… in today’s Zippy:
(#1)
The PWT (pneumatic wiggly thing) is a sky dancer, an inflatable tube man that waves and twists in the wind, beckoning passers-by (on foot or, especially, in cars) to come on in and buy.
Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
Twisting in the wind
October 6, 2018The autumnal Humpty Dumpty
October 5, 2018Currently viral on the net, this punning Humpty Dumpty cartoon:
(#1)
The noun fall ‘act of falling or collapsing’ vs. (North American) ‘autumn’, with a corresponding accompanying ambiguity in the adjective great: ‘very large’ vs. ‘of considerably high quality’.
Jumping higher than a house
October 2, 2018The One Big Happy from 9/5 has Ruthie enmeshed in the syntax and semantics of comparison:
The reduced comparative X can jump higher than your house: ‘jump higher than your house is’ (Grandpa’s intended reading), OR ‘jump higher than your house can jump’ (Ruthie’s perceived reading ).
Calling off the dogs
September 28, 2018A week ago, I posted about this cartoon:
(#1) from the 9/21 posting “A transtlantic exercise in cartoon understanding”
Most of the posting was about the content of the cartoon. But then there’s the question of its source — there’s an artist’s signature, but what is it? — and that’s turned out to be quite a mystery.
Mike Lynch
September 27, 2018A cartoonist and cartoon enthusiast who hasn’t appeared on this blog before.
The barest of brief Wikipedia information:
Mike Lynch [born January 18, 1962, in Iowa City IA] is a cartoonist whose work can be seen in Reader’s Digest, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy and other mass media markets.
Lynch maintains a substantial blog on cartoons, with material of his own and compilations of other cartoonists. For example, a 9/24 posting on gag cartoons, from Dick Buchanan; a 9/21 posting on women cartoonists of the New Yorker, from Liza Donnelly; a 9/20 posting on cartoonists drawing on the wall at the Overlook Lounge in NYC.
Angerland
September 26, 2018The One Big Happy from 8/30, in which Ruthie hopes for semantic transparency in morphology:
Ruthie’s reading from a book, so she can see the LAND in IRELAND (in pronunciation, it’s reduced to unaccented /lǝnd/ and might not be so easily identifiable). So she hopes the IRE part will be another word she knows that will make sense in combination with LAND in the way that the first elements in, say, ICELAND and WOODLAND do.
And her dad helpfully explains IRE.
The dog therapist is IN
September 25, 2018Today’s Bizarro/Wayno collaboration (entitled “Recurring Dream”) is, from the point of view of this blog, quite timely:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
That’s a dog therapist ‘therapist for dogs’ (a Use N + N compound); see discussion in my 9/22 posting “therapist dog, dog therapist”. In this case, for a patient who’s had the canine equivalent of the common nightmare of being naked in public (especially in front of a class or while giving a speech).
therapist dog, dog therapist
September 22, 2018Exercises in English N + N compounds (for use in another context), illustrated in cartoons exemplifying the Psychiatrist cartoon meme, with dogs either as patient or therapist (or both): therapist dog ‘dog that is a therapist’ (also ‘dog for therapists (to use, for example as companions)’, a sense I’ll disregard here); dog therapist either ‘therapist that is a dog’ (sense 1) or ‘therapist for dogs (taking dog as patients)’ (sense 2).
A transatlantic exercise in cartoon understanding
September 21, 2018To fully appreciate this cartoon (passed on to me on Facebook), you need to have two pieces of pop-cultural knowledge, one originally American, one originally British (though it is the way of such things to cross the Atlantic culturally):
(#1)
You need, of course, to recognize — American cultural knowledge — that this is a baseball diamond, with a game in progress, and that there’s an object on first base. Then — further American cultural knowledge — you need to recognize the (note: declarative, not interrogative) sentence Who’s on first as the first move in one of the greatest America comedy routines ever. Then — British cultural knowledge — you need to recognize the thing on first base and connect it to the fact that Who’s on first, both of them elements from one of the most popular British tv shows ever.
Two bookish Tom Gaulds
September 20, 2018More from the cartoonist of the bookish class, passed on by Facebook friends: on translation, and on book formats.