An anecdote about a smart-aleck (read: that kid) from a 1982 paper by the late UofC professor Jim McCawley: Anyone who has taught an introductory syntax course has had the experience of presenting an ungrammatical example only to be told by some smart-aleck about an unsuspecting interpretation on which the sentence is quite normal. For example, in discussing the order of auxiliary verb in English I have presented pairs of sentences such as (1)-(2) to illustrated that auxiliary have must precede progressive be: (1) Tom has been smoking pot. (2) *Tom is having smoked pot. On one occasion, a student pointed out that (2) is really grammatical since it allows an interpretation in which have is a main verb meaning get and smoked pot is a noun phrase with a structure similar to fried eggs. Such interventions are usually greeted with the sort of groans that are the accepted form of expressing appreciation of puns, and they provide the same sort of comic relief that puns do in the midst of what is at times a boring enterprise.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 19:02:59 +0000
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