January | 2015 | Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Archive for January, 2015

Antonio Soler and the Mournful Valley

January 21, 2015

Not long ago, WQXR played some keyboard sonatas by Padre Antonio Soler, a favorite composer of mine since my student days at MIT but one not especially widely known. That tweaked bittersweet memories of those days in Cambridge MA, especially powerful at this time of the year, in what I’ve come to think of the Mournful Valley of Mid-Winter, in between January 17th, the anniversary of Ann Daingerfield Zwicky’s death (this year, the 30th anniversary) and January 22nd, my man Jacques Transue’s birthday (this year, the 73rd; Jacques died in 2003) — and with celebrations of love, for Valentines Day, very much in the air.

This wil be about Ann — another posting of many about her and her family — who shared an appreciation of Soler with me.

(more…)

Posted in Memory, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »

One more from Jane

January 21, 2015

From Jane Austen to her niece Fanny Knight, November 18, 1814:

Note that Austen personifies Wit as a woman.

(Thanks to Chris Ambidge.)

Posted in Figurative language, Quotations | 1 Comment »

Ruthie and the gargoyle

January 21, 2015

Today’s One Big Happy:

gargoyle / gargle

The cartoonist, Rick Detorie, goes to some lengths to put Ruthie in situations where she’s confronted with vocabulary that will be unfamiliar to her. Recall Ruthie in an art museum (#2 in this posting), where she gets to cope with odalisque.

Posted in Errors, Linguistics in the comics, Words | Leave a Comment »

Theme music

January 21, 2015

(Classical music and popular culture, not much on language.)

A few days ago, WQXR played Liszt’s Les préludes, and I was taken back to the Saturday morning television of my childhood: the serial Flash Gordon, for which a section of Liszt’s work served as the theme music. I then recollected other pieces of classical music that have provided theme music for radio and television shows: notably, Rossini’s William Tell overture (The Lone Ranger) and Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges (The FBI in Peace and War).

(more…)

Posted in Music, Pop culture | 3 Comments »

Food photography

January 21, 2015

In Sunday’s (1/18) NYT Magazine, a feature by Mark Bittman: “Simple Stocks for Soup on the Fly: 9 ways to transform water into a flavorful dish in a matter of minutes”, with vivid photographs by Sam Kaplan. Three of these, for herb stock (elegant composition), prosciutto-parmesan stock (textural contrast), flavorful fish stock (somewhat creepy fish eyes):

(#1)

(#2)

(#3)

(more…)

Posted in Language and food, Photography | Leave a Comment »

Once -tastic, now -astic

January 20, 2015

A recent ad for Daedalus books, spotted in the latest issue of Harper’s magazine, and no doubt in other bookish publications:

The libfix -tastic, extracted from fantastic, has here been whittled down a bit further to -astic and tacked onto daedalus. (daedalustastic would have been possible, but daedalusastic is shorter and neater.)

(more…)

Posted in Language of sex, Libfixes, Morphology, Portmanteaus | Leave a Comment »

cartoonosity

January 20, 2015

Today’s Zippy, with a cartoon transformation:

The three Dingburgers admiring Little Zippy (already cartoon characters) become more and more like cartoon characters, more cartoonish, more cartoony: bigger eyes, bigger ears, longer noses.

(more…)

Posted in Cartoon conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Playful morphology | Leave a Comment »

magnolias

January 19, 2015

A notice on “magnificent magnolias” from the San Francisco Botanical Garden in 2013, but equally relevant this week:

In a cool and misty corner of San Francisco, the New Year begins with one of the city’s most breathtaking annual natural marvels. San Francisco Botanical Garden is home to the most significant magnolia collection for conservation purposes outside China, where the majority of species grow. Long considered the signature flower of the Garden, nearly 100 magnolias, many rare and historic, erupt in a fragrant riot of pink and white from mid-January through March. Paleobotanists consider the magnolia family to be among the earliest flowering plants, with magnolia fossils dating back nearly 100 million years. Ice age survivors, they bloom for us now.

People in the East and South of the U.S. think of magnolias as intense summer flowers, but here they’re one of the signature winter flowers.

(more…)

Posted in Language and plants | 1 Comment »

Uneasy anaphora

January 19, 2015

From today’s New York Times, in a death notice, “Yoko Nagae Ceschina, Countess and Fairy Godmother to the Arts, Dies at 82” by Margalit Fox:

I used to play 120 concerts a year,” [the violinist Maxim Vengerov said. “She would follow me — not to all of the concerts, but to the most important ones, which were probably about 80 or so. I would go to Chicago; she would be there. I would go to Japan; she would turn up there. Then she finally announced that she would like to be my grandmother.”

And so, in effect, she became, on one occasion flying to Switzerland to bring Mr. Vengerov, ill with pneumonia in a hotel room there, an immense fur coat.

The crucial bit is boldfaced.

I read this at first as an anaphoric ellipsis of the complement of became (with so as a sentence-introducing adverb: ‘as a result, consequently’). Then it occurred to me that the so might have been intended as the complement of became: ‘that she became, she became that (i.e., his grandmother)’. The first structure is just impossible for me, and the second is very awkward.

(more…)

Posted in Anaphora | Leave a Comment »