Morphophonology Rules (Actually, I Prefer Syntax and Semantics)

Following is a reader's comment on a recent post about paraprosdokians.

I've always loved gags like this -- "I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my father, not screaming and terrified like his passengers." — Bob Monkhouse



I never knew they had a name, so I did a Google search to find the proper pronunciation. Forvo.com says it's pronounced "para pros DOK ian," which is what I expected to find. However, the droll Brit at howjsay.com seems to have added a vowel where none exists in the spelling: "PARA pros(o) dokian."Is that an example of metathesis ?



And here is my response:

That would actually be an example of the morphophonological rule of insertion. Insertion is when a sound is inserted between two morphemes either for ease of articulation (to make the word easier to pronounce), or for ease of perception (to make it easier to hear every sound in a word), or both. British English speakers must not like having the morpheme /pras/ followed by the morpheme /dok/. I would guess that they insert the /o/ more for ease of perception than ease of articulation because the /s/ is in a syllable coda (end of the syllable) and the following /d/ is in a syllable onset (start of the syllable). Because the sounds in question are in two separate syllables, pronunciation should not be an issue. Are there any British English speakers who care to comment? I would love to hear from you.



I thought I would reprint this comment exchange because I always enjoy it when a post of mine piques a reader's curiosity and because I truly would love to hear what other readers think.

Fun with Semiotics - Assicons

From an e-mail I received (talk about having fun with semiotics).

We all know those cute little computer symbols called 'emoticons' where
:) means a smile and :( is a frown.

Well, how about some 'ASSICONS?'

Here goes:

(_!_) a regular ass

(__!__) a fat ass

(!) a tight ass

(_*_) an ass hole

{_!_} a swishy ass

(_o_) an ass that's been around

(_x_) kiss my ass

(_X_) leave my ass alone

(_zzz_) a tired ass

(_13_) an unlucky ass

(_E=mc2_) a smart ass

(_$_) money coming out of his ass

(_?_) dumb ass

(_~_) a latin ass

(_/_) an Asian ass

(_+_) a French ass

As for me, I am feeling like a (__!__) and a (_zzz_) after yesterday's Thanksgiving feast.


Click here for more about semiotics.

Linguistic Cartoon Favorites - Happy Thanksgiving

I Have Been Moved to Explain the Difference Between Coordinating and Subordinating Conjunctions

When it comes to determining whether a conjunction that joins clauses is a coordinating conjunction or a subordinating conjunction, there is a simple syntactic movement test that will reveal the answer.

To start with, coordinating conjunctions join independent clauses and the conjunction doing the joining is not attached to either clause. (The above "and" is a coordinating conjunction)

Subordinating conjunctions join dependent clauses to independent clauses and the conjunction doing the joining is attached to the dependent clause. (The above "and" is also a coordinating conjunction)

So, what does movement have to do with this?

Look at the examples below:

1. Joe loves snowboarding and Jack loves skiing.

2. Jack loves skiing because Joe loves snowboarding.

To determine which type of conjunction each sentence has, try moving the conjunction and its following clause to the front of each sentence.

Here are the resulting sentences:

1. *And Jack loves skiing, Joe loves snowboarding.

2. Because Joe loves snowboarding, Jack loves skiing.

The ungrammaticality of sentence 1 is marked with the asterisk.

The fact that the conjunction in sentence 2 can move with the clause that follows it, indicates that the conjunction is attached to the clause and thus the clause is dependent; in other words, the clause is subordinate to the main clause in the sentence and is linked by a subordinating conjunction.

By the way...There are different types of dependent clauses, but I will save talking about them for another day, because they deserve special attention. (The above "but" is a coordinating conjunction and the "because" is a subordinating conjunction)

*But I will save them for another day, there are different types of subordinating conjunctions.

Because they deserve special attention, I will save talking about them for another day.

2010 Winter Olympics-Bound U.S. Ski Team - Ad Agency Wipes-Out on Word Choice

Just spotted this verb subcatagorization blunder in a magazine ad for the 2010 Winter Olympics-bound U.S. Ski Team.

"Some gates bend, and some just lay down in fear."

To refresh your memory, transitive verbs take objects, intransitive verbs don't. "Lay" is a transitive verb and there is not a direct object following "lay" in this sentence.

In other words, the framework of this sentence, minus the second verb, requires an intransitive verb.

I sure hope the U.S. Ski Team doesn't lay an egg at the Olympics. If they do, I will lie down and cry.

Click here for more on "lay vs. lie".

P.S. In my punctuationally-challenged mind, I think "Vancouver" and "Bound" should be hyphenated.

Linguistics Quotation Favorites - Nonsensical Semantics

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

-Noam Chomsky

Syntactically sound but semantically senseless sentence created by Noam Chomsky in 1957 to demonstrate the need for more structured models of grammar.

The First in a Series of Occasional Linguistics Quizzes

The fact that native Spanish speakers have difficulty pronouncing the English word "skate" indicates that English and Spanish______

a. are prescriptive languages.
b. have different phonotactic constraints.
c. are nearly impossible to learn.
d. are not rule governed.

For answer click here.

Victor Borge's Phonetic Punctuation

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Schwas

susanohanian.org

Phonemetry - The Schwa

Phoneme + Poetry = poetry about phonemes

A curvaceous young phoneme called schwa
Said "I never feel strong. It's bizarre!
I'm retiring and meek
And I always sound weak
But in frequency counts - I'm the star!"

from One Stop English

I saw this poem while looking for additional IPA resources for my students. I immediately fell in love with it and thought I would share it with my readers.

P.S. The portmanteau is my creation.

The First in a Series of Occasional Linguistics Quizzes - Answer

The correct answer to the First in a Series of Occasional Linguistics Quizzes is b.

English and Spanish have different phonotactic constraints.

While the /sk/ consonant cluster is perfectly acceptable to English speakers and is not usually even given a second thought, the cluster is not a psychological reality to Spanish speakers. Because Spanish speakers do not recognize the cluster, their phonotactic constraints do not allow the /sk/ cluster to appear in the same syllable. The result is Spanish speakers will insert the vowel /e/ before the cluster which forms another syllable and breaks apart the /sk/cluster.

English
/sket/

Spanish
/es ket/

Restaurant Reduplication

Food Network has a fun show called Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. The show visits restaurants that fall under the aforementioned category and shares some of the restaurants' recipes.

A recent episode was titled "You Can Say That Again", and included visits to the following restaurants:

Tap Tap Restaurant in Miami Beach, Florida
Pok Pok in Portland, Oregon
Niko Niko's in Houston, Texas

While the food looked very tasty at each of the restaurants, I had more fun with the reduplicative restaurant names.

Linguistically speaking, "reduplication" is a morphological process that occurs in many languages to different degrees and for different purposes. Basically, it is the repetition of all or part of a word. In some languages reduplication has a grammatical function (inflecting for plurality or intensifying) and in others it is used primarily for phonological word play (rhyming, baby talk, etc.).

For more about reduplication check out this Wikipedia article.

On a side note: Does anyone else find the word "reduplication" to be slightly redundant?

If you are duplicating something you are essentially re-doing what has already been done; hence, reduplicating is akin to re-re-doing. I know it is possible to re-re-do things but there has to be a limit. Additionally, linguistic reduplication generally only repeats the word or word part one time so the word "duplication" should suffice.

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And on a completely separate note (for those who cannot tolerate apostrophe abuse): What the heck is that at the top right corner of the "s" at the end of "drive-ins" on the publicity photo for the show?

I hope it is just the funky font and it is really supposed to be a part of the "s", but on a quick glance it look like an apostrophe.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Syntactic Ambiguity

Creative Phraseology with Yahoo

SUBJECT: If I hop in the shower, am I turning into a rabbit?

I made an accidental but entertaining discovery today; clicking on the subject button when writing a Yahoo e-mail will generate a random and amusing phrase in the subject line of the e-mail. Many of these phrases succeed in being humorous thanks to the writer's creative use of morphology and semantics.

Here are a few that I enjoyed:

Cinco de Mayonnaise
Shake it, don't break it, took your mama 9 months to make it.
Cannibals are what they eat
this body is slowing and my mind is reverse growing
Did you say Yute? What's a Yute?
cycling over melons
Some Powdered Muffin with your Starfish, Dr Arbuckle?
My dog eats nuts
Pressing business at the dry cleaners
Save some funk for Sunday
Alarming drop-out rate of sky diving classes
My mono isn't getting better...it could turn into stereo

I would love to know who writes these so I could thank them/him/her for not recycling boring old catch phrases.

Thanks to Toothpaste for Dinner for the great cartoon.

Calque You Very Much

If it wasn't for calques, we wouldn't be able to stop at the beer garden for some free verse on our way to the flea market to take a look see for a landscape masterpiece.

As defined by WordNet, a calque is "an expression introduced into one language by translating it from another language."

The English words listed in the first sentence above are translations of the following:

beer garden is from the German biergarten

free verse is from the French vers libre

flea market is from the French marché aux puces

look-see is from the Chinese 看見

landscape is from the Dutch landschap

masterpiece is from either the Dutch meesterstuk or the German meisterstück

Calques are also known as loanwords or word borrowings and are word-for-word or literal translations. According to a Wikipedia article, "'calque' itself is a loanword from a French noun, and derives from the verb 'calquer' (to trace, to copy)."

If you are interested in reading more about calques, the Wikipedia article includes a list of many additional English words that are calques from other languages as well as words in other languages that are calques from English words.