Sunday, January 27, 2008

Two linguistic cartoons

Sometimes, the level of sophistication in New Yorker cartoons gets pretty high. The missus last night was flipping through some old issues (really old, in fact), and found these.

First, Frank Cotham's piece from here:



I could see some folks changing this to focus on the rise of Merge.

Second, Paul Noth's from here:



Yes, doctor, you can.

4 comments:

lynneguist said...

My favorite (I think it was from the New Yorker) was titled 'The Emergence of Language', and it pictured a cavewoman saying to a caveman "We need to talk".

Aha, just found it here.

Mr. Verb said...

That's brilliant (in the American sense, I mean) on several levels. Thanks!

Ellen Kozisek said...

When I read "(really old, in fact)", I was expecting, like, 1930s or such, not May 2007. Issues from the past year is hardly "really old" for a magazine that goes back to 1925.

Mr. Verb said...

Oh, gee, that's a reasonable reading. I meant the stack of 'old' magazines on the coffee table 'old', not the dust-allergies in the archive 'old'! May 2007 wouldn't really be 'old' for the blogal world, come to think of it. Thanks.