This morning, at Language Log, linguist Benjamin Zimmer from,
UPenn, posted “Blawgs, phonolawgically speaking” as a
follow-up to Mark Liberman’s piece at the same weblog “Who
use of “blawg” terminology and the defense of its usage by
the Editor of Blawg Review. Zimmer takes a look at what
makes “blawg” such an interesting portmanteau or “blend
word,” with special emphasis on the morphophonological
aspects of the word.
For an interesting peek at another profession that is (literally)
focused on parsing words and making fine distinctions, law-
types could not do better than checking out Zimmer’s post
bisecting the blog-law-blawg portmanteau.
For example, he explains that one type of blended word is
the sandwich variety, where part of one of the blended words
is inserted into the other word (rather than attached to it). A
famous example is Lewis Carroll’s “chortle,” where chortle =
ch(uck)le + (sn)ort. . But, “blawg” is unique:
“The recipe for such sandwich words is pretty constant:
take a polysyllabic word and replace the primarily-stressed
syllable with a punchy monosyllabic word of your choice.
It’s clear, however, that blawg is a different beast, morpho-
phonologically speaking. Denise Howell took a monosyllabic
word (blog) and inserted another monosyllable (law), such
that the “bread” for the sandwich consists merely of one
initial consonant (b-) and one final consonant (-g). I know
of no other sandwich word so dominated by its filling.
“What’s more, the two component words are maximally over-
lapping for some speakers and nearly so for others. . . . “
[Ed note: a discussion of whether “blawg” sounds like
“blog,” and if it matters, follows.]
After this brief exposure to linguistics, it seems to me that linguists
are science-minded persons, who like words more than numbers,
and are too nice to want to be lawyers. Like lawyers, however,
they apparently do tend to take liberties when describing the pos-
itions of others. Thus, where I said I was surprised, Benjamin says
I am “shocked.” Where I merely gave a prominent example, he says
I am “troubled.”
One thing for sure, I bet Benjamin and Mark would be quite annoyed,
if someone wanted to permanently call their weblog a “bling“, merely
because weblogs by linguists are so unique.
p.s. (Jan. 25, 10 AM): Just a quick apology to Benjamin Zimmer
for mistakenly calling him “Zimmerman” in the first version of this
post. All the portmanteau talk led me astray: “when it comes
to morphophonology, Zimmer is the Man!”
update (Jan. 27, 2005): Denise Howell, coiner of “blawg” and still
one of our very favorite persons in the entire blogiverse, has a piece
at Bag & Baggage about the recent discussion at Language Log,
by linguists Benjamin Zimmer and Mark Liberman on the use of
“blawg.” Denise suggests, in “I, Sandwich Dominatrix,” Jan. 25, 2006)
without ever linking to f/k/a or mentioning us, that:
Tyler, the original “baggage”:
“If you are among the folks — linguists excluded; it’s their
job — who might be spending a little too much thought and
energy on this borderline microbial issue, please consider
channeling your efforts toward something of more tangible
benefit to mankind.”
See our response by scrolling down to the update to our original post
on making the word “blawg” obsolete.”
“snowflakeS” Speak Brooks? We sure do. So, here are a
half dozen haiku and senryu from Randy Brooks:
big brother’s grin . . .
the last piece of the puzzle
out of his pocket
mourning dove
returns to the porch rail
new snow fluffs off
sawing–
the sap begins to flow
out of the evergreen
eyeing the spot
where our bumpers bumped–
snow in his thick eyebrows
cedar walking cane
hangs from the coat rack
dust on the handles curves
January 24, 2006
speak blawg?
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