More Fun with Anaphora

This humorous image reminded me of the recent post, 6 Cartons of Anaphora.

In this instance, the pronoun it is meant to refer to the noun poo, the semantically logical antecedent. Syntactically, it is also more logical to start the process of anaphora resolution by looking to the noun phrase in the sentence which is closest to the pronoun.

Note: I received the above image in an email and was unable to determine where it originated as it has made its way all around the internet.

Pronouns Playing with Plurals

I couldn't resist throwing a bit of alliteration into the title for the added wordplay effect.

Thank you, Steve, for bringing this comic to my attention.

Comic by Jesse Tahirali.

Vowel Be Darned

I stopped at the bank today and noticed round stickers all over the branch that asked the following question:

Of course there is something missing ... vowels. But what do missing vowels have to do with banking? I asked the teller and she directed me to a brochure about an identity alert benefit that the bank offers.

The brochure is titled as shown above and goes on to read:

Imagine having your identity stolen without even knowing it happened. Help safeguard you and your family with _____ _____Identity Alert Premium.

I get the correlation between stolen and missing items; however, I do not see any relation between missing vowels and stolen identity. Furthermore, I'm sure that an individual could have his or her identity stolen without knowing it happened; however, I have a hard time believing that any individual would read this copy and not know that the vowels are missing.

The semantic/pragmatic theme of this campaign is a stretch in my opinion.

As long as I am nitpicking, there is something else amiss with the copy too. The second sentence is a command with the implied subject "you" so it should really read "help safeguard 'yourself' and your family..."

Language Peeves - "These" vs "These ones"

From a reader -

Something I hear around here from two different people, both college grads, is the use of "these ones" rather than just "these."

The word these is a deictic pronoun which means that it is almost always accompanied by a gesture of some sort to indicate which particular objects the speaker is referring to.

When a speaker is pointing to an object and says "these ones" adding the plural pronoun one to the deictic pronoun these does not add any pertinent information (though it is actually a grammatically acceptable dialect variation).

By the way, the linguistic sense of the word deictic is defined by the Free Dictionary as, "Of or relating to a word, the determination of whose referent is dependent on the context in which it is said or written. In the sentence I want him to come here now, the words I, here, him, and now are deictic because the determination of their referents depends on who says that sentence, and where, when, and of whom it is said."