THE PHONOLOGICAL STUDY OF BLENDS AND PUNS Konrad Juszczyk juszczyk@amu.edu.pl Department of Psycholinguistics - Institute of Linguistics Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
1st Student Conference on Formal Linguistics 1 11-01-05
September 28, 2004
What are puns? ä
Puns are a kind of witticisms, a part of joyful language ä Used in jokes, ads or titles of newspaper articles ä
If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. (Washington Post)
ä Use
of ambiguity and sound similarity
ä Metaphors
be with you (from the website on metaphors)
ä Understanding
puns requires the knowledge of cultural context (see Kemmer’s study on mental spaces)
ä Polish
examples from advertisements:
ä Ciała
przyjemność po mojej stronie.
ä (The
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ä Kostki
pleasure is all mine)
zostały rzucone.
ä (Iacta
alea est – The dice is cast)
How are blends and puns related? ä It
happens that…
ä blends
look like puns because of ambiguity ä or puns make use of blends to achieve ambiguity, ä moreover both benefit from sound affinity.
ä You
can’t find much in literature on phonologica affinity, although it is a characteristic feature of puns and blends.
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What are blends? ä Blends
are a kind of compound where morphemes sometimes overlap each other ä Therefore
morphemes in blends are rather parts of source forms truncated at some point
ä English
examples:
ä chunnel,
swooshtika, smog, brunch, viagra, grue…
ä Polish
examples: dyskretyn, terroretyk, idiotele… ä Other terms describing these phenomena: ä portmanteau 4 11-01-05
words (coined by Lewis Carroll)
ä mixonymes ä Polish
terms: kontaminacja or adideacja
The need of phonological resemblance ä These
source-parts may overlap only if they are similar in sound, which is in a phonological matter.
ä Kemmer
(2003) also claims that:
ä „phonological
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properties are highly relevant to
blending; ä phonological similarity of the blend with part or whole source lexeme increases the likelihood or felicity (the ‘goodness’) of a blend.”
ä Other
studies of lexical blends described:
ä phonological
affinity on the suprasegmental level (Kemmer, 2003)
ä Morphology,
morphonology of Spanish blends couched within Optimality Theory (Pin)eros, ROA): ä featural
faithfulness, ä IDENT, MAX(SF-BW) and other constraints. 6 11-01-05
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Biurnonsens /b j u r n o n s e n s/ b!
j
u!
b!
r ! o ! p! j! u! r! n ! o ! n ! s ! e ! n ! s !
j! ! u!
r!
n! o! n! s! e! n! s!
ä This
blend plays on words apparently known in English and having similar meaning in Polish: ä bureau
(French origin) ä pure nonsense
Blend describes pure nonsense that one can encounter in a bureau or office. 8 ä SOURCE: title in the Polish daily newspaper GW. ä
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What happens in /b j u r n o n s e n s/? b!
j
u!
b!
r ! o ! p! j! u! r! n ! o ! n ! s ! e ! n ! s !
j! ! u!
r!
n! o! n! s! e! n! s!
Arrows show correspondence relationships between segments of source forms and the blend. ä Every phoneme in the blend has its correspondent in one of the source forms. ä Crossing arrows show one-to-many correspondence 9 relationships between similar phonemes. 11-01-05 ä
Phonological similarity in the blend ä The
first four phonemes in the blend have its ‘company” in both source forms, due to their almost complete phonological similarity. ä The first one /b/ refers both to /b/ and /p/ that are not identical in sound, but are similar. b!
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j
u!
r ! o ! p! j! u! r!
b!
j ! u!
r!
n !o! n! s! e! n! s!
n! o! n! s! e! n! s!
Natural class of sounds ä Sounds
/b/ and /p/ can be said to constitute a natural class since they share features like ä [+stop][+labial][+consonantal]
ä Sounds
in natural class are to be all affected by phonological processes like assimilation. ä The process in the blends presented above may be interpreted as feature-changing assimilation. ä In biurnonsens and barkiet assimilation takes place in the begining, whereas in drabieżnik - in 11 the middle (examples will be shown in a moment). 11-01-05
Which features are changed? ä The
differencing features should be easily noticeable (realized by speakers).
ä These
differences are minimal because the more a blend „echoes” the source forms, the better.
ä Features ä Those 12 11-01-05
of place of articulation and voicing
features differentiate sounds in oppositions
ä proportional,
privative and bilateral (correlation)
It looks like voicing assimilation, doesn’t it? [-voice]
[+voice]
CC VCCVCCVCC
[-voice]
[+voice]
CC VCCVCCVCC
pj u rnonse ns bj u rnonse ns ä The rule of spreading in autosegmental phonology ä The voicing in /p j u r n o n s e n s/ is an autosegment that spreads to the initial phoneme in association with /bjuro/ (bureau). 13 ä Spreading – dotted line and delinking is a line with bars. 11-01-05
Spreading and delinking in blend /p/ root
/b/ root + consonantal - sonorant
laryngeal supralaryngeal
+ consonantal - sonorant
laryngeal supralaryngeal
=
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-voice place manner velum
+voice place manner velum
+labial coronal -cont
+labial coronal -cont
vď śâ€ŻThis is a tree adopted from the feature geometry showing assimilation of voicing in /p j u r n o n s e n s/.
More examples of voicing assimilation d ! r a ! p j !e! Z! n! i! k !
b ! j! e ! Z ! n ! i ! k !
d! r a! ! b! i! e! Z n! i! k!
drapieżnik ≈ bieżnik drapieżnik (predator, beast of prey) 15 11-01-05
bieżnik (tread)
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More examples of voicing assimilation b ! a r ! l ! i ! n! e! k!
p! a ! r! c ! e ! t !
b! a r! ! c e! t! ä barlinek
≈ parkiet
ä Barlinek 17 11-01-05
(brand name for parquet floor)
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Majdłuższy weekend - /n/ ó /m/ /n/ root
/m/ root + consonantal + sonorant
+ consonantal + sonorant
laryngeal supralaryngeal
laryngeal
+voice velum manner place
+voice place manner velum
+nasal –cont
coronal
supralaryngeal
+labial –cont
+nasal
complete/total assimilation majdłuższy ≈ najdłuższy (the longest) 19 markomania ≈ narkomania (the drug habit/abuse) 11-01-05 maturalna kolej rzeczy. maturalna ≈ naturalna +anterior
*
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Metaphors be with you /l/ ó /m/ /l/ root = laryngeal
/m/ root + consonantal + sonorant
+ consonantal + sonorant
supralaryngeal
laryngeal
+voice place manner velum coronal +cont
-lateral
supralaryngeal
+voice place manner velum -nasal
+labial –cont
complete/total assimilation Syllable structure resemblance with +anterior
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„Let the force be with you”
+nasal
Evidence from psychophonetic study ä Experiments
on subjective consonant similarity in Polish (Łobacz, 1995) also show that ä consonants,
which differ in one feature are perceived as more similar than these which differ in more than one feature. ó /b/ - 254 ä /n/ ó /m/ - 140 ä /p/
ä In
/p/ ó // - 908 /n/ ó /Ç/ - 904
other words:
ä phonological
affinity = auditive similarity
22 11-01-05 ä
Phonetic distance in English for /l/ ó /m/ - 75/100
Summary: ä The
aim of the study was to show how phonological processes in lexical blending and punning resemble assimilation. ä This kind of assimilation is rather peculiar: ä A
„classic assimilation” occurs when adjacent sounds influence each other so that they become more alike. ä Those sounds are in syntagmatic order. ä Sounds assimilated in blend are like one under another. ä Hence, 23 11-01-05
we may call it a paradigmatic assimilation.
More examples – more questions… ä English
(Kemmer, 2003):
ä chunnel
= tunnel + channel ä smog = smoke + fog ä brunch = breakfast + lunch ä grue = green + blue ä motel =motor + hotel ä Spanish ä d
(Pin)eros, ROA):
e d o ‘finger’ + d e m o c r a c i a ‘democracy’
ä d
e d o c r a c i a ‘an arbitrary system of election by pointing with the finger’
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ä g
o l ‘goal’ + f u t b o l ‘football’
ä f
u t g o l ‘football (soccer) magazine published in Spain’
Bibliography: Kemmer, S. 2003. Schemas and lexical Blends. w: H. Cuyckens, T. Berg, R. Dirven, K-U Panther (eds.), Motivation in Language, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ä Szpyra-Kozłowska, J. 2002. Współczesne teorie fonologiczne. Lublin: Wyd. UMSC. ä Redfern, W. 2000. Puns. More senses than One. London: Penguin. ä Nash, W. 1985. The language of humour. Style and technique in comic discourse. New York: Longman. ä Łobacz, P. 1995. O percepcyjnej klasyfikacji polskich głosek raz jeszcze. [in:] Pogonowski, J. (red.) 1995. Eufonia i logos. Poznań: Wyd. Nauk. UAM. ä Davenport, M. & Hannahs, S.J. 1998. Introducing phonetics and phonology. London: Arnold. 25ä Laver, J. 1994. Principles of phonetics. Oxford: OUP ä
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