Archive for February, 2014

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Chuck Fillmore

February 14, 2014

From Amy Dahlstrom on Facebook today:

Charles Fillmore died yesterday at age 84 after a long battle with cancer. A brilliant linguist, especially in the field of lexical semantics, who influenced so many of us Berkeley students and colleagues elsewhere. He was sweet and funny and loving, and deeply devoted to [his wife, Berkeley linguist] Lily Wong Fillmore. The loss of my Doktorvater feels like the loss of a parent.

Knowing that this was in the cards, I posted a while back about my beloved friend and colleague Chuck, along with a link to a wonderful video he made about his career in 2012.

A photo:

 

Sorely missed.

Posted in Death notices, Linguists | 1 Comment »

Frivolity for Valentine’s

February 14, 2014

From Steven Levine, this remarkable advertising image:

Elsie the Cow, in a maid’s apron and nothing else — yielding a racy image — offering a very substantial breakfast. Smiling and dancing.

More on Elsie here.

Posted in Language and food, Language and gender, Language in advertising, Silliness | Leave a Comment »

The mystery of St. Valentine

February 14, 2014

Today’s Scenes From a Multiverse, on today’s holiday:

 

Given that we know almost nothing about St. Valentine, Jon Rosnberg is free to invent whatever he wants.

(more…)

Posted in Holidays, Language and religion, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Morning names

February 14, 2014

For some time now, I’ve been waking in the morning with a name stuck in my head, usually a name from show business or television: Laura Prepon, Frank Gorshin, Sada Thompson, Danny Pino, etc. (you can look them up). Usually just one day each (though Prepon had a three- or four-day run). Not extraordinarily famous, and I’m not sure why they pop up: they don’t figure in my dreams, and I don’t recall having heard something about them in the days before their names appear.

It’s sort of like being given crossword puzzle clues in the morning:

Laura of That ’70s Show

or

Prepon of That ’70s Show.

Posted in My life, Names, Pop culture | 3 Comments »

Odds and ends 2/13/14

February 13, 2014

Two (unrelated) items in my queue, on familiar topics: ambiguity and government by the nearest.

(more…)

Posted in Ambiguity, Coordination, Ellipsis, Government | Leave a Comment »

Pig fails again

February 12, 2014

Today’s Pearls Before Swine:

Once agan, Pig falls foul of the Comic Book Censor. This time, it’s over the expression flip s.o. the bird, understood literally (as Pig intends) or as a reference to a rude gesture, giving someone the finger (which comes up here every so often).

Posted in Ambiguity, Linguistics in the comics, Slang | 1 Comment »

Metatext in the comics

February 12, 2014

Another topic arising from the Stanford comics seminar, again from a proposal for a student paper (which I won’t cite here because the topic might change and in any case is still the student’s work, though I might cite it later with the student’s permission).

The topic is metatext, outside the text of the comic itself and in Elizabeth Traugott’s phrasing in e-mail, serving to “frame the way to read the text”.

At least six types: captions, titles, inserts, mouseovers, accompanying text, and footnotes. I haven’t discussed any of these systematically, but they’ve all come up in my postings on the comics. Some notes.

(more…)

Posted in Context, Linguistics in the comics, Pragmatics | 2 Comments »

Messing with my mind

February 11, 2014

From a Stanford student, this xkcd:

 

(more…)

Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Pragmatics, Speech acts | 3 Comments »

flamenco

February 11, 2014

Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm:

You say flamenco, I say flamingo. Amazingly, these words turn out to share a history.

(more…)

Posted in Etymology, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 1 Comment »

Pun to start the week

February 10, 2014

From the Funny Times Cartoon Playground (with reader-generated cartoons), this one by contributor cta:

 

In keeping with some other recent cartoon postings, consider this as an exercise: what sociocultural knowledge do you need to understand this cartoon (imagine you’re explaining it to a Martian or a child)? What makes it funny?

Posted in Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 2 Comments »

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