Wednesday, January 14, 2009
"I ain't never seen no men-folks of no kind do no washin'." Tyler Cowen on the Appalachian quintuple negative and the word for the day, pleonasm. Pleonasms, if I understand what they are, are common in polynesian. Bora-bora, hula-hula, maki-maki. There's an interesting dialect which evolved on Pitcairn and is now on one other island which has a bunch of these.
The dialect is interesting because it exists only as a second language; everybody also speaks English. Pitcairn culture and ethnicity is a fusion of British and Polynesian.
There's also a pleonastic idiom on the chans' lolspeak, e.g., long cat is long.
Pleonasms involve redundancy, often for stylistic effect. Hot water heater, ink pen, ATM machine. Ah, wikipedia also lists ink pen... it's another use for the pleonasm (neoplasm), enhancing signal by duplication, since in Southern "pen" sounds like "pin".
The dialect is interesting because it exists only as a second language; everybody also speaks English. Pitcairn culture and ethnicity is a fusion of British and Polynesian.
There's also a pleonastic idiom on the chans' lolspeak, e.g., long cat is long.
Pleonasms involve redundancy, often for stylistic effect. Hot water heater, ink pen, ATM machine. Ah, wikipedia also lists ink pen... it's another use for the pleonasm (
Comments:
Post a Comment
