Archive for the ‘Ambiguity’ Category
June 3, 2022
A little study in N + N compounds in English, their great utility and versatility (they pack a lot of content into two-word expressions), and their consequent massive potential ambiguity (so that divining the intended meaning can require vast amounts of background knowledge and appreciating details of the context in which the compound is used). You can have (great) brevity, or you can have (great) clarity, but you can’t have both at once.
From the world of commerce, the compound dog spot (which many of us will not have encountered before, or will take to be a reference to the coat pattern of Dalmatian dogs). From the comic strips, two compounds that have conventional interpretations but can also be understood in fresh and unconventional ways: from One Big Happy, dancing school; from Bizarro, cowboy.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Brevity vs. Clarity, Compounds, Context, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Pragmatics, Semantics of compounds, Snowclonelet composites | 2 Comments »
May 31, 2022
The Mother Goose and Grimm strip for 1/29
turns on an ambiguity in the VP, which is of the form:
want/need + NP1 + in NP2
The ambiguity appears more generally, in VPs of the form:
want/need + NP + PredicativeComplement
The ambiguity involves two different constituent structures for the VP, with concomitant differences in the argument structures, and indeed, in the semantics of the primary verbs of desire, want and need: desiring a thing — the much more common semantics, seen in Mother Goose’s assertion:
I want that dress in the window
— versus desiring a change of state (an inchoative ‘I want that dress to be in / get into the window’ or causative ‘I want that dress to be put into the window’ reading), presupposed by Grimmy’s objection:
But that dress is in the window
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Posted in Ambiguity, Argument structure, Constituency, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Syntax | 1 Comment »
May 11, 2022
Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, with the POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) Edgar Allan Po’ Boy = Edgar Allan Poe (the American writer and poet) + po’ boy (the superb New Orleans submarine sandwich):
(#1) Edgar Allan Po’ Boy is a N1 + N2 compound N, understood as having the head, N2, semantically associated with the modifier, N1, by (the referent of) N2’s being named after (the referent of) N1 — parallel to the Woody Allen Sandwich (a tower of corned beef and pastrami) at NYC’s Carnegie Deli
(Plus the allusion to Poe’s poem The Raven — Quoth the raven, “Nevermore” — in Grimm’s, “I had it once, but… nevermore”.)
If you were a betting person, you would surely put some money on this MGG strip as not being the first to use this particular POP — of course, that would be fine, it’s all in how you develop the joke — and you would win.
Just on this blog, in Zippy postings from 2016 and a Rhymes With Orange posting in 2017.
Plus bonuses: a texty with a pun turning on the ambiguity of /póbòj/ as either po’ boy or Poe boy; and two cartoons turning on Edgar Allan Poe / Po’ Boy understood as a Source or Ingredient compound (parallel to shrimp po’ boy) — yes, Edgar Allan Poe in a po’ boy, in it, good enough to eat.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Compounds, Language and food, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Parodies, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus, Poetry, Puns, Semantics of compounds | Leave a Comment »
May 8, 2022
A Mick Stevens cartoon from the New Yorker of 4/18:
(#1) The giant black cloud of smoke, largely obscuring its discoverer, made me laugh out loud when this issue arrived last month
But I didn’t post about the cartoon because it seemed to have neither a linguistics point nor a gender & sexuality point (nor to engage with other of my passions — music, art, food, plants, animals, mathematics, men’s bodies, shapenote singing, Switzerland, my medical conditions, and so on).
Ah, man of little faith. There is almost always a linguistics point to be found; and, if I’m willing to exercise some ingenuity, a gay point too. And so it is here.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Aphorisms, Books, Formulaic language, Gender and sexuality, Language play, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »
April 5, 2022
Tuesday to Tuesday, linguistics on the march to take over the comics: the Zippy strip of Tuesday 3/29 (on names and things) and the xkcd cartoon for today, Tuesday 4/5 (on esthetic responses to words: from word attraction to word aversion). (Warning: the word aversion discussion will take us to a sexual act, typically between men, that I will discurse on in intimate detail, in a way that’s utterly inappropriate for kids and the sexually modest.)
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Posted in Ambiguity, It's Just Stuff, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Movies and tv, Word aversion and attraction | 6 Comments »
April 3, 2022
(There will, as the title tells you, be riffs on squat, well, on squat. Since I’m given to finding my material in louche and faggy places, there will be brief encounters with squat — short and thick, fireplug-like — male organs and with a squatting position for receptive anal intercourse. But no visible body parts.)
I glanced at today’s incoming e-mail, which included a mailing from the New York Times with a link to a story of theirs offering life advice:
(#1)
I found it remarkable that the paper was giving pointers on how to embark on living in uninhabited buildings without the legal right to do so. But then we live in precarious times, and millions are having trouble coping.
Then I found the fine print of the mail header:
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Posted in Ambiguity, Language and animals, Language and food, Language and the body, Language of sex, Music, Names, Parody, Phallicity, Poetry, Signs and symbols, Taboo language and slurs | 1 Comment »
March 6, 2022
(A posting for my half-birthday, 3/6. When you’re a child, half-birthdays are good things, because a year is a long time to wait till people celebrate your life on earth again. When you’re old and infirm, they’re good things again, because a year is a long time to hope you’ll live till such a celebration comes again. I’ve gotten through another 6 months: a small but significant accomplishment, though frankly it seems mostly to be luck.)
Choosing more or less randomly from the fish in the sea of unblogged postings: this wry Wayno / Piraro Bizarro from 1/28:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.) Like an antique prank phone call
The prank turns on an ambiguity, in this case on fresh as a predicate adjective: ‘(of food) recently made or obtained; not canned, frozen, or otherwise preserved’ vs. ‘(of a person) presumptuous, impertinent’ (with the mutton, preposterously, personified).
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Posted in Ambiguity, Dialects, Humor, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, My life, Pranks, Puns | 3 Comments »
February 20, 2022
(A little tribute to, among other things, man-on-man anal sex in the Cowboy position, and the facial expressions and gaze accompanying the act — so definitely not for kids or the sexually modest. There are fuzzed-up images below; the photos with the genitals untouched are in a parallel posting “The locked gaze” on AZBlogX today.)
A Falcon Studios e-mail ad yesterday:
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Posted in Ambiguity, Facial expression and gesture, Gay porn, Gaze, Gender and sexuality, Language play, Metaphor, Nouning, Puns | Leave a Comment »
