I don't go to great lengths, I go to great depths..

Interesting paragidmatic substitution for this long coined phrase.


Because the dish is soft-shell crab, so Pizza Hut played with the idiomatic meaning of the phrase "to great lengths" to "great depths" so that it applies.

It is a good commercial outreach to show the effort taken to get the soft-shell crab.

Though seriously... if you have to go to great depths to get the crab, means that the crab lives almost a few thousand feet below water, where the pressure is very high... so... how did you get the crab in the first place when no human being or optic device has ever gone down to that level? =S

Pulled Pork burger..

In Canada, I came across this style of cooking pork called "pulled pork".

Initially, I wondered what it meant... does it mean that the pork is stretched so that it's thin and when cooked, it's crunchy? Wait... that's bacon. Or... is it that pulled pork means cooking only the tendons of the pig? Hmm... It doesn't sound right.

So curious me went to check it out. Recently, I was at "The Hand Burger" at Raffles Place Shopping Centre at City Hall, and I remembered what it meant. For people who don't know what pulled pork is, here it is:

Interesting when you see that "pulled pork" implies something akin to "yakiniku" in Japanese food, or like... shredded pork...

It made me think... why do we only use "pulled" as an adjective for pork. I have never seen "pulled chicken" or "pulled beef", but only "pulled pork." I did a web search, and found this:

"Pulled pork is a form of barbecue originating in Mexico. It is known as Carnitas in Mexico. It is a method of preparation in which pork, usually shoulder cut (sometimes referred to as Boston butt) or mixed cuts, is cooked using a low-heat, long-cook method. With these extended times at low temperatures, the meat becomes tender enough that its weakened connective tissue allows the meat to be "pulled", or easily broken into individual pieces"
-From Wikipedia

Interesting to see this theory. In essence, when I did a dictionary search, "pull" as a verb or an adjective did not include the definition for "pulled pork". It is rather interesting to see that "pulled" here borrowed the meaning of the original meaning of pull, which is

"remove [transitive] to use force to take something from the place where it is fixed or held"
- From Longman Dictionary.

But it is not included inside. Perhaps in time, when this dish has extended to all parts of the world can we see that it will be in the dictionary too.

Muscles needed?

I came across this advertisement in the classifieds one day after reading the comic section (No, I'm not looking for jobs as yet...)

It's interesting to see how synonymy is applied here, with the idea that in this case, "muscle" refers to "physically fit movers". As we've discussed in class, it is very difficult to find complete synonymy, but how about implied synonymy? If the advertisement had not included the clause "physically fit movers" beneath the caption of "muscle needed", I might have been inclined to think about something else.

Perhaps it's interesting to see such an advertisement stunt to grab attention. I think we've definitely seen such synonymy use in advertisements, with "Pink is the new black", and even the more recent "purple is the new pink". Such implied synonymy seems to transcend above and beyond the sense, to the referent, and even applied in society. Interesting how a simple lexical semantic function eventually transcends beyond to the society.

If you really dislike Bush..

I had lunch at this new Indian food place beside Fong Seng a couple of weeks ago, and what I saw on the menu really shocked me.


Yeap! You've got it. Bush and Obama are dishes on the menu. =S

I've been trying to put together why Bush and Obama represent these specific dishes, but up till today, I still have no clue nor idea about it.

One thing to note thought..the dishes are pretty good. =)

Lesson learnt... if you ever run out of names to give your new dishes, then why not try major presidents or celebrities? I wonder if anybody would name their dish Pitt.. =S

Married Couples have been merged...

There is a new function in town. If there is a celebrity couple, their names are merged to form the name of the couple.

For example:

Brangelina

Or even, take this quote about SNSD's YoonA and the male pairings that she's had in her dramas or in commercials:

"Move over Taec-Yoong, Gi-Yoong or any other Yoong’s pairing. Won-Yoong is now the trend as SJ’s Siwon and SNSD’s Yoona feature for TV & Style "
from: http://snsdkorean.wordpress.com/

Comparing previous conventions, whereby we'd have "David and Victoria Beckham" or "Tom and Katie Cruise". Perhaps the function as stated only works if the couple do not take the same last name. If a couple is married, and the female takes the last name of the male, we do not see the merger of names.

The thing for this is that, the generation of new terms are getting increasingly more and more. The function as stated above seems to imply that the male and female names will merge, and thus, a new term comes out. Imagine for the other members of SNSD, whereby in a Korean show "We got married", we have JyungTae to represent Jyung Don and Tae Yeon, so on and so forth. Thus, for the lexicon of SNSD, I think we would generate a whole new list of names that would fade off in the span of a month or two.

Perhaps we should explore the possibility of a temporary lexicon, given these days, there are so many terms that are being created that don't last for a more than a couple of months.

Thank you for taking my eternal life

Yesterday, some of my church friends and I were having a gathering, and many members of our church are doing their daily devotional time through the "Eternal Life Devotional", which is a print done by a Korean church.

As one of my friends did not attend service on Sunday, one of us collected on his behalf and passed it to him yesterday. And this is what he said:

"Thank you for taking my eternal life."

To a layman passerby, he would think that he was dead, because someone had taken his eternal life.

But this prompted me to think of something else, which is how with the "technologically saturated childhood", we are beginning to increasingly ellipsis phrases and words, and even, to take them in the figurative sense literally. I started wondering if in time, the dictionary would even be redundant in daily social life, since everyone seemingly create a new word class with their own terms of sense or referent.

In time, would the mental lexicon be THE dictionary that people trust? If that is the case, then it would be quite sad.

Soshified?

The recent KPop craze has taken the world by storm, and there have been rather new terms that are coming up.

Take SNSD, who are my personal favourites. If you are a fan of SNSD, you are what we call "soshified", as SNSD stands for So Nyuh Shi Dae, or Girls Generation in Korean.

After going through the lectures on terminology and how they are entered into the dictionary, there is one quote that I find that is very interesting from one of the articles that we went through. I quote it below:

"English is very good at absorbing new words. [But] in three or four years a lot of these words may have fallen out of use and might well come out of the dictionary," Times Online quoted Elaine Higgleton, the Editorial Director for Collins, as saying. (ANI)
from: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/twittering-hmm-and-heh-make-it-to-collins-english-dictionary/

Then remember how some time ago, when the era of JPop, Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls came out. If you were a fan of them, you'd be "Backstreet", "Spiced" or some other word that uses the group name to convert it to become a verb to be used to describe a fan of the club. Over time, however, these terms died away with the disbanding of the bands, with the exception of the very popular ones, such as Backstreet Boys, whereby there are some countries that have "Backstreet Day", where stores play nothing by Backstreet Boy music. And who can forget "Beetlemania", with girls hounding John Lennon and Paul McCartney as though there is no tomorrow.

So, in time, when SNSD disband as well, or they eventually become like JPop's Morning Musume, whereby they keep taking in new members and "graduating" the senior ones, "soshified" may not even exist anymore in our lexicon. Interesting. =)

Have you soshified yet? =P

I hereby pronounce you spaghetti!

Pizza Hut really does come up with the most unique of uses of words. In this advertisement about their new soft shell crab pasta, they happen to say "marrying succulent soft shell crab with al dente pasta".

In discourse structure, we learnt about declaratives, and the definition of declaratives and for the verb "marrying" is shown below:

Declarative (from Longman dictionary of contemporary English)
de‧clar‧a‧tive

SL a declarative sentence has the form of a statement

Declarative (from Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics)
A speech act that changes the state of affairs in the world.

Marry
mar‧ry S1 W2 past tense and past participle married, present participle marrying, third person singular marries

1 [intransitive and transitive] if you marry someone, you become their husband or wife [↪ married]:

He married Bea in 1925.

I'm going to ask her to marry me on St Valentine's Day.

She married young (=at a young age).

People in higher social classes are more likely to marry late (=when they are older than is usual).

Sophia had, in a sense, married beneath her (=married someone of a lower social class than her).

! In spoken English, get married is more common than marry.

2 [transitive] to perform the ceremony at which two people get married:

The priest who married us was really nice.

3 [transitive] to find a husband or wife for one of your children

marry somebody to somebody

She was determined to marry all of her daughters to rich men.

4 also marry up [transitive] formal to combine two different ideas, designs, tastes etc together

marry something with/to something

The building's design marries a traditional style with modern materials.

marry something and something

He writes fiction that marries up realism and the supernatural.

5

not the marrying kind

not the type of person who wants to get married:

I'm just not the marrying kind.

From the definitions as shown, we realise that the contemporary English definition of declarative and the Applied linguistic dictionary for declarative are quite similar. As linguists, our lexical stock would lead us to think that the declarative is the linguistic definition, which also includes that a person must be authorised to perform the declarative act. In the case of the commercial, we realise that "marry" here needs a person who has the power bestowed on him/her to conduct the ceremony. In this case... the sentence implies that Pizza Hut is the one that married the pasta and soft-shell crab together. However, if we go by Searle's speech act theory, then this declarative doesn't really stand, as Pizza Hut is not authorised.

Then again, the other definition of "marry", in the sense of "marry up", would completely debunk this intuition. As such, what we realise here is that there is a misunderstanding, that where one who is not that exposed to the meaning of "marry up" would find it a completely absurd relationship.

How would you like to attend the wedding ceremony of soft-shell crab and al-dente pasta? They both have the same NP composition... =)

For sure?

I think that while I was in Canada, I came across this particular phrase very often: "For sure!"

I'd hear it as I ordered my meal:
Me: "Can I have the enchilada please?"
A: "For sure!"

And I just heard it when I was talking to my friend:
Me: "Let's meet up for lunch sometime!"
K: "For sure!"

The question here is, what is the meaning of the word "sure" in this case? Is it an expletive? Or is it taking the position of a adjective? I decided to check up the meaning of "sure"...

Turns out that "sure" is actually polysemic; it can function as both an adjective and an adverb.

Under the meanings of "sure" as an adjective, I came across this:

for sure

a) informal certainly or definitely:

No one knows for sure what really happened.

b) spoken used to emphasize that something is true:

We'll always need teachers, that's for sure.

c) American English informal spoken used to agree with someone

And I realise that in these cases, "for sure" is actually used as an embedded prepositional phrase. But when we use it separately, where "for sure" stands alone, it still has the same meaning of certainly or definitely.

I decided to think of other such phrases, and realise that "for sure" falls into the same category as phrases such as "of course" and "for certain" and "you bet!". I wonder if there's a category for such phrases... maybe we could call them "exclaimatives".

And then I wonder what's the Singlish equivalent... and I believe that it would be "like duh!" or "can lah!".

Interesting how these things come about..

Loading of the floor

When I saw this sign, I was confused as to what the sign meant.

Firstly, "Floor Loading" is here used ungrammatically, but then I realised that it was meant to be read as a noun. In this case, it is informing people of the maximum load when undergoing the process of "floor loading". But upon further thought, I realise that the term "gun loading" is used commonly in the military force, especially when it comes to ammunition loading of a gun. Perhaps it is because "floor loading" is not common to my lexicon, thus it is confusing.

Secondly, "Design imposed load" here first gave me the impression that you are supposed to design the imposed load that is meant to be placed here. It was very confusing to me.
The use of the word "loading" is actually meant to be a verb, but in this context, it is used to denote a noun. And also, the use of two verbs here side by side also makes it very ambiguous. Is the load one that has a design imposed on it, or are we to design the load that is to be imposed. The choice of word use here really is confusing. Syntagmatically, I attempted to come up with new phrases, such as "draw exposed chicken" and "write implicit content". What I realise is that the collocation of the words used can affect the interpretation given, because it is probably used in rather high frequency, thus it has come to seem as normal for us.

I guess that as this week's reading on the Lexical analysis of Singaporean English will show, it is truely a lexical stock that varies from culture to culture, and the collacations of word use can indicate the differences. =)

"Unapologise" by Carrie Underwood

This song is from Carrie Underwood's latest album, entitled "Play On".

It's a song that talks about how in professing her love for this guy that she likes, she withdrew it. But moments after, she decides to unapologise, because she meant every word, and she can't unsay what the guy heard.

A very interesting use of the prefix "un-", isn't it? I really like the song, which has simple melodies, and simple lyrics, but a very creative use of the words with "un-" to bring across meanings that fit into the song well.

Carrie Underwood is fantastic by the way! =P

(Quite obvious, I'm a Carrie Underwood fan. =D)

Prawn, Shrimp or Scampi?

I quote from the website http://www.theepicentre.com/tip/shrimp.html

A shrimp is a shrimp; a prawn is, well, a shrimp.

Well... the definition doesn't really serve any purpose in drawing a clear distinction does it?

But that being said, the truth is that they both refer to the same entity, but that the term is used differently by different parts of the Earth: prawn for local Singaporeans, Shrimps for US citizens.

But one thing to note is that for Singapore, prawns refer to the bigger prawns, such as tiger prawns and those that you see in prawn noodles. Shrimp on the other hand, is used to imply the smaller types of prawn, those that are dried and used in soup stock, or in frying vegetables, or what in Hokkien is called haebi.

So if an American were to come to Singapore, and ask for shrimp... I wonder if he'll be surprised to see that our shrimp in the local hawker centres would be dried shrimp and that would be what is to be served him.

Funny though, how some local fast food restaurants that originate from USA use the terms that are colloquial there, as seen in Long John Silver's value meals as shown below:

There are, coincidentally, some places in Singapore that are from USA that use Singaporean terminology for their food. Fish and Co for example, call their dish "Peri Peri Prawns", and Manhattan Fish Market call their food "Flame prawns" and not "flame shrimp". I guess that the terminology changes with the location of the outlet. =)

A canteen that is green...

I chanced upon this in the YIH canteen the other day... I wonder.. why isn't that particular canteen green in colour, since it says NUS Green Canteen? Then I realised... It's because the canteen is ecologically friendly... then I wonder why is it only YIH that is ecologically friendly? Why is it singular for canteen and not plural? I couldn't find an answer to that!!

Then I found this:


And I started to wonder why we have a banner for the design of a rag (unwanted cloth used for cleaning), though I know full well that it means "Rag and Flag"... haha.. ok, so I'm being naively innocent that as an NUS student, I don't know what Rag stands for.

But it's just interesting to see how our NUS students are so innovative.

Oh goodness... a stall that bites!

Perhaps one reason why the Olio outlet at the Upper Deck of the Arts Canteen doesn't do so well, could be because people think that it bites... =P

Though the meaning of "bites" is a noun here, which means that it is an outlet that sells some but not all of the delicacies that a full Olio place would sell, but still, at first glance, some people (my friends who rarely come to Arts for example) thought that it means that Olio bites (as a verb).

I guess that's why of the three outlets in Upper Deck, Olio has the least customers?

Chocolate...

When I saw this advertisement on the MRT, I had to snap it!!

The advertisement is for Tudor Chocolates, and the slogan aptly reads

"The only thing between us is chocolate..."

I was actually quite amused by it, as it seems that chocolate holds such an important position, that the woman in the picture would rather choose chocolate over boyfriend anyday. And it implies that if the boyfriend doesn't like chocolates, then that's that... How sad, actually, to play second fiddle to chocolate.

I guess this is really an attempt to bring across the "desirability effect" of chocolate, somewhat akin to why bachelor would seem a bit weird to be used on the Pope for example, or why modern ladies choose to call themselves bachelorettes than spinsters.. I guess the colligation of a word does affect the intent that it brings across. =)

I kup you!

I was surfing facebook, when I came across this on my friend's profile:

"Actual conversation I just heard. "u keep kup me. I never kup u, it's u kup me" Deciphering kup, it means to hang up your call on someone."

It was really interesting to me, because I realised that unless we're Singaporean, and we understand a little bit of Hokkien, this entire sentence would be ungrammatical to the daily passerbys we brush across every single day. "Kup" is a Hokkien term, that means to hang up on someone, as said by my friend above.

The word "kup" is probably a verb in this sense, as other verbs can be substituted into the same slot as "kup", for example, "disconnected" or "irritated". However, what is interesting to note about this particular word, is that if it were to reflect the meaning that it encompasses, the sentence should read "you hung up on me", which means that "kup" encompasses not only the phrasal verb "hung up", but also it indicates that "me" is the subject of the preposition. Amazing how a single Chinese word, be it Mandarin or dialect, can encompass more than one word class of English in its inherent meaning. That aside, the conversation is a very Singlish thing, actually. Though we have www.urbandictionary.com, I wonder if we have a Singlish dictionary online.


It led me to think about the use of our own lexis. In Hoey's reading, the notion of lexical priming was introduced. In this sense, when the sentence "you kup me" comes into play, I wonder what happens to a person's processing of this sentence. When I first read the sentence, I was confused, actually. There was nothing that was primed when I read the sentence, until I finished reading her profile nickname. I guess that from this, even native speakers of Singlish have their moments of confusion about their own language. I wonder if there will ever be a fully proficient native speaker in a language. =)

Set Up!!

Following Manchester United's impeccable victory over arch-rivals Arsenal in a thrilling potential title clash at Emirates stadium last Sunday, Soccernet.com released the following online match report with the picture and caption:

Wayne Rooney celebrates with Nani, who set him up.

The use of "set him up" is normally primed to be with a date, or maybe a crime, or fraud. Taking a look at the concordance sample, we have the following from www.straitstimes.com

"trouble of setting him up with her female friends" -Straits Times, Breaking News

"...which would have set him up comfortably with a house in..." -Straits Times, Breaking News

"... told him that Tan had set him up. When Leong's father confronted Tan.." -Straits Times, Breaking News

This rather interested me, because for the longest time, I thought that "set me up" could only be used with negative things, like crime, or for dates. However, it seems from the concordances of StraitsTimes.com, it could mean describing someone, or in this case, Nani being the one who assisted Wayne Rooney in scoring his goal.

Looks like there's still a lot to mull, ponder and think over. =)

No-smoking... and return your trays...?!

This picture caught my eye, beacuse of the sure mis-match of the sign!

With the no smoking sign, one would be primed to think that it would be supported by words that describe the no-smoking sign. However, the label beneath the sign is "Please return tray/crockery after use."

For an alien who doesn't know what the no-smoking sign represents, it would be primed to think that that symbol represents the call to return the trays after use.

Funny what we come up with to put in our canteens these days. =)

Consolidatee??

I was at church the other day, and was on duty as a consolidator. The first time ever, actually. So when I looked at the instruction sheet, something caught my eye.

"Be prepared to consolidate up to 2 consolidatees."

It was truly the first time I've ever came across this word, so I ran a check on dictionary.com

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/consolidatee
Well, surprise of surprises, this word doesn't exist.

Drawing on a parallel with the "scratchitti" example, I think it's really a use of the suffix "-ee", similar to "mentor" and "mentee", here, we have "consolidator" and "consolidatee". The antonymic relationship of "employer" and "employee" is thus exemplified here in this example.

I guess this does show the subconscious understanding of the derivational suffix "-ee" for the verb "consolidate" here, and also with the antonymic relationship between the one consolidating "consolidator" and the one being consolidated "consolidatee".

Rather apt! =)

The beginning of a new blog

Well, this is rather interesting. I never thought I'd be blogging for a course module!

In any case, welcome to this blog!

I named it Transformational Lexis, because this blog is all about the lexicon; how the lexis can be used in different ways, primed in different ways, and in some sense even, created from the addition of some new lexis!

I think this is going to be an interesting blog of data collation and observations. Can't wait! =)

God Bless!
Luv, Daniel