Hi!
This semester I'm participating in a course about "English for special purposes".
So far we have been dealing with commercial texts only. However, all students are required to give a presentation in the course. My suggestion to Professor Bachem was that I could do a presentation on the extraordinary usage of English language in cartoon movies, using the land before time as an example. He did not approve the topic immediately, but told me to prepare something for next week so I could give him some idea of what it would look like. In case my choice of topic is approved by him, I may have to take some pols about your reception of that kind of English use and the like.
Here are some notes I've taken down so far:
Extraordinary usage of English language in cartoons
Use of catchwords / -phrases for individual characters never used by any other character:
ï Ducky: “Yep, yep, yep!”, “Nope, nope, nope!”
ï Cera: “dumb”
Usage of wrong grammar to create a cute, childlike effect:
ï Petrie: Usage of me instead of I.
ï Ducky and Petrie: “Regularization” of irregular verbs.
(“Spike finded it.”)
ï Petrie: Usage of no instead of not, don’t or doesn’t.
(“Me no know!”)
ï Dropping of forms of to be.
(“Me terrified”, “You sure?”)
ï No s at the end of third person singular verb forms.
(“And it have water!”)
Individual speech patterns for some characters:
ï Ducky never uses weak forms of the negation such as don’t, aren’t, doesn’t.
ï Ducky frequently repeats what she is saying. She does so either by quickly repeating a single word often three sometimes even more times, or else by confirming what she said by adding I do or I do not at the end of a sentence.
ï Petrie almost never uses I to refer to himself. When not using me he usually refers to himself with his name.
Creation of new words for the dinosaur characters. Very often usage of descriptive terms for “human terms” which would probably be unknown to the dinosaurs (such as scientific names for dinosaur species):
Sun – bright circle; Moon – great night circle; Stars – lesser lights of the dark time;
Rain – sky water; Sea – Big water; Volcano – buning/smoking mountain;
Triceratops - Threehorn; Stegosaurus – Spiketail; Carnivore – sharptooth;
There is no absolute consistence in the use of these terms though. Words such as sun, star and rain are used in spite of the alternative “dinosaur terms”. In some cases such words were used in songs for the sake of rhyming.
