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Questions related from Don L. F. Nilsen
Voladamir Zelinsky started out as a comedian and satirist. As a man of the people, he even entered a dancing with the stars competition. So when Ukraine was invaded by Putin, Voladamir Zelinsky...
01 January 1970 3,568 99 View
Since the 1800s, linguistics have been using Reed-Kellogg diagramming to teach about English syntax, but in 1916 we have Ferdinand de Saussure’s “Langue vs. Parole.” In 1954 we have John Gumpers’s...
01 January 1970 1,269 20 View
Carl Jung said that there are archetypes and shadow archetypes related the end of the journey (the ruler, the magician, the sage, and the wise fool). The Ruler moves from taking responsibility for...
01 January 1970 8,225 2 View
Democrats buy most of the books that have been banned somewhere. Republicans form censorship committees and read them as a group. Democrats name their children after popular sports figures,...
01 January 1970 6,303 14 View
Old Comedy of the 6th & 5thCenturies BC often made fun of a specific person and of current political issues. Middle Comedy of the 5th& 4th Centuries BC made fun of more general themes such...
01 January 1970 3,133 3 View
Much of the humor on “America’s Got Talent,” and on “Britain’s Got Talent” is Physical Humor. So also is the humor of Italy’s Commedia dell’Arte,” France’s “Comédie Française,” “Punch and Judy”...
01 January 1970 6,719 10 View
Whenever there is a paradigm shift because of changing technology, religion, politics, culture, etc., new concepts are brought into the language. And when there are no words to talk about these...
01 January 1970 1,396 11 View
LINGUISTIC HUMOR AND LANGUAGE PLAY There are many different types of linguistic humor: phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. There are Oxymorons (Civil War), Metaphors...
01 January 1970 6,152 8 View
Linguistic or conceptual body-part metaphors relate not only to Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, Knees, but also to Eyes, Ears, Mouth and Nose and other human body parts. Here are a few English...
01 January 1970 4,049 6 View
In discussing the History of English, we must consider such terms as assimilation, dissimilation, umlaut, ablaut, Grimm's Law, Verner's law, and in the case of Old English becoming Middle English...
01 January 1970 7,941 19 View
CASE GRAMMAR: A MERGER OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS Charles Fillmore’s Deep Cases are determined not by syntax, but rather by semantics. Rather than having Subject, Indirect Object and Direct Object,...
01 January 1970 4,693 15 View
01 January 1970 9,455 0 View
HUMOROUS ARCHETYPES, AND SHADOW ARCHETYPES Northrup Frye said that the Romance presents an idealized world, the black-and-white world of our desires, where good things are really good, and bad...
01 January 1970 4,068 0 View
AFRICAN-AMERICAN HUMOR The contributions of African Americans to the overall humor of the United States—and to the world—has been very significant, especially if we consider the elements of...
01 January 1970 7,941 0 View
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR AND ANIMAL PLAY Animals have their own behaviors, and their special ways of playing. Compare and contrast the behaviors and play of canines, felines, equines, primates, etc. More...
01 January 1970 9,305 0 View
HUMOR AS IT RELATES TO RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND DISCOURSE The classical rhetoricians of ancient Greece and Rome were concerned with the “five canons of rhetoric: 1. Invention, 2. Arrangement, 3....
01 January 1970 1,842 8 View
01 January 1970 7,900 0 View
HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND HUMOR Humor is often used to get people through tragic events, so it is no surprise that humor was used to get us through the Covid 19 pandemic. Here are a few...
01 January 1970 4,422 0 View
01 January 1970 6,493 9 View
Ambiguity AMBIGUITY PARADOX: “Everything is ambiguous; however, nothing is ambiguous.” Almost all words and sentences are ambiguous, if they are not seen or heard in the larger context. However,...
01 January 1970 276 13 View
PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, AND HUMOR John Morreall says that when laughter is mentioned in the Bible, it is associated with one of three things. In descending order, they are: Hostility, Foolishness,...
01 January 1970 3,023 6 View
PHYSICAL HUMOR AND PLAY Much of the humor on “America’s Got Talent,” and on “Britain’s Got Talent” is Physical Humor. So also is the humor of Italy’s Commedia dell’Arte,” France’s “Comédie...
01 January 1970 376 2 View
HUMOR IN MUSIC AND THE PERFORMING ARTS Humor in classical music has a long tradition as shown by such playful vocabulary items as the French gavotte, which like the Irish and English gigue or jig...
01 January 1970 6,646 23 View
01 January 1970 7,638 4 View
It is amazing how many ways we have of displaying and presenting various types of lexical and pragmatic information. These displays and presentations are at various levels of abstraction, detail...
01 January 1970 2,185 7 View
01 January 1970 7,940 0 View
HUMOR AND AGING In order to commemorate her 79thbirthday, Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of AARP. One of the musical numbers she...
01 January 1970 912 4 View
American Slang Slang is constantly changing, and so is jargon. This is because both slang and jargon are used to determine which people can use it properly, and which people can’t. Slang is the...
01 January 1970 813 3 View
THE HISTORY OF HUMOR Old Comedy of the 6th & 5thCenturies BC often made fun of a specific person and of current political issues. Middle Comedy of the 5th& 4th Centuries BC made fun of...
01 January 1970 9,662 5 View
