Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a Banana.

[Eddie Powalski]

What is a good noun to describe this type of expression?
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a Banana."

[James Hogg]

Eddie Powalski wrote:
> What is a good noun to describe this type of expression? "Time flies
> like an arrow; fruit flies like a Banana."

I was going to suggest "Marxism" but I see that Groucho never said it.

Wikipedia says it is "used in linguistics as an example of a garden path
sentence and syntactic ambiguity, and in word play as an example of
punning, double entendre, and antanaclasis."

--
James

[Eddie Powalski]

On Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:42:06 +0200, James Hogg wrote:

> Wikipedia says it is "used in linguistics as an example of a garden path
> sentence and syntactic ambiguity, and in word play as an example of
> punning, double entendre, and antanaclasis."

Interesting.

I had never heard the term "garden path sentence" before.

I guess the meaning is that you wander among the flowers
and scents of the sentence?

[CDB]

Aggravated antanaclasis, at that. It's probably the word Eddie was
looking for. The quick definition at OneLook for "antanaclasis" is

•(n.) A figure which consists in repeating the same word in a different
sense; as, Learn some craft when young, that when old you may live
without craft.

The words "fruit" and "flies" are not only different in sense, but are
different parts of speech as well. There probably isn't an inkhorn term
for it, since it wasn't likely to occur in Greek.

[Nick Spalding]

Eddie Powalski wrote, in <kt8g01$tp1$4...@dont-email.me>
on Tue, 30 Jul 2013 13:44:33 +0000 (UTC):

I think it is more that the first part 'leads you down the garden path'
in the sense of 'misleads you' about what may appear in the second.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2013-07-30 15:15:23 +0200, Eddie Powalski <Ed...@example.com> said:

> What is a good noun to describe this type of expression?
> "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a Banana."

I'd call it a sort of pun, but others have offered a more erudite term
(that won't be understood except in the linguistics community). I seem
to recall that Fowler in his 1st edition called it "legerdemain with
two senses".


--
athel

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

On Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:02:46 +0100, Nick Spalding <spal...@iol.ie>
wrote:

Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence

That gives the example "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a
banana" and points to the term Paraprosdokian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraprosdokian

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a
sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes
the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It
is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes
producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular
among comedians and satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only
change the meaning of an early phrase, but they also play on the
double meaning of a particular word, creating a form of syllepsis.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Scion]

Peter Duncanson [BrE] put finger to keyboard:

"The old man the boat."

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <kt8gn4$da3$1...@speranza.aioe.org>,

CDB <belle...@gmail.com> wrote:

>The words "fruit" and "flies" are not only different in sense, but are
>different parts of speech as well.

Not compulsorily so. The sentence is really the linguistic equivalent
of a Necker cube, with two or three possible readings:

- The default one, in which "flies" is a verb in the first clause and
a noun in the second clause.

- The punning one, in which "flies" is a verb in both clauses. All
fruit are pretty much the same when it comes to flying, and obey
Newtonian mechanics. I guess a banana could be thought of as a sort
of lifting body, after first applying sufficient thrust. A prize
still awaits the first general, closed-form solution of the
Navier-Stokes equations....

- The counterfactual one, in which "flies" is a noun in both clauses
(requiring the reader to posit a "time fly" which is associated with
arrows in the same way as fruit flies are associated with fruit).
This requires a backtracking parser (or lots of look-ahead) and is
thus the best candidate for a "garden path" parsing.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993

[Peter T. Daniels]

"Paraprosdokian" is not from linguistics, but from rhetoric. The technical term in linguistics is "garden path sentence." The phenomenon was entertainingly discussed by C. F. Hockett in one of his essays on jokes and slips of the tongue; both of them are included in his 1977 collection *The View from Language*.

[Don Phillipson]

"Eddie Powalski" <Ed...@example.com> wrote in message
news:kt8e9b$jjg$3...@dont-email.me...

> What is a good noun to describe this type of expression?
> "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a Banana."

This is a paradox, a philosopher's joke based on a double
pun (of flies as verb or noun, and like as an adverb or verb.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

[Robert Bannister]

On 30/07/13 9:15 PM, Eddie Powalski wrote:
> What is a good noun to describe this type of expression?
> "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a Banana."
>

Old?

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 30/07/13 9:56 PM, CDB wrote:
> On 30/07/2013 9:42 AM, James Hogg wrote:
>> Eddie Powalski wrote:
>
>>> What is a good noun to describe this type of expression? "Time
>>> flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a Banana."
>
>> I was going to suggest "Marxism" but I see that Groucho never said
>> it.
>
>> Wikipedia says it is "used in linguistics as an example of a garden
>> path sentence and syntactic ambiguity, and in word play as an example
>> of punning, double entendre, and antanaclasis."
>
> Aggravated antanaclasis, at that. It's probably the word Eddie was
> looking for. The quick definition at OneLook for "antanaclasis" is

So, following on from another thread, does the aggravation turn it into
a felony?
--
Robert Bannister

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

I wadsn't referring to "paraprosdokian" but to "antanaclasis", but who
cares? Neither will be understood by most people.


--
athel

[John Briggs]

On 31/07/2013 01:41, Robert Bannister wrote:
> On 30/07/13 9:15 PM, Eddie Powalski wrote:
>> What is a good noun to describe this type of expression?
>> "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a Banana."
>>
>
> Old?

That's an adjective...
--
John Briggs

[Peter T. Daniels]

I simply took the closest-to-hand of the two terms from rhetoric (which
would _not_ be "understood in the linguistics community"), that had been
suggested. If someone would like to propound the distinction between them,
other people would, I'm sure, be immensely grateful.

[Robert Bannister]

Alas. Failed the exam because he didn't read the question.

--
Robert Bannister

[Dr Nick]

wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) writes:

> In article <kt8gn4$da3$1...@speranza.aioe.org>,
> CDB <belle...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>The words "fruit" and "flies" are not only different in sense, but are
>>different parts of speech as well.
>
> Not compulsorily so. The sentence is really the linguistic equivalent
> of a Necker cube, with two or three possible readings:
>
> - The default one, in which "flies" is a verb in the first clause and
> a noun in the second clause.
>
> - The punning one, in which "flies" is a verb in both clauses. All
> fruit are pretty much the same when it comes to flying, and obey
> Newtonian mechanics. I guess a banana could be thought of as a sort
> of lifting body, after first applying sufficient thrust. A prize
> still awaits the first general, closed-form solution of the
> Navier-Stokes equations....
>
> - The counterfactual one, in which "flies" is a noun in both clauses
> (requiring the reader to posit a "time fly" which is associated with
> arrows in the same way as fruit flies are associated with fruit).
> This requires a backtracking parser (or lots of look-ahead) and is
> thus the best candidate for a "garden path" parsing.

There are three ways of parsing the first clause:
The idiomatic one - time passes the way an arrow goes past
The idiomatic one for the second clause - a species of fly called the
time fly is fond of arrows
A third: Measure the speed of flies the way you would do the speed of an
arrow.

Unfortunately "fruit" isn't really a verb to do the same with in the
second.

[CDB]

On 05/08/2013 5:26 AM, Dr Nick wrote:

> wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) writes:
>> CDB <belle...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>> The words "fruit" and "flies" are not only different in sense, but are
>>> different parts of speech as well.

>> Not compulsorily so. The sentence is really the linguistic equivalent
>> of a Necker cube, with two or three possible readings:

>> - The default one, in which "flies" is a verb in the first clause and
>> a noun in the second clause.

>> - The punning one, in which "flies" is a verb in both clauses. All
>> fruit are pretty much the same when it comes to flying, and obey
>> Newtonian mechanics. I guess a banana could be thought of as a sort
>> of lifting body, after first applying sufficient thrust. A prize
>> still awaits the first general, closed-form solution of the
>> Navier-Stokes equations....

Yabbut, that one is pretty counterfactual too. You can claim that a
banana flies like fruit and only be accused of obviousness, but not all
fruit flies like a banana: blueberries scatter for cover, grapes
encounter wind-resistance, watermelons immediately take a dive.

Apologies for hitch-hiking: usual reason, aioe.

>> - The counterfactual one, in which "flies" is a noun in both clauses
>> (requiring the reader to posit a "time fly" which is associated with
>> arrows in the same way as fruit flies are associated with fruit).
>> This requires a backtracking parser (or lots of look-ahead) and is
>> thus the best candidate for a "garden path" parsing.

> There are three ways of parsing the first clause:
> The idiomatic one - time passes the way an arrow goes past
> The idiomatic one for the second clause - a species of fly called the
> time fly is fond of arrows
> A third: Measure the speed of flies the way you would do the speed of an
> arrow.

> Unfortunately "fruit" isn't really a verb to do the same with in the
> second.

Jocule vagule blandule ...

[prenderga...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, July 30, 2013 at 8:15:23 AM UTC-5, Eddie Powalski wrote:
> What is a good noun to describe this type of expression?
> "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a Banana."

Pun

[Jack]

On Thu, 21 Jun 2018 07:45:41 +0530, Madhu <eno...@meer.net> wrote:

>* prenderga...@gmail.com Wrote on Wed, 20 Jun 2018 12:23:39 -0700 (PDT):

>and "Shit flies like shit."
>
>Tautology?

Sure fun times when you're having flies.

Scrambles?

--
John

[Pavel Svinchnik]

Emo Phillips uses this technique frequently in his comedy routines.