Holidouble holidactyl

Hey, diddle deity
Jesus of Nazareth
lived in Judea as
part of God's plan

son of a carpenter,
son of a virgin and
teleologically
Savior of Man






(Merry Christmas)

Do I get extra credit for two double-dactylic words?

Lexical vexical
Wanton Logomachy
(reckless misuse of a
word or a phrase)

Hypergrammatical
overperfectionists
rarely admit their
erroneous ways.


more double dactyls:
Ivan T. Sanderson
Goldilocks
Tom Swifty
Sad Scruffleupagus

Down with prescriptivism

I love very many things about this blog post. First of all, I got very nostalgic about the post title, because remember when I made a hilarious joke about Vietnamese soup and logic? Yeah me too. Those were the good old days, when all my post titles were Tom Swifties* and the posts themselves came oftener than trimonthly.

Anyway, in Kory's post are a number of gems. Top three:

• I drafted the reply I wanted to send and saved it to my Nobody Knows The Trouble I Seen folder.

This is the greatest folder name of all time. And now I have one too.

• Everything we’ve done to and for English is for its own good, we tell it (angrily, as it slouches in its chair and writes “irregardless” all over itself in ballpoint pen).

I'm not sure what, exactly, I love about this so much. Except that it seems possible that I, at some point now forgotten, might have written "irregardless" all over myself in ballpoint pen.

• I bet Latin doesn’t sneak German in through its bedroom window, does it?

LATIN. What a goody-two-shoes.

Also the actual content of the response is good too.





*I drove to work the other day behind a car whose license plate was 'T. Swift'. When I told my brother this, and added "Why didn't I think of that?", he responded with:

"Forget "I", Why didn't WE think of that?" he pronounced.

Nice work, Brother Will.

Phonolohotonthologos

Why hello there. You look like you could use some esoteric reference jokes and terrible, terrible puns. Let me help you out with that!



My ridiculous cartoon is finally ready. The main ideas come from this and this and this, although you shouldn't worry if you don't think any of it makes much sense. Some additional references are available at the end of the post, for those who don't have something better to do.

Here you go (click any picture to go to flickr, where bigger versions are available):

















(descriptions coming soonish: sooner if you email me to tell me you want them)


(Selected) Reference Jokes:
Auricle
Buccinator
Chrononhotonthologos
CON and EVAL
Deus ex machina
Electromyographia
Inferior Longitudinal
Levator Palatine
Liquids
Muscular Hydrostat
Orbicularis Oris
Postpositional Anaphornia
ʃibboleth
theta rolls

I love wikipedia.

Hoaxilus poaxilus
Ivan T. Sanderson
lived in New Jersey, a
Scottish expat

Eminent father of
cryptozoology
known for surviving a
Really Big Bat

more double dactyls:
Goldilocks
Tom Swifty
Dog

I still exist

Here's a little something just for you. To tide you over until I finish my dissertation, or give up on it, or think of something funny to say:

Bittily brattily
Goldilocks, Goldilocks
What have you done with the
porridge and chairs?

Some stories make you a
defenestrationist;
others end sadly: you're
eaten by bears.

DC politics update

Looks like DC's next mayor will be Vincent Gray. A solid standby of a spectrum election name- no frills, no nonsense, easy to pick out of a paint chip array, and in DC everyone is wearing a gray suit anyway about 80% of the time.

This was only the primary election, so most races with secondary-color-name candidates have yet to be decided. We'll have to wait for the final decision on the exciting Vincent Orange v Vincent "Kwame" Brown race for the council chair.

This is where the term "political spectrum" is originally from

Constitution City is notorious for its high numbers of monuments, presidential ghosts, politicians in suits, and chicken bones on the sidewalks. A lesser-known phenomenon in Our Nation's Fine Capital is the interesting and unusual election process.

The rule is simple: if you want to run for City Council or Mayor, you have to change your name. You can keep your old name for private and tax purposes, but your new politician name must follow this format:
[Vincent] [optional middle initial/nickname] [color term of your choice].

During the campaign season, rallies are held at which supporters wear the candidate's color (usually garments, but face and body paint are becoming more and more popular). Occasionally an especially fervent supporter will paint her house to match a candidate's promotional material. Finally, on election day, each DC resident finds an item of the appropriate hue and brings it to the voting booth, where an instant photograph is taken of the object. Many residents take this opportunity to once again wear colorful clothing and face paint to show their support, but any object (napkin, pencil, earring, bottle of nail polish, power tool, etc) is acceptable, as long as at least 80% of the surface area is a candidate's color. When the photo booths close, the Spectrum Committee sets to work creating a portrait of each candidate from the votes. In each race, the candidate with the largest photomosaic wins.

Choice of last name is a complicated tactical matter; most candidates hire teams including psychologists and linguists to find colors that are perceptually salient but not too common, and color names that balance the distinctive with the familiar. Color terms can win or lose elections- analysts believe that the outcomes of several races have been influenced by candidates' choices of color words that were not well-known (Vincent Viridian lost to Vincent Rose in a landslide in 1992; exit polls indicated that only 12% of voters could identify viridian on a color wheel) or have unclear referents (the 1978 three-way race between Turquoise, Green and Grey took three extra months to decide. In the end, Grey was declared the council member for Ward 5, but controversy continued around reports of vicious arguments in the Spectrum Committee Chambers over whether some 6,000 votes were turquoise or green. Several committee members resigned amidst rumors and accusations that they had called the race for Grey purely in order to end the bickering about the turquoise/green votes).

Once elected, the DC Spectrum Committee provides each council member with a wardrobe and a vehicle in the correct color scheme. Pictured below is the current council.

d
(standing) Vincent Periwinkle, Vincent Plum, Vincent Pewter, Vincent Blue, Vincent Red, Vincent Marionberry, Vincent "Phil" Brown, Vincent Mustard.
(seated) Vincent Black, Vincent Kelly, Vincent Gray, Vincent Navy, Vincent "Kwame" Brown.

The current election season is especially exciting, because it involves the first-ever Vincent Orange! Orange is challenging Vincent "Kwame" Brown for Vincent Gray's Council Chair seat (Gray and Vincent "Michael" Green are challenging incumbent Vincent "Fenty" Red for the mayor's seat). Historically, council photographs have been dominated by Browns, Greens, and Grays, with an occasional marionberry suit in the back row or the Mayor's office. It would be nice to get some brighter colors in there, although Orange may have a tough time with the electorate, as orange is not a flattering color on many people.

EXTRA WORDPLAY! TOM SWIFTY DOUBLE DACTYL!

Spinnery, spunnery,
Cosmical Irony:
Puns are beloved from
Maine to Brazil.

"It is a punishment"
Tom said, while gagging, "that
paronomasia
makes me quite ill."

(Rfts helped with the scansion and rhyme.)

hey double dactyl-y

my sister's here, with her dog, so I made a poem about them:

Diggerel doggerel
Sad Scruffleupagus
worries and whines as he
waits by the door

ever since Jocelyn
put on her jacket and
unsympathetically
went to the store.

When Jocelyn's here, he just stares directly at her. Or sleeps. WHO'S A GOOD DOG? WHO'S A GOOD DOG?

"I have a Bible, a Koran, and a Book of Mormon in my bag"

...Tom said sacrilegiously.

Oh, snap! You thought I forgot about this kind of hilarious joke, didn't you? That was your first mistake, thinking I would ever be capable of forgetting about something so ridiculous.

I've been working on one about poetry, and not being able to write it, and being despondent, but it hasn't really come together for me yet.

Everything else is the same as it ever was. Except that my mom is coming to visit soon and there is only a month left of school which is alarming.

I guess now I'll go figure out all the things I have to do this weekend.

She said listlessly.

Some Families Play Cribbage

This family plays Bridge.

Sometimes when we play Bridge, there are cards and bidding and tricks.

Sometimes, there is just Bridge. Or, you know - a lack of bridge, and some earthworks to fix the situation.



































The brave vehicles waiting for their "road".














(note from Jocelyn: the events pictured took place on the way to the beach, after the trip with the rowboats but before the trip to Kruger. I am a lazy blogger, hence the delay. Also this post is written from the Johannesburg airport and there are problems uploading pictures; so the pictures showing the triumphant success of the vehicles crossing the earthworked bridge will have to come later.)

Q: If that same pirate were then to recite a 20th-century poem about the nature of poetry, what would it be?

Language Hat:

Archibald MacLeish famously ended his 1926 "Ars Poetica" with "A poem should not mean/ But be." I learn from Peter Howarth in the LRB that Robert Frost put a nasty spin on this in a notebook entry: "A poem shouldn't mean, it should be mean." So much for the grandfatherly figure maundering about roads not taken, so beloved of careless skimmers of anthologies.

Mean poems!

orthoexaggeration

Lukas and I had a fight* the other day about whether or not people should ever use the word "overexaggerate". Lukas said no, and that anyone who did so was being extremely irritating. I said well they probably were being extremely irritating but you theoretically could use the word in an acceptable way regardless and that the irritatingness was a red herring.

For example: Some people have a tendency towards underexaggeration when they are telling a story.** And they will tell you all about EXACTLY what day and time and what dress they were wearing and what they had for lunch and if they did something on the way to the bank or the way home. This is also extremely irritating.

Other people*** exaggerate precisely the right amount, being neither too boringly pedantically precise nor ridiculously hyperbolic. Neither under- nor over-exaggerating. The Platonic Ideal of exaggeration. The exact combination of facts and artistic license that everyone agrees is the Best Way. We**** should all try to be more like these people.







*There is some chance that this word choice might be considered an example of overexaggeration. Since in fact what we had was a three-turn conversation via text message in which no one disagreed with anyone else.

**Midwestern women particularly. According to Discourse Linguists.

***Like me, mainly.

****you

also you'd think the collective would be something better than "herd"

Do you know what word has a really deeply unsatisfying plural form in the English language? It is "moose". One moose, two moose, three moose, a dozen moose. How many moose? Too many moose to count.

"Mooses" would be an improvement.

"Meece" would be so much better.

Julie always gets annoyed with me because whenever I am talking about a moose to her (SO OFTEN.) I do the sign for "moose" and then I get worried that maybe someone will think I am talking about an elk or a deer, so I spell out M O O S E too just in case. And Julie is all "yeah Cecily, when have you ever told a story about a deer or an elk? it's a moose, we get it, hurry up and finish your story already."


It's true, I know way more stories about moose than about elk or deer. Which also have zero plural forms, but which don't annoy me at all. Who cares if it's one deer or two deers? I wanna hear more about the MOOSE!

I don't actually have a story about a moose to tell you right now. There are no moose allowed in Washington DC; I am pretty sure it's Official Federal Constitution Policy. Up in the Frozen North, though, there are lots! Lots of mooses! So many meece! Maybe I'll see some and tell you a story about it later.

Update! my mother writes to add:

Do you have any memory of the song you made up as a two year old called,"Moosey Julia"? It was because I had you at the cabin and a mother moose came browsing around you and I were sitting at the table and she came and looked in the window. The song went something like:

"Moosey Julia, Moosey Julia
running around calling "Noot! Noot!"

I think you had her looking for her baby inside the cabin, anyway you sang it for a year or two and it was always adorable.

So. There you go. I don't actually remember this, particularly, but I am always willing to believe people who tell me I am adorable.

ANOTHER UPDATE: An anonymous commenter points out the genius of Brian Regan:

“Moosen! I saw a flock of MOOSEN! There were many of ‘em. Many much moosen. Out in the woods…in the wood-es…in the woodsen. The meese want the food in the woodesen…food is the eatenesen…the meese want the food in the woodesenes…food in the woodesenes.”

Moosen it is.

Verbing AWESOMEs language

d

I just read something where "photoshop" was used as a verb meaning "clean up with a hint of falsification and intent to mislead" but not related to pictures. I practically clapped my hands with glee on the spot.

(By "practically", I mean, whether or not I will admit having done this depends on my mood and how much whiskey and ice cream you brought me.)

It was in this post, which is discussing Sarah Palin's speechifications and their subsequent renderings into print. Prompting Mr. Nunberg to note that "you wouldn't expect the transcribers to photoshop Palin's anacolutha and false starts".

Indeed. I certainly did not expect transcribers to photoshop anybody's anacolutha and/or false starts. Although personally I would prefer transcribers to use the IPA whenever they can, maybe illustrated with some gestural scores of tongue position and printouts of waveforms, so it's possible I am not really anyone's target audience.

This is tangentially related and also awesome.

***

Next: I want to see movie critics start using anacoluthon to describe when it seems like there's gonna be one kind of movie, and then all of a sudden the aliens attack and you are all like "whoa I totally thought this was going to be a romantic comedy based on that opening scene there, boy howdy was I ever taken aback by the swift change in tenor as well as the scary scary aliens."

The banana confuses happily.

More awesome from China: menu items sighted by my mama.

The curry beef/chicken braises the Italian surface

Pushes Pisa newly

Cherishes one's relatives the intestines

West the Buddhist ritual procedures black angel digs up the beefsteak to match orchid shelled fresh shrimp

And for dessert:

The banana confuses happily

"This Vietnamese soup makes no sense at all!" Tom said phonologically.

Linguistics is so silly. It's always naming its ideas after totally random things that sound like something else completely. Mainly fighting techniques or supervillains. Occasionally baked goods.

Guess what this is talking about:

Enlightened Self Interest: An Alternative to Greed.

You might think that an idea named Enlightened Self Interest would be something to do with economics or politics. Especially since it's An Alternative to Greed. Well pay attention! I already told you I'm talking about LINGUISTICS!

So your next guess might be that it must be related to sociolinguistics or linguistic anthropology or something. All right. Those are pretty smart guesses so I won't hold it against you that you are totally and completely wrong.

All right already, what is the ANSWER?

The answer is: Syntax! If you think like Chomsky, you think words need reasons to move around in their sentences so they'll end up in the right place. Those words are not allowed to just go any old place any old time they feel like it. That would be chaos!

Some people think the reason a word would move around is because of Greed. (In many theories, as it turns out, words behave a lot like people. Greedy, greedy words, only looking out for number one.)

However! Some people think that Greed is an oversimplification of the words' rationalization for why they are moving around. (Some people also may think that I am anthropomorphizing these words in a reckless and unnecessary manner. I'll deal with THOSE people LATER.) These words, sometimes they move over to another spot EVEN WHEN THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO, just to help out some other parts of the sentence! What nice little words.

Except they aren't all that nice after all because as it turns out it's all in their own self interest; the sentence will crash if they don't and then there won't be any sentence for anyone. Enlightened Self Interest. Grudgingly consenting to help others, to keep your own cranky self alive. Just like the humans do!

"This conference should be more accessible" she said definitively

Hi! I'm in Connecticut!

I'm at a conference about sign language linguistics. Specifically phonology: my favorite! So far so good except that for a conference about sign language linguistics, this conference is surprisingly non-deaf-friendly. People keep coming up to me and talking, and then acting really surprised when I tell them I'm deaf. Or announcing to Julie "it's okay, I'm hearing, you can just talk."

"Yes, but I am deaf" said Julie resignedly.

Re SIGN ed ly! HAHAHAHAHA. 'Cause who expects you to SIGN at a conference about sign languages? It's funny because it's not true!

We probably are just spoiled by how politically aware and sensitive and smart and fantastic our professors all are. (Hi guys! I get an A for attitude, right?)

"I dream that one day I will measure the width of orange soda" ...

... he fantasized.

See, I told you. SO worth the wait.


UPDATE! THIS POST NOW FEATURES VISUAL AIDS!

All right, on to the actual blogging: I bring you a story from the olden days of last month when I used to be in Africa and did not have any sinus infections. To be precise, May 28, 2008. This story is called

Fanta Party Redux!

The party this time around was much more sedate than the last one, which was Out Of Control. It was kind of a let down. I was all ramped up for being mobbed by children and drenched in shaken soda and whatnot. I mean, that all happened, just not to the extent I was expecting.

I did get a sunburn though.

And a present!



Before that, the fanta-getting itself was also not without hitches. We wanted 2 cases of Fanta Orange, 2 cases of Fanta Citron, and 1 case each of Sprite and Coke.

But the Fanta sellers were out of Fanta Orange and also they were out of Sprite. So we ended up buying half and half of Coke and Citron (plus we had another case, mostly Citron, left in the kitchen at home). We also stopped at La Gallette (for other things) but they didn't have any Fanta Orange there either. It was a dry market for Fanta Orange! Which of course ended up being what everyone requested.



We took all our caffeinated American tooth-rotting beverages to the school and handed them out to everyone. Also we handed out many t-shirts with this



printed on the front. It says "Rwandan Sign Language" in Kinyarwanda.




I dream that one day I will add some more pictures of the actual party to this post, but Lindsay's off in France hobnobbing with phonologists and kissing her fiance and drinking wine and eating cheese. PROBABLY all at the same time. So since she's the one who took all the photographs at the party, my dream will have to wait until later now.