pages?

I have literally never heard anyone say "I ate too many drugs".

Also, even if Floyd said that, he did not deserve to be killed. In this position the police literally have guns and tasers. They have the physical and tactical advantage over a "intoxicated" person. To then kill the person they're supposed to detain is incompetence at best (unlikely), and malice at worst (much more likely).

> he did not deserve to be killed.

Nobody is suggesting anything remotely close to that.

Many people (on Twitter) are suggesting exactly that. They say "see, he was an erratic intoxicated drug addict, he didn't die because of the police officer. He died because of an overdose."

You can find any ridiculous opinion on Twitter. Why rebut Twitter opinions out of the blue in the middle of an HN thread?

Don't care, this isn't Twitter. Twitter is a mosh pit.

Death as a consequence from a self-inflicted drug overdose isn't a question of morals. The fentanyl surely doesn't care if the user is black and underprivileged or not.

Besides that, Floyd almost killed himself with an overdose of opioids a month earlier. This was cofirmed by his partner with the telling nickname "Momma".[1]

Also there is the bodycam footage from 2019 during which Floyd cadmitted he swallowed his stash of drugs to hide them from the cops. Suffering from an overdose once more.[2]

There appears to be a pattern.

[1]https://apnews.com/article/derek-chauvin-trial-day-4-live-up...

[2]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-race-georgefloyd-idUS...

New account coming in to explain what a murder victim may or may not have said and whether or not he was on something. Devil's advocate? Does it matter whether he was under the influence? Is that an offense punishable by summary curbside execution through suffocation?

What's your angle? What's your actual opinion on the case?

The article posted goes out of its way to "prove" he said something that meant he didn't do drugs. So clearly it does matter very much.

> This author tries really hard to prove that he didn't say "I ate too many drugs" to the point of absurdity. Who knows what he said? Nobody really. There isn't a reason to conjure reasons to pidgenhole a dead man's words to fit a narrative

Yeah, I don't think anybody can reasonably interpret exactly what Floyd said under the influence of drugs, given the quality of the video. Hearing it two different times I came to two different conclusions, depending on the setup following up the clip. Many people I've asked have heard it both ways too - it's simply too borderline.

> Especially considering one of the two things isnt even factual if you read the autopsy. Floyd definitely was incredibly intoxicated

Exactly. I think the number was something like four times the lethal amount and there is video evidence that he was foaming at the mouth.

In any case, if he said "I ain't do no drugs", it was clearly a lie given the drug dealer in his car (refusing to be a witness) and the high levels of drugs found in his bloodstream - the same type that almost killed him previously. If he said "I ate too many drugs", then it's just an admittance of the state he was clearly in from the evidence seen so far. In any case, I don't see how it helps the prosecution in the Floyd trial.

I'm going to wait out for more evidence of course. In any case, I will be annoyed if after having had the opportunity to present all available evidence and an independent jury has reviewed it - if there are violent protests/riots in reaction to whatever the verdict is.

So a man, while he is being crushed by police, will suddenly think "Wow, my head is spinning, it must have been all those drugs I ate." and then verbalise the thought? Or was he denying the rationalisation used for his suffucation?

I think context matters here a lot, and occams razor suggests that a man being attacked by police officers because he is supposedly on drugs will deny the drug taking, rather than invent a whole new category of problem for himself.

Attacked by police? He was out of the car by his own request.

Also have you seen the footage from the store? There is no alleged about his intoxication level.

OK, my mistake. But let's review that context - when faced with police officers is an offender going to increase their culpability and add a new culpability into the mix or are they going to seek to keep their punishment exposure to a minimum?

"I ate too" vs "I ain't do"....

The linguist actually has a point here. It is more likely the second option, again, because to assume the first is to imagine a new entity (in this case, a separate rationalisation outside of the context of the interaction).

As to why you might be seeking to dispute such a moot point (as the question of the case isn't whether Floyd was intoxiated)... I leave that as a problem for the reader.

I did not entirely keep the original title (verbatim: '"I ATE TOO MANY DRUGS": ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!") and instead edited it to explain what this is about, hopefully that's okay :)

I am unconvinced. His interpretation seems to require assuming a morphological error. The contrary hypothesis assumes an odd word choice. Among native speakers, odd word choices are far more common than morphological errors.

(Note: I only have a BA in linguistics and only took one class on American dialects. Unlike the OP, I am not an expert in AAVE.)

We are given the choice between two phrases that most seem to fit the audio. Both phrases are marked, i.e., not particularly common, and potentially indicative of an idiolect.

- I ate too many drugs.

- I ain't do any drugs.

"I ate too many drugs" is only marked in terms of word choice, not grammar. A different verb (e.g., "took") would be perfectly acceptable across a wide array of dialects. A further problem with OP's objection here is that people do sometimes use the verb "to eat" with regard to drugs.

On the other hand, I believe "I ain't do any drugs" is ungrammatical in AAVE, which requires negating both the verb and the noun phrase (cf. "I ain't do nothin" rather than "I ain't do anything").

So what's more plausible? That Floyd used a word in a way the OP is unfamiliar with? Or that Floyd - a native AAVE speaker - uttered a linear, clear, yet ungrammatical sentence?

You say

> On the other hand, I believe "I ain't do any drugs" is ungrammatical in AAVE

But the OP says

> "I ain't do any drugs" is a normal, grammatical sentence in AAE

And you concede that the OP is an expert and you are not.

For what it’s worth, and it’s not much because I’m neither a linguist nor a native speaker of any kind of English, I consume a lot of content made in AAE and have friends who speak it, and I would not bat an eye at seeing or hearing ”I ain’t do any drugs”. I think your interpretation of the grammar is too strict.

Not proof either way, but searching for "I ain't do any drugs" and excluding floyd and chauvin gives like two dozen results on Google. Doing the same with "I ain't do no drugs" gives a few thousands, including song lyrics and memes.

My family speaks a related dialect (Southern Appalachian) , and I grew up in an area where many of my neighbors, teachers, and peers spoke AAVE (Charlotte). I can confidently say that you're misunderstanding the concept of double negation in dialects related to southern english.

Specifically: Double negation is not mandatory, it's emphatic.

There is nothing ungrammatical or confusing about saying "any" instead of "no" in that sentence. There is a slight difference in emphasis conveyed ("no drugs" emphasizes that the amount is none, and "any drugs" emphasizes the subject of "drugs"). It's also possible he just chose the the word "any" because he was trying to tailor his speech to a particular audience.

Another similar example from my family's dialect would be the use of "might could" in place of "could" to convey uncertainty. It's commonly used, it adds additional context, but it would not be incorrect, weird, or misunderstood to just say "could".

This is my natural manner of speech, and both sentences sound weird to me. The first, "I ate too many drugs," even sounds weird in standard English, situationally, because that would imply that there were a lot of different types of drugs eaten. I'd say "I ate too much drugs."

The second one of course sounds weird because the natural way to say it is "I ain't do no drugs." But the situation I could imagine saying it in is in reply to someone who just asked me if I had taken any drugs or if I were on any drugs. I might say "I ain't do any drugs" to be compliant, submissive, and clear - mirroring the words in the question.

This is the weirdest blog I've ever read, it makes sense that it's a relic from a stupid twitter war.

I am sorry, but as much as I support BLM I wish Elijah McClain[0] was the person we talked about. He was never in prison (unlike George Floyd) and he played the violin to cats in a shelter. Mr. McClain died from a police restraining while after being injected with ketamine, and he was a friggin saint.

[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53182122

Does having ketamine in your blood stream mean you deserve to die?

Police injected him with ketamine to sedate him and he died from that.

Not according to the prosecution.

This is just not true.

>Paramedics were called and injected McClain with ketamine, but they incorrectly estimated his weight, giving him more than 1½ times the dose he should have received. He got 500 milligrams because they thought he weighed 220 pounds, but he weighed only 140 pounds and should have received 315 milligrams.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-08-22/ketami...

It is a matter of record that they injected him with 50% more than he ought to have received. As for your claim. It's not merely that this isn't true it isn't so far as I can discover even claimed by the police.

It's not even clear what you mean by the words "the prosecution" he didn't get tried for anything whatsoever by dint of being already dead because they screwed up and provably killed him.

My bad. I thought op was talking about George Floyd.

There's a trend where only controversial things get attention; because if it's uncontroversial, everyone can agree, no one argues with each other. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

I'll need to re-read it at some point with a fresh perspective, but after reading it just now I'd love if this could be required reading for anyone engaging in political arguments on the Internet. It puts into words what I've been trying to find a way to convey for a long time: there probably isn't a conspiracy and "they" probably aren't evil - it's all just emergent behavior in a system simply following the rules of information spread and human attention (also capitalism). No idea what to do about it, but it helps to keep this in mind.

Thanks for the link!

you're never going to get your "perfect case" to debate whether you want to empathize with a dead American or not

capital punishment has been abolished by the will of the people using their representatives in all of the states in question

extrajudicial capital punishment was never the will of the people, yet it slivers through the institution of the autonomous state concept with almost complete impunity

what you're wishing for is an absurdity

New account coming in with the whataboutism.

Instead of trying to deflect and distract, what do you think about the Floyd case and this particular article?

Denver/Aurora is very much talking about Elijah McClain still. The protests over his death last summer were impossible to not notice. The ongoing fallout in Aurora has rocked the city to it's core and many people have had careers ended over them (some may argue that it's not enough). Many local municipalities have made changes to laws and enforcement and the statehouse can be considered to be quite progressive, nationally speaking. The fallout from his death still is a large issue in local politics and the larger front range community.

https://www.denverpost.com/tag/elijah-mcclain/

I would like to address just one point made in this article. The author claims that the phrase, "I ate too many drugs," is

> highly implausible

I disagree. In numerous parts of the US the act of "eating drugs," would typically refer to taking a pharmaceutical pill with recreational value, taking an illicit "ecstasy" pill, or orally ingesting amphetamine/methamphetamine. I've heard this phrase used in the northeast, the south, and the south-east, in both privileged communities and inner-city neighborhoods.

This [0] is a recent thread from Quora demonstrating the commonality of "eating meth" in drug-user parlance. Meth was one of the drugs found in Floyd's system, at amounts that suggest he had recently consumed it.

[0] https://www.quora.com/Does-eating-meth-get-you-just-as-high-...

> I have known plenty of people who have experience with drug use, and none have ever referred to it as "eating drugs."

Anecdota of me and all, but eating drugs was normal and understandable parlance to my friend group growing up.

I don't get the point of either argument. Whether he said he took too many drugs or not, you shouldn't kneel on someone's neck, chest, or back for longer than it takes to get restraints in place. If someone's so fucking high that they can't explain what's happening, they need to be restrained and transported to the hospital. If someone's obviously high and combative, they need to be restrained and transported to the hospital. No one deserves to die because they abuse drugs. And even if they did, that's the judicial system's call to make. I hope that the police involved did not intend to kill him. But they behaved in a way that they should have known would lead to his death.

The only thing that the argument clarifies is whether George Floyd told the truth or a lie at that particular moment in time. The drugs were in his system, and the amount of fentanyl in particular was not an insignificant dose, even for a person of his body weight.

> No one deserves to die because they abuse drugs.

Perhaps, but people do die due to their drug abuse often - whether through first- or higher-order outcomes of those choices. If someone ODs on drugs and dies, I'm not sure saying they "deserved," it would be appropriate or fair, but it would not incorrect to state that their own actions did not lead directly to the fatal outcome.

Is it appropriate or fair to force people to conduct themselves in such a way that arguably avoids a fatal outcome in the special case of drug abusers? What about in the case of self-defense or law enforcement?

I've watched the full unedited body cam footage. Cops approached Floyd in a running car, making his intoxication a significant public safety risk that could have led to injury/death. Especially after several viewings of the footage, there's no reason to believe that was not the origin of the heightened tensions and the anxieties that led to the chaotic police work carried out by Chauvin and his buddies.

If someone ODs on drugs and dies, I'm not sure saying they "deserved," it would be appropriate or fair

When is it appropriate to say somebody deserves something?

>When is it appropriate to say somebody deserves something?

When their own voluntary actions led to that outcome?

I'll go ahead and disclose that I found myself in a similar situation after attempting suicide by overdose. I was hallucinating and making no sense, not following direction, and I've been told I was trying to break into other people's vehicles looking for my truck. The cops assumed I was on meth, which is fair. After not being able to get me to admit to it because I had no idea what was going on and had never done meth, they called an ambulance and sent me off with the EMTs. If those cops had behaved the way the ones involved in George Floyd's death had, I would be dead. Which, of course, was my original intention. But the job of the police is to keep people safe. Whether they want it or not. When someone is obviously having a medical issue, they need to call an ambulance immediately.

This is like using general relativity to prove that your team did deserve that penalty kick in the cup final. Cringe.

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