Archive for the ‘Compounds’ Category
October 18, 2019
It’s been about ten days since the last POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) here — a 10/9/19 posting “Two old cartoon friends”, with doctors without border collies — so, on the theory that regular POPs are good for the mind and the spirit, today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro collabo, at the very gates of heaven:
pearly gates + gate-crasher
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
Appreciating the cartoon requires that you be familiar with the pop-culture story (whose source is the Christian Bible) of St. Peter at the pearly gates to heaven; that you be familiar with the belief (spread by an 1989 animated movie) that all dogs go to heaven; that you know the idiomatic synthetic compound gate-crasher; and that you know the idiomatic nouning plus-one. That’s a lot of cultural stuff.
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Posted in Back formation, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Nouning, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus, Pop culture, Proverbs, Synthetic compounds, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
September 12, 2019
E-mail from the Stanford linguistics department on the 10th, under the header:
Save the Date: BOY Party 9/27
Whoa! I thought, conjuring up images of a department party featuring attractive young men — as entertainers (maybe some lesser-known boy bands), as guests of honor (very young up-and-coming NLP entrepreneurs, perhaps), as party staff (a phalanx of Ganymedes, in costume), purely as eye candy (twinks on parade), whatever — things are really loosening up in Margaret Jacks Hall!
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Posted in Abbreviation, Acronyms, Categorization and Labeling, Compounds, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Movies and tv, Semantics of compounds, Social life, Underwear | 2 Comments »
August 31, 2019
Roz Chast in the September 2nd New Yorker:
(#1)
An exercise in the semantics of N + N compounds, exploiting an ambiguity that might not have occurred to you:
in the semantics of the modifying N, N1 (here, the coordinate N bricks and mortar);
in the semantics of the head N, N2 (here, the understood N store);
and in the semantics of the relation between N2 and N1 (here, ‘N2 for N1, (specifically) N2 selling N1’, in this case ‘store selling bricks and mortar — rather than the ‘N2 (made) of/from N1’ relation in the familiar conventionalized compound brick(s) and mortar store ‘store (made) of/from bricks and mortar’.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Compounds, Figurative language, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Metonymy, Semantics of compounds, Subsectivity | 1 Comment »
August 28, 2019
… or edible roots (with root covering any underground plant organ), or whatever you call the stuff. In the 7/30 One Big Happy, Ruthie, confronted with /hol fudz/, takes it to be just such a label, hole foods, when her mother is referring instead to a grocery store, Whole Foods:
(#1)
The conventional (semi-technical) label for the category in question is root vegetables.
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Posted in Accent, Categorization and Labeling, Compounds, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Phallicity, Semantics of compounds, Vaginality | 3 Comments »
August 26, 2019
Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro collabo:
(#1) A parade of unidiomatic prepositional alternatives (with the P of) to the synthetic compounds cheese grater, nutcracker, meat cleaver, egg timer
(Wayno’s title: “Rhyme & Punishment”; see comments below)
To understand the relevance of these nominals, you need to know not only who Jimmy Buffett is and that his most famous song is the notoriously ohrwurmisch “Margaritaville”, you actually need to know a crucial couplet from the song:
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Posted in Compounds, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Semantics of compounds, Synthetic compounds, Understanding comics | 5 Comments »
August 25, 2019
Exhibit A: the joke routine That’s Good / That’s Bad from an Archie Campbell comedy sketch — discussed in my 7/22/19 posting “Oh that’s good”.
Exhibit B: the principles that predict when a N + N compound in English has primary accent on the first (modifier) N (front stress, or forestress) and when that accent falls on the second (head) N (back stress, or afterstress) — discussed in my old paper “Forestress and afterstress”, (OSU Working Papers in Linguistics, 1986, viewable on-line here).
From a sufficiently abstract point of view, these two phenomena can be seen to be manifestations of a single scheme, which I’ll refer to as exception-triggered alternation.
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Posted in Accent, Compounds, Homosexuality, Jokes, Opposition, Phonology | Leave a Comment »
August 18, 2019
Saturday’s Zippy takes us to southeastern Pennsylvania, the land of my childhood:
(#1)
Not in escrow, but in Hellam Township, in York County PA. Specifically, in the Haines Shoe House. Which is a house in the form of a shoe (rather than a shop that sells shoes, or a storage place for shoes, or …).
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Posted in Architecture, Art, Compounds, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Puns, Semantics, Semantics of compounds | Leave a Comment »
July 17, 2019
The original spur was this Pinterest item:
(#1) [ cowboy butter ] [ dipping sauce ]
On the dipping sauce in #1; the cowboy butter that is its basis; the interpretation of cowboy butter and other cowboy X compounds (cowboy casserole, cowboy rub); the combination of cowboys, butter, and meat (each with possible sexual associations); Jackson Hole Cowboy Cream; and cowboy cheese bites.
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Posted in Compounds, Gender and sexuality, Language and food, Language of sex, Language play, Masculinity, Metaphor, Semantics of compounds | 4 Comments »
July 12, 2019
Friday’s Wayno/Piraro collabo Bizarro strip (titled “Shaving Cream Pie”):
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
Ordinary barbers use shaving cream; clown barbers use cream pies. It’s just like spas: ordinary spas use facial creams (for moisturizing); clown spas use cream pies.
Bonus: the cartoon shows a clown barber twice over: a barber who is a clown, and also a barber for clowns.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Brevity vs. Clarity, Comic conventions, Compounds, Language play, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Morphology, Semantics of compounds | Leave a Comment »
June 18, 2019
Today’s Rhymes With Orange, with a clown facial:
(#1)
From NOAD, the nouning of the Adj facial ‘of or affecting the face’:
noun facial: a beauty treatment for the face.
Then the noun facial ‘facial treatment (for beauty)’ serving as head in the N + N compound clown facial (for a pieing — a pie-in-the-face — involving a clown or clowns), which contrasts in interpretation with the compounds cum facial (for a sexual practice in which semen is ejaculated onto the face) and beauty facial (used to clarify that the ‘facial treatment’ sense is intended).
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Posted in Compounds, Language and culture, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Semantics, Semantics of compounds | Leave a Comment »
