Archive for the ‘Argument structure’ Category
March 19, 2020
Today’s Calvin and Hobbes re-run strip, on Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs (CFSBs), which offer “100% of the daily recommended allowance of caffeine”:
(#1) Just in case you had a fleeting moment of wondering about it, there is no caffeine RDA (recommended dietary allowance — recommended by the US National Research Council); the RDAs are for nutrients, and caffeine is not a nutrient
C&H Sugar Bomb strips. Hummingbird metabolism. The getting-high sense of the noun buzz and its verbing. The near-instant buzz of concentrated caffeine. Adalbert Stifter’s 1845 novella Bergkristall.
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Posted in Argument structure, Books, Language and animals, Language and food, Language and medicine, Linguistics in the comics, Verbing | Leave a Comment »
February 9, 2020
… with figurative roses. Recent gifts to me of many kinds: symbolic roses for me, in accord with a 1/29/20 posting of mine on a line from the Sacred Harp: “Give me the roses while I live” (SH340 Odem (Second)). I’m an old man, currently writing things under the Python Queen of Scots cry “Not Dead Yet”. Meanwhile, I have been given some excellent roses.
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Posted in Abbreviation, Argument structure, Books, Linguists, My life, Semantics, Social interactions, Syntax | 3 Comments »
October 3, 2019
Yes, this posting is about fucking — specifically about the syntax, semantics, and sociolinguistics of the sexual verb fuck in English, especially with reference to male-male anal intercourse (that is, men fucking men), so despite the high amount of technical linguistic content (NERD FLAG), it is (RAUNCH FLAG) thoroughly unsuitable for kids or the sexually modest. I mean, I’m going to talk about a lot of fucking in this piece, and I’m going to start with a guy getting (quite movingly) fucked by another guy, so some of you are going to have to, or want to, get the fuck out of here.
The impetus for this posting is a line from a short gay porn video on the IceGay site, “Brad McGuire And His Piggy [Dawson]”; McGuire, a dominant top into barebacking, is unloading a line of dirty sex talk onto the sexpig Dawson, whose aching desire is to get a load of hot cum in his ass after being enthusiastically screwed, doggie-style:
(#1) McGuire and Dawson, moving close to climax
McGuire: Work that dick, man. C’mon. Fuck me with that ass. [Big spangly note: McGuire fucks Dawson with his dick; Dawson fucks McGuire with his ass.] Yeah, c’mon, hungry pig. Yeah? That’s it. That’s it. C’mon, work for it [the desired load of cum]. Yeah. … Yeah, you work for that load. C’mon, fuck me with that ass, man. Fuckin’ pig.
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Posted in Argument structure, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Metaphor, Participant roles, Semantics, Syntax | Leave a Comment »
May 16, 2019
The Wayno/Piraro Bizarro from the 14th shows us Lassie trying to deliver a message about Timmy:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
Ah, a variant of the Lassie-Timmy cartoon meme. With a play on the senses of be in trouble. From various dictionaries:
(i) ‘in a problematic situation or state of hardship’
(ii) ‘in peril, danger’
(iii) ‘subject to or due for punishment’
(iv) (euph.) ‘pregnant and unmarried’
In the usual cartoon meme, Timmy is in trouble in sense (i) or (ii) — classically, he has fallen down a well — but in #1, it’s sense (iii). I haven’t found an instance of the meme that bends gender to take advantage of sense (iv), but it’s certainly imaginable. (And for a possibility torn from the headlines, if you’re in trouble in sense (iv) and get an abortion, in Alabama you’re now in trouble in sense (iii).)
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Posted in Ambiguity, Argument structure, Comic conventions, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Semantics | 1 Comment »
April 25, 2019
In the recently published The Ultimate Cartoon Book of Book Cartoons —
(#1)
edited by New Yorker cartoonist Bob Eckstein (a regular visitor on this blog), this Ed Koren (who’s also on this blog):
(#2)
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Posted in Argument structure, Books, Combining forms, Language change, Linguistics in the comics, Metonymy, Morphology, Puns, Spoonerisms | Leave a Comment »
March 17, 2019
(Men’s bodies and tons of mansex — anal, anal, anal — in street language. No actual penises on display, but nevertheless absolutely not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Padraig porn for the day:
(#1) The TitanMen gay porn sale for this weekend: Kiss me, I’m Irish
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Posted in Argument structure, Art, Catchphrases, Dance, Facial expressions, Formulaic language, French, Gay porn, Gaze, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language of sex, Language play, Music, Puns, Snowclones | 1 Comment »
March 5, 2019
… just came up on this blog. Since I last reported on the crowds of spam comments here, in my 10/20/18 posting “Numbers and names” (“The number of pieces of comments spam on this blog … passed 5.5 million a little while ago”).
Well, on the 3rd, when I first checked, some 5,600,601 had accumulated since this blog started in December 2008. At the moment, there’s an attack underway from a site with a clever strategy for evading spam recognition programs, so I’m getting more than a thousand new spam comments a day..
Meanwhile, there’s a certain amount of entertainment in the ebbs and flows in the views of postings on this blog — which will lead me eventually to some remarks on location expressions in the world’s language.
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Posted in Argument structure, Language play, Lexical semantics, Movies and tv, Possession, Semantics, Syntax, This blogging life | Leave a Comment »
December 24, 2018
Having tackled the Christmas season as a whole, Sandra Boynton examines one specific day: on FB yesterday, with “A helpful tip on National Pfeffernüsse Day” (December 23rd):
(#1)
On peppernuts. And on the recipe register (here: Recipe Object Omission in roll thoroughly in confectioners’ sugar).
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Posted in Ambiguity, Argument structure, Categorization and Labeling, Compounds, Holidays, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Style and register, Subsectivity | 1 Comment »
