" Olive, the other reindeer"; was Re: "Trolling" for "Trawling": An Eggcorn?

[Mark Mandel]

One more point to consider: The zero plural. How does a kid hear and parse
this song? (Words from http://www.41051.com/xmaslyrics/rudolph.html)

   1. Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer
   2. had a very shiny nose
   3. and if you ever saw it
   4. you would even say it glows.
   5. /'al at v/ the other reindeer
   6. used to laugh and call him names
   7. They never let poor Rudolph
   8. play in any reindeer games.

1-2 introduce a reindeer and describe him. 3-4 say how the listener would
react to him. So far, no problem.

5-6 are to exactly the same tune as 1-2. To a child who doesn't know that
"reindeer" can be plural as well as singular -- and how many do on first
hearing this song? -- 5-6, parallel to 1-2, introduce another reindeer,
whose name is /'al at v/ : Olive, the other reindeer.

So who are "they" in line 7? "Oh, you know, Daddy. Like, they won't let you
talk out loud in the library."

m a m

On 8/2/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> On Aug 2, 2007, at 3:05 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>
> > This has got to be a joke, not a trfue misunderstanding, as the
> > relevant lines are,
> >
> >   "All of the other reindeer,
> >   Used to laugh and call him names.
> >   THEY wouldn't let poor Rudolph
> >   Play in any reindeer games."
> >
> >   Even if your own name is Olive, and all your female relatives are
> > named Olive, and your favorite character is Olive Oyl, you will
> > understand "all of" as  meaning "all of," at least if your
> > attention span is long enough to get to the operative pronoun.
>
> i have no idea how it originated, but mondegreens sometimes aren't
> globally -- only locally -- well-formed.  they typically occur in
> lyrics/poetry/quotes/etc., where listeners tend to expect bizarre
> expressions.
>
> in this particular case, who knows?
>
> it ended up as a title of a children's book and a 1999 tv special
> derived from the book, by the way.
>
> arnold
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org