Humorous English Syntax.
There are two kinds of ambiguity—lexical ambiguity and syntactic ambiguity. All of the following sentences are syntactically ambiguous:
Smoking grass can be nauseating.
Dick finally decided on the boat.
The professor’s appointment was shocking.
The design has big squares and circles.
That sheepdog is too hairy to eat.
Could this be the invisible man’s hair tonic?
The governor is a dirty street fighter.
I cannot recommend him too highly.
Terry loves his wife and so do I.
They said she would go yesterday.
No smoking section available.
All of the following sentences are syntactically anomalous:
*I never saw a horse smoke a dozen oranges. (Martin Joos’s example)
*Enormous crickets in pink socks danced at the prom.
*A verb crumpled the milk.
*Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (Noam Chomsky’s example).
But these are not nonsense sentences. Each sentence has a different meaning. “I never saw a horse smoke a dozen oranges” is not only meaningful, it is true. Furthermore such “nonsense” sentences can occur in a regular conversation. In fact, Chomsky’s “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is a sentence which occurs very often in various linguistics classes. Furthermore, Chomsky’s sentence is very poetic (as opposed to being prosaic). It brings up numerous to the human and could be illustrated by a cartoonist in many different ways.
Like “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,” “‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did Gire and gimble in the wabe” is also syntactically well formed but semantically anomalous.
In the “Colorless green…” example the words are incompatible; however in the “’Twas brillig” example the content words don’t even exist.
The function words “it,” “was” “and” “did,” and “in” exist, but the content words “brillig,” “slithy” “toves,” “gyre,” “gimble” and “wabe” are not English words, and therefore the issue of their compatibility with other words is a mute point.
Don and Alleen Nilsen “Humor Across the Academic Disciplines” PowerPoints:
https://www.public.asu.edu/~dnilsen/
First, the English teacher should be aware of these kind of ambiguities. Then, if the English teacher is, at least, bilingual and knows the language spoken in a specific non-English country, then he or she may try to find an "equivalence" (as it is called in Translation Studies) of this ambiguity in the other language. If there is no equivalence, then he or she should try to place the expression/ambiguity within a context either in English or in the spoken language of his/her students.
I do not teach a purely syntax class but I do teach writers and editors and many of these are international students. I find that discussion of certain texts help us to approach idiomatic language.
Phillip K. Dick, The Eyes Have It
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31516/31516-h/31516-h.htm
and
Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves
https://daretobebetternow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/eats-shoots-and-leaves.pdf
Many of the examples above are also lexical ambiguities as well. The important thing for me is to get my students discussing these inconsistencies and comparing them to their L1.
English Syntax: humorous!
You can teach idiomatic language in many and different ways. That's one way ... I agree.
Nikolarea: Excellent responses. I've recommended your responses to other humor scholars. Thanks.
Joseph: Excellent references. I've recommended your comment to other humor scholars.
You can use "eyes breakers" composed of language games relevant to your topic of discussion
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Zero