
Free Sex Pot Bust Rap – Introduction to Noun Talk - secondary
https://billwadge.wordpress.com/2019/06/28/free-sex-pot-bust-rap/
======
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-](https://ciudadseva.com/texto/tlon-uqbar-orbis-)

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

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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.

~~~
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.

~~~
ggggtez
Because adjectives come before nouns. The first word is almost always is a
descriptor of the second word. A "pig flier" is clearly something that flies
pigs, not a type of pig that flies.

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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.

~~~
FearNotDaniel
My dad's old tabloid-satire favourite, which does admittedly contain a few
non-nouns: MAD GAY PRIEST IN SEX CHANGE MERCY DASH TO PALACE

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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](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](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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_salad)

~~~
Nursie
Welp ... that's what happens when you think verbs are a conspiracy and try to
base a legal theory on it.

To me the most bizarre aspect is the central one - you think that the
government is a conspiracy, that sometime in the past, more than a century
ago, the whole thing was usurped by this massive conspiracy who are
systematically keeping down the common man, and controlling everything.

And you think if you say the magic combination of word-salad they're going to
be forced somehow to stop it and recognise you? Like "Uh, yeah, this guy knows
the magic words, guess we don't get to oppress him now, you're free to go sir"
instead of "What? we took over the whole government, back in your box, slave"

Because that totally makes sense.

\--edit-- Oh wow, yeah that word salad page really does look like this stuff!

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

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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](https://i.imgur.com/of9ZaGN.jpg)

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
It's not limited to technology: your observation hit me right in the feels.

~~~
dqpb
I don't have trypophobia, but I imagine it's similar to the cringy sensation I
get when I hear phrases like "hit me in the feels", and "he's good people".

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

~~~
pjc50
This is actually referenced in the article if you read down a bit.

~~~
gilleain
Sigh, thanks. Should have read it all.

------
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...](https://lyricstranslate.com/en/noch-ulica-fonar-
apteka-%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%87%D1%8C-%D1%83%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0-%D1%84%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8C-%D0%B0%D0%BF%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%B0-night-
street.html)

------
markvdb
Reminds me of Buffalo buffalo buffalo.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buffalo_buffalo_B...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo)

------
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...](https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/lot-12-underground-
newspapers-1816140204).

------
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)

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munificent
See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese)

------
commanderjroc
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K-L9uhsBLM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K-L9uhsBLM)

