The New Sesquipedalian

If you can’t make it to the P-Workshop today, this website should be second best. It could probably be used to create a corpus like the German Alcohol Language Corpus…

This should help.

My favorite part is that the “islands” (including Wh-island) are separated from the mainland by “con-straits”.

Stolen shamelessly from Beatrice Santorini:

Lexical Ambiguity

Q: River Ravi flows in which state?
A: Liquid.

Q: How can a man go eight days without sleeping?
A: By sleeping at night.

Structural ambiguity

Q: How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
A: You will never find an elephant that has only one hand.

Referential ambiguity

Q: Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?
A: At the bottom of the page.
Q: What can you never eat for breakfast?
A: Lunch or dinner.

Q: If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it?
A: No time at all, the wall is already built.

Q: How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?
A: Any way you want, concrete floors are very hard to crack.

Violations of Cooperative Principle

Q: What looks like half an apple?
A: The other half.

Q: If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what will it become?
A: Wet.

Q: If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in the other hand, what would you have?
A: Very large hands.

Q: In which battle did Napoleon die?
A: His last battle.

Q: What is the main reason for divorce?
A: Marriage.

Q: What is the main reason for failure?
A: Exams.

Be careful what you name them, folks. This article has some wisdom on how to name them well, as does the following anecdote.

A burglar broke into a house one night. He shined his flashlight around, looking for valuables when a voice in the dark said, ‘Jesus knows you’re here.’

He nearly jumped out of his skin, clicked his flashlight off, and froze. When he heard nothing more, he shook his head and continued.

Just as he pulled the stereo out so he could disconnect the wires, clear as a bell he heard ‘Jesus is watching you.’

Startled, he shined his light around frantically, looking for the source of the voice. Finally, in the corner of the room, his flashlight beam came to rest on a parrot.

‘Did you say that?’ he hissed at the parrot.

‘Yes’, the parrot confessed, then squawked, ‘I’m just trying to warn you that he’s watching you.’

The burglar relaxed, ‘Warn me, huh? Who in the world are you?’

‘Moses,’ replied the bird.

‘Moses?’ the burglar laughed, ‘What kind of people would name a bird Moses?’

The bird replied, ‘The kind of people who would name a Rottweiler Jesus’

Have you heard about the Great Language Change Hoax? If not, this article will enlighten you.