(Topic ID: 30586)

POLL added: How Do YOU Spell The Sound a Pinball Knocker Makes?

By MrWizzo

11 years ago


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  • 99 posts
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  • Latest reply 11 years ago by RWH
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    Topic poll

    “What best captures the sound of the knocker?”

    • DMD: THWACK: YES 30 votes
      39%
    • DMD: THWACK: NO 6 votes
      8%
    • EM: KLACK : YES 13 votes
      17%
    • EM: KLACK : NO 3 votes
      4%
    • KNOCK IT OFF ALREADY! 25 votes
      32%

    (Multiple choice - 77 votes by 66 Pinsiders)

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    #78 11 years ago

    Come on MrWizzo, with your credentials we both know you're just playing with these people: I'm sure you can work out this spelling in IPA all by yourself with some obstruents. Hell, for the !Kung it's probably a phoneme in a word that translates to "congratulations".

    Heh.

    #80 11 years ago

    Oppan Chomsky Style.

    This is why linguists are so popular at parties.

    #83 11 years ago

    I went to CWU of Human Chimpanzee Communication fame. I was an actuarial science student at the time but couldn't stop taking linguistics and anthropology courses and was almost lured away by Dr. Klug. I was about 99% indoctrinated into the chimps as hairy near humans at that time before a deaf sister-in-law and Derek Bickerton blew that all to hell.

    In any case, I wish I'd stayed the course.

    Good party banter is to get people to try and think of our language's most versatile word: It can be a noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, exclamatory and is our single only infix! Plus then you get to explain what an infix is. Men buy you drinks and women toss themselves on your bed.

    Anecdote: Dr. Klug insists that a previous class of her's invented the term, "turkey", as to apply to someone who's kind of a jerk or somewhat stupid, but perhaps not quite a total moron or asshole. The class exercise was to examine how various animal words are used to apply to human behavior and how that differs substantially between cultures (her bend was linguistic anthropology). Then the idea was to think up an animal term that seemed wholly arbitrary and completely illogical and see if they could get it to stick in the lexicon. They came up with 'turkey' because it wasn't in popular use and it is such a benign mostly unobtrusive creature. Then it was voted on what the hell it should mean. They settled on something negative and started using it around campus. In my etymological search to vet this claim the time of first use is early 50s which is certainly possible given her age.

    #88 11 years ago
    Quoted from MrWizzo:

    After nine years of it, I couldn't do it anymore.
    What for me it most interesting is that although primates can learn "human" language and even teach it to offspring, the key is that their vocal tract will never produce speech, and it is speech that separates human beings from animals. The parrot has the vocal tract to mimic speech, but no capacity for language. Language is no more than the arbitrary relationship between a sign and its meaning, and there are how many many human languages and systems animals and insect use to communicate.
    I remember a paper floating around UCONN on the very topic of English's only real infix in the word's gerund or progressive verbal from. One of the examples cited was my hometown of "Phil-a-****-ing-del-phi-a." Its placement is constrainted by both phonemic and morphonemic boundaries if I remember. I will try and see if I can find it.
    Interesting note on the use of "turkey". I have to take a moment and look up the scholars you mention. Thanks for sharing.
    Dan

    Not exactly the forum, but, I now VERY strongly contest the notion that any animal on Earth is capable of anything even remotely similar to human language. I was a believer for a long time, and it just doesn't hold up. And I mean, I embarrassed myself with the conclusions I finally made. Maybe in PM.

    My pinball machine's "knocker" goes, RINNNGNGNGNNGNNGNGNG!!!!!

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