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From: neal@druny.UUCP (Neal D. McBurnett)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Puns in English and Esperanto (Yes, Virginia!)
Message-ID: <52@druny.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Jun-85 00:28:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: druny.52
Posted: Sun Jun 23 00:28:17 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Jun-85 04:22:26 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 33

When I began studying Esperanto, I thought that puns simply didn't
exist in the language.  Since then I've come to realize that this is a
foolish opinion, and in fact I've recently come across several books of
examples to the contrary.  I'm now interested in a more systematic view
of puns ("vortludoj" (word games) or "Kalemburoj") in English,
Esperanto, and other languages.

I would divide the world of puns into the following cases:
	Interchanging words which sound similar
	Rearranging letters
	Re-interpreting groups of morphemes
	Multiple interpretations of single morphemes
In each of these categories one can distinguish between spoken and
written puns in two ways.  First, unless the language is phonetic, some
puns will not work with equal precision in both forms, and second,
words are distinctly separated when written, but not when spoken, so
there is more flexibility in spoken puns.

Of these, Esperanto has few examples of homonyms (although I do have a
book of "Esperantonimoj": antonimoj, homonimoj, paronimoj, sinonimoj,
kaj vortludoj).  On the other hand, because the rules for forming words
out of morphemes are very flexible, Esperanto is very rich in opportunities
for the so-called "mis-cutting" of words.  Thus, "virtemo" can either be
interpreted as "virt-em-o" (tendency to be virtuous), or "vir-tem-o" (a
male topic or theme).  (I have a program to divide Esperanto words
which is quite good at finding these.)

In all languages, anagrams are potent sources of puns, and one is
always free to interchange words which sound similar.  Does anyone have
a better scheme for classifying puns (especially if it takes several
languages into account)?  I would think that tonal languages like
Chinese would offer entirely new possibilities.
-Neal McBurnett, mcvax!seismo!ihnp4!druny!neal