Language Log

Yesterday's Zits:

Many parents are oblivious to the nuances of their children's paralinguistic vocalizations. But not Aubrey Chorde, from the most recent Something Positive, who is interpreting here for her friend and house-guest Davan MacIntyre.

Some pre-verbal sound-meaning correspondences are universal — crying and laughing, for example. Some more subtle differences, like empty-stomach crying and full-diaper crying, are (I think) interpretable to some extent across children.  But just like adults, very young children also develop idiosyncratic cries, laughs, grunts, giggles, and so on. And their lack of self-censorship makes these especially useful sources of information about their internal lives (and external but out-of-sight activities).

From today's Doonesbury:

The latest Subnormality includes this panel:

Saturday's Dilbert:

Digital media offer wonderful opportunities for the study of language, communication, and culture. So despite short-term problems, both internal and external, I'm optimistic.

Today's Dilbert (12/01/10):

Today's Sore Thumbs starts with this panel:

From Ben Zimmer, who got it from Mike Klaas, who found it on the Wonder-Tonic site ("Written, Graphical, and Interactive Sundries by Mike Lacher") of 3/31/10, here:

Following on the Dinosaur Comics eggcorn cartoon in my last posting, here's Micah Gordon's Coarse Ground on (roughly) the same subject:

Scorecard follows…

From Ryan North yesterday:

with an explanation, and a plug for LLog:

WHAT ARE THE HAPS MY FRIENDS

November 17th, 2010: This comic and all the eggcorns in it come from the wonderful Language Log and the eggcorn database.

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Today's Dilbert:

This is a different — and I think more interesting — take on the issues discussed here and here.

The Nov. 10 Subnormality , featuring a tour of the Museum of the Theoretical, has a nice example of dude used as an interjection:

Tim Leonard sent along the Nov. 2 User Friendly strip, with a question: