proof that boring linguistics papers are not always boring
i know what you’re thinking. you’re thinking that boring linguistics papers are always boring. but it ain’t always so, slacker! as evidence, i submit the paper* on the aforementioned adverbial prefixes in klamath. here, scott delancy discusses the prefix sg- (act with the penis) as it appears in several klamath myths.
the concluding line is the best line that ever appeared in all of linguistics (i bolded it for extra emphasis). i would wear a t-shirt of a tattooed version of a cross-stitched rendering of it, if such a thing existed.
sg- occurs in a set of semantically rather idiosyncratic stems:
- /sgocaqta/ — bend the penis on
- /sgena/ — take out the penis
- /is goqo:tYe:nia/ — scrape the penis around inside
This is hardly surprising; there is a limited range of things which can be done with the penis, even in myth.
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* “lexical prefixes and the bipartite stem construction in klamath” by scott delancey, international journal of american linguistics, (january 1999).

