At the request of colleagues who are working on reciprocal and symmetric expressions in English, yesterday I scanned in a classic paper on the topic, which is also a classic paper in profane-domain linguistics (aka scatolinguistics ‘the linguistics of dirty talk’): Quang Phuc Dong’s “A note on conjoined Noun Phrases”. Having gone to the trouble, I’m reproducing the scans here so that they will be generally available through this blog.
Reciprocity in the profane domain
November 16, 2018Shake, shake, shake that death rattle
November 15, 2018Today’s Calvin and Hobbes re-play has the two protagonists engaged in a heavy game of Cowboys and Indians:
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A play on two senses of rattle, denoting either a sound or a thing that makes a sound.
Bite me, Count Bendix!
November 15, 2018Today’s Zippy, set in the Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights NJ (in Bergen County, in the NJ suburbs of NYC, near Passaic), celebrates grilled or fried ham and cheese sandwiches:
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A word for it: teknonymy
November 13, 2018On the Linguistic Typology mailing list recently, David Gil (Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany) relayed a query from a friend:
Teknonymy is the phenomenon in which a parent is referred to by the name of his or her children. For example, my father was addressed and referred to by his Arabic-speaking friends as “Abu Daud”, or ‘father of David’. Teknonymy is attested in many different cultures around the world.
In at least some Arab societies, teknonymy interacts with gender in the following way. Whereas men, once assigned a teknonym, may still be addressed or referred to by their original name, women who are assigned a teknonym [like Umm Malik ‘mother of Malik’] may no longer be addressed or referred to by their original name — their original name is simply lost.
My question: Is anybody familiar with similar cases of gender asymmetry in teknonyms in other languages/societies?
I was familiar with the phenomenon, but didn’t have a name for it. Now I have several.
News for penises: salt and pepper
November 12, 2018A bulletin from Coral Gables FL, with penis pepper mills in gorgeous hand-turned wood; and a patriotic phallic (salt/pepper) shaker, standing tall for US Veterans Day (today). Photos under the fold (so the phallically averse among you can avoid engaging with these simulacra)…
On the doo-wop gender train from the past
November 11, 2018Going the Facebook rounds:
the song that was number 1 on your 14th birthday defines your life
(pretty clearly intended: #1 in the US — though you could certainly carp about that)
Hey nonny ding dong: it’s “Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)” as recorded by the Crew-Cuts in 1954.
(#1) Trading card photo of The Crew-Cuts. In 1957, Topps gum cards issued a series of movie stars, television stars and recording stars.
A commercial zeugmoid
November 8, 2018A recent Arm & Hammer Slide TV commercial, ‘Change Your Cat’s Litter’ (viewable in an iSpot.tv posting here) exhorts the viewer:
If you hate changing your cat’s litter, then change your cat’s litter.
A cute zeugmoid, playing on two (related, but distinct) senses of the verb CHANGE.
Arousing the beast
November 7, 2018In today’s comics feed, a One Big Happy that requires a double dose of pop-cultural moon knowledge to understand:
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A defiant gesture, a bit of lycanthropic folklore.
Halloween detritus
November 6, 2018A bit late for the train, a recent snack treat from mccormick.com — McCormick & Co., the spice, seasonings, and condiments firm — that appeared on a Pinterest board for Halloween:
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Combining two pop-cultural items: zombies and nasal mucus, especially in the form of green boogers. Plus popcorn, of course.
