Posts (page 2)

As we were working in class we were talking about the class or aspect of verbs.  Take for example the verb 'to know'.  It is difficult to explain why this verb would be considered a state but I think it goes something like this:

I know that man.

Know has no beginning or end that you can point out.  You can't "unknow" something.  This makes sense when you look at the way it is used in AAVE (African American Vernacular English) where something like "I've been knowing that man" makes more sense by placing it in the present (knowing) and the past (been).  The duration here isn't specified but it corresponds well with the habitual 'to be' used in the same sentence to indicate that 'being'  and in this case 'knowing' as well is habitual.

SO, this actually goes back to a previous topic but I found it humorous and worth mentioning.  I have blogged about the 'slips of the tongue' we have ofter heard, but this past weekend my daughter gave me some cute examples of substitution errors. 

When we picked Emma up from her grandparents on Sunday, she and papa were playing yet another game "I took your nose", you know the game where you pretend to "steal" someone's nose and pretend to wear it on your own. Emma basking in all her cuteness, looked up at papa, took his nose, and told him, "I picked your nose papa".  We tried to explain to her the difference between 'pick' and 'took' but it just didn't register despite the fact that she has been exposed to both phrases.

On Monday, after we talked about the scab on her nose, we asked her, "What happened to your nose Emma" and "did you hurt your nose".  She confidently looked at us and said, "No, I broke my nose mommy."  I once again tried to explain the difference between breaking and scraping your nose and the little genius that she is came up with, "But mommy I broke the skin on my nose"...I must say she is absolutely correct!!!

As I was reading the chapter, I was trying to think of examples of pleonasm such as one I read on someone's my space page:  "I like to ride my bicycle outside"...Is there any other place you would ride a bicycle.  There is always the chance that it is a stationary bike but doubtful...this just felt very redundant.  Then I remembered a shirt I just recently bought on sale at Old Navy.  This shirt, while I admit I wear it because it wouldn't matter if the kids at the learning center destroy it, has bothered me and I haven't been able to put my finger on it until now.  The phrase embroidered on the front is pleonastic, "Young Ideas are the New Future".  Aren't ideas usually young and secondly can the future be anything but new?  It seems to me that not only did they waste thread embroidering the word 'new', it would be much more appropriate to say "Young Ideas are the Future", but they also wasted my brain cells trying to figure out why it bothered me so much.  I guess now I understand why it cost $2.99.

So, I hope class tomorrow clarifies this but I found Chapter 10 incredibly confusing.  Here is my attempt to convey the degrees of my confusion. 

This is my example of a monopolar chain:

Grasp (the material), Understand (the material), Master (the material)

Somehow I feel like Way over my head should be just below grasp...what do you guys think?

Here is another great article to look at.  It came from the Herald Leader.

http://www.kentucky.com/181/story/312457.html

So I got curious and googled for PUNny headlines and came across someone's blog.  It had some interesting headlines.
I am copying this from http://blogpourri.blogspot.com/2006/08/punny-headlines-driving-you-to-pull.html

"I was therefore happy to find that in spite of the prevailing wisdom in the newspaper industry, there were a number of "punny" headlines in the newspapers over the past couple of days - all relating to the one story of the forfeited cricket test match between England and Pakistan at the Oval and each one a play on the umpire's name Hair. (I haven't seen a photograph of Hair with his umpire's hat off. I wonder if he has any.)

'Pakistan demand Hair cut' read an August 21 headline in the Guardian (a clever headline, and I did go on the read the story). "A hair-raising past" says this Cricinfo headline. "Series with fraught histroy sitting on a Hair trigger" opines a Telegraph headline. "Pakistan lay blame on Hair for parting of ways". Now, is that a pun? The headline seems contrived. You can almost feel the effort that must have gone into the drafting of that headline. Moreover, "parting of ways" is not exactly how I would describe the Hair-Pakistan relationship.

Here's another "Hair cut" word play though not as good as the Guardian headline: "Hair cuts an over-officious figure in the game". "Pakistan no stranger to bad Hair day" according to The Times. "Hair's some more bad news for Pak" reads a not so good pun on the CNN-IBN website.

Before we go further, let me confess to my own attempt at punning in my post titled "Umpire Alleges Ball Tampering: Hair Today Gone Tomorrow?" Here's another in Desicritics writer Desh's post, "Darrell Caught in Pakistan's Hair.""

While I agree with the author here that some of these are a little cheesy, I am impressed with the variety of headlines for this incident.  I particularly like the headline "Pakistan lay blame on Hair for parting of ways" and "Hair's some more bad new for Pak"

I also found another website that had the following ones listed: 
http://www.funwithheadlines.net/index.html

Court: Mom Can't Sue Over Circumcision
Sue disagrees.

Man Charged in Break-In, Counterfeiting
Police not sure if they got the right guy or the counterfeit guy.

Toe-Licking Robber Gets Probation Term
"This really sucks!" he complains.

Couple Get No Help for Decapitated Ram
I think it's a bit late for help.

I love word play!!!

I was reading a friend's my space page and her update was a PUNny one,,,thanks Charity that's a great headline.  Her comment read "thankful she did not get swept up in the tornadoes last night...whew!"  To know this person is to know that there are many readings for this statement...the tornado didn't take her away, she didn't let it scare her, or she didn't get too excited as she loves wild weather. 

Isn't it great how puns work???

After reading Leslie's blog about synonymy I started thinking about whether complete synonymy exists or not.  For words like 'small' synonyms such as mini, minuscule and little each have a different impact when used.  One example of 'near-complete' synonymy was 'baby' and 'infant'.  Take for example the two sentences, "The trash can is small" and "the trash can is minuscule".  These two sentences create a very definite difference in the mind but if you try the same thing with 'baby' and 'infant' it is a little more blurry.  "The baby is crying" and "The infant is crying" are so similar that it is hard to distinguish which word is better.

While it is true that you can use the word 'baby' as a term of endearment and not 'infant', I would never call my husband and say "hey infant", in the context of a baby or infant being a "a very young child (birth to 1 year) who has not yet begun to walk or talk" http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=baby the two words seem to have a high degree of interchangibility.

The example used in class, "Iraqi Head Seeks Arms", intrigued me so I did a google search for ambiguous headlines and came up with a great website,

http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html

Here are a few that we got a good laugh out of:

PROSTITUTES APPEAL TO POPE

KIDS MAKE NUTRITIOUS SNACKS

QUEEN MARY HAVING BOTTOM SCRAPED

MINERS REFUSE TO WORK AFTER DEATH

DRUNK GETS NINE MONTHS IN VIOLIN CASE

JUVENILE COURT TO TRY SHOOTING DEFENDANT

COMPLAINTS ABOUT NBA REFEREES GROWING UGLY

PANDA MATING FAILS; VETERINARIAN TAKES OVER

I put some of the more ambiguous words in bold but as we talked about the ambiguities in language can and do result in som humorous statements.  It seems to me that the ambiguity occurs when the words are homonyms. 

I was thinking about the many different ways the phrase white elephant is used to denote the meaning of pretty much anything we want it to.  When I googled the phrase I immediately went to the wikipedia meaning of it:

A white elephant is a supposedly valuable possession whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) exceeds its usefulness, and it is therefore a liability. The term derives from the sacred white elephants kept by traditional Southeast Asian monarchs in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. To possess a white elephant was regarded (and is still regarded in Thailand and Burma) as a sign that the monarch was ruling with justice and the kingdom was blessed with peace and prosperity.^[1] The tradition derives from tales in the scriptures which associate a white elephant with the birth of Buddha, as his mother was reputed to have dreamed of a white elephant presenting her with a lotus flower, a symbol of wisdom and purity, on the eve of giving birth.^[2] Because the animals were considered sacred and laws protected them from labor, receiving a “gift” of a white elephant from a monarch was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because of the animal’s sacred nature and a curse because the animal could be put to no practical use.

We also use this term in gift exchanges sometimes called "Dirty Santa" where we are able to steal the gift someone else has chosen.

Another common use is in politics as in the way it is used in the following passage:
The emphasis on the evangelical vote is a smokescreen motivated by the attempt by Republicans (and conservative Democrats) to move the country rightwards. Meanwhile, most pundits, left and right, refuse to squarely face the white elephant in the room: race.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/20661/