Q: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

[Seán Fitzpatrick]

I first heard the three-line version from Philip (“Always carry a
grapefruit”) Cohen, aka Treesong, back in the early '90s.  Phil is a
linguist and may be a member of the ADS, but I don't know whether he
subscribes to this list.  He may well have coined the Yeager line; that was
my impression at the time.

 

I have used the three lines of morpho-syntactic ambiguity as an e-mail
signature subscript for more than 15 years.

  

Seán Fitzpatrick
  Time flies like an arrow.
    Fruit flies like a banana.
      Chuck Yeager flies-like-airplanes.
http://www.logomachon.blogspot.com/

Damien Hall wrote:
'... Chuck Yeager flies, like, airplanes.':
 
Margaret and I independently chipped in with the third member of the
aphorism - so obviously it wasn't coined by my source for it in Philly in
2003 (and she has confirmed this to me, too). So the search goes on; one
more for the files!
 
More on the excellent exploitation of morpho-syntactic ambiguity of the
phrase, too - I noticed after posting yesterday (and it was pointed out to
me) that there are actually three uses of _like_ AND three uses of _fly_ in
it:
 
'Time flies like an arrow': intransitive verb _fly_, comparison _like_
 
'fruit-flies like a banana': noun _fly_, transitive verb _like_
 
'Chuck Yeager flies, like, airplanes': transitive verb _fly_,
discourse-marker _like_
 
Genius!
 
Damien
 
--
Damien Hall
 
University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
YORK
YO10 5DD
UK
 
Tel. (office) +44 (0)1904 432665
     (mobile) +44 (0)771 853 5634
Fax  +44 (0)1904 432673

 

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