Relevance
In the segment of NPR's "Morning Edition" that lists notable events of
the day, today we were told:
Don't forget to spay or neuter: "Price
is Right" host Bob Barker is 82 today.
There are two reasons to think that the first part must be intended to
be relevant to the second part. However, unless you know more
about Bob Barker than that he's the host of "The Price is Right",
you'll be at a loss as to how.
First reason to think it's relevant: the two parts are juxtaposed, and
the first has nothing obvious to do with the day. So, unless the
folks at NPR have become unhinged, the first must have some relevance
to the second.
And then there's the prosody, indicated by the colon in my
transcription above: the first part ends with a suspension rather than
a fall, conveying that the second part is a continuation of the first.
And relevance there is: for years, Bob Barker has ended the game show
with an appeal to viewers to spay or neuter their pets. (In 1994
he set up a foundation to fund grants for spay/neuter clinics.)
I'm not a game show fan, so I didn't know about Barker's attachment to
the cause and was just baffled by the "Morning Edition" announcement.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at December 12, 2006 12:31 PM