When you stop to think about it, puns are actually pretty neat.
Sign language has puns. But the gestures are similar, rather than the sounds.
Sign language is fascinating because it works exactly like other languages. It has rhymes, again with similar gesture rather than sound. Some people stutter in sign; being stuck in a repeated gesture.
This is further evidence for the theory that language is something inherent in human brains.
Where else would it be? The mouth?
Like it was not just invented by a generic computation machine called the human brain, multiple times in different locations. Its more fundamental than that.
There was a competing theory that language was a technology that we developed and therefore had to learn rather than being innate.
We tortured a whole bunch of apes in the 70s & 80s trying to teach them language when it was always an exclusive ability of humans.
( I know that chimps could do sign language and stuff, but they never developed language; only able to express simple desires and emotions that they were well capable of without doing sign. And yes, Koko the gorilla’s ability was mostly a stage act. I’m sorry. )
Language isn’t entirely exclusive to humans. Some animals are linguistic geniuses and can pick up the basics. Kanzi the bonobo did a lot better than Koko and Nim. I don’t think the language acquisition device is a requirement to use language, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier and enables much greater complexity in language.
And of course, language is now an ability humans share with large language models, which do even better than Kanzi at using language.
The capability for language is obviously inherent and no one has disputed that for 70 years, the question is whether it’s domain specific like the generativists claim or domain general like the functionalists claim.
Either there isn’t a pun here or I’m not understanding where the pun is. Either way, it’s freaking me out, man.
I guess OP opened the box of pundora for you
Jokes and puns show a mastery of the language they’re written in.
I know a little Spanish, I can write technical documentation in Spanish well enough with some translation assistance. I can’t make a joke in Spanish, though. I especially can’t make a pun, which relies on knowledge of both the joke and the “straight intention” of the pun.
If you can make a pun in another language off the top of your head I’d probably consider you fluent in that language for all intents and purposes.
Multaj viroj diras ke vi ne kapablas pluvi. Sed, Mi vidis virinon, kiu pluvis sur ŝia koramiko.
Many men say that you can’t rain. But, I saw a woman, who was raining on her boyfriend.
It’s an incredibly bad joke, but I think it qualifies.
they are awesome. no idea when they became “low brow” Shakespeare used them a plenty. they are fun and clever
I judge them on a circular scale.
All I have is a bathroom scale.
I give that a solid 2.
You should listen to “the debaters” podcast / show which is hilarious, but also every episode has a giant trove of puns
Puns - and dare I say, smut - will save humanity.
Puns are the highest form of humor.
