Two Grim Reaper memic cartoons: today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro collab, and a Harry Bliss cartoon in the current (12/24&31) New Yorker, both requiring signficant background information for understanding (beyond recognizing the figure of Death with his scythe):
Archive for the ‘Modifier attachment’ Category
Ask not for whom the reaper scythes
December 20, 2018Posted in Books, Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Modifier attachment, Movies and tv, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
Attaching an 8-page essay at Wheaton College
September 30, 2018Reported back on the 19th, a stunner of a 2017 headline about Wheaton College (IL) events dating back to 2016. First, the story from a source other than the one that produced the remarkable headline: from the Daily Mail (UK) by Jennifer Smith on 2/14/18: “Christian college ‘punished’ football players who ‘kidnapped, beat and sexually assaulted’ freshman in brutal hazing ritual by asking them to write an eight-page essay and complete community service”:
Posted in Ambiguity, Context, Modifier attachment, Parsing, Psycholinguistics, Relevance | Leave a Comment »
The news for shoes
September 17, 2018… and toucans, but not, surprisingly, pandas, despite the brand name.
Originally encountered in ads from the Footwear etc. stores (a California chain with a store on University Ave. in Palo Alto): Wanda Panda,
We Are Wanda Panda
Shoes, ankle boots and sandals for women. Made in Spain. [The company’s headquarters are in Alicante, on the Costa Blanca]
Hours of attention: Monday to Thursday, 9:00 – 13:00, 16:00 – 18:00, Friday 9:00 – 13:00 [notably Spanish hours]
Phonemically /wandǝ pændǝ/ in English, apparently involving the bamboo-eating bear Ailuropoda melanoleuca (I have two friends with the panda as a very serious totem animal, so I’m alert to pandas) — but phonemically /wanda panda/ in Spanish, with no allusion to (el) panda ‘panda’ at all; instead the reference is to (la) panda ‘gang, crowd, group of friends’ (in European Spanish slang). And the Wanda Panda mascot is a cartoon toucan (tucán in Spanish):
Some notes on the shoes. And then a digression on why Wanda and panda don’t rhyme in English (though they do in Spanish).
Posted in Clothing, Fashion, Language and animals, Modification, Modifier attachment, Spanish | 2 Comments »