Today’s Bizarro:
Don Piraro is a great pun fan — mostly imperfect puns, as in this case, where miner and mimer are phonologically distinct, but also phonologically very close, differing only in the segments /n/ and /m/, which are only one (position) feature apart.
/n/ and /m/ are, in fact, very closely related phonologically. From A. M. Zwicky & E. D. Zwicky on imperfect puns (1986, p. 501), here:
Consider … the strong relationship between /m/ and /n/; this recurs in production studies, for instance those examining speech errors, and also in studies of perceptual similarity other than those involving imperfect puns, as in research on half rhymes [where it’s by far the most common segmental relationship] and on perceptual confusions.
It’s one short step from miners to mimers.
June 21, 2012 at 10:43 am |
The effect is slightly weakened by the fact that performers of this type are not generally called “mimers”. If he had just written “coal mimes”, it would have been fine.