6.407 Fun
The Linguist List
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Wed Mar 22 02:17:14 UTC 1995
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LINGUIST List: Vol-6-407. Tue 21 Mar 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 293
Subject: 6.407 Fun
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1)
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 08:08:56 +0800 (PST)
From: alan harris (vcspc005 at huey.csun.edu)
Subject: spellcheck doesn't work
2)
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 1995 12:01:56 +1100
From: Bert.Peeters at modlang.utas.edu.au (Bert Peeters)
Subject: palindromes
3)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 12:49:26 +0800 (PST)
From: alan harris (vcspc005 at huey.csun.edu)
Subject: the more philosphic approach to a question. . .
4)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 15:41:47 +0000 (GMT)
From: "majones at popserver.essex.ac.uk..." (majones at essex.ac.uk)
Subject: RE: 6.288 Qs: Linguistic Songs, Surv
-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 08:08:56 +0800 (PST)
From: alan harris (vcspc005 at huey.csun.edu)
Subject: spellcheck doesn't work
WHY SPELL CHECK DOES NOT WORK--A LINGUISTIC ODYSSEY
Thanks to M. Zarnosky: bruin at vt.edu Thu Feb 23 08:08:05 1995
)
) From IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, Vol. 26, No. 2,
) March, 1990 -- p. 209, author name n.a. --
)
) "Catching Misspilled Words with Spilling Checker
) "As an extra addled service, I am going to put this column in the
) Spilling Checker, where I tryst it will sale through with flying colons.
) In this modern ear, it is simply inexplicable to ask readers to expose
) themselves to misspelled swords when they have bitter things to do.
) "And with all the other timesaving features on my new work processor, it is
) in realty very easy to pit together a colon like this one and get it tight.
) For instants, if there is a work that is wrong, I just put the curse on it,
) press Delete and its Well sometimes it deletes to the end of the
) lion or worst yet the whole rage. Four bigger problems, there is the Cat
) and Paste option. If there is some test that is somewhere were you wish it
) where somewhere else you jest put the curse
) at both ends and wash it dissapear.
) Where you want it to reappear simply bring four quarts of water to a
) rotting boil and throw in 112 pounds of dazed chicken. Sometimes it brings
) in the Cat that was Pasted yesterday.
) "But usually it comes out as you planned, or better. And if it doesn't,
) there are lots of other easy to lose options..."
===============================================================
Alan C. Harris, Ph. D. TELNOS: main off: 818-885-2853
Professor, Communication/Linguistics direct off: 818-885-2874
Speech Communication Department
California State University, Northridge home: 818-366-3165
SPCH CSUN FAX: 818-885-2663
Northridge, CA 91330-8257 Internet email: AHARRIS at HUEY.CSUN.EDU
===============================================================
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2)
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 1995 12:01:56 +1100
From: Bert.Peeters at modlang.utas.edu.au (Bert Peeters)
Subject: palindromes
Content-Length: 1281
I forgot who posted the query on palindromes some time ago, but here is one
a colleague in the German section just passed on to me.
Ein Neger mit Gazelle zagt im Regen nie
"A black man with gazelles does not fear when it rains"
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dr Bert Peeters
Department of Modern Languages (French)
University of Tasmania
GPO Box 252C Tel. (002) 202344 +61 02 202344
Hobart TAS 7001 Fax. (002) 207813 +61 02 207813
Australia Email: Bert.Peeters at modlang.utas.edu.au
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3)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 12:49:26 +0800 (PST)
From: alan harris (vcspc005 at huey.csun.edu)
Subject: the more philosphic approach to a question. . .
Content-Length: 4597
>From William_F_EADIE at umail.umd.edu Tue Mar 7 12:47:36 1995
Date Tue, 07 Mar 95 12:17 EST
>From we14 (William_F_EADIE at umail.umd.edu)
thanks to Bill Eadie:
(forwarded by Lawrence Rosenfeld)
) WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
) Plato:
) For the greater good.
) Karl Marx:
) It was a historical inevitability.
) Machiavelli:
) So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken
) which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but
) also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend
) with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the
) princely chicken's dominion maintained.
) Hippocrates:
) Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
) Jacques Derrida:
) Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the
) act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is
) equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned,
) because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
) Thomas de Torquemada:
) Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
) Timothy Leary:
) Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would
) let it take.
) Douglas Adams:
) Forty-two.
) Nietzsche:
) Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes
) also across you.
) Oliver North:
) National Security was at stake.
) B.F. Skinner:
) Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium
) from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it
) would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to
) be of its own free will.
) Carl Jung:
) The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that
) individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and
) therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
) Jean-Paul Sartre:
) In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the
) chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
) Ludwig Wittgenstein:
) The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects
) "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which
) caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
) Albert Einstein:
) Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the
) chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
) Aristotle:
) To actualize its potential.
) Buddha:
) If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
) Howard Cosell:
) It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to
) grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian
) biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement
) formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a
) remarkable occurence.
) Salvador Dali:
) The Fish.
) Darwin:
) It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
) Emily Dickinson:
) Because it could not stop for death.
) Epicurus:
) For fun.
) Ralph Waldo Emerson:
) It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
) Johann Friedrich von Goethe:
) The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
) Ernest Hemingway:
) To die. In the rain.
) Werner Heisenberg:
) We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it
) was moving very fast.
) David Hume:
) Out of custom and habit.
) Saddam Hussein:
) This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite
) justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
) Jack Nicholson:
) 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.
) Pyrrho the Skeptic:
) What road?
) Ronald Reagan:
) I forget.
) John Sununu:
) The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation,
) so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the
) opportunity.
) The Sphinx:
) You tell me.
) Henry David Thoreau:
) To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
) Mark Twain:
) The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
) ========================================================
===============================================================
Alan C. Harris, Ph. D. TELNOS: main off: 818-885-2853
Professor, Communication/Linguistics direct off: 818-885-2874
Speech Communication Department
California State University, Northridge home: 818-366-3165
SPCH CSUN FAX: 818-885-2663
Northridge, CA 91330-8257 Internet email: AHARRIS at HUEY.CSUN.EDU
===============================================================
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4)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 15:41:47 +0000 (GMT)
From: "majones at popserver.essex.ac.uk..." (majones at essex.ac.uk)
Subject: RE: 6.288 Qs: Linguistic Songs, Surv
Content-Length: 1090
Prompted by Bob Fadkin's request for linguistic songs, I thought linguist
listers might be amused by the following ditty which I penned a few years
ago.
THE LAMENT OF THE NULL ANAPHOR (to the tune of 'Beautiful Dreamer)
Like the birds in the air, I long to be free.
How I long to be licensed by Principle C,
To be nested somewhere on a branch of a tree,
Where no coindexed item can c-command me.
I'm properly governed, but not realised.
I can't be conjoined or get cliticised
And I can't block contractions across my domain
And I'm locally bound in an Argument Chain.
Now my antecedent's a capital PRO,
She could not be governed, so she had to go.
She escaped from her sentence, though she had no Case
And she left me behind as a mere NP trace.
And now once again she's gone off on a spree
To widen her Scope from the Spec of CP,
Her trace can't command me, but there's my mishap,
For now I've become a Parasitic Gap.
(I know the derivation doesn't work out exactly, but then 'Barriers' doesn't
scan!)
Mike Jones,
Dept of Language and Linguistics,
University of Essex,
Colchester, UK.
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