Page 38 - The Language of Humour

‘I SAY, I SAY, I SAY’ 25
5 I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got into my
pyjamas I’ll never know. (Groucho Marx in Animal
Crackers)
6 Make up for your life. (advert)
7 In passing sentence the judge said he was a thoroughly evil
man. (news report)
8 ‘My parents are stuck at Waterloo Station. There’s been a
bomb scare.’ ‘Are they safe?’ ‘No, bombs are really
dangerous.’

Commentary

Clause:

Yoko Ono will talk about her husband John Lennon who was
killed / in an interview with Barbara Walters /=adjunct to either
‘talk’ or ‘killed’.

‘Make up for’=verb meaning ‘compensate’, or a noun phrase with the
headword as ‘make-up’. Phrase:

I once shot an elephant [in my pyjamas].

The head word being modif ied is ‘I’ or ‘elephant’ Deixis:

In passing sentence the judge said he was a thoroughly evil man.