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Author Topic: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...  (Read 217480 times)

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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #725 on: July 02, 2013, 11:03:14 AM »
I hadn't realized how much "veterans" can sound like "Bedouins" until I misheard my son talking about how the veterans need more access to therapists, and our conversations got more and more skewed and screwy until we managed to sort out the problem.

I think we all should get paid time-and-a-half for working on Bedouins Day.

:lol:
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Offline Porter

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #726 on: July 12, 2013, 10:25:03 AM »
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #727 on: July 16, 2013, 02:06:44 PM »
You underestimate my ability to take things seriously!

Offline BlackBlade

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #728 on: July 17, 2013, 07:02:56 AM »
Kyrgyzstan, is the homeland of the Kyrgyzs, a people best known for cheating at Scrabble. -Tante Shvester

What, you expected us to be badly injured or dead, and flying blind to boot? You're the one who told us all to be Awesome. -Brinestone

Offline pooka

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #729 on: July 26, 2013, 04:50:18 PM »
That's okay.  The rest of us were primed with "I saw Nixon flying over the grand canyon" in Linguistics 101.  Linguists love it because it demonstrates people's ability to jump to the preferred interpretation. 
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."  Comte de Saint-Simon

Offline Porter

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #730 on: August 01, 2013, 03:02:28 PM »
Quote
The rest of us were primed with "I saw Nixon flying over the grand canyon" in Linguistics 101.
Not I.  That's the first I've heard that one.
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #731 on: August 02, 2013, 09:36:04 AM »
Presumably because you didn't take Linguistics 101. ;)
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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #732 on: August 02, 2013, 11:03:18 AM »
I still don't get what principle that statement demonstrates.
Kyrgyzstan, is the homeland of the Kyrgyzs, a people best known for cheating at Scrabble. -Tante Shvester

What, you expected us to be badly injured or dead, and flying blind to boot? You're the one who told us all to be Awesome. -Brinestone

Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #733 on: August 03, 2013, 05:07:40 AM »
Ambiguity. Who was flying over the Grand Canyon?
"It is true, however, that the opposite of Little Rock, Arkansas is Boulder, Colorado." - Tante

Offline BlackBlade

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #734 on: August 03, 2013, 07:56:26 AM »
Err, Nixon?

edit: If the implication is that you could also be flying over Grand Canyon and see Nixon I think the statement is unnaturally phrased to include that possibility.
Kyrgyzstan, is the homeland of the Kyrgyzs, a people best known for cheating at Scrabble. -Tante Shvester

What, you expected us to be badly injured or dead, and flying blind to boot? You're the one who told us all to be Awesome. -Brinestone

Offline Jonathon

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #735 on: August 03, 2013, 09:53:51 AM »
If the implication is that you could also be flying over Grand Canyon and see Nixon I think the statement is unnaturally phrased to include that possibility.

Yeah, but linguists love that stuff anyway. One common example of a garden-path sentence is The horse raced past the barn fell, which might be syntactically possible in some strict sense but is semantically and pragmatically improbable for at least a few different reasons.
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Offline Porter

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #736 on: August 05, 2013, 09:20:01 PM »
Presumably because you didn't take Linguistics 101. ;)
This is true.

I didn't get interested in such things until the time for taking 101 classes was long past.
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Offline Porter

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #737 on: August 06, 2013, 12:29:18 PM »
Here's an ambiguous sentence I found today:

Quote
The Independent reports that Eric Eoin Marques, a 28-year-old Dublin resident, appeared before a judge last Friday to answer charges of distributing child pornography originating from the FBI
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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #738 on: August 06, 2013, 09:16:22 PM »
Explain it to me, please.  I'm not understanding the ambiguity.
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Offline Brinestone

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #739 on: August 06, 2013, 10:09:13 PM »
The charges, not the pornography, probably originated from the FBI, but it isn't clear.
Ephemerality is not binary. -Porter

Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #740 on: August 07, 2013, 09:10:05 AM »
No, I read about the case in the news.  The pornography did originate with the FBI.  It was the bait in a trap.
Fighting thread drift with guilt, reverse psychology, and chicken soup.
Sweet! Law of Moses loopholes! -- Anneke
I love Bones.  -- Sweet Clementine
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. -- anonymous

Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #741 on: August 09, 2013, 07:51:21 AM »
Are people in their 20's and 30's familiar with "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate", instructions that used to come on the punch card that came in your bills?  I haven't seen or heard that phrase in a while, and I don't know if it is still in the common parlance.
Fighting thread drift with guilt, reverse psychology, and chicken soup.
Sweet! Law of Moses loopholes! -- Anneke
I love Bones.  -- Sweet Clementine
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. -- anonymous

Offline BlackBlade

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #742 on: August 09, 2013, 08:17:57 AM »
Are people in their 20's and 30's familiar with "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate", instructions that used to come on the punch card that came in your bills?  I haven't seen or heard that phrase in a while, and I don't know if it is still in the common parlance.
I recall seeing it, but can't say when the last time I did was.
Kyrgyzstan, is the homeland of the Kyrgyzs, a people best known for cheating at Scrabble. -Tante Shvester

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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #743 on: August 09, 2013, 08:57:03 AM »
Same here. We haven't gotten bills in the mail in several years.
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #744 on: August 09, 2013, 01:31:22 PM »
Are people in their 20's and 30's familiar with "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate", instructions that used to come on the punch card that came in your bills?  I haven't seen or heard that phrase in a while, and I don't know if it is still in the common parlance.

Not at all.
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Offline pooka

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #745 on: August 09, 2013, 03:50:39 PM »
Young uns.
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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #746 on: August 09, 2013, 03:58:56 PM »
I had to look up "spindle" to see what it meant in this context.
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Offline Dobie

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #747 on: August 09, 2013, 06:24:28 PM »


Is this still about the pornography? :angst:

Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #748 on: August 11, 2013, 12:02:52 PM »
The spindle is the spike that you stack paid bills on.  You shouldn't spindle the punch card because then it would have a new hole in it, and it would mess up the computer.
Fighting thread drift with guilt, reverse psychology, and chicken soup.
Sweet! Law of Moses loopholes! -- Anneke
I love Bones.  -- Sweet Clementine
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. -- anonymous

Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« Reply #749 on: August 11, 2013, 02:06:22 PM »
Aha! That makes sense now. I knew someone who impaled their receipts like that on their desk and I thought it was really odd.
"It is true, however, that the opposite of Little Rock, Arkansas is Boulder, Colorado." - Tante