Free Sex Pot Bust Rap – Introduction to Noun Talk

[harperlee]

This reminded me the superb short story “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges:

> There are no nouns in Tlön's conjectural Ursprache, from which the "present" languages and the dialects are derived: there are impersonal verbs, modified by monosyllabic suffixes (or prefixes) with an adverbial value. For example: there is no word corresponding to the word "moon,", but there is a verb which in English would be "to moon" or "to moonate." "The moon rose above the river" is hlor u fang axaxaxas mlo, or literally: "upward behind the onstreaming it mooned."

You can read the original for free here: https://ciudadseva.com/texto/tlon-uqbar-orbis-

And in english here: http://art.yale.edu/file_columns/0000/0066/borges.pdf

Highly recommended. 17 pages.

[aasasd]

Wikipedia says: “Almost all languages have the word classes noun and verb.”

[d_burfoot]

In my work on grammatically sophisticated natural language parsing, I thought about this pattern extensively. The basic observation is true: English allows you to stack nouns on top of one another, apparently without limit.

However, you're not really allowed to do this in any way you please. The almost-required interpretation is type specification: when you refer to N1 N2, you almost always means an N2 of type N1. So a "police officer" is an officer of type "police". An "oak tree" is a tree of type "oak".

I disagree with the grammaticality of some of the author's examples, and also some of his claims about the flexibility of the pattern. The type specification is almost always singular, and I've never seen punctuation included in the pattern. So "thrones game" should really be "throne game", and "night darkness, storminess" is not grammatical to me.

Interestingly, other languages do not permit this pattern, and so objects that can be expressed succinctly using the pattern in English become unwieldy in translation. In subways you sometimes a sign for "Passenger Emergency Intercom System" which is translated as something like "Sistema de comunicación para pasajeros en caso de emergencia" in Spanish.

[oever]

German and dutch have the same pattern but without the whitespace.

Hottentottententententoonstellingstenten.

[ggggtez]

Agreed, the authors personal ability to make the phrases was not quite right.

They also confuse the ability to have these attacked nouns, with the idea that they are equivalent to other sentences in meaning. I think it becomes clear things like

It was a dark and stormy night

Night darkness, storminess

Loses the context of what or when was dark and stormy.

[lonelappde]

Why isn't the police office a police of type officer? When he gets promoted to police seargant or police commissioner, he changes what type of police he is.

[jameshart]

The bag-of-nouns headline is a particular staple of regional British journalism. While bags of nouns are frequently used in both local and national headlines to describe the subjects of stories - CAR PARK PLUNGE DEATH VICAR is a succinct way of clarifying, our of all the death vicars, which death vicar this particular story relates to - but it tends to fall to local news to report on the various events which befall each death vicar - the APOLOGY, the ENQUIRY, the TRIBUTES, the COURT APPEARANCE, etc. as the story runs its course. National news tends only to run such stories when there is action, or closure, or a comment from a celebrity - CAR PARK PLUNGE DEATH VICAR FINALLY CAPTURED, or JUSTICE FOR CAR PARK PLUNGE DEATH VICAR, or CAR PARK PLUNGE DEATH VICAR ‘MISUNDERSTOOD’ CLAIMS BIG BROTHER CONTESTANT.

As a result they tend to resort to the occasional verb or adjective, while local press sticks to just the nouns.

On the other hand, US journalism tends to use prepositional phrases for their identifying markers - PRIEST IN PARKING LOT DEATH - which leads to ‘crash blossoms’ when they put verbs on the end: PRIEST IN PARKING LOT DEATH PROTESTS.

[benj111]

"The bag-of-nouns headline is a particular staple of regional British journalism"

Strikes me as more tabloid that regional? Maybe not in my region, regional??

Although I'm sure the Sun would have gone with

CAR PARK DEATH PLUNGE PRIEST. The readership loves a good old death plunge.

[aasasd]

Had to take another look at the “China Ferrari sex orgy death crash,” and lo it says Dublin right there: https://i.imgur.com/of9ZaGN.jpg

[Nursie]

Reading this reminds of some of the crazy Sovereign Citizen and redemptionist movement ideas about "Correct Language" or "Quantum Language". For some reason they believe that by eschewing verbs and using punctuation creatively, they can somehow compel the state to excuse them from taxes, debt, the need for a driving license etc etc.

It's sort of a semantic magical thinking and I find it fascinating.

The inventor seems to have been this guy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wynn_Miller

[knodi123]

Holy shit, this guy is having a legit schizophrenic episode and everyone around him thinks "I don't understand this, it must be brilliant".

From his site: http://dwmlc.com/dwm/pages/page.php?page=10

> FOR THE COURT OF THE WRITTEN-MOTION IS WITH THE FICTION BY THE MODIFICATION OF THE WRITTEN-WORD. FOR THE AFFIRMATION(OUTSIDE OF THE NOW-TIME-QUANTUM) OF THE PERJURY(FICTION OF THE LANGUAGE-CLAIMS) OF THIS PARLIAMENTARY(KINGS)-MOTION-PLEADINGS AGAINST THE PARTY.

Compare to the example in the wiki article on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_salad

[aasasd]

Afaik “quantum language” is a term for legitimate, and still ongoing, attempts at finding the semantic core of human languages. Possibly not ‘the’ accepted term, but used in some papers.

[andrewflnr]

It's like you're trying to program in the kingdom of nouns, but somehow end up doing point-free functional programming.

[aasasd]

Another baffling invention is the current trend towards verbs as nouns, unchanged. Namely, ‘compute’ and something else technicky.

You know, I think I'm gonna leave the browse for a while, sit in the eat-prepare and make me some eat to relaxed sound-play. To avoid my blood press go too high. Maybe take a walk on the walk or even down to the green-grow.

I guess people felt about the same way when nouns were taking off as verbs and adjectives. Anyway, soon all the parts of speech will change places and everything will be fine again.

----

Also, get a load of “China Ferrari sex orgy death crash”: https://i.imgur.com/of9ZaGN.jpg

[cannam]

Adjective rather than verb, but that's how I feel about Apple's use of "Recents" as a menu entry in some of their software.

Developers, if your application ever offers me a selection of Recents, I will delete it and then delete it, and delete it, again and again until the computer steps in to stop me.

I like to think that this is what provoked Jony Ive into leaving.

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

It's not limited to technology: your observation hit me right in the feels.

[dredmorbius]

The kitchen is the to-cook-place, actually:

https://www.etymonline.com/word/kitchen

[posterboy]

I feel way agitated by false homonyms, say "very" rendered "way". I don't really mind, but thinking about it is irritating ...

[gilleain]

A similar idea is explored in the novel 'The Tin Men' by Michael Frayn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tin_Men).

One of the characters invents 'Unit Headline Language' (UHL) with constructs like 'Strike Threat Probe Row'. A key feature of the language is that you can arrange the units in many different ways and it makes as much - indeed as little - sense.

"UHL, Goldwasser quickly realised, was an ideal answer to the problem of making a story run from day to day in an automated paper. Say, for example, that the randomiser turned up

* STRIKE THREAT

By adding one unit at random to the formula each day the story could go:

* STRIKE THREAT BID * STRIKE THREAT PROBE * STRIKE THREAT PLEA

And so on. Or the units could be added cumulatively:

* STRIKE THREAT PLEA * STRIKE THREAT PLEA PROBE * STRIKE THREAT PLEA PROBE MOVE * STRIKE THREAT PLEA PROBE MOVE SHOCK * STRIKE THREAT PLEA PROBE MOVE SHOCK HOPE * STRIKE THREAT PLEA PROBE MOVE SHOCK HOPE STORM

Or the units could be used entirely at random:

* LEAK ROW LOOMS * TEST ROW LEAK ..."

[mttjj]

This is literally the second half of the article…

[pjc50]

This is actually referenced in the article if you read down a bit.

[ordu]

Maybe unrelated, but reminds be Alexander Block[1]:

    Night, streets, the lantern, the drugstore,
    The meaningless and dusky light.
    A quarter of the century more --
    All fall the same into your sight!
 
    You died – as it was before –
    You have the former way to start:
    The streets, the lantern, the drugstore,
    Swell of the canal in the night.

The first and the last sentencies have no verbs at all.

[1] https://lyricstranslate.com/en/noch-ulica-fonar-apteka-%D0%B...

[markvdb]

Reminds me of Buffalo buffalo buffalo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buffalo_buffalo_B...

[secondary]

> The title of this post is a real headline from the Berkeley Barb (many years ago).

He's right about that: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/lot-12-underground-ne....

[benj111]

I was under the impression that Americans pronounced Berkeley to rhyme with berk, rather than bark? But then Berkeley Barb would suggest the latter pronunciation?

[jsgo]

Your impression is correct. There's also an interest for anything sharing the same first letter as meaningful. Which is why that Berkeley Barbs thing makes sense. Even willing to substitute so long as the phonetics are there (ie Kids Korner)

[munificent]

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese

[commanderjroc]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K-L9uhsBLM