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Sesquipedalian #11
the SESQUIPEDALIAN Volume VII, No. 11
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National Ding-a-Ling Day December 12, 1996
DON'T IT MAKE YOUR MONDEGREENS BLUE?
John Carroll
Can I whine just a little? The trouble with collecting mondegreens
for 10 years in a socially responsible manner-- that is, pledging not
to use the same time-tested mondegreens over and over again but to
strive for fresh, unheard mondegreens every time-- is that the quality
inevitably declines.
For instance, 'Doughnuts Make Your Brown Eyes Blue'-- a fine
song, a fine concept, a fine mondegreen. 'Dead ants are my friends,
they're blowing in the wind'-- who can disagree with that? I see a
child surrounded by whirling ant corpses, a child whose sense of
wonder has overcome the fierce clutch of death.
Ah, well. We do have new ones of great quality; perhaps they
will one day join the pantheon currently occupied by such songs as
that old Spanish Christmas carol, 'Police Naughty Dog.'
Helen Goldsmith's friend Paul has always heard the chorus of
Steely Dan's 'Reelin' in the Years' as: 'Are you reeling in the yeast /
stowing away the time? / Are you gathering up the cheese? / Have you
had enough of mine?' I see cheeseballs in the future here.
Caedmon Bear (a fine name) likes the Stevie Wonder song 'Talk
With God' which contains the line 'When you feel life's too hard, just
go and have a talk with God.' His girlfriend hears it as, 'When you
feel life's too hard, just go have a chocolate bar.' (And a
cheeseball.)
The only Elvis Presley mondegreen this year is from Lauren
Flanagan, who checks in with 'Well, they sent you a tie clasp,' from
'Hound Dog.' Actually, they said you was high-class, but the cheap
jewelry is a nice touch.
Also from Lauren Flanagan, the line from 'Stairway to Heaven'
by Led Zeppelin, 'As we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than
our souls,' is sometimes heard as 'And there's a wino down the road; I
should have stolen Oreos.' (Goes with the cheeseballs.)
Finally, this letter: 'My name is Ramdass Khalsa. I am an
8-year-old boy. I go to school in El Cerrito. It is called
Prospect. I am a real Beatles fan. My favorite Beatle is Ringo
Starr. Well, I have a story to tell. I play the CD of Sergeant
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band all of the time. When it played
Lovely Rita I always wondered what the words were. First I thought it
was Lovely Rita meets a maid. Then I thought it was Lovely Rita needs
a maid. Then I finally got the courage to ask. So I asked my mom and
I found out it was Lovely Rita meter maid. That ends my funny
experience.'
The courage to ask-- really, that's what mondegreens are all
about.
[Excerpted from John Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle]
-\-/-\ LOOK WHO'S TALKING \-/-\-
-- Rachel Nordlinger has been awared a research grant for $20,000 from
the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Studies to fund a fieldwork project with the Wambaya community in the
second half of 1997. The project aims to develop practical language
materials in Wambaya -- including a learner's guide, a dictionary,
story books, videos -- for use in the schools to help young Wambaya
children learn something of their traditional language.
-/-\-/ CALL FOR PAPERS/-\-/-
-- FIFTH MEETING ON THE MATHEMATICS OF LANGUAGE (MOL5): Sponsored by
the Association for the Mathematics of Language (a special interest
group of the Association for Computational Linguistics). DATES: 25-27
August 1997. LOCATION: Schloss Dagstuhl, Saarbruecken, Germany.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 31,1997. SUBMISSION ADDRESS:
djohns@watson.ibm.com
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS: Submissions are invited from all areas of
study that deal with the mathematical properties of natural language.
These areas include, but are not limited to, mathematical models of
syntax, semantics and phonology; computational complexity of
linguistic frameworks/theories and models of natural language
processing; mathematical theories of language learning; parsing
theory; and quantitative models of language.
If the co-chairs feel the area of a submitted paper cannot be
adequately reviewed by the program committee, an attempt will be made
to get outside reviews.
SUBMISSION FORMATS: All contributions to MOL5 are to be made
electronically as either an unformatted (plain text) ASCII file or
LaTex file. Authors are responsible for their submissions printing
without special actions by the program committee. Submissions should
consist of an abstract of original, previously unpublished
work. Abstract length should be no more than five (5) pages.
PROCEEDINGS: No unrefereed proceedings are planned. It is anticipated
that selected papers will be published after peer review as a special
issue or collection.
-- IAP WORKSHOP: "The interpretation of root infinitives and bare
nouns in child language" Time: Monday, January 13, and Tuesday,
January 14, 1997 (9AM - 5PM), at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, E25-401. In this workshop, we intend to investigate the
interpretation of so-called "Root Infinitives" and bare nouns (nouns
without a determiner) in child language. "Root - Infinitives" are
infinitival clauses that occur as matrix clauses. Both root
infinitives and bare nouns are prohibited in adult language (except
for under special circumstances). The question is how children provide
these 'ungrammatical' utterances with an interpretation. We will have
various speakers (including Frank Wijnen, Sergey Avrutin, Ken Wexler,
Ingeborg Lasser, Jeannette Schaeffer) present their views on these
dissues, followed by a discussion. Furthermore, we plan to design
experiments for various languages to test the predictions that follow
from the presented theories. If you are interested to participate,
please contact Jeannette Schaeffer (see below).
> >Jeannette C. Schaeffer
> >MIT - Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
> >18 Vassar Street 20C-228
> >Cambridge, MA 02139
> >Phone: (617) 253-2559
> >Fax: (617) 253-5017
> >E-mail: schaeffe@mit.edu
-- CLS - 33: APRIL 17-19, 1997, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.
Panels:
*** UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR, PARAMETERS, AND TYPOLOGY ***
If valid concrete universals exist how are they formulated and what is
their role in linguistic theory?
What are the relevant parameters along which languages are typologized?
*** THE PERCEPTION OF SPEECH AND OTHER ACOUSTIC SIGNALS ***
Is the perception of speech special, taking place within a module that is
specifically dedicated to the perception of phonetic as opposed to general
acoustic signals?
*** LINGUISTIC IDEOLOGIES IN CONTACT ***
In language contact situations, what role does the interaction of ideas
and perceptions held by linguists and non-linguists about the languages in
contact have in shaping the languages?
What are the implications for historical linguistics?
Please submit ten copies of a one-page, 500-word, anonymous abstract
for a twenty minute paper (optionally, one additional page for data
and/or references may be appended), along with a 3" by 5" card with:
(1) your name
(2) affiliation
(3) address, phone number, and e-mail address
(4) title of the paper
(5) an indication for which panel or which particular
subdivision of the main session (e.g. Phonetics, Phonology,
Syntax, Semantics, Historical Linguistics, etc.) the paper
is intended.
The abstract should be as specific as possible, and it should clearly
indicate the data covered, outline the arguments presented, and
include any broader implications of the work. An individual may
present at most one single and one co-authored paper. Authors must
submit a camera-ready copy of the paper at the time of the conference
in order to be considered for publication. Only a selection of papers
presented at CLS 33 will be published. The deadline for receipt of
abstracts is JANUARY 31, 1997. Send abstracts to:
Chicago Linguistic Society
1050 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
(773) 702-8529
Abstracts sent by e-mail will not be considered. Information may be
obtained from cls@tuna.uchicago.edu.
-\-/-\ TRUE LINGUISTICS \-/-\-
THE KING CLAUDIUS DUBIOUS ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS: The dance department at
Towson State University has put together a collection of memorable
statements by its students, and we are delighted to be able to share
some of them with you:
'Laertes is leaving for France. Polonius tries to give advice to his
son but ends up telling him quiches.'
'Hamlet did not appreciate how Gertrude and Claudius had the audacity
to engage in nupidity in an expeditous fashion.'
'We appreciate the faculty's areas of expertise. For example,
melodrama is John Manlove's faux pas.'
'I hope that I never feel as though I've reached my plato as an
actor.'
'This format, when humor was excreted from an improbably situation,
influenced many writers after Plautus.'
'People were so upheaved over _El Cid_ that it couldn't be performed.'
'Brecht's rebellion made him an awful man. He treated women badly,
drank, and wrote poetry.'
-\-/-\ JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS \-/-\-
(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
'jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)
-- The Graduate Institute of Linguistics has a tenure-track position
at the assistant professor level for a linguist specializing in
semantics. Ph.D. required. Please send c.v., three letters of
recommendation, statement of research interests and samples of works
prior to 1 February 1997 to: Search commitee, Graduate Institute of
Linguistics, National Tsing Hua University, 101 Sec. 2, Kuang-fu
Road, Hsin-chu 300, Taiwan, ROC
(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)
-\-/-\ INSTA-PRIZE \-/-\-
CHRISTMAS CARDS: Murphy wrote seven Christmas cards and addressed
seven envelopes, but somehow managed to put all seven cards in wrong
envelopes. How many different ways is this possible?
Answer to last week's puzzle: Highlands.
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