Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
October 18, 2018
In today’s comics feed, the One Big Happy for September 21st:
Playground Lady intends a WH question with (a reduced variant of) the auxiliary V is + a predicative PP headed by the P like ‘similar to’. Ruthie, ever keen on the reading not intended, hears a WH question with (a reduced variant of) the auxiliary V does (a PRS form of the V lexeme DO) + a complement VP headed by the BSE form like of the V lexeme LIKE ‘find enjoyable’. What is he like? (possible answer: He’s short and blond and funny-looking ) vs. What does he like? (possible answer: He likes playing video games).
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Posted in Ambiguity, Clitics, Context, Linguistics in the comics, Phonology and Syntax, Relevance, Syntax | Leave a Comment »
October 17, 2018
On Facebook, Emily Menon Bendor has passed on this Liz Climo cartoon for the Halloween season, which I posted about here on 4/20/13, in “Liz Climo”:
I now take this occasion to announce the creation of a Page on this blog (dedicated to my two Canadian ailuropod friends, Chris Ambidge and Leith Chu) about my Panda postings. With introductory notes about pandas and about pandapunctuational Lynne Truss.
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Panda postings, Resources | 1 Comment »
October 15, 2018
(Bonus content: a news bulletin for penises, with two items.)
Today’s Wayno/Piraro combo:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
Simultaneously a boy about to bash a rainbow donkey piñata with a bat — a baseball bat, rather than the usual piñata-specific stick or bat (illustrated below) — and a military officer about to execute a prisoner by firing squad. So both in the everyday world and in a metaphorical world systematically mapped onto the everyday world.
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Posted in Comic conventions, Humor, Idioms, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Phallicity, Rainbow, Toys and games | 1 Comment »
October 13, 2018
The One Big Happy in today’s feed (from 9/16) and the Zippy for today: Nat the name (short for Nathaniel) vs. gnat the insect, both /næt/; and Superfund (‘ a US federal government program designed to fund the cleanup of toxic wastes’ (NOAD)) vs. superfun (‘great fun’, with the prefix super– ‘great, large’), with /fʌnd/ vs. /fʌn/, but usually leveled to the latter via final t/d-deletion before a word beginning with a consonant (here, before the word site):
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Posted in Errors, Linguistics in the comics, Word confusions | Leave a Comment »
October 8, 2018
… in the 10/3 Wayno/Bizarro collab entitled “Off the wall”:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
A little festival of formulaicity. In the title, the (informal) idiom off the wall and an allusion to the idiom fly on the wall. In the interviewee’s remark, the (colloquial) idiom fly in the buttermilk and perhaps an allusion to the song “Ole Buttermilk Sky” [10/9: but see the comment below on “Skip to My Lou”]; an allusion to a family of “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup” jokes; and the idiom fly in the ointment. Plus a pair of excellently anthropomorphic houseflies on a tv talkshow; if it’s a late-night show, it could be Fly By Night (with the idiom fly-by-night).
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Posted in Books, Formulaic language, Idioms, Jokes, Language and race, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Slang | 2 Comments »
October 6, 2018
Today’s Wayno/Bizarro collab:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)
A play on the
NO SHOES / NO SHIRT / NO SERVICE
sign in some restaurants. Here enforced by a maître d’ who’s a (serifed) uppercase B. Suitably serifed uppercase diners fill the seats, while a shirted and shod but sans-serif uppercase T realizes he won’t be served.
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Posted in Etymology, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Typography | Leave a Comment »
October 5, 2018
Currently 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’.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 1 Comment »
