What her mother says to Ruthie in a vintage One Big Happy comic strip that came up in my comics feed some time ago:
How to understand the sentence (X) You look pretty dirty? Ruthie’s mother intends X to be understood as something like ‘You look rather dirty’, while Ruthie understands X as “You look pretty when you’re dirty’ — no doubt a willful misunderstanding, finding a compliment in her mother’s words — and responds accordingly
Well, the title pretty much gives the joke away. An outrageous (but phonologically perfect) pun in a Bizarro cartoon from 9/6/12:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbol in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there’s just 1 in this strip — see this Page.)
What the woman and her two kids get to view is Disney on ice —
(the body of the dead-since-1966 Walt) Disney (resting) on (a block of preservative) ice (in a display case)
What she bought tickets to was an entertainment (especially aimed at children) called Disney on Ice —
(an entertainment in which characters from the Walt) Disney (Company’s animated cartoons are portrayed by performers skating) on ice
A generic penguin ban sign (sold on Amazon, a CD Visionary no-penguins button):
(#1) What’s banned? Spheniscid birds. Why? Who knows. (They smell. They steal fish. They get underfoot. Whatever.)
and a ban — in a list of prohibitions against public vice or indecency — on the door of Loretta’s Authentic Pralines on N. Rampart St. in New Orleans (photo from the TripAdvisor South Africa site):
(#2) What’s banned? Who knows. Why? Because they’re a vice (like drinking or smoking) or are indecent (like profanity or nudity), presumably the latter.
Chip Dunham’s Overboard strip from December 28th:
(#1) Captain Crow and his dog Louie
An exercise in both syntax/semantics and semantics/pragmatics: on syntactic constructions and their semantics, and on the indirect conveying of meaning in context.
Above, what will become example (c) in the syntactic discussion:
(c) I don’t think I’ve told you today what a wonderful dog you are
which will lead to a related example, Sir Van Morrison’s song line in (d):
(d) Have I told you lately that I love you?
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).
An Instagram site that searches for posted material that can be treated as a haiku (a 3-line poetic form with 5, 7, and 5 syllables in the lines). Recently, the robot took on sex between men (not at all graphically).
An example of a found haiku, based on a posting that went:
I suppose ant-man’s boss could be considered a micromanager
— to which the robot responded with the 5-7-5 version:
i suppose ant-man’s
boss could be considered a
micromanager
The xkcd cartoon (#1774 Adjective Foods) from the 19th:
Mark Liberman posted this on Language Log on the 19th, with a link to a 2004 posting of his and with the video of Monty Python’s “Crunchy Frog” sketch. Ordinarily, I’d just add that link to my Page on postings about xkcd cartoons, but this time I want to elaborate some on my own.
From the most recent NYT “Metropolitan Diary” (on-line on the 26th, in the national edition on the 28th), a contribution from Michael Joseloff that begins:
Two teenagers with clipboards were stopping passers-by on the Upper East Side. I was in a hurry to get to the bank, so I tried to maneuver past them and avoid their pitch. No luck.
“Me and my friend are trying to raise money to buy uniforms for our basketball team,” one of the boys began, before rattling on with the rest of his memorized speech. To paraphrase Renée Zellweger in “Jerry Maguire,” he had me at “me and my friend.” He seemed sincere. I decided to help.
I was desperately hoping that he was going to help the kid by making a contribution. But no: he proposed to help by correcting the kid’s grammar.
