Stinky Portmanteaus

A semantically spot-on portmanteau -

Spotted on If Companies Had Realistic Slogans at BuzzFeed.

Language Clippings

University of Michigan's Anne Curzan gives a great mini-lecture about slang words formed by clipping and how these words have the potential to become a standard part of the lexicon.

Portmanteau Bumper Stickers

In a post a week or so ago I mentioned my new hobby of Geocaching. Look what happens when a Geocaching sticker is added to a linguistics sticker -

These two bumper stickers need not be alien. And, they actually portmanteau quite well.

Geo Sticker

Ling Sticker

He'd've Preferred a Quadruple Contraction

But 'twou'dn't've been easily comprehensible.


The link to the Wiktionary page about English double contractions has been making the blog rounds in the last month or so and I am embarrassed to admit that my unfamiliarity with a few of them let me to click on the explanatory links.

I guess I haven't spent a ha'p'orth amount of time on nautical endeavors. The bo's'n better send me back to the fo'c'sle.

At any rate, the list got me to wondering about the exponential potential of contractions. There is a Wiktionary page with English triple contractions but that is as far as the Wik goes (and it only includes two examples: 'twou'dn't and fo'c's'le).

I welcome comments that include a minimum of quad-contractions.

The Ch'l'ng's'n'w (okay, that's a stretch; they should be somewhat figure-out-able).

Image via Art With Heart by Micah Lexier

Clipping Cartoons (It's Much More Fun Than Clipping Coupons)

Clipping, back-formation, and affixing, that is.

Clipping is a word creation process that takes a historically, multi-syllabic word and removes one or more syllables to form a smaller word. Some examples are: ad from advertisement, gas from gasoline, phone from telephone, and flu from influenza.

Because clipping does not change the lexical category or semantic interpretation of a word, the above cartoon actually illustrates a word creation process called back-formation.

Back-formation is similar to clipping but it can change the lexical category and/or semantic interpretation of a word. Examples include: couth from uncouth, and the verb burgle from the noun burglar.

Affixing is the process of creating words by adding prefixes, suffixes or infixes.

Image credits here.

Book Review Briefs: The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman

"The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman" by Meg Wolitzer

ʌ ʌ (2 carets up)

What a wonderful book for young readers. Whether interested in language or not, this is an enjoyable book and I'll bet anyone who reads it will discover a new found enthusiasm for vocabulary, parts of speech, and morphology.

If the cover image didn't give it away, the book is about the game of Scrabble, more specifically, a Youth Scrabble Tournament and what brings three preteens from different states to the tournament.

Here is a summary from Penguin.com:

At first glance, Duncan Dorfman, April Blunt, and Nate Saviano don't seem to have much in common. Duncan is trying to look after his single mom and adjust to life in a new town while managing his newfound Scrabble superpower—he can feel words and pictures beneath his fingers and tell what they are without looking. April is pining for a mystery boy she met years ago and striving to be seen as more than a nerd in her family of jocks. And homeschooled Nate is struggling to meet his father's high expectations for success.

When these three unique kids are brought together at the national Youth Scrabble Tournament, each with a very different drive to win, their paths cross and stories intertwine . . . and the journey is made extraordinary with a perfect touch of magic. Readers will fly through the pages, anxious to discover who will take home the grand prize, but there's much more at stake than winning and losing.

Anagrams are a frequent topic in the book, as evidenced by these excerpts:

"Words are like clay, Dorfman," he went on. "They can be shaped and messed with not only by your hands, but also by your head."

"PROSE is an anagram of ROPES. Oh, and SPORE is too. And POSER."

Here is an excerpt that includes the topics of vocabulary, parts of speech and morphology:

Duncan thought about the word AA, for instance, which he had looked up in the Scrabble dictionary and found out that it meant "rough, cindery lava." If he hadn't known it was a noun, he might have tried to add ING onto the end of it, thinking it was a verb.

Makes me wish I was a kid again so I could read books and play Scrabble all day long.

Word Creation - Blimpworthy

If you are wondering which sporting event to watch this weekend, you may want to take the blimpworthiness factor of the options into consideration; Goodyear sure hopes you do.

Goodyear recently coined a new word in the name of marketing. Through the creative use of compounding and affixing, Goodyear wants sports fans to vote for the event they feel is most "blimpworthy" in a new series of ESPN online polls. By voting in the polls, sports fans help to determine which sports events the blimps will appear at on particular weekends.

More information about Goodyear and the polls here and here.

Update on Contraction Retraction

Back in January, I posted about a linguistic phenomenon that I observed and was unable to label. The original post titled "Contraction Retraction - A Phono-Morpho-Syntactic Phenomenon" can be found here.

Following are some relevant excerpts from the post:

What happens when a person starts to utter a contraction and then for some unknown reason decides to utter the two word phrase instead of the contraction?

If I start to say "don't" and change midway to "do not" what comes out of my mouth sounds an awful lot like "dough not".

Transcribed phonetically below.

don't = /dont/
do not = /du nat/
dough not = /do nat/

I decided to update the post because of a recently received reader comment:

It's called allomorphy (according to my linguistics professor). And it's not limited to contractions. It happens with a lot of words. What you're witnessing is the minor change in a word [do] as its instance is changed from "don't" to "do not".

Think about "photograph" versus "photography". [fo-tow-graph] versus [fo-tau-graf-ie]. The morpheme "photograph" has the same meaning, even in "photography", but because the pronunciation is different, it is a separate allomorph.

Here is my response:

Not to argue with your professor (and I am certainly no expert), but during my MA program in linguistics I never heard an analysis of contractions that presented the phonetic changes as allomorphy.

SIL International’s Glossary of Linguistic Terms defines an allomorph as one of two or more complementary morphs which manifest a morpheme in its different phonological or morphological environments.

With allomorphy, I have always understood the phonological and morphological environments to be limited to the words in which they appear.

To me, the phrase “do not” contains two separate free lexical morphemes and when they are contracted it is like combining the two lexical morphemes into one phonetic form.

Based on the broad phonetic transcriptions I presented, I would say there is deletion and assimilation through contraction but not a different form of one morpheme that would be considered allomorphy.

The most common type of allomorphy in English involves plural and past tense suffixes, for example; the past tense “–ed” suffix can be phonetically realized as /t/, /d/ or / əd/.

The example you have given comparing “photograph” /fotogræf/ to “photography” /fotɑgrɑfi/ is an example of root allomorphy (or stem allomorphy, depending on whom you ask) that is similar to “hymn” /him/ versus “hymnal” /himnəl/.

Regardless of whether or not the act of contracting is considered a form of allomorphy, I would still regard the phenomenon I have described as a different matter. As a matter of fact, upon further thought, I believe it involves more than just phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax; it also involves psycholinguistics. The phenomenon involves the process the brain is undergoing as it chooses initially to verbalize the contraction but switches midstream to an altered, un-contracted form of the initial phrase.

I now welcome more input and data from anyone who has experienced or witnessed this "contraction retraction" or has other thoughts about the processes involved.

Demetri Martin, Linguist???

One of my sons recently purchased comedian Demetri Martin's book, "This is a Book". As I was flipping through it, I noticed that Demetri Martin appears to have a true appreciation for the many aspects of language and how they can be manipulated to humorous effects. Much of his humor involves morphology, syntax, semantics, semiotics, pragmatics and orthography.

Here are some examples from the book.

Pragmatics

Syntax

"Nearly 1/2 of all people in the United States are torsos."


Semantics

"The boomerang is Australia's chief export (and then import)."


Semiotics

Morphology

A Palindrome

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MAN AND HIS YOUNG SON. THE MAN IS TRYING TO TEACH THE YOUNG BOY THE NAME OF A PIECE OF FRUIT AND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SINGULAR AND PLURAL:

-Son, say a papaya.
-Papayas.
-No "s."

Orthography

A Loss for Linguists and Language Learners

Just heard the sad news that the co-creator of Mad Libs, died on Tuesday. Leonard Stern may be better-known as the television writer, producer and director of shows including "The Honeymooners" and "Get Smart", but the role he played in teaching many children the parts of speech is equally, if not more, important.


I have even used Mad Libs in Introduction to Linguistics classes at the colleges where I have taught, though instead of asking for a noun I would ask for a part of speech that can be inflected for number and case; instead of a verb, a part of speech that can be inflected for tense, aspect, person and number; and so on.

Here is an excerpt from Leonard Stern's Los Angeles Times obituary that includes information on the inspiration for creating Mad Libs:

The idea for Mad Libs came to Stern and co-creator Roger Price in 1953. Stern was working on a "Honeymooners" script and was stumped for a word to describe Ralph Kramden's new boss' nose when Price dropped by.

As Stern recalled in a 2008 interview with Publishers Weekly, "I asked Roger for an idea for an adjective, and before I could tell him what it was describing, he threw out 'clumsy' and 'naked.'

"We both started laughing. We sat down and wrote a bunch of stories with blanks in them. That night we took them to a cocktail party and they were a great success."

Word Up Weekly - Noncondimental

I am amazed that one of my sons does not like condiments. To me, there are times when the condiment is the best part of the meal and the food is simply a condiment-delivery utensil.

At any rate, I woke up in the middle of the night recently and a word I had never heard formed in my head (I am weird like that). It seemed to be the perfect word to describe my son's affliction. The next day I googled the word to see if it had ever been used* and, if so, how it is officially defined...

There were plenty of results in the link headlines; however, when clicked upon none of them actually included definitions for the word with the prefix. Most returned a definition for the noun condiment and some added the adjective condimental, but alas, NO noncondimental. The word noncommital has its own dictionary entry, so why not noncondimental.

Add a prefix and create a word.

noncondimental
adj.
(of a person or a person's behavior) Refusing to use any items intended to enhance the flavor of food.

*Although I never found an official definition, it should be noted that I did find the word used in an online Catholic Encyclopedia.

Linguistics: Entertaining and Informative Mini-Lectures

I hope you enjoy these two mini-lectures with Professor Anne Curzan from the University of Michigan.

Part 1, The Word on Language and Grammar, talks about word formation, highlighting the "-ize" suffix and some of its odd results.

Part 2, The Word on Language and Grammar, gives an overview of the phonological phenomenon of metathesis, highlighting the asterisk/asteriks difference.


PART 1



PART 2


Both lectures are from the University of Michigan's LSA Wire.

Contraction Retraction - A Phono-Morpho-Syntactic Phenomenon

What happens when a person starts to utter a contraction and then for some unknown reason decides to utter the two word phrase instead of the contraction?
?
I have recently noticed a phenomenon that seems to play out in the phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax of certain contractions.

If I start to say "don't" and change midway to "do not" what comes out of my mouth sounds an awful lot like "dough not".

Transcribed phonetically below.

don't = /dont/
do not = /du nat/
dough not = /do nat/

The same phenomenon occurs with "won't" and "shan't".

won't = /wont/
will not = /wIl nat/
woe not = /wo nat/

shan't = /ʃænt/
shall not = /ʃɛl nat/
sh(y)eah not = /ʃæ nat/

I have been unable to locate an official name for this linguistic phenomenon so if anyone has further information please submit via comments below.

Also, comments are open for additional data (other contractions that are capable of undergoing this type of metamorphosis). Does this "contraction retraction" occur in other languages as well?

Image credits here.

A Wug Defines Efficient Driving

I have long known that Jean Berko Gleason is the linguist who created the Wug Test (pictured and described below); what I didn't know is that she has given an accurate label and definition to my preferred style of driving. Check out this wonderful video clip from The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers. Jean Berko Gleason is my new idol.



And for those who have not met a wug:

“What’s a wug?” is a question people often ask me when they hear that I developed the Wug Test. A wug is a mythical little creature that looks rather like a bird. It’s included in a series of pictures I drew for a study of kids’ acquisition of English. We wanted to know if children know more about language than just the things they’ve heard from others. For instance, do preschoolers “know” how to make a plural? Adults do: if your friend says he had an “abdominoplasty” and you’ve never heard the word before you still know what two of them are called. Adults know that to make a plural you add some form of -s to the word. Snug as a bug in a rug? No way, it’s a wug!

To find out if kids have the same sort of knowledge we needed to use natural-sounding words that they didn’t already know. If we used real words like “dog,” they might know the plural “dogs,” but this could be an imitation of what they heard from adults. So I invented the little animal called a “wug,” a name that we could be sure they never heard before. We showed them pictures of a wug, and said “This is a wug.” Then we showed them another picture and said, “Now there’s another one. There are two of them. There are two….??” To our delight, even preschoolers could add the plural ending and tell us that there were two “wugs.” We used this invented word method to check kids’ knowledge of plurals, possessives, verb tenses, and a variety of other important features of English and found that by the age of 4 they could provide all the most common forms.

Children learn how to make regular plurals and past tenses before the irregular ones, and sometimes we can see that they have this linguistic knowledge by the kinds of “mistakes” they make. So the next time your 4-year-old friend says “I falled down and hurted myself,” you can be sorry for the booboo, but happy to know that the little guy has knowledge about some basics of the English language.

-Jean Berko Gleason

From PBS The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Creativity with Suffixes

The Second in a Series of Occasional Linguistics Quizzes

Two words from the following list share an affix.

Do you know which two and why?

wetter

manner

ruler

fewer

For answer please scroll down.

?????

????

???

??

?

?????
????
???
??
?

The answer is: wetter and fewer

The words wetter and fewer both contain the inflectional, comparative -er suffix.

The word ruler contains the derivational -er suffix, changing the verb rule to the noun ruler.

The word manner is a single morpheme and does not have a suffix.

---

In morphology, the same forms do not always have the same functions.

A Portmanteau That Really Fits the Bill

What a fun portmanteau word; however, according to Australian-Wildlife.com, there is no other type of platypus so the term "duck-billed" platypus is redundant.

Another linguistically interesting fact from Australian-Wildlife.com is that "there is no agreed term for the plural of platypus, with platypus, platypoda and platypuses all being used."

More Portmanteau Foods - Chalsa

Just spotted this ad on my Yahoo homepage. Next time I have some portmanteau fruits, I just may have to have a side of chalsa in which to dip them. I do love portmanteaus.

Apostrophe Errors Part 2 - Ladie's Room

The sign for the women's restroom at one of our local taverns is a plaque that reads "women", unfortunately, a holiday wreath is covering the regular sign so the sign pictured below has been placed on the door temporarily. I have stopped having a beer with my burger during the holidays.

For more on restroom apostrophe errors click here.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Facebook's Functional Shift