A Seminal Foundation Paper of Stoler's Analog Philosophy

Amphitruones
Or, The Humorous Use of Linguistic Ambiguity

Undergraduate Honors Thesis
Department of Linguistics
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
April 1989
By Michael Stoler

Note: I'm working on converting this entirely into HTML, so that all the subheadings and internal cross-references will work as links, but at 119 pages, it's going to take me a while. Right now it's still in MS Word -- hope you have it.

Acknowledgements and Dedication
Prologus
Actus I -- What's so Funny?
Actus II -- Confusion Philosophy
1. Linguistic ambiguity
2. Speech perception and word recognition
3. Role and types of contexts
4. Tolerance of variation
Actus III -- Wholly Orders
1. Semilinguistic ambiguities
2. Bilingual and dialectal LAUGHs
3. First Order LAUGHs
4. Second Order LAUGHs
5. Third Order LAUGHs
6. Fourth Order LAUGHs
7. Fifth Order LAUGHs
Actus IV -- Prose Texts and Contexts
1. Puns as speech acts
2. The Distance Principle
3. Literalness
4. Syntax of pun setups
5. Puns and poetic devices
6. Sound Associations and child language
Epilogus
Bibliography

Amphitruones Or, The Humorous Use of Linguistic Ambiguity

Undergraduate Honors ThesisDepartment of LinguisticsHarvard University, Cambridge, Mass.April 1989By Michael Stoler

Amphitruones
Or, The Humorous Use of Linguistic Ambiguity

Undergraduate Honors Thesis
Department of Linguistics
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
April 1989
By Michael Stoler