Happy Homophonic Birthday Mom

Mom - You are the greatest and thank you for putting up with the utter chaos I caused at times. Hope you have an utterly outstanding day. I love you.

P.S. "Udder" and "utter" are only homophones on the surface level.

Phonemic Level---------------------Allophonic Level

(underlying transcription)---------- (surface translation)

udder

/ʌdɚ/----------------------------------[ʌDɚ]

utter

/ʌtɚ/-----------------------------------[ʌDɚ]

The American English phonology rule for flapping states that alveolar stops are flapped intervocalically when followed by an unstressed vowel.

Fortune Cookie as a Magic Eight Ball

It's all in the context.

If your cookie is in 3 pieces, the answer is no.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Swearing at the Oaths

What the...is a Hoomba

A dear friend of mine, who has provided much fodder for this blog (thank you, love), has inspired me with yet another word from her clanolect - 'hoomba'.

I googled the word and came up with only one definition (not hers) from Urban Dictionary which follows -

Hoomba: A "nothing" word used to replace a noun when the appropriate noun cannot be thought of in the amount necessary for conversation.
1) "Hey, grab me that...hoomba"
2) "I was struck on the back of the head with a...hoomba."

I far prefer the definition provided by my friend's clanolect (of which I have become a part, thank you) -

Hoomba: A bonfire poker

Verbing Nouns and Placing Products

I love the way John Mayer succeeded in verbing two different proper nouns in one sentence and the way he managed to drop in a little product placement in his denial of having had a fling with actress Kristin Cavallari.


"I have never Bensoned her Hedges, nor have I attempted to Bartle her Jaymes."

Linguistics Quotation Favorites - Universality

Linguistics will have to recognize laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.

-Ferdinand de Saussure

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Nasal Twang

Newsweek Magazine's Weird Word Choice

The September 21st issue of Newsweek magazine includes an article titled "Born to be Big". Following is the opening sentence of the article:

"It's easy enough to find culprits in the nation's epidemic of obesity, starting with tubs of buttered popcorn at the multiplex and McDonald's 1,220-calorie deluxe breakfasts, and moving on to the couch potato-fication of America."

I am wondering if any particular word in this sentence bothers readers as much as it bothers me.

Do you see which word I am referring to?

Not yet.

Well.....

The word that really gets to me is "couch potato-fication".

A morphological analysis of the formation of the word "couch potato-fication" suggests that the suffix "-ify" (in the form of "-fy") was added to the compound noun "couch potato" resulting in the verb "couch potato-fy" meaning, "to make or cause one to be a couch potato." Then the suffix "-ation" was added to the verb "couch potato-fy" resulting in the noun "couch potato-fication" meaning, "the state or quality of making or causing one to be a couch potato."

While "-fy" is an accepted variant of the suffix "-ify", according to encyclopedia.com the suffix normally takes the form "-ify". Additionally, the combination of the suffixes "-ify" and "-ation" form what is considered a separate suffix "-ification". The suffix "-ification" is highly productive as can be seen by the following unexhausted list of words.

amplification
beatification
certification
clarification
classification
codification
deification
demystification
disqualification
diversification
edification
falsification
fortification
glorification
gratification
identification
justification
mystification
notification
ossification
personification
purification
qualification
quantification
ramification
ratification
rectification
reunification
sanctification
simplification
solidification
specification
stratification
unification
verification

Had the Newsweek article used the suffix in its known form, I probably would not have even thought twice about the neologism. However, without the initial /I/ or short-i sound found in the suffix, Newsweek's use stuck out like a phonetically sore thumb.

Granted the "-ification" suffix usually follows a consonant, it doesn't always, as exhibited by the word "deification". So based upon the linguistic template of "deification" and the known phonological pattern of the suffix, I think that "couch potato-ification" would have been a better choice for this neologism.

By the way, another thought that entered my mind when first reading this word was, "did they mean to say "couch potato-fixation", as in our nation has a fixation on the ability to be couch potatoes? As a matter of fact, when googling the suffix "-fication" without its initial letter "i" as Newsweek used it, Google responded with, "Did you mean: -fixation".

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The article is also available on the Newsweek website and, interestingly, does not include the hyphen between potato and fication. Whether the word is written as "couch potato-fication" or "couch potatofication" it still sounds odd to me.

PNUT...What??? APOSTROPHE...where???

Snapped this photo at one of our local grocery stores. I immediately wondered what the heck a 'pnut' is and why someone would make butter out of it. If the sign had read "p'nut" I would have known right away that it was a contraction for 'peanut' and I do love peanut butter.



By the way (with credit to The Owl at Purdue), "A contraction is a word (or set of numbers) in which one or more letters (or numbers) have been omitted. The apostrophe shows this omission. Contractions are common in speaking and in informal writing. To use an apostrophe to create a contraction, place an apostrophe where the omitted letter(s) would go."

Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" Explained

Created by Ari Hoptman, a former undergraduate linguistics major from Wayne State University.

The Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes - Do You Call it Soda, Pop, Coke or What?

While doing some research for the class I am teaching, I came across a Cambridge dialect survey that I would like to encourage all of my readers to take.

"What we are interested in is not what other people believe is "correct" English or what you think you and others should say, but what you actually do say."


The questions and multiple-choice answers from the survey are informative and entertaining and it only takes a few minute to answer them.

Plus, as an added bonus (wow, look at that redundancy) once you have completed the survey you can view the results that are tabulated on a daily basis.

Following is one of the questions with the current results to pique your interest:

Question: "What is your generic casual or informal term for a sweetened carbonated beverage? (As in: "We have milk, beer, apple juice, and four kinds of _____: Pepsi, 7Up, root beer, and ginger ale.") Results as of 9/13/2009:

soda (31%)
pop (17%)
soft drink (14%)
coke (8%)
I just call each kind by its individual name (6%)
Other responses (21%)

Vehicular Vocabulary

I recently came across a new term in the August issue of Detroit's Hour Magazine. The appropriateness of the timing of my newly acquired vocabulary cannot be denied, as I read the article just two days before driving home from northern Michigan after a holiday weekend (Yuck, an extra hour added to the trip). The term I am referring to is "phantom jam"; a traffic jam with no apparent cause -- no accident, no stalled vehicle, no lanes closed for construction.

According to an article on Wired.com, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers who are studying the phenomenon in hopes of expunging it, have suggested an additional name for this kind of gridlock - a "jamiton". "It’s a riff on 'soliton,' a term used in math and physics to describe a self-sustaining wave that maintains its shape while moving."

These "phantom jams" or "jamitons" occur when there is even the slightest disturbance in the flow of heavy traffic - a driver unnecessarily touching the brakes, someone tailgating or an idiot talking on the phone and not paying full attention to the road. These minor disruptions to the flow of traffic cause a chain reaction that results in a self-sustaining traffic jam.


Following is a video of MIT's model of the formation of a phantom jam.



As a frequent weekend and vacation expressway traveller, I wholeheartedly support MIT's research efforts and would like to remind drivers not to tailgate, not to talk on the phone, not to unnecessarily use brakes and, most importantly, that the left lane is for passing and slower traffic should keep right.

Let's eradicate these terms from our vocabulary.

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Read more about The Semantics of Slower Traffic.

Check out slowertraffickeepright.com

The Semiotics of College Letters

Dear Dad,

$chool i$ really great. I am making lot$ of friend$ and $tudying very hard. With all my $tuff, I $imply can't think of anything I need. $o if you would like, you can ju$t $end me a card, a$ I would love to hear from you.

Love,

Your $on

__________________________________________________

Dear Son,

I kNOw that astroNOmy, ecoNOmics, and oceaNOgraphy are eNOugh to keep even an hoNOr student busy. Do NOt forget that the pursuit of kNOwledge is a NOble task, and you can never study eNOugh.

Love,

Dad

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From an e-mail I received...a perfect example of the use of semiotics.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Snowclones

That Cranberry Morpheme Has Tude

A cranberry morpheme, according to Andrew Spencer in the book Morphological Theory, is a morpheme that has "neither meaning nor grammatical function, yet is used to differentiate one word from another". The term cranberry morpheme was chosen to describe this linguistic occurrence based on the comparison of the word 'cranberry' to other 'berry' words where the first morphemes do carry meaning (ex. blueberry, blackberry and loganberry).

Cranberry morphemes are sometimes called "fossilized terms". In the case of the word 'cranberry' Wikipedia points out the fact that 'cran' "actually comes from crane (the bird)." Of course this etymology is not commonly known, thus the alternate name "fossilized term".

Some cranberry morphemes with 'tude' that are currently popular include:

Prefixes

celebu-

nano-

mongo-

Suffixes

-isode

-cation

-rexia

-dango

-palooza

Silly Snowclone Version II (Rated R)

Back in May of this year, I posted about a snowclone that my son and I spotted on the back of a truck - "Silly Boys Trucks Are For Girls". The snowclone used the following clichéd advertising phrase as a linguistic template:


A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I were at a restaurant/bar in northern Michigan that was hosting a bike night when we ran into a gentleman wearing the t-shirt pictured below:

Talk about giving a children's cereal an adult spin.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Happy Labor Day Weekend

From the Rooter to the Tooter

I read a wonderful memoir this summer called "Same Kind of Different as Me". The book is about a millionaire art dealer named Ron Hall and his relationship with a homeless man and former sharecropper named Denver Moore. I won't get into any more details about the book but I wanted to mention an idiom that Denver Moore used in the book when talking about eating the meat from pigs.

"From the rooter to the tooter."

What a beautifully poetic way to describe eating the parts of pigs that most people would rather not even think about.

Apparently this is a well known idiom (probably more so in the southern United States) but it was new to me and I really got a kick out of it. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and its accurate portrayal of dialects too.