8 posts from February 2008

Having just touched on adjectives, I thought it might be interesting to look at a few other examples that are uncommon, though possible in English.

We discussed the two regular placements:

• attributive: adj noun - a black bear
• predicative: noun is adj - the bear is black

I thought of a couple examples that didn't really fit this, where it was - noun adj.  So, I looked it up and found that some call it post-positve adjectives, whatever, we all know that names vary practically from day to day and person to person.  Here are some examples that I found to be interesting:

heir apparant
Windows Vista
iPod Nano
times past

Any others come to mind?

So, I know it's been a few weeks since we've talked about idioms and such, but I can't help pass up a good example that I just stumble upon in life.  So, I was at the movies when, during one of the previews someone said 'I'm clean as a fiddle' - clearly this struck me as odd, or rather incorrect.  I kind of brushed it off until during the movie itself, one of the characters said 'I'm fit as a fucking fiddle!'.  Saying sorry now for the language btw - nice alliteration though, you must admit.

So, I began thinking about it, and decided idiom because you can't change anything for synonyms and still keep it's meaning, can't refer back to it anaphorically, nor can fiddle be used for more than one function at a time.

Have you all recently ran into any good examples of idioms/metaphors/whatnot being used incorrectly? 

A few days ago, I was on Tates Creek rd, and I see this sign that said: GREEK bake sale.  I thought, okay, a sorority decided to do a fund-raiser - and I guess it wouldn't be that far of a stretch for them to come out to a busier road to get more people.  I later realize that this is right next to the orthodox Greek church and thus had nothing to do with the Greek of campus.

At the beginning of the semester, I received an email telling about some activities that were to take place on campus, one of them being a Pan-Hellinic ice cream social.  For some reason, the first thing that popped into my head was that the classics department was trying to recruit.  I later realized that this was not true, and that it had to do with the Fraternities and Sororities.

I feel like, at least in my life - and yes a bit of it by chance, that there is a lot of ambiguity in the word Greek; and that unlike - I have to go to the bank before going to the club - these signs/messages had nothing to clear it up the ambiguity.

It is surprising how that many meanings of one word can enter into your life and make it difficult to know which one is being referred to.

I was talking with Dr. Myers the other day about how she is, and I am on the path to becoming a French Linguist.  We then pondered for a minute about where to put that in a myronymic hierarchy of a University - and it is one of those examples that brings two superordinates together again.  I found it interesting to look at the semantic convergence in relation to the practical convergence that happens with this. 

Would your future job create a convergence in a hierarchy? A new branch? Does it fit inbetween two levels?

So, as we know, tautology is all around us.  What surprised me though is the frequency it shows up in place names - especially those that use two languages.  Here are some that I found to be interesting:

River Avon - River River (Brythonic)
Mississippi river - Big river river (Algonquin)
Lakeville lake, MI - the town is Lakeville, and the lake called next to it is Lakeville lake
Hill Mountain - Wales
Faroe Islands - Sheep Islands Islands (Faroese)
The La Brea tar pits - The The Tar tar pits - English/Spanish
Chateaudun - Castle Stronghold - French/Gaulish

And finally, Torpenhow Hill - HillHillHill Hill - (SW English, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, English)

I thought that these were pretty fun.  Can anyone think of/find any other one's?

So, I randomly turned on the TV to an episode of Friends the other night - Chandler and Joey were fighting over something and this conversation came out of it:

Joey: Where's my underwear?
Chandler: I stole it.
J: Well, you hide my clothes, I'm gonna do the opposite.
C: What are you going to do, show me my clothes???
J: Hey, opposite is opposite.

He then proceeds to come back into the room a few minutes later wearing all of Chandler's clothes.

I found this to be a rather humorous example of the opposites: show/hide.

reversals, after all, are the means by which nature regulates this visible realm of hers: clear skies follow cloudy; after the calm comes the storm; the winds take turns to blow; day succeeds night; while part of the heavens is in the ascendant, another is sinking.  It is by means of opposites that eternity endures.

This provides many examples of opposites as well as many differing examples of how they are opposing.

Also, if any of us were ever in doubt of the severity of chapter 9, I think the final sentence gives reason enough to make sure that we know it well.

While reading the section about markedness, I remembered - and proceeded to confirm - something that I had heard about Orwell's constructed language Newspeak in his novel 1984.  What struck me about it was that in reducing the vocabulary of the English language, he favored the marked negative term in most cases.

In most cases, he replaced one of a given set of words with -un.  So, to me, the logical choice between good:bad would be to have good and ungood, which is exactly what he did in this case.  Though, as previously stated, he often did not follow this logic.  More often you see examples like this in the book:

hot:cold - cold and uncold
light:dark - dark and undark

It is explained that he did this to emphasize the Party's (the institution that has controll in the book) desire to keep the people from thinking unorthodox thoughts.

I find this interesting because positive terms are normally favored.  It also brings up the question that if our vocabulary was to be reduced, what would be chosen - especially in terms of synonymy and antonymy - could be rather variable.