Today’s Ada@Home cartoon by Rob Harrell exemplifies the restriction of lexical items to specific collocations:
Archive for January, 2021
Collocation restriction
January 17, 2021
Rainbows
January 17, 2021A Christmas gift from Aging Life Care of California, a Cozee Rainbow aromatherapy pack: the rainbow is a cloth outer cover for the pack itself, which contains clay beads and lavender oil (and can be heated in a microwave or chilled in a freezer). ALCCA chose the Cozee (from the Pink Sky company) for its rainbow and my gayness, but as it happens the rainbow in question is not the Gay Pride rainbow (with 6 bands of color), but Isaac Newton’s rainbow (with 7: the ROY G BIV rainbow).
The cover:
(#1)
And some ad copy:
(#2)
In the bleak midwinter
January 17, 2021Every year, an emotionally difficult time of the year: Ann Daingerfield Zwicky’s death day is 1/17 (this year a Sunday, today), and my man Jacques Transue’s birthday is 1/22 (a Friday this year). When Ann died, in January 1985, it was in fact extraordinarily cold and bleak in Columbus OH; and then of course Jacques’s birthday was pretty much swallowed up by the aftermaths of Ann’s death (including a memorial service at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, on the Ohio State campus).
This year, I’m in Palo Alto CA, where midwinter is normally wet and cool (though not truly cold), but also green and graced by many winter-blooming flowers. In fact, this year it’s unseasonably dry and what counts as warm for winter here (high temperatures near 70 F., at least for a while), so the edge has been somewhat taken off my midwinter funk over my lost loves.
Into the midst of this have come some touching photos of J in his later years, as he was sliding towards death (which finally came in 2003) — a contrast to the photos of him that I’ve been posting here recently, photos of a strong, vital, handsome younger J.
A riot of hibiscus
January 16, 2021Extracted from my 1/15/21 posting “Flat on his back at the solstice”, this image:
(#1) A guy in Hawaiian mode, with beachcomber hat, lei, coconut drink, ukulele, and Hawaiian beach shorts
These Hawaiian beach shorts are only modestly floral. But ads go past me all the time for just gorgeous shirts, and bottoms as well — beach shorts, board shorts, and swim trunks — many in recognizably Hawaiian patterns (from traditional fabrics of several kinds), others of new, riotously colorful and often playful, design.
I started to assemble a collection of some of my favorite patterns, only to realize that they were all based on hibiscus flowers — some stylized, some more realistic. So this has become a hibiscus posting. (Information about the flowers in a while.)
Perverted by Language
January 15, 2021Monica Macaulay on Facebook, who had just come across the album Perverted by Language, by The Fall:
Monica: Love the title of the album. If I had a blog, that’s what it would be called. (“Don’t confuse yourself with someone who has something to say.”)
Flat on his back at the solstice
January 15, 2021Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, framed as an instance of the Psychiatrist cartoon meme:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)
The patient is lying on the therapeutic couch, but he’s also flat on hs back suffering the affective disorder that comes to many with the winter solstice (Wayno’s title for the cartoon: “Bummer Solstice” — playing on summer solstice).
Then the title “Tropical Depression”, ordinarily referring to a meterological phenomenon, involving lowered atmospheric pressure (depression) arising in the tropics (the geographical band surrounding the equator)[*see note after this paragraph]; but here referring to a mental condition (depression, characterized by lowered energy and affect), in this case, specifically, seasonal affective disorder (aka seasonal melancholy) triggered by the short, dark, cold days around the winter solstice — which the patient seems to be counteracting with cultural symbols associated with the bright, hot, and humid tropics (Hawaii, to be specific): beachcomber hat, lei, coconut drink, ukulele, and Hawaiian beach shorts.
[*Note added 1/17: this account of the tropical in tropical depression is grossly oversimplified. For a more accurate statement — from an actual meteorologist — see Sim Aberson’s comment on this posting.]
Wasps on wheels
January 15, 2021The last of a set of three morning names from some time ago: Vespa (following consilience and Jay Gould). From Wikipedia:
(#1) From the Classic Digest site: The Vespa 50 is one of the best loved scooters in the world, this one is the most famous model 1970 Piaggio Vespa 50 Special “First series”Vespa is an Italian brand of scooter manufactured by Piaggio. … The Vespa has evolved from a single model motor scooter manufactured in 1946 by Piaggio & Co. S.p.A. of Pontedera, Italy to a full line of scooters and one of seven companies today owned by Piaggio.
… Vespa is both Latin and Italian for wasp — derived from the vehicle’s body shape: the thicker rear part connected to the front part by a narrow waist, and the steering rod resembled antennae.
Jay Gould
January 14, 2021(The second of three morning names from some time ago.)
From Wikipedia:
Jason [generally known as Jay] Gould (May 27, 1836 – December 2, 1892) was an American railroad magnate and financial speculator who is generally identified as one of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. His sharp and often unscrupulous business practices made him one of the wealthiest men of the late nineteenth century. Gould was an unpopular figure during his life and remains controversial.
Gould’s sharp business practices made him the target of the political cartoonists of the day, who churned out wicked caricatures of him.
A carnival of omission
January 14, 2021The Mother Goose and Grimm cartoon from 9/11/18:
What Grimm says to Ralph is just a bare NP, but what it conveys is the content an entire sentence, but with almost all of its parts “omitted” — that is, implicit, rather than explicitly expressed: That’s / It’s the last time I let you talk me into flipping my house.
— a subject that or it or something similar (referring to some antecedent that’s loosely in the context — here, Ralph’s convincing Grimm to flip his house) can be omitted (SubjOmit, Ref type)
— in combination with SubjOmit (of several types), a copular verb (specifically, a form of BE, here is or ‘s) can be omitted (VerbOmit in combination with SubjOmit)
— in sentence-initial position, certain occurrences of articles (primarily the definite article the) can be omitted (ArtOmit)
All of these phenomena are constrained in complex ways by conditions having to do with which items are affected, in which circumstances. Below I’ll run through the phenomena with a few examples selected from my files, plus some notes about the conditions.
An Obama periodic sentence
January 14, 2021(Another item in my posting queue from a while ago.)
As suits his complex life history, Barack Obama commands a wide range of rhetorical styles and is adept at shifting from one to another according to the context: American “plain style” used to convey sweet (but lawyerly) reason, distinct echos of black pulpit style, and much more. Including, from a speech to students at the University of Illinois on 9/7/18, a striking periodic sentence. (The whole speech can be viewed on the media space Illinois site, “President Barack Obama Speech at the University of Illinois”.)