Thursday, May 12, 2005
Groucho Marx and Ambiguous Abstraction in Compound Prepositions
One of the rotating quotes at the Calvin Library site is this one from Groucho Marx:
Outside of a dog, a book is Man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
You could say Marx is playing on the ambiguity of whether the compound preposition “outside of” is abstract (describing a relationship of concepts) or concrete (describing a relationship of objects). I’m sure that’s how Marx saw it…
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