I hate capitalism

[tahnan]

All corporations suck. More on this tomorrow. In the meantime, note that when applying for an account at Sovereign Bank, the available titles do not include "Ms.", and your options for employment are "Employed Full Time / Employed Part Time / Self-Employed / Homemaker / Retired", and not, say, "currently looking for employment".

Comments

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I'd like to believe you, and yet my undergrad advisor tells me, "The woman who put her paycheck in the bank was wiser than the one that put it in the Brown University Employees Credit Union" (http://www.cog.brown.edu/~pj/abstracts.htm#paychecks).

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

You have amused me.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

There is, of course, a history to the sentence. The original sentence illustrating "paycheck pronouns" was:

(1) The man who gave his paycheck to his wife was wiser than the man who gave it to his mistress.

The linguistic question at stake is: what does "it" refer to? Clearly, the second man's paycheck, but that's a little tricky because that hasn't been mentioned in the discourse before, so why can you use a pronoun there? (Compare: "I read a book last night. He's very smart"--since the author hasn't been mentioned, you can't use "he" to refer to him.)

But sentences about wives and mistresses are a little passe these days, so Polly updated it based on, er, some current events (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_scandal). (In the original paper, she thanks a Rhode Island politician for making the sentence possible.)

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

To me it seems that "it" refers, not to the second man's paycheck, but to the phrase "his paycheck"-- whose referent shifts from the first man to the second, even though it only actually appears in the sentence once.

Does this mean I don't buy variable-free semantics?

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

Note: I don't actually have the foggiest idea what variable-free semantics are. Or is.

[q-pheevr.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, well. Providence.

Didn't the BUECU go under because embezzlement at another institution bankrupted the deposit insurance company? So it wasn't really the credit union's fault, although I guess banks are better protected because they're federally insured. (My credit union is insured by DICO.)

Still, I think the woman who deposited her paycheque in the Brown University Employees' Credit Union was wiser (if no wealthier) than the one who fed it to her donkey.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Thank you. That's the funniest thing I've read all week.