English is a Silly Language

Allegory

Alliteration

Allusion

Ambiguity

English is a Silly Language!

http://www.gray-area.org/Research/Ambig/

Collection of Ambiguous or Inconsistent/Incomplete Statements

Compiled by Jeff Gray

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,

"it means just what I choose it to mean - nothing more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice,

"whether you can make words mean so many different things."

       Lewis Carroll

Introduction

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the 500 words used most in the English language each have an average of 23 different meanings. The word "round," for instance, has 70 distinctly different meanings. The variance of word meanings in natural language has always posed problems for those who attempt to construct an unambiguous and consistent statement. It is often the case that a written statement could be interpreted in several ways by different individuals, thus rendering the statement subjective rather than objective. The first detailed examination of this problem with respect to the specifications of computer systems is contained in [Hill, 72]. Hill provides a plethora of examples to illustrate this common problem. Peter G. Neumann illustrated this point by constructing a sentence which contained the restrictive qualifier "only." He then showed that by placing the word "only" in 15 different places in the sentence resulted in over 20 different interpretations [Neumann, 84]. Moreover, other words like "never," "should," "nothing," and "usually" are sometimes applied in a manner in which a double meaning can be ascribed. In particular, the word "nothing" was a favorite word often used by Lewis Carroll.

Occasionally the ambiguity found in natural language may evoke images of the ridiculous while at other times it may be the source of humor. The examples presented here point to the potential confusion that can result when using natural language. That is, informal descriptions are subject to the vagaries and ambiguities of the natural language in which they are expressed. Those who formulated these statements did not fully consider the implications caused by the way in which the sentences were phrased. In a sense, they became victims of the Humpty-Dumpty Syndrome, a phenomenon where individuals fail to realize that words have many meanings and that others may not always be able to surmise the intent of a particular statement.

If simple statements like those given on this Web page are vulnerable to ambiguity, one can only imagine the potential problems that exist within a software requirements specification (SRS) written entirely in natural language. Such documents can easily be hundreds or thousands of pages in length. The possibility of ambiguities and inconsistent statements existing in such documents is very real.

The following represents a collection of ambiguous or inconsistent statements that I have found from various places. While most of them provide a source of amusement, my overall goal is to show that the cavalier use of natural language can often lead to unintended meanings.

I plan to add new content to this list periodically. If you have any additions or suggestions, please contact me at:

English is a Silly Language!

Part 1:

Lets face it, English is a stupid language.

There is no egg in the eggplant.

No ham in the hamburger.

And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.

English muffins were not invented in England.

French fries were not invented in France.

We sometimes take English for granted.

But if we examine its paradoxes--

We find that Quicksand takes you down slowly.

Boxing rings are square.

And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

If writers write, how come fingers don't fing.

If the plural of tooth is teeth,

shouldn't the plural of phone booth be phone beeth?

If the teacher taught,

Why didn't the preacher praught.

If a vegetarian eats vegetables

What does a humanitarian eat!?

Why do people recite at a play

Yet play at a recital?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy

Of a language where a house can burn up as

It burns down

And you fill in a form

By filling it out

And a bell is only heard once it goes!

English was invented by people, not computers

And it reflects the creativity of the human race

(Which of course isn't a race at all)

That is why:

When the stars are out they are visible

But when the lights are out they are invisible

And why it is that when I wind up my watch

it starts but when I wind up this poem

it ends?

English Homonyms

· We must polish the Polish furniture.

· He could lead if he would get the lead out.

· The farm was used to produce produce.

· The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

· The soldier decided to desert in the desert.

· This was a good time to present the present.

· A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

· When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

· I did not object to the object.

· The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

· The bandage was wound around the wound.

· There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

· They were too close to the door to close it.

· The buck does funny things when the does are present.

· They sent a sewer down to stitch the tear in the sewer line.

· To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

· The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

· After a number of injections my jaw got number.

· Upon seeing the tear in my clothes I shed a tear.

· I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

· How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Missing Words

The omission of a key word from a statement can drastically change the intended meaning, as evidenced by the following examples:

· I saw this at a department store in my hometown recently:

"We now have dress shirts on sale for men with 16 necks"

Hopefully, the omission of "-inch" was not intentional!

· Adultery Considered OK?

In 1623, Baker and Lukas published a Bible in England since called "The Wicked Bible," because the little word "NOT" was omitted in the seventh commandment: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." The printers were heavily fined by the high commission and the whole edition destroyed.

Lexicon of Inconspicuously Ambiguous Recommendations

Lexicon of Inconspicuously Ambiguous Recommendations

    (Ways to handle those tricky situations! )

You're called upon for an opinion of a friend who is extremely

lazy. You don't want to lie --- but you also don't want to risk losing

even a lazy friend.

Try this line: "In my opinion," you say as sincerely as you can

manage, "you will be very fortunate to get this person to work for

you."

This gem of double meaning is the creation of Robert Thornton, a

professor of economics at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA.

Thornton was frustrated about an occupational hazard for teachers,

having to write letters of recommendation for people with dubious

qualifications, so he put together an arsenal of statements that can

be read two ways.

He calls his collection the Lexicon of Inconspicuously Ambiguous

Recommendations. Or LIAR, for short.

LIAR may be used to offer a negative opinion of the personal

qualities, work habits or motivation of the candidate while allowing

the candidate to believe that it is high praise, Thornton explained

last week.

                          Some examples from LIAR

To describe a person who is totally inept: I most enthusiastically

recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.

To describe an ex-employee who had problems getting along with fellow

workers: I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague

of mine.

To describe a candidate who is so unproductive that the job would be

better left unfilled: I can assure you that no person would be better

for the job.

To describe a job applicant who is not worth further consideration: I

would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of

employment.

To describe a person with lackluster credentials: All in all, I cannot

say enough good things about this candidate or recommend him too

highly.

Thornton pointed out that LIAR is not only useful in preserving

friendships, but it also can help avoid serious legal trouble in a

time when laws have eroded the confidentiality of letters of

recommendation.

In most states, he noted, job applicants have the right to read the

letters of recommendations and can even file suit against the writer

if the contents are negative.

When the writer uses LIAR, however, whether perceived correctly or not

by the candidate, the phrases are virtually litigation-proof, Thornton

said.

Ambiguous Newspaper Headlines

·  Following the tragic JFK Jr. accident, Reuters reported:

    Thursday July 22 9:22 AM ET (Reuters)

    "Kennedys Board Cutter On Way To Sea Burial"

The story was corrected so that a "kitchen board cutter"

could not be inferred:

    Thursday July 22 10:15 AM ET (Reuters)

    Kennedys Board Ship To Scatter JFK Jr.'s Ashes

·   Here are some sentences from actual newspaper articles:

   o  Great care must be exercised in tying horses to trees, as

they are apt to bark.

   o  We do not tear your clothing with machinery; we do it

carefully by hand.

   o  After Governor Baldridge watched the lion perform, he was

taken to Main Street and fed twenty-five pounds of red meat in front of

the Fox Theater.

   o  Dr. Benjamin Porter visited the school yesterday and lectured on

"Destructive Pests". A large number were  present.

   o  The Duchess handled the launching beautifully, confidently

smashing the champagne against the prow.  The crowd cheered as she

majestically slid down the greasy runway into the sea.

   o  Anti-nuclear protestors released live cockroaches inside the

White House Friday, and these were arrested when they left and blocked a

security gate.

ACTUAL ANNOUNCEMENTS TAKEN FROM CHURCH BULLETINS

Don't let worry kill you - let the church help.
Thursday night - Potluck supper. Prayer and meditation to follow.
Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community.
For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
The rosebud on the altar this morning is to announce the Birth of David Alan Belzer, the sin of Rev. and Mrs. Julius Belzer.
This afternoon there will be a meeting in the South and North ends of the church. Children will be baptized at both ends.
Tuesday at 4:00pm there will be an ice cream social. All ladies giving milk will please come early.
Wednesday, the ladies Liturgy society will meet. Mrs. Jones will sing "Put me in my little bed" accompanied by the pastor.
Thursday at 5:00pm there will be a meeting of the Little Mothers Club. All wishing to become little mothers, please see the minister in his study.
This being Easter Sunday, we will ask Mrs. Lewis to come forward and lay an egg on the altar.
The service will close with "Little Drops of Water". One of the ladies will start quietly and the rest of the congregation will join in.
Next Sunday a special collection will be taken to defray the cost of the new carpet. All those wishing to do something on the new carpet will come forward and do so.
The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind and they may be seen in the church basement Friday.
A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
At the evening service tonight the sermon topic will be "What is hell?" Come early and listen to our choir practice.
Bertha Belch, a missionary from Africa will be speaking tonight at Calvary Memorial Church in Racine. Come tonight and hear Bertha Belch all the way from Africa.
Announcement in the church bulletin for a National PRAYER & FASTING Conference. "The cost for attending the Fasting and Prayer conference includes meals".
"Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don't forget your husbands".
The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been canceled due to a conflict.
The outreach committee has enlisted 25 visitors to make calls on the people who are not afflicted with any church.
The ladies Bible Study will be held on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. All ladies are invited to lunch in the church hall after the B.S. is done.
The Pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday morning.
The congregation is asked to remain seated until the end of the recession.
Low self-esteem support group will meet on Wednesday from 7.00 to 8.30 p.m. Please use the back door.
The third verse of Blessed Assurance will be sung without musical accomplishment.
The Rev. Steacey spoke briefly, much to the delight of the congregation.
The Pastor will preach his farewell message, after which the choir will sing "Break forth into Joy"
Next Sunday Mrs. Solosky will be soloist for the morning service. The Pastor will then speak on "It's a terrible experience"
Due to the Pastor's illness, Sunday evening healing services will be discontinued until further notice.
The music for today's service was all composed by George Friedrich Handel in celebration of the 300th anniversary of his birth.
Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community.
Weight watchers will meet at 7 p.m. Please use large double door at the side entrance.

Six new choir gowns are currently needed, due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.

Anadiplosis

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/figures/anadiplosis.htm

Anadiplosis (an-uh-dih-PLO-sis): Figure of repetition that occurs when the last word or terms in one sentence, clause, or phrase is/are repeated at or very near the beginning of the next sentence, clause, or phrase.

Ex: "Kinetic energy is also known as the energy of motion. A vehicle's energy of motion doubles when its weight doubles. When a vehicle's weight doubles, it needs about twice the distance to stop."

"They call for you: The general who became a slave; the slave who became a gladiator; the gladiator who defied an Emperor. Striking story."

-- delivered by Joaquin Phoenix (from the movie Gladiator)

Click for Audio

"Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution."

-- George W. Bush, 9-20-01 Address to Congress and the Nation

Click for Audio

"Don't you surrender! Suffering breeds character; character breeds faith; in the end faith will not disappoint. You must not surrender...."

-- Jesse Jackson, 1988 Democratic National Convention Address

Click for Audio

Helen Parr/Elastigirl: "Dash, this is the third time this year you've been sent to the office. We need to find a better outlet, a more constructive outlet."

Dashiell 'Dash' Parr: "Maybe I could, if you'd let me go out for sports."

-----------------------------

Analogy

http://www.epcc.edu/faculty/joeo/sa_analogy.htm

An analogy is a comparison in whichdifferent items are compared point by point, usually with the idea of explaining something unknown by something known. Analogies are offered to provide insights, and can be very instructive. Analogies tend to suggest that existing similarities imply even more similarities.

Formal analogies are in this general form:

a:b::c:d

This is read as follows: "a is to b as c is to d". What that means in plainer English is that the relationship between "a" and "b" is similar somehow to the relationship between "c" and "d."

Here are more specific examples:
1. shoe is to foot as tire is to wheel
2. followers are to a leader as planets are to a sun
3. shells were to ancient cultures as dollar bills are to modern culture

In each of these examples, there are parallels between the first to terms and the last two. In the first example, a shoe has the same relation to a foot that a tire has to a wheel. Followers, by the same logic, are similar to planents, and shells functioned in some ancient cultures as printed money functions in our culture today.

Although analogies are helpful in pointing out relationships that may not at first be visible, they have their limitations. You often hear it said that an analogy "breaks down." That means that it is only suggestive and does not follow in every detail.

In the first example above, for instance, there is only limited similarity between a shoe and a tire. I don't know if a tire "protects" a wheel, as a shoe protects a foot. Shoes are not paritcularly round. And you don't usually have to "air up" shoes. On the other hand, they can both wear out in similar ways and both are usually made of some pretty durable stuff.

Here's an example that may not be so familiar to the ordinary reader. If I am trying to explain certain features of cyberspace to readers not familiar with it, I might point out that on the Internet or the World Wide Web, the URL ("Uniform Resource Locator," that long "address" usually beginning like this, "http://www......") is analogous (or very similar) to a name of an ordinary file on your computer.

Here is the formal analogy:

computer file : URL :: computer : network (where "network" means all the computers taken together on the World Wide Web, or WWW).

Indeed, this analogy shows how a computer file and a WWW document name are very similar. What's even more interesting in this analogy is that it may be even MORE useful in showing the nature of the WWW: it's really just one huge computer. And because of the way files names are constructed, every document "address" is IN FACT just a file name on the enormous "worldwide" computer called the WWW.

The limitations of analogies have been suggested above: they break down or don't hold except in narrow ways. Another way of saying the same thing is that analogies don't prove anything. As said above, they are merely useful in helping people see similarities not otherwise apparent.

http://academic.luzerne.edu/bpajka/analogy_examples.htm

When NATO began bombing Serbia during the Kosovo crisis, the Clinton administration, along with the U.S. media, likened Yugoslavian president Slobodan Molsovic to Adolf Hitler and compared the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo to the Nazis' "final solution" against the Jews. When justifying the bombing, Clinton frequently evoked the Holocaust and the lessons of World War II. "Never again," he said. Meanwhile, the Serbian community in the United States (and many Balkan scholars) criticized the Holocaust analogy. The Serbian community likened the Kosovo crisis not to the Nazi annihilation of the Jews but to a civil war in which Serbs were protecting their homeland against Albanian terrorists. they pointed to explanatory precedents when the Serbs themselves were victims, especially the "ethnic cleansing" of Serbs from Croatia in 1995. *

When the voting age was reduced from twenty-one to eighteen, many people argued for the lower voting age by saying, "If you are old enough to fight for your country in a war, you are old enough to vote." But author Richard Weaver claimed that this analogy was true "only if you believe that fighting and voting are the same kind of thing which I, for one, do not. Fighting requires strength, muscular coordination and, in a modern army, instant and automatic response to orders. Voting requires knowledge of men, history, reasoning power; it is essentially a deliberative activity. Army mules and police dogs are used to fight; nobody is interested in giving them the right to vote. This argument rests on a false analogy." Someone else might argue that Weaver's counter-analogy is also weak. *

*Both analogies are taken from Writing Argument: A Rhetoric with Readings. 5th ed. by Ramage, Bean, and Johnson.

Anapestic

Basic Feet

The basic unit used for counting accents in poetry is called a foot. Each foot has either two syllables in it or three syllables in it. There are four basic feet, two for two-syllable units and two for three-syllable units: the names are Greek because we trace one system of poetic scansion back to the Greeks. Even though their system (also used by the Romans) was quantitative and ours today is qualitative, we have retained their names. Here are the basic four feet:

iambic

trochaic

anapestic

dactylic

[OTHER 3 DUE WED., ALONG WITH ANAPHORA THROUGH APHORISM – GIVE EXAMPLES OF EACH IN BACKS OF NOTEBOOKS.]

The anapestic foot consists of three syllables, the first two of which are spoken more softly than the third syllable. The following words are all examples of anapestic feet:

_ _ /

in ter rupt

_ _ /

un der stand

_ _ /

ap pre hend

http://www.poeticbyway.com/xcowper.htm

“Bob’s Byway”

WILLIAM COWPER
1731 – 1800

While anapestic trimeter is the prevailing metrical pattern of this poem, only 20 of the 56 lines are fully anapestic; 36 lines begin with an iambic foot.

VERSES SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BY ALEXANDER SELKIRK

I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute;
From the center all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

O solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?

Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.

I am out of humanity's reach.
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech;
I start at the sound of my own.

The beasts that roam over the plain
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.

Born in Scotland in 1676, Alexander Selkirk ran away to sea when he was nineteen. In 1704, during a privateering expedition to plunder Spanish shipping off the Pacific coast of South America, he became concerned over the seaworthiness of their ship. After a quarrel with the captain, he asked to be put ashore on the Juan Fernandez islands, about 400 miles off the coast of Chile. Selkirk remained alone on the island for four years and four months, until finally rescued by an English vessel in 1709.

His adventures provided the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

The Chilean government has renamed two of the Juan Fernandez islands, one as Isla Robinson Crusoe and another as Isla Alejandro Selkirk.

Society friendship and love
Divinely bestow'd upon man,
O had I the wings of a dove
How soon I would taste you again!

My sorrows I then might assuage
In the ways of religion and truth,
Might learn from the wisdom of age,
And be cheered by the sallies of youth.

Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly world!
More precious than silver and gold,
Or all that this earth can afford.

But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard,
Ne'er sighed at the sound of a knell,
Or smil'd when a sabbath appear'd.

Ye winds that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I shall visit no more:

My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.

How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.

When I think of my own native land
In a moment I seem to be there;
But, alas! recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair,

But the seafowl is gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair;
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.

There is mercy in every place,
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace
And reconciles man to his lot.