Sunday, April 27, 2014

Oulipost #24: Homosyntaxism

Prompt: Homosyntaxism is a method of translation that preserves only the syntactic order of the original words. To give a rudimentary example, if N=noun, V=verb and A=adjective, the outline NVA could yield solutions such as “The day turned cold,” “Violets are blue,” “An Oulipian! Be wary!”)

Option 1: Choose a sentence from your newspaper source text and write as many homosyntaxisms as possible based on that same variation.

Option 2: Complete a homosyntaxism of an entire paragraph or article found in your text.


Source: tonight, i decided to take my news from the past.  from one hundred years in the past, in fact.  the picture was printed in late April of 1914 about the Cape Cod Canal. 

the image comes from capecodtoday.com

the sentence i think i'll play with tonight is... "This does not mean that the canal is open for shipping."  And i'll be using option 1.

i don't usually divulge much of the processes, but i find it really fascinating (enough to point out) how drastically different the vernacular and syntax of journalism between then and now.  one hundred years is a mighty long time. 


This does not mean that the canal is open for shipping.
Pronoun / negative auxiliary verb phrase / verb / conjunction / article / noun / auxiliary verb / verb / preposition / verb.





He shouldn't leave but a man does want to love.
She couldn't love fore the days would hurt.
They don't live because a wound needs to heal.




 

1 comment:

Nicole said...

This is a good one.