|
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play that suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect.〔(Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009. ) Retrieved 7 February 2009〕〔(Dictionary.com. 2009. ) Retrieved 23 April 2010.〕 These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or figurative language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism is an incorrect variation on a correct expression, while a pun involves expressions with multiple correct interpretations. Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, as their usage and meaning are specific to a particular language and its culture. Puns have a long history in human writing. Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs were originally based on punning systems, and the Roman playwright Plautus was famous for his puns and word games.〔〔M. Fontaine, Funny Words in Plautine Comedy, Oxford, 2010.〕 Punning has been credited as the fundamental concept behind alphabets, writing, and even human civilization. == Typology == Puns can be classified in various ways: The homophonic pun, a common type, uses word pairs which sound alike (homophones) but are not synonymous. Walter Redfern exemplified this type with his statement, "To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms."〔''Puns'', Blackwell, London, 1984〕 For example, in George Carlin's phrase "Atheism is a non-prophet institution", the word ''prophet'' is put in place of its homophone ''profit'', altering the common phrase "non-profit institution". Similarly, the joke "Question: Why do we still have troops in Germany? Answer: To keep the Russians in Czech" relies on the aural ambiguity of the homophones ''check'' and ''Czech''. Often, puns are not strictly homophonic, but play on words of similar, not identical, sound as in the example from the "Pinky and the Brain" cartoon film series: "I think so, Brain, but if we give peas a chance, won't the lima beans feel left out?" which plays with the similar—but not identical—sound of ''peas'' and ''peace''.〔''See the citation on Wikiquote''〕 A homographic pun exploits words which are spelled the same (homographs) but possess different meanings and sounds. Because of their nature, they rely on sight more than hearing, contrary to homophonic puns. They are also known as ''heteronymic puns''. Examples in which the punned words typically exist in two different parts of speech often rely on unusual sentence construction, as in the anecdote: "When asked to explain his large number of children, the pig answered simply: 'The wild oats of my sow gave us many piglets.'" An example that combines homophonic and homographic punning is Douglas Adams's line "You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass." The phrase uses the homophonic qualities of ''tune a'' and ''tuna'', as well as the homographic pun on ''bass'', in which ambiguity is reached through the identical spellings of (a string instrument), and (a kind of fish). Homonymic puns, another common type, arise from the exploitation of words which are both homographs and homophones. The statement "Being in politics is just like playing golf: you are trapped in one bad lie after another" puns on the two meanings of the word ''lie'' as "a deliberate untruth" and as "the position in which something rests". An adaptation of a joke repeated by Isaac Asimov gives us "Did you hear about the little moron who strained himself while running into the screen door?" playing on ''strained'' as "to give much effort" and "to filter".〔Asimov, Isaac. (''Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor'' ), p. 175, § 252. 1971. Houghton Mifflin. New York.〕 A homonymic pun may also be polysemic, in which the words must be homonymic and also possess related meanings, a condition that is often subjective. However, lexicographers define polysemes as listed under a single dictionary lemma (a unique numbered meaning) while homonyms are treated in separate lemmata. A compound pun is a statement that contains two or more puns. For example, a complex statement by Richard Whately includes four puns: "Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there. But what brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred." This pun uses ''sand which is there/sandwiches there'', ''Ham/ham'', ''mustered/mustard'', and ''bred/bread''. Similarly, the phrase "piano is not my forte" cleverly links two meanings of the words ''forte'' and ''piano'', one for the dynamic markings in music and the second for the literal meaning of the sentence. Compound puns may also combine two phrases that share a word. For example, "Where do mathematicians go on weekends? To a Möbius strip club!" puns on ''Möbius strip'' and ''strip club''. A recursive pun is one in which the second aspect of a pun relies on the understanding of an element in the first. For example, the statement "π is only half a pie." (π radians is 180 degrees, or half a circle, and a pie is a complete circle). Another example is "Infinity is not in finity", which means infinity is not in finite range. Another example is "a Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother."〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=PUNS )〕 Finally, we are given "Immanuel doesn't pun, he Kant" by Oscar Wilde. Visual puns are used in many logos, emblems, insignia, and other graphic symbols, in which one or more of the pun aspects are replaced by a picture. In European heraldry, this technique is called canting arms. Visual and other puns and word games are also common in Dutch gable stones as well as in some cartoons, such as ''Lost Consonants'' and ''The Far Side''. Another type of visual pun exists in languages which use non-phonetic writing. For example, in Chinese, a pun may be based on a similarity in shape of the written character, despite a complete lack of phonetic similarity in the words punned upon.〔Attardo, Salvatore. (''Linguistic Theories of Humor'' ), p.109. Walter de Gruyter, 1994. Alleton, V. : ''L'écriture chinoise''. Paris, 1970.〕 Mark Elvin describes how this "peculiarly Chinese form of visual punning involved comparing written characters to objects."〔Mark Elvin ("The Spectrum of Accessibility : Types of Humor in ''The Destinies of the Flowers in the Mirror''" ), p. 113. In :- Roger T. Ames (et al.) : ''Interpreting Culture through Translation: a Festschrift for D. C. Lau''. 1991. pp. 101–118.〕 Richard J. Alexander notes two additional forms which puns may take: graphological (sometimes called visual) puns, such as concrete poetry; and morphological puns, such as portmanteaux.〔Alexander, Richard J. ''Aspects of Verbal Humour in English'', pp.21–41〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「pun」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|