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ucl.ac.uk>My message about "Bollocks he did!" aroused more interest than anything else I've ever written - no fewer than 47 replies, either via Linguist or direct. We linguists obviously enjoy writing about naughty words! This message is a summary of the responses. I'm sending a separate message about some challenges to syntactic theory. Here's a list of all my correspondents, with thanks to them all for taking the trouble. I've divided them into male and female (with one wild guess!), because of the gross difference in numbers (38 male, 9 female). Does this show anything about gender differences in use of / expertise in / interest in naughty words? Male: Milton Azevedo, Laurie Bower, John Bro, Ed Burstynsky, Paul Chapin, John Cowan, Tom Cravens, Robert Davis, Alexis Dimitriadis, Sam Glucksberg, John Goldsmith, Angus Grieve- Smith, Steve Harlow, Randy Allen Harris, Peter Hendriks, Michael Henderson, Rich Hilliard, Larry Horn, Daniel Karvonen, Paul Kershaw, John Kingston, (?) Randy LaPolla, Tze-Wan Kwan, John Limber, Mark Mandel, Geoffrey Nathan, Bruce Nevin, David Newton, Stewart Nichols, Neil Norrick, Nick Ostler, Harold Schiffman, Andy Spencer, Joe Stemberger, Joe Tomei, Larry Trask, Max Wheeler, Nick Youd Female: Georgia Green, Heidi Hamilton, Cat McGlothlin, Melissa Macpherson, Norma Mendoza-Denton, Elise Morse-Gage, Mary Neff, Benji Wald, Cherilyn Young ************************************************************* THE FACTS 1. The main point is that my example (1) is *not* very revolutionary in principle, because there are clear precedents based on other naughty words, notably THE HELL: (1) Bollocks he did! (meaning "No, he didn't") (2) The hell he did! Let's call this the *cataphoric* use, because BOLLOCKS etc relates to the status of the following proposition. 2. On the other hand, none of my correspondents claimed to have heard BOLLOCKS used in this way before, so it is a (little) first (and maybe last ...). (Actually, Steve Harlow, another Brit but based in York, said it sounded fairly normal, so maybe it all started in (old) York?) 3. Other words/word-pairs that are acknowledged by one or more correspondent in the cataphoric pattern are: BULL CRUD, BULLSHIT, CRAP, FUCKALL, (LIKE) HELL, LIKE FISH, LIKE FUCK, LIKE FUN, LIKE HECK, LIKE SURE, MY ASS/ARSE, MY EYE, MY FOOT (?), NONSENSE, PIG'S ARSE, (LIKE) SHIT, SHITE, THE DEVIL, THE FUCK, THE HECK, THE HELL, YOUR ASS But most correspondents recognised only two or three forms, and some geographical differences emerge (e.g. LIKE FUN came from an Australian). E.g. Joe Tomei explicitly rejects THE SHIT in this pattern, and I rejected NONSENSE which Stewart Nichols explicitly accepts. Nick Ostler finds THE DEVIL and THE HELL `rather club-land (UK) in tone' (I agree, incidentally). The question-mark after MY FOOT is because it comes from Benji Wald, who is really discussing the forms rather than where they occur; it is allowed by others at the end of the sentence, but can she use it at the start? Keep your eyes open for BULL CRUD - it was supplied by a 20-year old in person. It's Texan, apparently. Incidentally, Randy Allen Harris (West-Coast Canadian) says that FUCK YOU can be used cataphorically, but means "... isn't true, you're lying". 4. Another cataphoric use of some similar words expresses surprise, not disagreement. For Laurie Bauer, for instance, (3) is like this. (3) The bugger it is! John Bro recognises this use as well, though he thinks it's distinguished from the negative one by the intonation - it has the focus on the naughty word, and the rest of the sentence defocussed (see para 8). 5. Another pattern in which BOLLOCKS is used (the only pattern till now), is *anaphoric*, meaning "That's *** not true!". Some of these words can be used cataphorically but not anaphorically, and vice versa. The following can apparently be used anaphorically: BALLS, BULL CRUD, BULLSHIT, BOLLOCKS, LIKE HELL, SHIT 6. A third pattern of use, which we might call *exclamative*, doesn't seem to have any propositional content at all, but expresses intense dissatisfaction with the way the world currently is - used e.g. when you hit your thumb with a hammer, or delete a file by accident. The forms used here are as follows: HELL, SHIT I think Mark Mandel includes THE HELL and THE DEVIL here, but I'm not sure. There may of course be far more than this, because this people weren't commenting on this use. 7. Some correspondents link some or all forms directly with *phonetics*. Tom Cravens says the vowel in anaphoric SHIT is longer than the one in exclamative SHIT. 8. Some commented on *intonational* restrictions. Sam Glucksberg thinks NONSENSE may be ok cataphorically provided its first syllable is heavily stressed. Harold Schiffman and John Kingston think the intonation is limited in cataphoric cases - fall on the naughty word, then rising thereafter. On the other hand, John Bro thinks this intonation pattern means something like "Gosh, you don't say?", whereas the negative meaning requires intonation focus, with a fall, on the last word, e.g. DID. [beware of misunderstanding!] 9. Rich Hilliard comments on the syntax of the sentence following a cataphoric word. It has to be very simple, and maybe it has to consist of nothing but a pronoun and a verb. His starred examples are: (4)a *The hell I did it! b *The hell Susan knows! c *The hell you say it's a boy! d *The hell my mom thinks! This seems to move it into the same world as tag questions. Maybe the rest of the sentence has to be entirely *anaphoric*, so even our `cataphoric' use is in effect anaphoric. 10. Nick Ostler points out the possibility of having the negator at the *end* of the sentence, which seems to combine the cataphoric and anaphoric functions, and which seems to link up with the recently- discussed use of clause-final NOT, doesn't it? . His example is (5a), and John Limber provided a similar example, (5b). (5)a He did, my foot. b Safe my ass. (meaning it's definitely not `safe' [baseball]) Neal Norrick makes the same point, and adds MY BALLS as a possible end-position negator (though not possible in initial position). He also allows MY EYE here. Also Angus Grieve-Smith for MY ASS and MY EYE in final position. 11. Other languages. Nick Ostler provided a similar example from French (interesting reappearance of MY EYE, listed above!): (6) Il est arrive mon oeil! Tze-wan Kwan gives a Chinese (Mandarin?) example: (7) Ta hui chang ge pi. She can sing (piece) wind from bowels. (i.e. she can't sing) Apparently Cantonese uses male and female organs instead of wind. 12. BOLLOCKS is a Britishism. It's recognised (with that spelling) by the Collins Cobuild Eng Lang Dictionary as (1) a rude swearword which is used in very informal English to express disagreement, dislike or defiance, (2) a noun meaning testicles (but `a very rude and offensive use'). Some correspondents didn't believe the spelling and converted it, without comment, either into BULLOCKS or BALLOCKS. (According to John Cowan, BALLOCKS is the normal American spelling of the word.) Apparently both of these are etymologically justifiable, because it goes back to the Middle English BALLOCK, Old English BEALLUC, meaning `testicle', which is related not only to BALL but also to BULL. I don't know what the second morph "ock" meant. (Question: are testicles called balls because they look like balls, or the other way round?) Well, there it is folks - just goes to show there's more to grammar than you might expect. I'll highlight some of the issues in a separate message. Thanks for your help. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue