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July 2, 2012Words & Origins
So I’m looking at verb-noun compounds in English for my dissertation, which are not the most popular patterns around. Endocentric verb-nouns show up every so often in swimsuit, hovercraft, and shakeweight, but there have not been any new exocentric ones since carrycot in 1943. Other exocentric verb-nouns include killjoy, pickpocket, daredevil, and breakfast.
We have so many other patterns that V+N is not really missed, but the old words we have from the pattern are so fun that I’m tempted to try to force a new one into the world, and put it on a t-shirt and wear that t-shirt to nerd events. More about that in Part 2. But first…
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June 29, 2012
/ˈflæpdʒæk/
I’m trying to figure out whether flapjack is an endocentric or exocentric compound. Flap is a verb, jack is a noun, and it’s a fun compound. If I can include it in my research, I’d like to. Is a flapjack a type of jack, or a thing (not a jack) that flaps jacks?
Flap from flapjack is listed in the OED under definition 4a. It has Germanic relatives.
— Do yourself a favor and act out the definition of flap as given above. Do it now. I defy you not to giggle while you do it. Descriptive words are amazing. You really get the feeling that you’re manhandling whatever it is between your hands. Wrestle it to the ground! Flap it!
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May 25, 2012So I’m looking at verb-noun compounds in English, and there are a number of endocentric compounds that begin with the verb blow. Blow comes from OE bláwan, and shows up in a lot of endocentric compounds, which makes sense, since it is a Germanic word. (Trust me on that.)
Blowgun (which comes from blowpipe), blowtorch (which comes from blowlamp) and blowfish are some of the common Modern English forms that use blow. Then of course there is blowjob, which my friend Jason thought up when I told him I was looking for verb-noun compounds in English. This tricked me into saying “Hmm, okay, I’ll look into blowjobs” in public. (Between that discussion and his political-ethical considerations about what makes necrophilia disgusting and illegal, “Hey Jason, how’s necrophilia going?” we seem to have conversations that are quite dangerous when out of context. But he’s cool. Check out his new vlog.)
Blowjob is first attested in 1961, while hand job (a noun-noun compound) first appeared in 1939. Both are American in origin (U! S! A!). Thus, it is very likely that blow job is modeled after the –job pattern of sex acts, rather than being independently created as a verb-noun compound.
And to top it all off, I found this little charmer with one citation from 1885… yes, it’s blow-cock. It really could NOT look more dirty if it tried, but apparently it is a boiler component. The definition even sounds like a euphemism…
So there it is. A dirty dip into etymology.
(All of the data from this post comes from oed.com.)
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May 15, 2012
I comply with the right-hand head rule. I am a good compound.
Hi there neighbor. I’m doing something about compounds in English and Spanish for my MA Linguistics dissertation, and I’m 2-weeks in, and already knee-deep in books and articles about Romance compounding, exocentric synthetic compounds in English, deverbal complex words and right-hand-headedness. It’s crazy-go-nuts.
LOOK! LOOK AT ALL THE LARGE BOOKS!!
Just today I was thinking to myself, “Brianne, you’ve really gone down the compounding rabbithole…” and I immediately responded, “RABBITHOLE! ANOTHER COMPOUND!!” And then the first Brianne shook her head.
I love compounds... and meat-flavoured crisps.
I’m learning some really interesting things that make me say “OH!” outloud in the quiet fairhurst building, (sorry fellow students), and I’ll share them when I have a more concrete direction that will make some of this preliminary research unusable, but for now this post is just a friendly resource for me to point new acquaintances to when I ooh and aah over compounds that appear naturally in conversation. Foolproof, handbook, footprint, pickpocket, straitjacket. I’m going to do this for the next 5 months…. at least.
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
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April 29, 2012*This is very like the first Tiny Dissertation post in its curiosity for the answer, its short lifespan, minimal scope of interest, and un-academic treatment of the subject.
My 'Space God' character (right) in Little Big Planet dancing to Cornman by Kinky
Hypothesis: There should be compound words in Spanish songs, because they are very productive in Romance languages, so they should show up in songs.
Data: Lyrics found online for 10 songs in Spanish, each by a different artist, that I listen to a lot but have never thought about in regards to compounds.
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April 26, 20121. Would You Come With Me? – The Elected
2. Walk with You – Dispatch
3. Come Fly with Me – Michael Bublé
4. Is She Really Going Out With Him? – Goldfinger (cover)
5. Won’t Go Home Without You – Maroon 5
6. Come Dance with Me – Frank Sinatra
7. Life Goes On Without You – Jill Sobule
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April 21, 2012
Back of kooBi
Front of kooBi (with duckie)
My first computer was a laptop called kooBi. It was an iBook. Its accompanying iPod was called doPi. It was great, went to Spain, and got a lot of stickers on it. Then poor kooBi aged and got tired. The disc burner stopped working, and that kind of feature is important to me, so I got a new one, a MacBook which I named McBook. Its iPod shuffle sidekick was called McPod. For graduation in 2008, I was given an iPod Touch named iToca, which is still with me. McBook‘s life was tragically cut short when it drowned in the summer of 2009, leading me to buy a MacBook Pro. I’m very attached to my laptops, the first 2 are living in a box in California, and I’ve taken this new one with me everywhere (Korea, Walnut Creek, Germany). But! It doesn’t have a proper name.
After 3 years of companionship, it’s still the new guy, and there’s some kind of smugness that comes with the title Pro that I do not enjoy associating myself with. So… back in 2009 I covered up the MacBook Pro label with a sticker that no one understands, because it’s in Latin. The label says Vade Mecum.
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April 17, 2012Acronyms are fun! They are time-saving, mnemonic devices to remember a series of 2-10 words in a row. Radar, laser, scuba, sonar, aids, and Necco, acronyms are very productive in English. Ancient acronyms include SPQR and INRI. In Linguistics, coming up with a clever or at least memorable acronym for one’s corpus is an very important step in one’s research, apparently. CHILDES is, in fact, full of children’s speech while DOE, COLT, ICAME, ACE, LOB BASE, all fidget their letters to create speakable words. (COLT is Corpus of London Teenage Language.)
Erm, I think we’re losing sight of the real issue here, which is: what are we gonna call ourselves? Erm, and I think it comes down to a choice between “The League Against Salivating Monsters” or my own personal preference, which is “The Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society.” Erm, one drawback with that: the abbreviation is “CLITORIS.”
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April 16, 2012
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April 9, 2012