Friday, March 16, 2007

Bashing Linguistics

As Daffy Duck once said, "It is to laugh."

#734797
Malagmyr: This linguistics professor was lecturing the class.
Malagmyr: "In English," he explained, "a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative."
Malagmyr: "However," the professor continued, "there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."
Malagmyr: Immediately, a voice from the back of the room piped up: "Yeah..... right...."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The oldest version of this story, I believe, has J.L. Austin as the professor and Sidney Morgenbesser as the voice from the back. Our small contribution to the culture.

Anonymous said...

It had the odor of an old chestnut, but I'd not seen it before.

Good to see you, man!