The Purple People Eater?

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by Dinosaur, Mar 13, 2011.

  1. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    A phrase in a song about a purple people eater is "Eating purple people is my game."

    Without that phrase, I think most people would interpret "purple people eater" to refer to a purple creature who eats people, since there are few (if any) purple people.

    Suppose the phrase was "Asiatic people eater"? Would that mean a creature who ate Asiatics or a cannabalistic Asian person?

    English seems ambiguous on such phrases, while Languages like Latin have case endings which prevent any confusion. I would not use a phrase like the above. I would say either "Asiatic cannibal" or "Eater of Asiatic people."

    I think a hypen would clarify English: Asiatic-people eater or Asiatic people-eater. Would this be proper?

    Are there languages without case endings which resolve this ambiguity via word order rules? Id est: Adjectives must follow the word referred to.
     
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  3. John99 Banned Banned

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    Let us try this experiment:

    "I am the red egg eater"

    Also, theres a lot to be said for context. It is more of an artsy way of expression as opposed to "I eat red eggs."
     
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  5. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    John99: Suppose you did not know that there were any such item as a red egg?

    BTW: Initially, I could not think of such an item, but I suppose there are red eggs. At least at Easter time. Suppose a person was unfamiliar with colored Easter eggs?

    Of course some variations on the above are unambiguous due to context. What about examples for which context does not provide an obvious clue?
     
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  7. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    What do you mean "no purple people"?

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  8. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    One of my favorite songs in high school. Actually the lyric goes:
    I said, "Mr. Purple People Eater, what's your line?"
    He said, "It's eatin' purple people and it sure is fine."​
    Of course. That's the joke, in a song that was one long joke from start to finish. After all, there are also few (if any) purple people eaters.

    Sheb Wooley was a jokester, especially in his alter ego Ben Caulder, e.g. his parody of Jim Reeves's "Almost Persuaded":
    I introduced myself and said, "Ben Caulder here."
    She said, "It ain't been no colder here than it has anyplace else."​
    It's impossible to eliminate every possibility of ambiguity from language. Or I should say, the only way to do it would be to make our language as dry and cumbersome as computer code. You can swap languages and take pot luck. That phrase comes out fine in Chinese: purple eats people de. (De is a particle to aid in parsing sentences, indicating that this is a really good place to divide it into coherent groups of words. So purple eats people de dog would mean "a purple dog who eats people," whereas eats purple people de dog means "a dog who eats purple people."

    But this is an illusion. You can craft an ambiguous sentence in Chinese, one whose English translation might be clear. Chinese grammar is more streamlined than English and its syntax is more straightforward, so it might not be easy, but it can be done.
    Again, Latin has its own opportunities for ambiguity. BTW, in this case it would be the number inflection that resolves the ambiguity, not the case inflection. If "purple" were singular, it would have to modify "eater." If it were plural, it would have to modify "people."
    We wouldn't insert the hyphen between "Asiatic" and "people," but it would be okay to put it between "people" and "eater."
    In Spanish the adjective follows the noun it modifies. But this isn't as much help as it seems, since it follows the entire phrase. No matter which noun is modified by "purple," the phrase would be "eater of people purple." Again, the clue would be in the inflection of the adjective. A singular adjective would go with "eater," a plural with "people."

    Although "people" is usually translated as gente, a singular noun. Since comedor means "a place to eat" rather than "one who eats," they'd probably just say el morado que come gente for "the purple (person) who eats people," or él que come morados, "he who eats purple (people)."
     

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