In xkcd‘s telling, E-Man swoops in to battle the Etymological Fallacy and speak on behalf of common usage:
(If the cartoon displays as multicolored trash — this is some WordPress glitch — click on the image to see it properly.)
Archive for January, 2012
Etymology-Man
January 30, 2012-poo- mixes
January 29, 2012In the February 2012 Out magazine, a column (p. 87) that begins:
No longer is a dog just a poodle — it’s either a cockapoo, a poogle, a yorkipoo, a pootalian, or any number of multicultural canines that characterize the rampant trend of crossbred poo-mixes.
and ends:
Let’s all make a pact — if your dog sounds like an Urban Dictionary entry, it’s time to simplify.
A great effusion of poomanteaus.
Cardinal sin
January 29, 2012
Mario Lopez stripped
January 29, 2012(Not about language.)
It’s been a while since I posted on men’s underwear, but now from Karen Erickson on Facebook, this story (with video) on actor and tv host Mario Lopez appearing on The Ellen Show:
Ellen Helps Mario Lopez strip to his underwear
Mario Lopez proved he’s not just the Rated M underwear creator, but also a Rated M client during this impromptu striptease to promote his new line of skivvies on The Ellen Show Tuesday. And Ms. DeGeneres surprised us when she eagerly tore off Mario’s shirt and jacket before spinning him around to show the raucous audience his plump rear.
Still photo of the event:
The man is clearly keeping himself in shape.
DJ names
January 29, 2012Listening to KFJC (Foothill College’s radio station) yesterday, I was struck once again by the names of their DJs (full list here). Some are names borrowed from a variety of sources:
Number 6 (The Prisoner), Dorian Gray (The Picture of), Ann Arbor (Michigan city), Morris Minor (British economy car), Arthur Dent (Hitchhiker’s Guide), Boo Radley (To Kill a Mockingbird), Sluggo (Nancy comic book character), Goodwrench (GM auto repair service)
Others are puns:
Abacus Finch (Atticus Finch), Sir Cumference (circumference), Austin Space (Lost in Space), Thurston Hunger (thirst and hunger), Greta Clue (get a clue), Dominic Trix (dominatrix)
Echoes here of drag names, roller derby names, and stripper names — all rich sources of language play.
Wordless cartoons, words-only cartoons
January 28, 2012In the latest (January 30th) New Yorker, this cartoon by Sam Gross:
Completely wordless — but how much cultural knowledge it takes to understand it! You need to know about doggie/doggy doors (or dog doors, as they’re usually called in the trade), balloon animals, helium, and clowns.
At the other end of the scale there are words-only cartoons, like this Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal number (opposing social pleasures and stranded prepositions) posted by Mark Liberman a couple years ago:
Cartoons usually have both a picture and a caption (or speech bubbles), but there are limiting cases in both directions: pure sight gags and slogans presented as cartoons, for example.
Object gap + subject gap
January 27, 2012Caught in a radio news report this morning, this quote from Barack Obama, with the crucial bit boldfaced:
Obama said of a push for less financial regulation and lower taxes. “And why we would want to adopt something that we just tried and did not work, doesn’t make sense.”
This has a relative clause (that we just tried and did not work) in which a clause with an direct object gap (we just tried ___) is coordinated with a clause with a subject gap (___ did not work) [DO + SU]. As I noted in a Language Log posting on “Amazing conjunctions” back in 2005,
coordination of a clause with an object gap … and a clause with a subject gap … is usually judged ungrammatical, though there’s some question about what condition bars it.
In fact, a 1981 paper of Gerald Gazdar’s (“Unbounded dependencies and coordinate structure”, Linguistic Inquiry 12.155-84) treats such examples as ungrammatical and attempts to give an analysis that predicts that. But examples aren’t hard to find, in writing as well as speech; I myself seem to be given to writing relative clauses with this non-parallel structure.
Today’s word reversal
January 27, 2012From radio station KALW’s “Daily Almanac” segment this morning, in the school lunch menu for San Francisco public elementary schools, announcer Joe Burke listing a
toasted turkey ham cheese and sandwich
instead of what’s on the school district’s website:
toasted turkey ham and cheese sandwich
A word reversal, of adjacent words, of an unusual type.
Queer comics
January 26, 2012Now playing at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum (655 Mission St.), under the auspices of the California College of the Arts, a show (which opened December 17th) on queer comics — a combination of two of my interests. The poster:
