Noncompositional

It’s amazing the difference between semesters [nominal extraposition]. Only two days gone by and yet the semester seems like it’s been going on for weeks and weeks [non-constituent coordination, copy-raising]. Well, I’m anticipating that either this will be a slow semester of blogging due to me faithfully concentrating on teaching and research, or a semester of much blogging due to…uh, the massive amounts of ideas I’ll be getting from all the academic activity [discontinuous coordination]. (just practicing noticing various non-canonical constructions, to get back into the swing of things)

Actually, I’m hoping that a particular ad for Aflac is still in existence at a gas station near my apartment, because it would potentially be great material for the class (actually, moreso for a slightly different class that isn’t offered this year, but I can always figure out a way to squeeze it in). But I’ll probably test it out here first. In short, it’s about metaphors for service institutions, and conceptual blending.

And, in case you hadn’t noticed, the title for this post contains the strange minimizing use of all of, as in, He’s been here for all of three days and already he thinks he owns the place.

A recent PC post on envelope-pushing names in China reminded me of the situation on names in Japan, where there is a government-sanctioned list of Chinese characters (kanji) that can be used in personal names. This doesn’t limit the possible sounds that can go into a name (beyond the phonology of the language), as you can just use hiragana (or katakana?) to indicate the appropriate pronunciation.

The approved list of kanji, the Jinmeiyoo Kanji (’Chinese characters for use in personal names’), consists of 983 kanji that do not appear in the standard 2000-odd standard kanji used in everyday writing, giving parents about 3000 characters to chose from. Excluded from the list are many characters that indicate culturally taboo or offensive concepts, like prostitution, cancer, and various emotional states (resentment, e.g.). Once, there were parents who attempt to give their child a name like ‘demon’ or something similar, and this name was rejected as a form of abuse of parental powers, due to the expected social difficulties that the child would be expected to experience (but, I haven’t heard anything about Japanese parents tying to put symbols in names, like in the Chinese story).

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Fear not, faithful reader(s), I still exist. However, despite the rapid onslaught of lack-of-institute, I have somehow managed to remain busy, probably due to something called “things I was supposed to be doing in July.” Maybe, just maybe, much of that will be done before classes begin at the end of August. Until then, an assignment in morphology vs. phonology: magicite (the mineral/stone/thingy that stores the essence of magic(k)al power in one or more fantasy worlds): is it magi[k]ite or magi[s]ite?