Archive for August, 2012

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Zits relevance

August 28, 2012

Today’s Zits:

Here we have a deliberately uncooperative response from Jeremy, who treats his mother’s request entirely literally, rather than thinking “Why is she making this request?” and calculating the reasons for her request and the kind of response she’s looking for. So his answer flouts Grice’s Maxim of Relation (or Relevance), as in this discussion of an earlier Zits. Jeremy is given to evasive uncooperativeness.

Note Jeremy’s facial expression in the first panel, and both facial expressions in the third.

 

Posted in Language of teenagers, Linguistics in the comics, Relevance | Leave a Comment »

the river

August 28, 2012

From yesterday’s “Metropolitan Diary” in the NYT, this contribution (“Which Way Is the River?” by Alan Rogowsky):

Dear Diary:

From the Useful Information Department.

Overheard in front of the subway station at West 72nd Street and Broadway.

Woman: “Which way is the river?”

Policeman: “That way. Or that way. We’re on an island.”

(This in Manhattan, which is bounded by three rivers: the Hudson River on the west, the East River on the east, unsurprisingly, and the much smaller, and locally much less salient, Harlem River on the north.)

(more…)

Posted in Pragmatics, Semantics | 1 Comment »

How so?

August 28, 2012

From Paul Krugman’s NYT column yesterday (“The Comeback Skid”):

There will be two big stars at the Republican National Convention, and neither of them will be Mitt Romney. One will, of course, be Paul Ryan, Mr. Romney’s running mate. The other will be Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, who will give the keynote address. And while the two men could hardly look or sound more different, they are brothers under the skin.

How so? Both have carefully cultivated public images as tough, fiscally responsible guys willing to make hard choices. And both public images are completely false.

How so? is perfectly ordinary — a truncated idiom (glossed by OED2 as ‘How is it so? How is that?’, by NOAD2 as ‘how can you show that that is so?’) — but I hadn’t realized just how old it is: the OED‘s first cite is 14th century, and the cites go through several centuries from there (including one from Shakespeare: “How so sir, did she change her determination?”). The cites run out in 1632, which just means that this entry hasn’t been updated.

In any case: how is it so that the two men are brothers under the skin? (and then the answer follows).

 

Posted in Idioms, Truncation | Leave a Comment »

Gidget and her friends

August 28, 2012

In the NYT yesterday, an obit (by Leslie Kaufman) for “Tubesteak Tracy”:

Terry Tracy, Model for the Big Kahuna, Dies at 77

Terry Tracy, who as an easygoing, fun-loving surfer inspired the “Gidget” movies and television series and helped make surfing an international sport — in the process becoming the embodiment of the cool alternative lifestyle of sunglass-wearing beach bums — died on Wednesday at his home in San Clemente, Calif.

… One day a 15-year-old girl just over five feet tall named Katherine Kohner wandered up to Mr. Tracy while he was living on the beach. Soon he gave her the nickname Gidget, a hybrid of girl and midget.

Portmanteaus in the news.

(more…)

Posted in Art/lit/music/film, Death notices, Names, Pop culture, Portmanteaus | 4 Comments »

Zits replay, slower and faster

August 27, 2012

Today’s Zits — with Jeremy talking so fast his mother can’t understand what he’s saying — turns out to be a repeat performance; I posted about this strip on Language Log in 2009, under the title “Teen speech in overdrive”.

Jeremy’s mother: “Can’t you just talk slower?” Jeremy: “Can’t you just listen faster?”

On slow/slowly, see Language Log here and here and Motivated Grammar here.

 

 

Posted in Language of teenagers, Linguistics in the comics, Syntactic categories | Leave a Comment »

no small lift

August 27, 2012

From a NYT editorial yesterday, “No Crime, No Punishment”, p. 10:

Proving federal fraud requires evidence of intent, no small lift.

Or framed positively, a big lift ‘something which is a lot to lift (i.e. achieve)’. Not among the many senses of the deverbal noun lift in the OED, but similar to a big ask ‘something which is a lot to ask’ as discussed on Language Log back in 2008.

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Posted in Conversion, Nouning | Leave a Comment »

sleepwalking

August 27, 2012

Heard on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, in a segment on sleepwalking: 14-year-old Miranda Kelly reporting a moment when she realized, “Oh, I sleptwalked.”

That’s double inflection, on both parts of the verb sleepwalk, where the standard form  (sleepwalked) has inflection only on the second part, the head V walk.

(more…)

Posted in Back formation, Inflection, Morphology, Synthetic compounds | 8 Comments »

Team names

August 26, 2012

Having looked at the names of minor-league baseball teams, I was moved to play with possible (but unlikely) names. A sampling, of a variety of formal types:

Boston Baked Beans, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, San Francisco Fire, Portland Cement, Tempe Fugits, San Diego Riveras, San Antonio Banderas, Santa Barbara Bush, Albuquerque Quirks, Dubuque Bucolics, Ketchican Canneries, Omaha Steaks, Lincoln Monuments, Baton Rouge Compacts

Feel free to play with the idea on your own.

Posted in Language play, Names, Silliness | 3 Comments »

Playful variations

August 26, 2012

More Far Side cartoons from Gary Larson’s Wiener Dog Art (though not involving wiener dogs): three playful variations on formulaic expressions.

First, a very silly variation on the compound wharf rat:


from Wikipedia:

The brown rat, common rat, street rat, sewer rat, Hanover rat, Norway rat, brown Norway rat, Norwegian rat, or wharf rat (Rattus norvegicus) is one of the best known and most common rats.

Such wharf rats hang around wharves, as do seafarers of all sorts (so that wharf rat is also slang for someone who frequents wharves).

Then a larger fixed expression, a famous quote:


A line from Lauren Bacall’s character in To Have and Have Not (1944):

You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.

Finally, a still more complicated, punning, one, based on a proverb:

People who live glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, as the proverb has it. Or in the more complicated pun (which requires some lead-up), people who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.

 

 

 

Posted in Formulaic language, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 1 Comment »

Minor League Baseball

August 26, 2012

On Facebook, Betsy Herrington noted this sports story:

At age 50, [Roger] Clemens pitched 3 and 1/3 scoreless allowing 1 hit and striking out 2 for Sugar Land Skeeters.

adding:

Love minor-league team names.

Yes, they’re great. And there are so many teams.

(more…)

Posted in Names | 4 Comments »

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