Problem Of Other Minds Puns

This is the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, after the story ends. After chopping down the beanstalk, Jack realizes that he’s actually pretty damn good with an axe, and casual vegetative vandalism really struck his fancy, so he began chopping down other trees for a living. He became a traveling woodsman, and he enjoyed many years of his simple life of manual labor.

One day, as he chops wood, he hears screams from a nearby cottage. Hurriedly breaking in (because recall: jack has no problem with entering houses uninvited), he sees a cross dressing lycanthrope attempting to devour a little girl dressed all in red and her little grandmother too. Wielding his trusty axe, Jack murdered yet another fantasy creature, and safely led Little Red all the way back home. Answering the door was a beautiful woman of around his age. After sending Little Red to bed, the two of them talked for hours.

One thing led to another, and a year later they were married with a child on the way. They had a beautiful little boy named Jack Junior who followed in his father’s steps to become a woodsman. This was fortunate, because as Junior grew up, Jack was feeling the pain of his previous adventures. An old back injury from jumping from the beanstalk was haunting him, and over time his posture grew more and more hunched. He had a tough time working, but at least Junior was becoming a strapping young man.

One day, Jack and Junior took the long road to the grandmothers place to bring her a meal, just like that fateful trio Red took so many years ago. When they arrived, the grandmother greeted them cheerily, welcoming them in and making conversation. “Oh Junior,” she said, “you’ve grown into such a handsome and strong young man. It’s so kind of you to handle all the work so your poor father, with his bad back and all, doesn’t have to. Why don’t you have a girlfriend yet?” Junior hesitated. “Well Grandma,” he replied. “It’s because... I’m gay”. The close-minded, set-in-her-ways grandma’s expression became stormy. She pulled poor hunched-over Jack into adjacent room, and whispered angrily: “Jack, your life is a mess! Your posture is terrible and your son isn’t giving me any grandsons!” Jack replied: “Ma, we’re happy, you can’t just-“ But she interrupted. “No excuses!” She snapped. “You need to straighten your lumbar, Jack!”

Note: Quality Very Varying (I see what I did there) and sometimes subject to specialist knowledge. So I apologise in advance. Shame me with your better puns.

While I was languishing in the Language Centre, doing some semantics antics and considering how all the other linguistics students despised and derided me, I was accosted by a stout man with large glasses who made me a preposition. It was that I should collect terrible puns, to do with linguistics, in order to ingratiate myself yet further with the other linguistics students (including even the phonetics fanatics).

I'm struggling to think of a pun to do with grammaticality that both makes sense and "Is grandma tickly?" correct. I'm also stuck on 'morphologician'. (I'm not actually sure that's a particularly logical word for the subject, though I guess that's more for, er, more for a logician to worry about.)

The problem I have with writing about phonological variation is that one is constantly forced to choose between being fun or logical - very Asian!I always get in trouble with electricians, they think I'm calling them a 'dialectician' whereas in fact I'm just saying "Die, electrician."

I like pscycholinguistics – the only department of linguistics where it’s acceptable to wear a cycle helmet. My Australian accent is terrible but I like to think my Sath Efrican one is predicate. My favourite accent is Received Pronunciation, because it is the accent chiefly used by invisible Japanese people who are ordered online. When the first recipient of an invisible Japanese person got the parcel, they wrote a complaint saying "Received but can't see Asian" and the name stuck.

Why did the speakers whose native languages weren't English, but whose only shared language was English, but they weren't very good at it and kept on having to stop to think about it, stop talking to one another? They came to an agreement. (Get it? If not, write your answer on a pastecard and paste it to the below address.)

What did the 'a' say to the 'the'? "You definitely are ticklish, 'the'!"

Why was the small man eaten by the large bear, which was proportionately bigger than him? It had, er, relative claws.

I think the reason there are so many speakers of Russian is because they all partake in an activity called "copulae shun". (Ok, ok, I know, that was Pushkin it.)

I know a man called Hillary who can, might, should, did, must, shall and will ride an ox. We call him "Ox Hillary".

I always think the verb 'to be' in the senten

The CIA had changed its recruiting practices, what with all the recent leaks and other problems. So Mr. Johnson was more than a little surprised to see a pine tree, which was dressed in a rather nice suit, waiting outside his office when he arrived at 9 am. He asked his secretary, "Gladys, who is this?"

"Mr. Johnson, this is Mr. Cone, our newest hire. He wanted to talk with you about the Honduras assignment."

Mr. Johnson spoke to Mr. Cone in his office. His new pine tree colleague was very knowledgeable and well-spoken, but there was something about him that threw Mr. Johnson off. He tried to dismiss his concerns as imaginary, but it gnawed at him all through the morning. He barely touched his lunch, as some of the things Mr. Cone had said were still swirling around and around in his mind. He was sure something was wrong, so he went in to see the head of their office branch, Mr. Smith.

"Johnson! Come right in, come right in," said Mr. Smith, puffing on a cigar. Mr. Johnson poured himself a tumbler of whiskey and sipped at it nervously.

"You're being rather quiet today, Johnson. Tell me, what's troubling you?"

"It's just this new guy, Mr. Cone," Mr. Johnson said carefully, staring at the bottom of his whiskey glass. "Are we sure we know him as well as we think we do?"

Mr. Smith took only a small puff from his cigar before letting his hand rest back on his desk. "Now really, Johnson," he sighed, "you're a good agent. Your caution has served you well in the past, but paranoia doesn't look so good on you. Mr. Cone has the most impressive resumé I've seen come across my desk in the last fifteen years. I've personally had him vetted by the best men in the business. He's going to be an asset to this office."

That was the response Mr. Johnson had been afraid of getting, but he continued to press his cause. "I understand that, sir. It's just that I'm getting the strangest feeling from this Cone fellow. Don't you think he's a little too perfect? A little too well-qualified?"

Mr. Smith stopped smoking his cigar altogether. A distant look came into his eyes as he mulled over the possibilities. "You don't suppose--"

"Yes," said Mr. Johnson, "I think he's a plant."

Note: I'm a mom, not a dad, but I'm pretty sure I only thought of this because my father-in-law tortures me with these kinds of stories almost constantly.