Up from speechlessness

Installment #4 in the Zippy “Speechless” series (#3 is here):

We’ve moved from (at least partially) expressive and sound-symbolic utterances to “nonsense” formulas (and picked up a Stooge along the way): material that is pronounced like ordinary English but isn’t in itself meaningful — though it does have a function in a cultural routine (in this case, as part of a counting-out rhyme).

One Response to “Up from speechlessness”

  1. Zippy noises « Arnold Zwicky's Blog Says:

    […] series on “speechlessness” (in some very extended sense) — #4 in the series was here — continues with spoken or written representations of non-language […]

Leave a Reply


%d bloggers like this: