LINGUIST List 4.40

Tue 26 Jan 1993

Qs: Politics, gender, telnet, humor

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , graduate study in socio- and political linguistics
2. , Re: LINGUIST How-To's (Unrev)
3. Tom Cravens, telnet access
4. , Request for linguistically-based humor

A student of mine is starting to look into the possibility of graduate
study in sociolinguistics with her intended emphasis being political
language; she is interested, for instance, in researching the role of
language in formulating foreign policy and, possibly, in the military.
She probably will want to attend an institution with good programs in
linguistics and in political science and/or political sociolinguistics.
I'll appreciate any suggestions sent directly to my address and will pass
them on to her.
Mimi Klaiman

I am interested in locating literature about gender marking in Spanish by
bilingual speakers. A former student of mine is investigating bilingual
aphasics and has had success locating only two articles. Any information would
be appreciated.

Thanks

I'm conducting an unscientific survey on accessibility to telnet, and
invite responses from LINGUIST subscribers use or have tried to use telnet.
I'm interested in users in all countries.

The question is very simple. Do you pay real money for basic access,
or is it free?

The response can be almost as simple: 1) name (optional--names won't go
beyond me); 2) your principal department affiliation); 3) institution;
4) pay / free:

(Jim Smith)
ESL
Southern Arizona University
free

Those who wish to participate can respond to me personally
(cravenswiscmacc.bitnet). I'll post a very brief summary to the list
a few days from now.

Thanks in advance,
Tom Cravens
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Wanted: Examples of jokes or humorous lines, preferably well-known,
whose humor is based on syntactic (or lexical) ambiguity. The
following exemplify the kind of thing I am after:

 One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my
 pajamas I'll never know.

 -- George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind
 Animal Crackers (1930 film, said by Groucho Marx)

 Take my wife ... please.

 -- Henny Youngman

(Clearly, subtlety of wit is not a requirement.)

Examples based on attachment ambiguities, like the Kaufman-Ryskind
example, would be especially useful, as would references to previous
work collecting or discussing such examples.

Please reply directly to me. I will accumulate replies and post a
summary to the list. Thanks in advance.

 -- Stuart Shieber