Mangled Easter Eggs - quote ???

[Caroline Bowen]

"TRIVIA: Old Question: Who compared speech to raw Easter eggs being smashed
between the rollers of a wringer? What point was he trying to make? Answer:
C. F. Hockett, A Manual of Phonology (p. 210): 

Imagine a row of Easter eggs carried along a moving belt; the eggs are of
various sizes, and variously colored, but not boiled. At a certain point,
the belt carries the row of eggs between the two rollers of a wringer, which
quite effectively smash them and rub them more or less into each other. The
flow of eggs before the wringer represents the series of impulses from the
phoneme source; the mess that emerges from the wringer represents the output
of the speech transmitter. At a subsequent point, we have an inspector whose
task it is to examine the passing mess and decide, on the basis of broken
and unbroken yolks, the variously spread-out albumen, and the variously
colored bits of shell, the nature of the flow of eggs which previously
arrived at the wringer... The inspector represents the hearer."
http://www.linguistics.ku.edu/news/archive/KULD041498.shtml

Hockett, CF (1955). A Manual of Phonology. Baltimore: Waverly Press.

Enjoy your presentation!
Caroline 

Caroline Bowen PhD
Speech Language Pathologist
9 Hillcrest Road
Wentworth Falls NSW 2782
Australia
e: cbowen at ihug.com.au
i: http://speech-language-therapy.com/
t: 61 2 4757 1136

-----Original Message-----
From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org]
On Behalf Of sues at xtra.co.nz
Sent: Tuesday, 26 September 2006 3:40 PM
To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
Subject: Mangled Easter Eggs - quote ???

Dear all 
 
I wonder if anyone can help out in a moment of (small) crisis: 
 
I am looking for a quote about English prosody being akin to a row of
brightly 
coloured Easter Eggs coming along on a conveyor belt until they go through a

washer/mangler - the author likens the resulting mess of squished up silver 
paper and chocolate eggs and yolks to disentangling the English speech
stream. 
 
I found it magnificent and used the image as title for a paper I'm giving
this 
weekend!! But I haven't been able to find the source as I am not at home at
the 
moment. 
 
I think it was in James Morgan's [ed] "Signal to Syntax: Bootstrapping into
..." from 
Brown University but when I google Mangled Easter Eggs or similar I can't
get 
anything. 
 
Deeply grateful for any kind help! 
 
Sue Sullivan 
Christchurch 
New Zealand