Comments on: Analyze this

By: Peter Kirk

Peter Kirk — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:01:16 +0000

I noticed the dropped “t” in “won’t” which to me suggests a cockney pronunciation with a glottal stop at the end of the word, which would go with the colloquialism “rip you off”. But the dropped “t” also allows this to be reanalysed as “We won! [We] rip[ped] you off a lot!”

By: Mike Aubrey

Mike Aubrey — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:23:37 +0000

Thomas: I hope that doesn’t mean I’m not as funny as I think I am!

By: John Donnelly

John Donnelly — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:48:56 +0000

There are a lot of different levels of humour here.

First I’m struck by confusion over the sentence structure
- We won’t rip me off by a large amount (unlike those guys down the road who will take you for everything you’ve got).
- We will rip you off by a small amount (after all we have to make money somehow).
- We won’t rip you off at all.

If I vocalize the text it seems they may have a strong accent. That realization is amusing because it breaks the usual spelling rules and reminds me of the old “A B C D Goldfish” exercise.

Then it appears that the sign writer hasn’t corrected the spelling and so ripped off the store merchant.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:03:57 +0000

Mike, That doesn’t sound like nearly as much fun as I thought! I’ll shut up now just some…er I mean a lot (it rhymes better).

By: Mike Aubrey

Mike Aubrey — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:56:56 +0000

Anyway, the joke in my apartment is adding the tag, “just some” to absolute and either/or statements – especially when its a highly unusual collocation.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:50:39 +0000

All I’m saying is that we should be aware of our presuppositions prior to jumping into exegesis. Indeed, Wrong’s presence on the web will be missed in this regard. Oh well.. as long as he keeps telling me what 50 blogs to check out each month I suppose I can forgive.

By: Steve Runge

Steve Runge — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:40:28 +0000

So you are suggesting we need to rethink our presuppositions? Where is NT Wrong when you need him?

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:37:59 +0000

I think there’s some ellipses going on here…

“We [are] won’ [to] rip you off a lot.”

where “won’” is a shortened form of the older “wont” – meaning it is their habit to rip us off. This reading might come under fire because it essentially puts the traditional understanding on its head. Just call it the New Perspective on Rip. Or the NPR if you will.

By: P. Smith

P. Smith — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:22:03 +0000

My thoughts exactly Dr. Runge. My friends hate it when I do this same sort of thing.

By: Steve Runge

Steve Runge — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:05:39 +0000

Perhaps they used an emphatic that wasn’t strong enough to close the door? Perhaps they were casting about for “…at all”? Thanks for the correction, I had missed that.