XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien   
   From: chenrich@monmouth.com   
      
   In article <11q7i6-pck.ln1@morgen.pointerstop.ca>,   
    Derek Broughton  wrote:   
      
   > I completely agree.  One of the marks of most great comedy is that it stops   
   > before you tire of it.  Monty Python, whatever one thinks of them, were   
   > successful because their sketches were often finished before you quite got   
   > the point.  I can think of a few sketch comedy groups that showed promise   
   > that never quite understood that.  You, being Canadian, might be familiar   
   > with Radio Free Vestibule. I always thought they were hilarious, for the   
   > first half of every sketch, but they never learned when to quit and always   
   > lost me before they got to the punchline (though I _still_ can't say   
   > "galoshes" without laughing).   
   I never heard of Radio Free Vestibule. It's obvious that I Have Missed   
   Something.   
      
   I do remember, from the 50's, a radio comedy show called "Rawhide." It   
   was like Monty Python in that it featured extreme silliness powered by   
   notable cleverness.   
      
   >   
   > > In other words a meerkat may bleat at a rhinoceros, but it still remains   
   > > a rhinoceros. --[Kalahari Bushman saying of my own recent invention]   
   >   
   > Surely "it" remains a meerkat?   Perhaps, I'm missing the point...   
      
   Well, you see, in the Kalahari language, verbs agree in gender with   
   their subjects; "meerkat" and "bleat" had feminine gender whereas   
   "rhinoceros" and "remains" had masculine gender.... [1]   
      
   Actually, I had the same hesitancy about construing that saying. But I   
   think that making the antecedent of "it" be the rhino is acceptable.   
      
   [1] Bullshit, of course. But I would not put it past the Kalahari to   
   have something even stranger in their grammar. For that matter, English,   
   analyzed by contemporary linguists, has syntactical features that might   
   astonish you. How about transitive and intransitive prepositions?   
   Try   
      
      
   --   
   Christopher J. Henrich   
   chenrich@monmouth.com   
   http://www.mathinteract.com   
   "A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver." -- Boon   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)