(#1)
A new series by cartoonist Bob Eckstein (who’s been around on this blog for three years now; see his Page). From the 6th, on the Weekly Humorist site, “Drunk Cartoon: Pants”:
Archive for the ‘Compounds’ Category
Drunk Cartoons
June 14, 2018The canine therapist
June 3, 2018Posted by a Facebook foaf today, this Bizarro from 10/14/10:
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
The Psychiatrist meme, with a talking dog as a bonus. Plus, in my title, a nominal with the pseudo-adjective canine — and it’s ambiguous.
Dramatic exits
May 31, 2018A Leigh Rubin cartoon from the 22nd, illustrating an exit and a dramatic exit:
(#1)
First, this is a play on the ambiguity of exit, as a N referring to a concrete object (a door, used for exiting) or an act (of exiting). Then there’s another ambiguity, in the sense of dramatic in the nominal dramatic exit: it could be taken literally, as ‘pertaining to a play’, but here it’s used with a figurative sense ‘melodramatic, stagey, flamboyant’ (note the man’s gesture). In its second use, dramatic incorporates a figurative sense of the N drama seen also in the (originally US gay) slang compound drama queen.
Crowing
May 22, 2018The One Big Happy from April 25th:
(Tick-Tocket’s Chicken Crew seems to be a children’s book invented for this cartoon. But the title is plausible.)
Library Lady asks abut the noun crew, Ruthie (who often marches to the beat of her own drummer) responds with crew, a PST form of the verb crow — and then goes on to conjugate
crow (BSE/PRS), crew (PST), crown (PSP)
Two from Fairbanks
May 20, 2018Two cartoons recently passed on to me by Chris Waigl in Fairbanks AK: a Cheer Up, Emo Kid (CUEK), about technical uses of words; and (actually from Alaska) a Tundra, about point of view in the interpretation of compound nouns.
Balls on the N + N compound watch
May 18, 2018In today’s Dilbert, Catbert persecutes Dilbert (as Alice looks on):
(#1)
N + N compounds are notorious for the wide range of interpretations available for them: what’s the semantic relationship between head N2 and modifier N1? As above, where the choice is between ‘ref(N2) relieves, reduces ref(N1)’ (the reading for a conventionalized compound stress ball and many others, like headache pill) and ‘ref(N2) causes ref(N1)’ (as in death ray) — where for an expression X, ref(X) is the referent of X.
There oughta be a word
May 16, 2018Darya Kavitskaya on Facebook yesteday:
This is sour cherry clafoutis. No more food for today.
I commented:
I think French needs a verb clafouter ‘to cook a clafoutis; to devour a clafoutis’.
Come to think of it, I could use an English verb clafoute /kla’fut/ with these senses:
I think I’ll clafoute for tonight’s dessert. Maybe plum.
Terry piggishly clafouted. Seven at a sitting!
To come: a reminder about what clafoutis is; about the forms of the invented French verb clafouter; on “having no word for” some concept; about needing — or at least wanting — a word for it; about the ambiguity of these invented verbs (both ‘to cook’ and ‘to eat’); about the source of such ambiguities in marker-poor combinations of elements (lacking explicit indicators of the semantic relationship between the elements — there’s nothing in French clafouter or English clafoute to indicate the semantic role of the referent of their subjects, as creator or consumer); and about the motivation for marker-poor combinations, in a drive for brevity (vs. clarity). French and English could be clearer, less ambiguous — I’ll illustrate with still more invented French verbs — but only at the cost of greater length and effort.
All this from (delicious) French sour cherry flan.
mailman lady
May 8, 2018The One Big Happy from 4/11, with Ruthie addressing her mail carrier:
(#1)
Referring to mail carriers. And a snowclonelet composite X lady (one of several; this one is associated with kid talk).
