124 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Figure C1.1 WORD PLAYS 125 As your next activity, you should attempt to build an archive of similar examples of poems, cartoons or any other textual forms that you can find where the different sounds which represent features of accent variation are represented using the tech- nique of eye dialect. Local newspapers or websites dedicated to the area where you live are often good places to start your search, as are literary texts. The written recording of representations of different accents in texts is a com- mon way of establishing solidarity amongst individuals who share such features, as well as simultaneously acting as a social distance mechanism for those individuals who do not share the same pronunciation features. These issues of solidarity and social distance are crucial to the discipline of sociolinguistics, and phoneticians play a very active role in producing sociolinguistic studies. This will be explored further in D1 and throughout strand 9. WORD PLAYS In this unit, you will be able to realise how deeply embedded are your rules of morphology and semantics by trying out the following activities. Past and future In Old English (AD 500–1100), the past tense of verbs was commonly formed either weakly by adding a dental suffix (‘-ed’ in ‘lifted’, ‘-t’ in ‘spelt’, or ‘-ed’ in writing even where /t/ was pronounced as in ‘walked’), or strongly by an alteration in the root vowel (‘sing – sang’, ‘run – ran’, ‘bring – brought’). In modern English, the weak form is now standard, so new coinages are tensed with dentals: ‘accessed’, ‘hosted’, ‘sprinted’ not ‘sprount’. There are British and American variations that have diverged over the years, reflecting the state of the dialects of American settlers at the point at which they left regions of Britain: in the UK, meat is ‘hung’ but criminals were ‘hanged’, a British swimmer ‘dived’ into the pool but an American swimmer ‘dove’ into the water. Old English probably had around 300 strong past tense forms; modern English has less than 100, so the form seems to be dying out. We can imagine a twenty- second century text as follows, that might capture for us how an Anglo-Saxon person might regard our own English: I runned through the woods, catched some sunshine, and goed for a paddle in the river. When I was weared out, I swimmed to the shore and eated my lunch. That evening, we lighted a fire and singed, before we all goed to bed. We waked up in the morning to find that the farmer had bringed us some eggs so we had a big breakfast before we setted off and drived home. Try to continue this story in twenty-second century English! A popular anonymous rhyme exploits the comical potentials of the strong and weak past tense systems as follows: Activity 2.1 J Activity 1.5 J C2 126 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Forth from his den to steal he stole His bag of chink he chunk And many a wicked smile he smole And many a wink he wunk. Try to write a second verse on the same principles. How would you render unusual past forms of ‘foot the bill’, ‘a bring-and-buy sale’, ‘kiss and tell’ or ‘hit and run driver’ without sounding odd? A cautionary tale: a friend staying at her prospective parents-in-law was kept awake all night by the birds tweeting outside her window. Asked in the morning by her prim host whether she had slept well, and a bit nervous, she unfortunately exclaimed, ‘Not really, the birds twat all night’. New words for old Connect the following affixes together randomly and then try to imagine a meaning for the resulting word. Then try to use the word in a sentence. -ness -less -ish -ful -wise -y pre- un- dis- re- bi- intra- For example: ‘nessless’ – the desire for material things rather than abstractions; ‘nesslessness’ – the philosophy arguing for the desire for material things rather than abstractions ‘ishful’ – extreme vagueness ‘ishy’ – a bit vague ‘pre-wise’ – sometime in advance. Make up your own examples and definitions. What is semantically odd about the following words which are in fact very commonly used? pre-warn reconfirm pre-book pre-order re-check remove interlink What is the difference between ‘flammable’, ‘inflammable’, ‘inflammatory’ and ‘non-flammable’? Compare your first intuitions with dictionary definitions. Imagine meanings for the following illegitimate back-formations: ‘effable’ or ‘to eff ’ (from ‘ineffable’) ‘couth’ or ‘couthy’ (from ‘uncouth’) ‘cessor’ or ‘cession’ (from ‘intercessor’) ‘monstrate’ (from ‘demonstrate’ and ‘remonstrate’) ‘turb’ (from ‘disturb’) Try to think of other similar examples. Why are these illegitimate? Why can we be ‘grateful’ but not ‘grateless’? Why can we ‘inquire’ but not ‘quire’? Why are ‘outlaws’ not the opposite of ‘in-laws’? Having been in a relationship you now have an ‘ex’: can you have a ‘pre’? Can you think of any other oddities like these? Activity 2.2 J WORD PLAYS 127 How do the following break morphological rules: ‘borg’ (from ‘cyborg’ from ‘cyber- netic organism’), ‘boyf ’ (from ‘boyfriend’), ‘earfro’ (meaning excessive ear hair), ‘textrovert’ (someone who can only emote by email or text), ‘emote’ (to express emo- tion), ‘dotcomrade’ (an online friend)? Mean meanings Consider the potential semantic confusions present in the following. Can you explain in each case what is going on? The bandage was wound around the wound. The farm was used to produce produce. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. We must polish the Polish furniture. He could lead if he would get the lead out. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present. I did not object to the object. The insurance was invalid for the invalid. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row. You must bow to the woman with the bow, under the bough of the tree. They were too close to the door to close it. The buck does funny things when the does are present. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests. We can dispense with dispensing the punishments, as a special dispensation. Can you think of any other similarly ambiguous phrases? Rewriting Blake Overleaf is a table summarising many of the common lexical semantic relationships in English. Now take the following famous poem by William Blake, and systematically rewrite the nouns and verbs by applying one of the lexical semantic relationships. For example, a synonymic version of the poem might be entitled ‘That Diseased Flower’, an antonymic version might be ‘A Healthy Sink’ (you have to be quite imaginative and lateral-thinking). Try to complete the entire poem. The Sick Rose O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm That flies in the night In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. Activity 2.3 J Activity 2.4 J 128 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Discuss the effects of each change. Then make a list of every occurrence in the original poem where Blake does not employ a simple philonymy (i.e. every example of deviant language use). You will notice that Blake uses a lot of surprising xenonyms. Note that the personification of the Rose (‘O’ and ‘thou’) is a form of semantic xenonymy. Are plants usually ‘sick’, or rather ‘diseased’ (plesionym)? Is ‘worm’ the same as ‘serpent’ or ‘snake’ (and what are the semantic resonances in interpretation of this image: from the Garden of Eden myth to a rather nasty phallic suggestiveness)? What are the interpretative effects of Blake’s actual stylistic choices? Aside from the denotational values (the narrow definitional meanings) of Blake’s choices, what are the connotational (conventional secondary meanings), associative (more personal conventional meanings) and resonant (loose atmospheric and tonal) effects of the style of the poem? synonymy antonymy hyponymy meronymy polysemy/ homonymy plesionymy philonymy tautonymy xenonymy a word is a synonym of another if its meaning is almost exactly the same a word is an antonym of another if its meaning is almost exactly opposite a word is a hyponym of another if it is part of the general category where an actual part–whole relationship exists between the meanings of two words a word is polysemous if it has developed two distinct meanings, and a homonym where two distinct words have converged (often only distinguishable with a knowledge of etymology) a word is a plesionym if it is a near- synonym but substitution of the word does not leave the same truth-conditions two words are philonyms if they collocate in an acceptable and expected way two words are tautonyms if they merely repeat without adding new value, creating a tautology two words are xenonyms if they create semantic dissonance book, volume, text; letter, epistle, note, line black, white; up, down dog, mammal; poodle, dog hand, fingers; car, tyres sole (shoe/fish); seal (animal/glue) it wasn’t misty, just foggy; he was murdered, or rather executed the speaker can speak French; the pregnant woman the speaker is speaking; boys will be boys fat water; the sadness of pencils DOING POLITENESS 129 The prototype game In order to demonstrate the reality of prototypicality in human categorisation, you might like to try out some of the following. In order to discover what are the central, secondary and peripheral members of a particular category, write down as fast as you can 30 examples of each of the following categories: fruit vegetables furniture modes of transport holiday resorts things to wear for a seminar famous artists routes between your school/work and home It is likely that the later items in the list of 30 are the more peripheral and marginal ones. Can you arrange each set of 30 in a radial pattern, with a central group, and less central clusters? You are unlikely to have written them down immediately in strict sequence. Now try to think of situations in which your three most peripheral items are treated as more prototypical members of the category. For example, a durian (a large, spiky, oriental fruit with an indescribably bad smell – so bad it is banned on the Singapore transit system) is a very poor example of a fruit to British minds. However, in the Singaporean context, it is a good example of a fruit – and it is a good example of an ‘exotic’ fruit – and it is an especially good example of a bad-smelling fruit. Try to play word-association by recording yourself or others saying the first 50 words that come into your head – try not to pause or hesitate. Do you notice any patterns, any clusters around certain semantic domains, and phonological or morphological repetition – that might show the way your mind is chaining concepts together? DOING POLITENESS Virtual politeness Like several universities, Nottingham University has recently purchased its own ‘Island’ space in Second Life, the virtual world where individuals interact through constructed personas known as ‘avatars’. Teaching and learning tools are continually being devised for use within this virtual environment. As part of the process, Colleen McCants, a member of the University’s Information Services Team, has produced a politeness guide for appropriate avatar ‘netiquette’ to ensure that members of the University do not break the norms and conventions of politeness in this emergent area of cyberspace. Activity 3.1 J Activity 2.5 J C3 . 124 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Figure C1.1 WORD PLAYS 125 As your next activity, you should attempt. INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Discuss the effects of each change. Then make a list of every occurrence in the original poem where Blake does not employ a simple philonymy (i.e. every example of deviant language. century English! A popular anonymous rhyme exploits the comical potentials of the strong and weak past tense systems as follows: Activity 2.1 J Activity 1.5 J C2 126 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH