Arnold Zwicky’s Blog

So fun

July 16, 2009 by arnoldzwicky

Over on ADS-L we’ve returned to an evergreen topic, uses of fun as an adjective, as in so fun in this Rhymes With Orange cartoon:

A reminder: fun hasn’t lost its noun uses (as in “We had a lot of fun”), but for many people an adjective fun has developed alongside it.

ADS-L discussions over the years have tended to focus primarily on the very noticeable inflected forms funner and funnest (which have been attested at least since the early ’80s), but there are other clearly adjective uses — so fun as above (very common), very fun, the periphrastic superlative most fun (as in “That was the most fun party I’ve every been to”), and others.

There are two routes (not incompatible with one another) to the development of an adjective fun: by reinterpretation of the first element fun in noun-noun compounds like fun party as a prenominal adjective; and by reinterpretation of the predicative noun fun (as in “The party was fun”) as a predicate adjective. (The intended interpretation of many instances of fun will of course be unclear, which makes the historical record hard to interpret.)

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Postings on internal/external inflection

July 14, 2009 by arnoldzwicky

Here are some postings, on Language Log and on this blog, on internal and external inflection. This inventory is probably incomplete.

(Note: the case of noun-noun compounds with a plural as first element — activities center, Mets fan, etc. — is a separate topic from this one and is not covered in this posting.)

EB, 5/28/06: And the plural of MacBook Pro is …:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003195.html

GP, 8/10/06: The dying adjective laureate:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003438.html
poet laureate (vs. Nobel laureate)

ML, 8/21/06: Term for shifting plural s to the end of initialisms and acronyms?:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003484.html
WMD etc.

GP, 8/21/06: No plural shifting term:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003486.html
follow-up to 3484

ML, 4/22/07: Cavett’s comforting cavils:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004433.html
attorney general, film noir, and more

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/external-internal-and-double-inflection/
ticking off

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/more-internal-inflection/
shout-out; in comments: Whopper Junior, fuck-up, Chicken-In-A-Biskit

Posted in Inflection, Morphology | Leave a Comment »

to name-check

July 11, 2009 by arnoldzwicky

Following up on my shout-out posting, here’s another innovative formation, formally very different from N + Prt composites, but with some overlap in meaning: the two-part back-formed verb to name-check.

It started with e-mail from a correspondent whose name I mentioned in a posting:

… it’s an honor to be name-checked by you.

This is a back-formation from a compound noun name-checking (parallel to name-drop back-formed from the compound name-dropping ‘dropping names’), in the sense ‘mention someone less famous than you’ — so being name-checked (in my correspondent’s usage) is being mentioned by someone more famous than you. In this usage, it’s the social inverse of name-drop (and name-checking is the social inverse of name-dropping).

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Back formation, Morphology | 3 Comments »

More internal inflection

July 11, 2009 by arnoldzwicky

Cartoonist Ryan North wrote me on 9 July about a posting of mine reproducing one of his Dinosaur Comic strips:

… Also, thanks for the shouts out to my comic – I really appreciate it and am also flattered!

North and I both understood this to be an “internal plural” of the composite noun shout-out ‘a favorable mention’ (though that interpretation might not be immediately obvious to all readers; I’ll get to that in a moment). (Earlier discussion of external, internal, and double plurals here — including a somewhat surprising internal plural hards-on for hard-on ‘erection of the penis’.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Inflection, Morphology, Syntax | 9 Comments »

The telephone game

July 9, 2009 by arnoldzwicky

… but with shouts rather than whispers, and a teletype at the end:

On the name of the game, the Wikipedia page says:

In the United States, “Telephone” is the most common name for the game. The name “Chinese whispers” reflects the former stereotype in Europe of the Chinese language as being incomprehensible. It is little-used in the United States and may be considered offensive. It remains the common British name for the game.

Posted in Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Homophone problems

July 8, 2009 by arnoldzwicky

Another Hilary Price Rhymes With Orange cartoon:

Posted in Linguistics in the comics | 1 Comment »

Stranded P postings

July 7, 2009 by arnoldzwicky

Another inventory of postings on Language Log and this blog, this time on stranded prepositions.

As before, I’ve omitted postings where the subject phenomenon is mentioned only in passing.

ML, 10/10/03: Quoi ce-qu’elle a parlé about?:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000032.html
stranded Ps in Canadian French

ML, 4/11/04: An internet pilgrim’s guide to stranded prepositions:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000743.html

BP, 6/19/04: What for:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001084.html
chains of stranded Ps

GP, 12/8/04: A Churchill story up with which I will no longer put:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001702.html

BZ (posted by GP), 12/12/04: A misattribution no longer to be put up with:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001715.html

ML, 4/25/05: Better a spectacular blunder than a hint of unseemliness:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002095.html
omitting stranded P

AZ, 5/17/05: Ending with a preposition:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002168.html
a stranded P cartoon

ML, 5/21/05: More on Canadian French preposition stranding:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002187.html

AZ, 6/2/05: Who are you writing to?:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002219.html
a stranded P cartoon

AZ, 6/21/05: The CliffsNotes version:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002254.html
stranded P in the CliffsNotes grammar manual

ML, 6/29/05: If we look, simply, to the French:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002273.html
French as a model for English P use

ML, 6/30/05: The French aren’t really against:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002274.html
stranded Ps in (European) French

AZ, 7/4/05: That’s American:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002291.html
increase in stranding as an aspect of “colloquialization”

AZ, 7/5/05: Avoidance:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002292.html
including avoiding stranded P

AZ, 7/7/05: Get ’em while they’re young:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002298.html
Ruth Heller on prepositions, for children

GP, 9/20/05: New Yorker search engine stark staring mad:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002485.html
“I’m sorry I couldn’t find that for which you were looking.”

BZ, 11/27/05: Churchill vs. editorial nonsense:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002670.html

AZ, 11/4/06: Grammar on the gay beat:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003734.html
P stranding in Genre magazine

AZ, 11/23/06: Let’s meet at mine:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003811.html
stranding vs. fronting

AZ, 3/3/07: Self-incorrection:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004266.html
“fixing” stranded prepositions

ML, 5/1/07: Hot Dryden-on-Jonson action:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004454.html

ML, 5/3/07: A note of dignity or austerity:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004464.html
combination of stranded and fronted P

ML, 5/4/07: Back to the future, redundant preposition department:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004465.html
combination of stranded and fronted P

ML, 5/14/07: A phenomenon in which I’m starting to believe in:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004493.html
combination of stranded and fronted P

GP, 5/15/07: Could preposition doubling be headed our way?:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004498.html
combination of stranded and fronted P

ML, 5/19/07: Re-doubled prepositions:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004510.html
combination of stranded and fronted P

ML, 8/25/07: Prepositional anxiety and Voldemort’s wand:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004854.html
incorrection of stranded P

AZ, 5/10/08: Contamination:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=130
Dryden’s Rule contaminating stranded to

ML, 8/21/08: Heaping of catmummies considered harmful:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=514
stranded P on Language Log and AZBlog – 7/7/09