Two N-N compounds that came by me recently, one silly, one serious. Both are subsective: the referent of the compound as a whole is a subtype of the referent of the second (head) noun. But in neither case is the relationship between the two nouns straightforward.
First, today’s Bizarro:
Then there’s the N-N compound hope chest, heard dimly on some tv show as I was wakening from a nap.
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A Zippy on lexical semantics, and a wry Zits on watching your language:
(#1)
Define sup, and distinguish the referent from slurp. The proper names are, as usual for Zippy, entertaining, and the title is a separate bit of language play.
(#2)
The joke here, of course, is that Jeremy censors not just his speech — that would be routine — but also his thoughts.
Posted in Language of teenagers, Language play, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Names | 1 Comment »
[edited later on 2/25, to move the Batman theme from a comment (by Dave Kathman) to the body of the posting]
From Victor Steinbok, who found it on George Takei’s site, this cartoon:
A festival of pop-cutural allusions in the speech balloons, plus some language play.
Posted in Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Pop culture | 1 Comment »
(Or maybe Peanutses.) On Facebook, Jeff Bowles has been posting old Peanuts cartoons. Here are two with some linguistic interest, having to do with writing.
From 3/13/86, on narrative:
(#1)
From 3/14/86, on literary rejection:
(#2)
An earlier, gentler, rejection strip here.
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Today’s Rhymes With Orange:
gentrify / tentrify.
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From Mother Goose and Grimm:
The relevant senses of the verb spoil, from NOAD2:
[ no obj. ] (of food) become unfit for eating: I’ve got some ham that’ll spoil if we don’t eat it tonight.
harm the character of (a child) by being too lenient or indulgent: the last thing I want to do is spoil Thomas | (as adj. spoiled): a spoiled child.
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An assignment for the Stanford students in the Language in the Comics course involved the Zippy the Pinhead cartoon on the brain here. The students didn’t like this cartoon; they didn’t understand it (well, Zippy specializes in the absurd). It turned out that at least part of the problem was that the students had no idea who Joan Rivers was. Once again, the necessity of background knowledge!
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