Here's to a Punny Summer

In keeping with Monday's theme, here is another one from So Much Pun.

Enjoy a fall into a lake or pool and have a great summer.

Pun with Bob Marley and Eric Clapton

"I shot the sheriff" was written and recorded by Bob Marley and covered by Eric Clapton.

Typographically speaking, I love So Much Pun's version of the song.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Phonetic Eye Chart

Hope you can see your way to a good weekend.

The Semiotics of Automobiles

I recently ran across a post titled "I don't get it" on the blog Because I Amuse Myself. The reason I ended up at this particular blog post was that I passed a Nissan Cube with a windshield decal that read "The Brave Little Toaster". When I saw the car and its decal I couldn't help but laugh because the car does look rather boxy and I remember Disney's Brave Little Toaster from my children's toddler years. I always wondered if other people thought boxy cars resembled toasters. I got my answer after a few brief moments on the internet. Here is the post:

I don't get it




What's the appeal of the toaster-on-wheels vehicle?As if the Scion xB wasn't enough, now Nissan has joined the box-shaped car club with the not-so-cleverly-named "Cube".



Why? Who goes to a car dealership and thinks, "I want a car that looks like it could toast a giant slice of bread"?

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Here is a picture from The Brave Little Toaster:



I also discovered some bumper stickers for sale at various internet sites:

And then I passed a Ford Flex.

It even has a slot for regular slices of bread and a slot for an extra-wide slice of bread.

This Baby is Missing a Letter

A good friend spotted this sign in a restroom at Disney World and snapped a photo to share with me. He commented that it amazed him how much the deletion of one letter from the beginning of a word can totally change the pronunciation of the word. I think the oddity of this example comes from the fact that when a string of consonants starts a word and one of the consonants is dropped the resulting word usually still rhymes (ex. "bloomed"..."loomed", "crusted"..."rusted", "strap"..."trap"..."rap", and so on).




That is not the case here, and part of the reason is that we are talking about consonant sounds, not letters. The word "changing" may start with two consonants in alphabetical spelling, however, phonetically, the letters "c" and "h" combine to form one sound - /ʧ/(aka /č/).


So, phonetically, we have "hanging" /hæŋəŋ/ compared to "changing" /ʧenʤəŋ/.


By adding the letter "c" to the "h" in the word "hanging", the word initial sound changes from a fricative to an affricate. Because sounds like to hang out with other sounds with whom they share commonalities, it is not surprising to see the affricate /ʤ/ in the word "changing". It also does not surprise me that the /æ/, which is a lax vowel, becomes /e/ (a tense vowel) in "changing" because if consonants were classified by tenseness, I would think that affricates are more tense than fricatives.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Happy Father's Day

I love you Dad, and I thank you for teaching me such phenomenal organizational skills.


Thanks to Arnold Zwicky for bringing this one to my attention.

License Plate Semiotic Interjections

This is most likely not a customized/vanity plate as it follows the alphanumeric format of standard plates of this design in Michigan.

I spotted the plate while driving on I-75 last week and I would not have given it a second look if it wasn't for the fact that it was on a car of the same model as the one pictured below.

ICK A BUG!

What a semiotically perfect plate for a Volkswagen Beetle; I wonder if the owner of the car has noticed.

*I was unable to take a photo of the actual plate and car while I was driving. The plate is a re-creation and the photo is a stock photo.

Six Words - Brevity is the Soul of Wit (and Wisdom)

My father passed along the following e-mail from his friend Rick Hebert, a Houston teacher of 9th graders with reading disabilities:

"Here are a few of those “6-Word Stories” that “Ricky’s Kids” wrote; I’m quite proud of these guys…of course, I had to spell a few words for them (and keep repeating, “6 words, 6 words only, no more than 6 words, no less than 6 words), but…"

My Mind Wanders; Hope It Returns

“Perfect” Takes Time I Don’t Have

Life is Fair; People Are Not

Others Are Losers; I Found You

We Are a Lack of Words

She Fears No Evil; She Lies

He Dies Every Day Doing Nothing

Can’t Stop Loving, But He’s Bogus

….and my 2 favorites

What Happens Here Stays on YouTube

American Dream Running Out of Time

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Six word stories belong to a recently-named genre called "flash fiction" or "microfiction" and originated with a story that may or may not have been written by Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

There is now a website called Six Word Stories that has a collection of these stories categorized by author and subject. Here are a few I found under my favorite subject "word play":

The day unfolds. I fold laundry. - R. Armour

Girl on fire. An old flame? - nihualahain

Love triangle. You get the point. - Dan


P.S. "Brevity is the soul of wit" is a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet that just happens to be six words.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Creativity with Suffixes

Rabbit Writes for the Right Thesis Advisor

Congratulations to those who have recently completed a thesis.

One fine, sunny day, a rabbit sat outside his burrow, typing on his laptop. Along came a fox, out for a walk.

"What are you working on, Rabbit?" asked the fox.
"My thesis," said the rabbit.
"Hmm. What's it about?" asked the fox.
"It's about how rabbits eat foxes," replied the rabbit.
"That's ridiculous!" exclaimed the fox. "Any fool knows that rabbits don't eat foxes."
"Sure they do," said the rabbit. "And I can prove it! Come into my burrow."

They disappeared inside and after a few minutes, the rabbit emerged alone, returned to his laptop, and resumed typing. Soon, a wolf came along.

"What are you working on, Rabbit?"
"My thesis," the rabbit replied.
"Hmm. What's it about?" asked the wolf.
"It's about how rabbits eat wolves," said the rabbit.
"That's ridiculous!" exclaimed the wolf. "Any fool knows that rabbits don't eat wolves."
"Sure they do," said the rabbit calmly. "And I can prove it! Come into my burrow."

They disappeared inside and after a few minutes, the rabbit emerged alone, returned to his laptop, and resumed typing.

Meanwhile, inside the rabbit's burrow there was a pile of fox bones and a pile of wolf bones -- and a lion picking his teeth.

The Moral: It doesn't matter what you choose for a thesis subject. It doesn't matter what you use for data. What matters is who you have for a thesis advisor!

- Thanks for the laugh Miss Cellania.

I wonder who was on the rabbit's thesis committee.

P.S. As for the moral, it does matter, and I sure am glad that I had an advisor (Margaret Winters) and a committee (Martha Ratliff and Ljiljana Progovac) that cared about my subject and data. Thank you all again.

Onomastics - Creative Restroom Signage

Onomastics or onomatology is the study of proper names of all kinds and the origins of names. The words are from the Greek: "ὀνομαστικός" (onomastikos), "of or belonging to naming" and "ὀνοματολογία" (onomatologia), from "ὄνομα" (ónoma) "name". - Wikipedia


One of the many ways that businesses add character to their establishments is by creatively naming their restrooms. Here are a couple spotted on the web.

I was recently out at one of the newer restaurants in my hometown when I happened upon these interesting restroom signs.

I get the name "Joe" for the men's restroom (after all, Average Joe, Joe Public, Ordinary Joe and Joe Sixpack have long been used as generics to represent the average American male); what I don't get is "Sally" for the women's restroom. The female equivalent of the above named "Joes" has always been "Jane". In my experience, "Sally" is used as a derogatory nickname for effeminate men. So what gives?

Maybe it has to do with Urban Dictionary's top definition for Sally: "A really, really hot girl."

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - National Language

Thanks to xkcd.

Pragmatically Appropriate Letter Deletion

Regular readers may know that I am a major proponent of the Slower Traffic Keep Right campaign. I actually have the windshield decal pictured below (though I have decided not to use it as I do not want to draw undue attention from our friendly state troopers).





The following photo is from Vanity Plates: Creepiness in 8 Characters or Less and while the plate is somewhat humorous it is the modified decal that I find most amusing. For a truck this size, removing the "S" from the decal makes the message more pragmatically effective.