Editing 1985: Meteorologist
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===Questions from the linguist meteorologist=== | ===Questions from the linguist meteorologist=== | ||
− | When they get back on air | + | When they get back on air again a new meteorologist, [[Blondie]], steps in. The management enquires (on air) to make sure she is not also a mathematician. She states no, but tells that she has a linguistics degree, which the management thinks is fine, and thus believes they have prevented the problem with Cueball. However, this proves to be in vain, as Blondie goes into a tangent once more but from a linguistics standpoint, rather than a mathematical one, detailing the true meaning of the word "it" as referring to the weather. After one panel of this the management calls for security again. |
− | While, at the most basic level, human speech is broken into subject, object, and verb; for some reason | + | While, at the most basic level, human speech is broken into subject, object, and verb; for some reason we are capable of producing and comprehending speech without both objects or verbs, but in English there is a certain "resistance" to speech without a subject. Thus if you are in the passenger seat of a car going down the highway and happened to see some deer in the trees nearby, you could simply say "Deer.", rather than "there is a deer over there", deer being the subject of the sentence. However, if you noticed that it had begun to rain, you could not simply say "Raining." on its own. Feel how that sentence just seems weird? Hence we have developed the tendency to use the filler word "it" despite the fact that when we say "It's raining." the "it" is not a reference to the clouds producing the rain, but the general state of the rainfall around us. (McWhorter, John. Understanding Linguistics: The Science of Language. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/understanding-linguistics-the-science-of-language.html ) |
The first question is again quite harmless, and both possible answers ("it" being a {{w|dummy pronoun}} or referring to the weather) are valid answers, but the second question is much more disturbing. | The first question is again quite harmless, and both possible answers ("it" being a {{w|dummy pronoun}} or referring to the weather) are valid answers, but the second question is much more disturbing. |