" Olive, the other reindeer"

[Dennis R. Preston]

James,

Why are you surprised? Some of us are just very serious persons. (It
may also be the case that "when my pragmatic organizer took over" the
lag was very short indeed.)

For some reason, I got the "holly" and "Charlie" rhyme, instantly but
I attribute that to the "Boston" priming.

I actually don't know of many cross-phonemic (timed) comprehension
tests, although I have conducted a number of cross-phonemic
comprehension tests within changing dialectal frameworks and find it
odd that speakers of changing dialects are not always that much
better at understanding the new forms than others. For example, when
young persons from the Detroit area are played samples of words like
"bet" with increasingly lower or backer positions (forms they would
use themselves), they very often misunderstand the words to be "bat"
or "bet," respectively. It's almost as if their producers are out in
front of their perceivers.

Weird.

dInIs


>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Landau, James" <James.Landau at NGC.COM>
>Subject:      Re: " Olive, the other reindeer"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>In a message dated Mon, 27 Sep 2004 13:27:40 -0400,
>  "Dennis R. Preston" <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>
>>  Look like the old /hw/-/w/ jumped up. It bit me the other day. I was
>>  out in the garden working and bitching and carrying on about how hard
>>  I had it, etc... My neighbor said " You want some cheese and crackers
>>  to go with that wine." Luckily my pragmatic organizer took over, and
>>  I had to figure out why what he said make sense. Finally, of course,
>>  I got to his "wine" - "whine" homophony.
>
>>From: Dennis Preston <preston at MSU.EDU>
>>Date:         Thu, 2 Aug 2007 19:32:14
>>To:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>Subject:      ; was Re: "Trolling" for >"Trawling": An Eggcorn?
>>
>>Once years ago I stood in front of  a used car lot in Calgary wondering
>why
>>Otto's Auto's struck me as mildly funny; then I realized that for
>almost ahl
>>Canadians they are homophones. (And nearly everybody west of the
>Mississippi,
>>nearly everybody in New England, and a passle of folk in a band through
>the
>>middle of the US.)
>
>Dr. Preston, I find it rather surprising that your ear can be so attuned
>to phonemic nuances that you overlook obvious plays on words.
>
>I personally distinguish /ah/ from /aw/ yet the assonance in "Otto's
>Autos" was immediately obvious to me.  Although it may have been because
>back in elementary school I gleefully learned that autos are powered by
>Otto engines. (The four-cycle internal combustion engine was invented by
>Nikolaus August Otto in 1876).
>
>Here's one for you, from the old Pogo strip:
>
>     Deck us all with Boston Charlie
>     Nora's freezing on the trolley
>
>Do you catch the rhyme?
>
>    James A. Landau
>    test engineer
>    Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
>    8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
>    West Atlantic City  NJ  08232  USA
>
>~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
>MRQZJ NZAMM KHZAK ETHDD JSUFH NSKCR
>PUUSI SPJLU MBZCT GQGLH POAWW YYQWR
>FGALC HLBYK YYQWR
>^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
15C Morrill Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-353-4736
preston at msu.edu

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