There was this paper of mine (“Jottings on Adpositions, Case Inflections, Government, and Agreement”), originally from 1988 but not properly published until 1992 (in The Joy of Grammar: A festschrift in Honor of James D. McCawley), that I wanted to quote from in an on-line discussion a week ago, only to discover that after the great dispersal of almost all my books and files some years back, I had no trace left of the thing, no copy of any kind (this sort of thing keeps happening to me). I couldn’t find a way to get a copy on-line, but in a stroke of luck it turned that Benjamins was selling off its remaining stock of the paperback edition of Joy at a price I could actually afford, so I bought their last copy and had it mailed to me next day delivery. This morning I created jpegs of all 15 pages (369 through 384); the quotation I need is on the first page, but now I can add this posting of all 15 pages to the little set of publications of mine available on-line.
Archive for the ‘Morphology’ Category
Adpositions and case inflections, from 1988
January 20, 2025Hats off to the vampires!
January 19, 2025For yesterday, 1/18, in Bizarro, the 6th and I suppose last Waynoratu Nosferamanteau:
The male nosferatu (holding a wineglass of what is presumably blood, and chatting with his young female companion at some sort of vampiric meet-and-greet) seems to be wearing a Canadian toque (= tuque), with pom-pom, to warm his head during the cold dark nights in his coffin (yes, it’s very silly) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)
The nosferamanteau is Nosferatoque = Nosferatu + toque. As for the hat, from NOAD:
noun toque: [a] a woman’s small hat, typically having a narrow, closely turned-up brim. [b] historical a small cap or bonnet having a narrow brim or no brim. [c] Canadian a close-fitting knitted hat, often with a tassel or pom-pom on the crown. [variant of tuque] [d] a tall white hat with a full pouched crown, worn by chefs.
(The heart tattoo with A B O in it, for the blood types A B AB and O, is a nice touch.)
Fangs for the memories
January 17, 2025Very briefly: in entry 5 in the Waynoratu Nosferamanteau marathon, today, two anti-establishment vampires greet one another:
A 1960s-style hippie on the right (peace symbol, long hair, headband, etc.), a 1970s-style Johnny Rotten punk rocker on the left (anarchist symbol, spiky hair, studded collar. etc.)
Meanwhile, the punmanteau is a complex one: Johnny Rotten wrapped around nosfer– (representing Nosferatu)
Bite my punmanteau!
January 16, 2025Continuing Bizarro‘s theme from Monday through Wednesday, today’s Waynoratu Nosferamanteau — a Wayno punmanteau based on the film title Nosferatu — examines Transylvanian dentitions:
(#1) In the tradition of Nosferattoo, Nosferachoo, and Nosferatoon, a Nosferatooth X-ray; I must say that that’s a truly splendid vampiric X-ray (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page)
(I was going to wait to see what Friday and Saturday would bring us on Bizarro before posting this strip, but it brings up an issue in visual symbolism, manifested in Wayno’s adaptation of the two-serpent caduceus (surmounting a tooth) to serve as a symbol of dentistry.)
Waynoratu Nosferamanteaus
January 15, 2025It’s not only the worst week of the year (as I detailed in a posting yesterday), but in the Bizarro cartoon world, Wayno has made it Nosferatu Punmanteau Week (Nosferamanteau Week, for short), exploiting the success of the 2024 movie to commit a series of punmanteaus (puns based on a portmanteau, presented visually as well as linguistically — these are, after all, cartoons) of a special, self-incorporating, type: puns on the model Nosferatu that are portmanteaus of Nosferatu + W, where W is, so far this week : tattoo (in Nosferattoo), achoo (in Nosferachoo), and cartoon (in Nosferatoon). The Waynoratu Nosferamanteaus might well continue through the week. Wayno could even specialize in creature Nosferamanteaus, like the crested parrot Nosferacatoo and the bare-bottomed monkey Nosferaboon; we might even get a whole zoo.
While we wait: about the movie; about the three strips so far; and earlier punmanteau postings of mine.
Los Angeles looterers
January 11, 2025Heard on MSNBC on 1/9, a reporter on scene at the Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles, noting that looterers had become a problem — using, not the agent noun looter, based on the established verb loot, but the agent noun looterer, based on the innovative verb looter (a verbing of the noun looter). A looterer is someone engaged in lootering, which is a kind of looting.
The question is why the reporter went for the elaborate innovative noun looterer rather than the simpler established noun looter. In the context, it was clearly not a mistake, and the reporter repeated it. And then it turns out that the usage wasn’t her invention on the spot; the verb looter and its derived agent noun looterer are attested from others. Even with reference to the Los Angeles fires; from the iHeart podcasts about the fires:
2 days ago — That’s just the estimate. Speaker 2 (00:43): So the Los Angeles Police arrested a possible arson suspect … twenty looterers have been arrested
Aged anchovy salt
December 27, 2024🎁 Boxing Day 🎁 — also St. Stephen, with his feets uneven — coming a day late, because life has been very difficult for me, and postings have piled up so high I’m not sure I can ever get to them, so I’ve picked something I know I can get done, so that this dark, rainy, and excruciatingly painful low-air-pressure day will not be a total loss
I bring you an e-mail message from Victor Steinbok on 12/25, about this ad for Spice Tribe (website here), a San Francisco-based on-line spice store dedicated to mindful cooking:
(#1) VS wrote: Facebook has offered another example of what I used to refer to as parenthetical ambiguity. Is it [aged anchovy] [salt] or [aged] [anchovy salt]. From a culinary perspective, the latter makes no sense (aging salt doesn’t change it). But that doesn’t mean there’s no built-in ambiguity.
Doctor The Who
December 18, 2024For today’s Bizarro, a portmanteau title — Doctor Who + The Who = Doctor The Who [with the overlapping material underlined] — for a hybrid cartoon character, who is simultaneously Tom Baker’s 4th Doctor Who and also the leaping, jumping Pete Townshend of the rock band The Who:
(#1) Wayno’s character is, in appearance and dress, Baker’s Doctor Who; but this character is also, in action, Townshend’s hyperactive guitarist in The Who (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
Welsh days
December 10, 2024More remembrance of times past, recollections triggered by e-mail exchanges between Waynes Browne (at Cornell) and me (at Stanford). The story comes in three parts:
— my 10/12/24 posting “Namesakes and surnamesakes”, which reported on e-mail from WB, the first half of which I riffed on in that posting
— the second half of that e-mail, all about Welsh (recalling our Welsh days at MIT 64 years ago)
— the product of years of my work on the description of Welsh syntax and morphophonology, from only 40 years ago (in a 1984 Chicago Linguistic Society paper)