Functional Linguistics Puns

Feels like it has been outdated..... Sorry for my little knowledge on this theory. But can we combine it with quantitative method or is there any research that has already realized the mix of qualitative and quantitative method on SFL?

Hello everyone,

I am writing an essay on the topic that I put in the title of the post and I kinda got stuck with it. Applied linguistics is not really my cup of tea. It was easy for me to write some differences but what are some similarities of those two approaches in Applied Linguistics? Specifically in second language acquisition, teaching, although I would really appreciate answers even if its about Applied Linguistics in general. Of course I'm not looking for somebody who will do my homework, but will point me in the right direction

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any ideas how one would go about this, only using pictures for the different meaning components (form, meaning, sound) of each functional components?

trying to teach myself to code anki decks, does anyone know how to make custom cards?

What is genre analysis and how is it done under the framework of systemic functional linguistics?

Hi! I'm doing a study about functional features of Philippine Legal Memoranda, and I'm basing my model for analysis on a study that I found which analysed functional features of Chinglish Legal memoranda. The problem is that I'm having a hard time locating an article or a book that explains elaborately the textual metafunction focused on simple theme, clausal theme and multiple theme. Any help is much appreciated. Thank you!

Or would it be okay to post that kind of thing here? I don't see it very often.

I'm currently working on a final for one of my SFL classes and I was wondering if you would let me pick your brain. Mostly on the topic of Theme & Rheme, but there's a possibility some processes might be involved.

Feel free to PM me!

Thanks!

Edit: For example,

Theme: Then (interpersonal) there are those (marked topical?)

Rheme: who don’t wear bras at all.

Theme: to trace (marked topical?)

Rheme: their eyes and nose and soft neck with her rough fingers.

Theme: as (textual) if (marked topical?)

Rheme: he’s the unwelcome guest at a sacred rite.

I think I'm mostly having trouble understanding exactly what a marked Theme is when I see it. Textual metafunction was our shortest covered metafunction, so I'm a little confused about it.

Thank you!

First-time poster so sorry if I've done this wrong (I made a new thread because I have completed an introductory linguistics module).

Hi! I am doing a three-level metafunctional analysis of a recipe and I am struggling with the following section. I will use | to break off what I think are the clause boundaries.

Soak the gammon overnight in cold water, | unless mild cured when several hours will be sufficient

it is the 'unless mild cured' that I am struggling with. Obviously what it is saying is 'unless it has been mild cured' but I'm struggling to work out if 'cured' is a verb in its own right or if it is a nominalisation (because I can't analyse 'it has been' when it isn't there). Both of these thoughts could also be wrong! I'm just looking for help on how to categorise this as I am finding SFL very confusing indeed. I've consulted my trusty copy of Halliday's FG and still can't seen to work it out. Thanks!

I’d ask under homework help, but as this is regarding my bachelor dissertation, I don’t need that kind of help I think- Thing is, in doing my diss in drama, and as the absolute dumdum I am, I managed to get a fascination for linguistics, particular roman Jakobson & his models and functions. I’ve read through some of one of his books and it IS extremely interesting, but I’m very uncertain where I can go to read more on similar topics. I don’t have a lot of experience with linguistics, so I massively bit over more than I can chew, but I do think if I read a bit more it’ll start coming together - I’m already understanding the poetic function somewhat, which is what I’m aiming at.

Point is, does any of you have any good recs for reading material? Preferably essays and articles I can find online, regarding this function, or generally linguistics on stage. I’d also love talking about it all and trying to get a better understanding of everything! Thank you

(usa) a lot of social conservatives bitch about them as being grammatically incorrect and confusing but we've used gender neutral pronouns to refer to people of unknown gender for years.

like, if my friend was going to introduce me to a new person i might ask "what are they like?" in instances like this. it's being used to refer to one person, singular, and is obviously grammatically correct.

the only difference between referring to someone in the former example and a person with they/them pronouns is that the they/them person's pronouns are known.

the only reason people act like this is extremely confusing and unfair or get angry over the supposed "incorrect grammar" are culture war obsessed nerds and old people who use too much facebook. it's all just so disingenuous.

I have written some nltk/python functions that look for certain patterns in speech and transform them into a different pattern. I'm looking for a) the proper terminology to describe what this process is, and b) what similar patterns I might want to apply myself to in this regard.

Example of a pattern and the output for "there is/ there are" statements:

There is a huge shaggy dog in my yard --> A huge shaggy dog is in my yard

There are fifty geese in the lake across the street --> Fifty geese are in the lake across the street

Example of a pattern and the output for what I believe are called Conversational Postulates:

I'm curious if you can answer these questions --> Can you answer these questions

What I'm really wondering is if you have the technical skills to compete --> Do you have the technical skills to compete

To clarify, I am not asking how to do these - I have the above examples working well - I am just trying to understand what these functions are called, and perhaps hear of what some other related patterns might be that occur frequently in conversational speech to which I can apply similar coding.

Oddly, I find this to be fun... lol. Thanks for your thoughts and assistance.

I'm guessing about it might be a placebo effect, that's why I'm asking.

Since I started k-holing every weekend, I feel like it's harder for me to express my ideas and talk coherently. It's like the process is slowed down.

Do you think that ketamine might harm that area of the brain that's related with the language function?

First - Previous - Next

The Terran fleet that arrived in the Weaver system was relatively small; consisting of one dreadnaught, four battlecruisers, two missile frigates, and eight corvettes, along with several support vessels and troop transports.

They had spent a week in transit, with the voyage having been mostly quiet. With the exception of the pack of Void Wolves that had been trailing the fleet for the last three days.

The fleet had dropped out of FTL for about an hour earlier that day to "discourage" them from following any further. It would be unfortunate if the creatures were to bother the Weaver colony later, or decide to harass the fleet in the middle of combat.

"Discouraging them", had consisted of first locating the biggest, meanest looking one of the critters, and shooting it in the face with a kinetic round from the spinal gun of a battlecruiser; a lesson to the others that ships were not prey.

The creature did not survive the lesson.

However the creatures were either slow learners, or determined, and continued their approach. Since the point had not yet been made, the admiral had ordered the ship to target "the next biggest one".

It too, did not survive the lesson.

The lessons continued until the void wolf pack had taken approximately 50% casualties; at which point the remaining creatures fled, while emitting electromagnetic "howls" of various frequency.

Now however, the fleet was finally at the edge of the system and within communication range.

"Alright Silver, send a greeting and link us in to the Weaver's Battlenet, lets see how things are going" said the admiral.

"You got it boss" replied the AI.

The tactical display lit up with the words "ESTABLISHING BATTLEFIELD CONTROL, STANDBY".

A minute or so passed before he began to wonder what was taking so long. "Silver?"

"Keep your panties on, these spiders are weird. Even with the translation index Hool gave us, it's still hard to parse what they are sending" replied the AI.

"Yes. We've been in contact with them for over a century, and STILL haven't entirely perfected our understanding of the Weaver's language. Their spoken language is highly contextual, information dense, multi-banded, and, well, sort of "sung" to each other." said Ambassador Hool.

"Th

Here’s my use-case:

I am trying to create a language learning tool (for Chinese). I am a software developer.

I am trying to get a list of grammar rules for Chinese and while sites do exist for this purpose (Chinese Grammar Wiki is quite notable) I am not seeing any software libraries that have any sort of grammar rules/grammar analysis of documents beyond POS tagging and the like.

While things like Google translate are able to translate between languages, I assume this is due to Markov chains and various statistical (ML) analysis.

What I’d love to be able to do is put a piece of text through an analysis program, and spit out a list of grammar rules (already stored in the program) out. I’m happy to make this myself - the Chinese grammar wiki lists about 2000ish rules which is a large slough but hardly incomprehensible or impossible to make - I’d guess between 6 months to two years until completion and which would be massively helpful to my business model.

Is this the ideal way of doing this? Does something programmatic exist in this space I’ve just completely not noticed? I am aware of Jieba, but that’s just POS tagging and doesn’t seem to have more complex grammar rules.

EDIT: obviously grammar changes over time and slang usage exists, but I feel like this is the sort of project where even a partially completed project is still valuable

I'm sorry in advance, this boi is long and I feel like asshole for writing this out but I really needed to get this off my chest.

I've noticed this specifically in the BNHA fandom, but it definitely crops up in other anime fandoms as well, where writers will come up with their own nicknames for Japanese names/characters. Now, this is not inherently bad, but there are three issues I have with this trend: 1) these nicknames are often derived from English nickname-making nomenclatures (even though in the fic they're still in Japan, and are speaking Japanese) , 2) the author has every important character hand out nicknames to every other important character, and 3) the author goes to lengths to have their characters say these nicknames in dialogue way more than is natural.

For context, I speak Japanese (as an L2) and have a BA in Linguistics; I am aware that I'm overly sensitive to this, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I thought I'd vent this out anyway, if only to relieve my frustration, not because of the unnatural mixing of languages (which is honestly to be expected in this context), but rather because of the execution of the nickname(s) within the narrative.

1 - English-style nicknames

This alone isn't a complete deal breaker. Fics are obv written by a multilingual community, but most write in English, and many creators and consumers are native English speakers. It's not surprising at all that writers would fall back on their native nomenclatures to come up with a nickname for their fav characters.

That said, it can feel weird in a context full of Japanese names. Here's some basic info on Japanese nicknames for those interested. In general, nicknames are derived in a couple ways: diminutive forms, abbreviations, clippings, and epithets, to name a few. However, each language accomplishes these transformations in different ways. Japanese has name enders like -chan and -kun that are often used to derive diminutive names (as well as really babey one like -chin or -tan, e.g. Kuroko --> Kuro-chin), much like English uses -y/-i/-ie. Japanese does have abbreviations (e.g. Toukyou Manji --> TouMan), but doesn't really use them as nicknames for people I think (correct me if I'm wrong). Nicknames from clippings (e.g. Kyousuke --> Kyou) are not uncommon, but note that these clipped nicknames are commonly used with name enders (e.g. Kyou-san, Kyou-chan, etc.). Epithets are similar to English where they've done something amazing or have a notable

When asking questions like "你几岁？“ and "这个多少钱“ , it is proper to respond with responses like "我30岁" and "这个10块钱。" My question then is what is the grammatical verb in these two responses (and questions, I guess)?. I know that when adjectives function as predicates, they are classified as 'stative verbs,' like 他很高，这道菜特好吃, etc. Can numbers function the same way?

谢谢指教！

There are two things that you hear quite often... one of them is the mantra "Diversity is our greatest strength". That is what it is.

Meanwhile, there is another thing you hear quite often... and that is when speaking to the dysfunction in many parts of the MidddleEast and the Afric.Continent, people constantly say that these issues are the result of the "careless" colonial-era borders that were created all those years ago that split these nations across numerous ethnic groups, linguistic groups, religious groups, etc etc. Here is a very popular video here from a popular YouTuber making such a case in THIS video, but he is far from being the only person who puts forward such theories. They are quite common.

What is strange to me is that these theories for the MidddleEast and the Afric.Continent are saying that their dysfucntion/conflict issues arise from the nature of their high ethnic/religious/lingstic diversity, however, at the same time, we are always told that diversity is our greatest strength. Because, if this diversity was indeed a universal strength, shouldn't one expect these MidddleEast and the Afric.Continent nations to be the strongest and most productive/functional places in the world? So, which is it? Does diversity lead to war and conflict, as it is being blamed for in the MidddleEast and the Afric.Continent, or is it a unifying force for peace and harmony, as it is being championed in the US/Europe and the West?

As written above, how frequent is it crosslinguistically to have a distinction between all and every (EDIT: and each). And which purpose does such a distinctions serve? Or is it only some sort of a focussing feature?

So, imagine you found a genie who was all knowing about anything linguistics. What would be the one yes or no question you would ask it?

Maybe it's confirmation bias but I've increasingly noticed people use "what" instead of "which". For example "what kind of soda do you want?" "What languages include verbs?" I understand there is little functional difference but is the word disappearing?

Is there a linguistic term for words disappearing in this way? Language is fluid so this isn't a criticism but an observation.

Previous | Next

---Leviathan Power---

I awake to a rainbow of iridescent feathers clouding my vision.

I pull my head out from under Qorak’s wing and hop down from our perch.

“Computer, repeat?” I ask, blearily.

The computer answers in an uncharacteristically urgent tone “I say again, 37 separate messages detailing various disperate descriptions of a, hitherto, undetermined emergency have been logged within the last [66 minutes]. All attempts to identify the source and nature of the emergency and resolve it, without crew intervention, have failed. Most appropriate course of action determined to be: raise the Captain and advise her to gather Security Officers and the Engineering Lead to seek out the source and nature of the emergency and attempt to resolve it.”

My stomach drops.

I turn to Qorak, his face a mask of dread and his beautiful plumage wilting too, momentarily seeming almost as drab as my coat of matte grey, white and black.

I run to him and throw my wings around him and in as soothing a voice as I can manage, while conveying the urgency, I say “Seal the door when I’m gone, do not open it under any circumstances for anyone but me, even if I’m taken hostage and they threaten to kill me, that door stays shut. Do you understand me?”

Stammering, he says “B-but-I-you-but-if-th-they…”

I snap “Do you UNDERSTAND ME?!”

He slumps “Yes, my okla…”

I tenderly tap the side of my beak against his and, looking down into his eyes, I say “Thank you, sweetfruit…”

As I leave he calls out, desperately “Come back to me, Tcakqaal… don’t allow our daughter to grow up never having met her mother!”

Without turning I answer “I don’t intend to!”

---some [minutes] later---

*plap* *plap* *plap* *plap**plap**plap* *plap* *plap* *plap* *plap**plap**plap*

“So, what do the reports say?” asks Engineering Lead Kwijj, against the steady pitterpatter of her twelve, gel coated manipular-perambulatory tentacles on the Bridge Deck Corridor.

Jogging beside her, I answer “The…*huff*…common theme is that…*huff*…they describe being… *gah*…woken by…*huff**huff*…a ‘terrifying noise’…could you slow down?!”

Her single eye wheels down to mine without her forward momentum breaking. “I’m sorry, Captain. It really sounds like we don’t have time! None of the Triple Ms responded to c

Previous / First

James told General Sigbert about his thoughts on the vanishing blight. Namely, about his inability to do anything about it.

Understandably the general wasn't very happy about it.

He explained that he wasn't a scientist, or mage (at least not yet), and wasn't even intelligent about these kinds of things. He was a nursing student and a mechanic. This was out of his wheelhouse.

Kela confirmed this. She recounted the interview she'd done with James when he'd first arrived. She, Amina, and Veliry had told him about the conversation that the Colonel had had with King Farrick.

Sigbert was still disappointed, but he understood.

He agreed to give them copies of all the research on the blight. He'd been meaning to send an update to the king anyways, so it was killing two birds with one stone. However, it would take a few days to make a copy for James and Veliry's translation purposes.

In that time, James had to complete the book and use the resulting runes with Veliry. He'd also run a few more tests on the blight. He had come up with a few more ideas, and he might as well try them. Veliry rushed off to get a list of all the tests that had been done, to see if they matched up with what James was planning. Then she was going to get to work on copying notes. All the other researchers were being re-tasked, temporarily, to help her.

When they finally had finished planning, the sun was in the middle of the sky, just past the orbiting rings. Gixelle and Artair had also shown up. After recovering from the party, the two of them had spent the day prepping Gixelle and Maxel for their trip north.

Artair was officially taking over as James's riding instructor, and Gixelle had come to say goodbye.

Maxel and Steve were being oddly clingy with each other. Both of them seemed to realize that they wouldn't be together soon enough. Maxel was no longer being the ice queen she'd been when James had first met her. Instead, she and Steve were leaning against each other and rubbing their heads together, tails entwined.

When did that change? He wondered. Am I gonna have to pay Drake Child Support?

Gixelle shook hands with Sigbert, clasping forearms in that classic medieval warrior way that so many movies had shown James on earth. Sigbert lightly tapped the black eye with his knuckles.

"You can pay me back for

sometimes while I'm talking about a topic my mind starts thinking about a different one and just turn into Fitz from AoS, I feel like I can barely speak anymore, it sounds something like this:

"I...a a am t...trying to talk ab...out the....h...................hyperdrive"

When this start to happen I usually stop trying to speak and take a deep breath while I go back to normal, is this INTP related (at least on a small scale) or something else entirely?

Personally, I believe poverty of the stimulus is a really strong argument for the generativists. How would a functionalist respond to the question as to why children seem to learn syntax and vocabulary at such a lightning fast rate? I'm still on the fence about functionalist vs formal linguists, slightly leaning towards formal ling. at the moment, but it may be due to the fact I understand it more.

Thank you!

tl;dr - I assume linguistics is a relatively unpopular field. Why? Can we change this? How? (I hope this isn't too off topic for r/linguistics, it's a bit meta; I also hope that it doesn't come off as soapboxing, I'm genuinely interested in hearing people's thoughts.)

Compare the number of members in r/linguistics to r/philosophy or r/psychology. Compare the number of undergraduate majors across these three fields, or the number of academic departments specializing in these and related fields at universities and colleges across North America and perhaps the world. Most don't even offer a linguistics major, let alone have a dedicated linguistics department staffed by actual linguists. Given all this, I take it for granted that linguistics is a relatively unpopular field.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that language itself is very popular. People love learning factoids about the world's languages or etymology, they love riddles and language puzzles (crosswords, wordle!), they love language jokes and puns, they love creative uses of language (poetry, rap and other song lyrics, literature/fiction, aphorisms, inspiring oration).

One reason I am asking: I'm wondering whether our field is doomed to obscurity, or if we can turn this around. I.e. is this for deep and immutable reasons, or maybe just because our field is young (see point 1 below)?

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts, prescriptions, and possible objections to the presupposition of the question. And also if you're aware of any discussions of this elsewhere. Here are some of my own hunches:

1 - Linguistics is still a young field and just needs time to come into its own. Maybe competing frameworks within linguistics and the sometimes vicious debate between them makes the field look bad from the outside and turns people off? (That said, I'm a pluralist, it's good to have lots of competing ideas.)

2 - Linguistics is too hard. Trying to uncover truth in this field requires very careful thought, and the fact of the matter is, most people don't want to think hard (or they're too busy thinking hard about other stuff). (This could interact with 4.)

3 - The language/math dichotomy: Whether this is caused by our current education system, or is due to something deeper in the human folk taxonomy of areas of study, many school children seem to identify early as either a math and science person, or a creative person, with lovers of language being a subtype of creative person that can further manife

I'm reading The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. He writes:

>The particular ways that languages do form questions [moving the auxiliary to the front of the sentence] are arbitrary, species-wide convetions.

Could it not be arbitrary, but a common functionality? For instance (but not limited to) the listener benefiting from knowing with the first word of a sentence whether it is a question or a statement.

>The universal plan underlying languages, with auxiliaries and inversion rules, nouns and verbs, subjects and objects, phrases and clauses, case and agreement, and so on, seems to suggest a commonality in the brains of speakers ...

Or a commonality in function...?

>...because many other plans would have been just as useful.

Are they really?

>It is as if isolated inventors miraculously came up with identical standards for typewriter keyboards or Morse code or traffic signals.

I am pretty sure certain tools have been invented by different cultures seperatedly. See Multiple Discovery.

I'm quite convinced language, tool use and plenty of other things are innate to humans, or human nature in a sense. I am however not convinced, there has to be a "mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module" for language to explain the finding above...

Not to start a discussion whether Universal Grammar Theory is correct (even though I'm still happy about any input!). My main point is: Does my criticism make sense? Couldn't there be a common functionality in explaining overlapping grammar?

Last year, I worked on a comedy pilot with a friend who’s a published author but who didn’t have any screenwriting experience. So I gave her a crash course in screenwriting as went along.

Trying to explain comedy to her made me want to better understand it myself, and this is the result.

What’s So Funny?

Here’s my non-exhaustive list of things that can be funny… at least to some people, some of the time.

Reversals

Reversals go against expectations. Someone says or does something that’s a surprise, or a situation doesn't work out the way you expected.

If you expect the grandma with the walker to be frail, and the gang member to be tough, and the grandma kicks the gang member in the balls, that’s a reversal of expectations.

Reversals can also happen when things flip from good to bad or vice versa, especially when it happens in an unexpected way.

The fall of those on the top, and the rise of those on the bottom, is an ancient source of comedy. It can be especially funny and satisfying to see powerful jerks put in their place.

Insults

Insults have been the basis for comedy pretty much forever. Shakespeare was really good at them.

Exaggeration

Exaggeration can be verbal (“Yo Mama” jokes, which are also insults), situational (the WORST first day on the job), or physical (the MOST ridiculous outfit, the MOST muscle-bound bully).

Physical Comedy

Physical comedy includes things like pratfalls, fainting, spit takes, fights (especially silly ones, like with pies), slapstick, clowning, clumsiness, miming, stunts, slamming doors, collisions, injuries, and making funny faces. Basically, it’s humor based on actions rather than words, and often pain or destruction is involved.

Anarchy

The Marx Brothers were all about anarchy, chaos, defying social conventions, etc. The I Love Lucy chocolate factory scene is another classic example of things getting out of control. Often, anarchy is portrayed via physical comedy.

Disasters

Various [people](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/05/up-tree/#:~:text=Steven%20Spielber