Reverse-speak is a common feature of generative grammar among the Bush-men

[Leopolds Ghost]

For example, the participle "am", "am not" is known as a Reverse Intensifier Clause.

Often used to mean "am not precisely",

as in the statement:

"I am NOT Beelzebub, Lord of Sulphur!"

Chomsky could provide more insight into this, but to put it in layman's terms, among the Bush-men, "AM NOT" usually translates to "IS". Example: "IS our children learning?"

In this case, "IS" is used as an unknown tense in standard English, the negative future conditional progressive. Roughly translating to normal English as: "I am assuming our children are not and will continue to not be learning?" This is the reverse of the Irish and Welsh tense, "I do be", as in "I do be learning to play the flute."

TAKE-HOME ASSIGNMENT:

Identify five examples of Bush-speak and diagram them for semantic meaning.

EXTRA CREDIT: Field work amongst the Bush-men will count towards your masters in Linguistic Anthropology.

[Ino]

1. So...

"I am NOT Beelzebub" is Bush-speak for "I is Beelzebub"? Or, as Samuel Bodman would put it, "He didn't mean it literally."

[Leopolds Ghost]

2. Possibly. However, In Bushspeak, "He didn't mean it literally" means

"He DID mean it literally, but I'm not going to tell YOU that."

However, this statement is only expressed in the "neutered" gender commonly used by White House spokesmen.

Rarely is the question asked, "Is I El Diablo?"

[RC]

3. OW! My heard hurts wading through that.

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. Now you know how Bush feels.

I had to take Linguistics in college.

Someone should parse Bush's speech and identify the roots of
pre-historic grammar.

For example, he repeats words often. In Pidgin English and other languages, this is a form of syntax used to distinguish meaning. Could Bush mean something when he says, "Fool Me, Fool, Can't be fooled again?" Coded messages, perhaps?

[bobthedrummer]

5. Great observation-some of the other characteristics used by BFEE:

symbolism, noetics, neurolinguistic programming.

[Leopolds Ghost]

6. Noetics?

Isn't that the War on Christmas? No wait, that's Noelist. ;-)

LG (who never got THAT good at linguistics)

[leeroysphitz]

7. I thought the war on Christmas was...

"Antichristestablishmentnoelism".

I am not being contentious.

[Leopolds Ghost]

8. No, you are being nonchristmous. n/t

[KurtNYC]

9. Michael McDonald: "I do be brothers"

:smoke: