...P¹

Thanks to Andrea Veatch, Norma Mendoza-Denton, Jonathan Haidt, Hadass Sheffer, William T. Reynolds, Shirley Brice-Heath, Mark Keavney, Victor Raskin, Henry Gleitman, Amy Carrell and others for helpful discussions. Thanks also for the useful comments of three anonymous reviewers. Most of this work was carried out with the financial support of a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University.

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... Aristotle²

Aristotle's Comedy is lost to us, since approximately 800 A.D.

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... many³

My bibliography file contains 619 entries at the most recent count.

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... not.⁴

The theory does not have a behaviorist focus, since it centers on internal subjective interpretations and the resulting internal states rather than on external stimulus and observable response characteristics. Behavior is evidence for the theory, but (with present methods) unobservables are its defining elements. Similarly, until not long ago, the theory of atoms was one of unobservable elements, supported by observable evidence.

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... order.⁵

Kierkegaard, for example, wrote that humor communicates on an ethical/moral level.

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... more.⁶

This fact corresponds to Wyer & Collins' (1992) Proposition 8, that cognitive elaboration increases humor. See discussion below.

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... eliminated.⁷

This may seem reminiscent of a Freudian, or one might say, hydraulic view of emotions, but it can just as easily be considered as a process of reasoning in which multiple hypotheses are initially entertained at once, then insufficiently plausible or emotionally compelling ones are eliminated on further consideration.

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... prolonged.⁸

This explains Proposition 8 of Wyer & Collins (1992), which makes the role of further elaboration a central tenet or proposition of their theory. However, this observation is a consequence, not an axiom, of the present theory.

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... set-up.⁹

Other interpretations of this joke are also possible, including one in which the punchline reveals the violation that Jesus should be concerned about such mundane things as seeing Peter's house when he's dying. I believe I did not see this interpretation when I first encountered this joke; at the same time it is entirely possible for people to laugh at different things in the same joke. The existence of one valid interpretation doesn't refute the existence of another valid interpretation, if both can stand on their own merits. The present argument is based on the mere existence of a valid interpretation with an N+V ordering and thus does not require all other interpretations to be invalid.

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... humor.¹⁰

Kierkegaard (1941/1846:446-7), Koestler (1964), Nerhardt (1976), Forabosco (1992), Wyer & Collins (1992) are some authors who propose a crucial role for incongruity or absurdity.

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... question¹¹

Thanks to Mark Keavney for pointing this out to me.

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... beginning.¹²

This explanation for the repetition effect is overlooked by Wyer & Collins (1992), where instead it is the reduced possibility for further cognitive elaboration in repetitions that is used to explain their reduced humor potential. This despite the fact that comprehension difficulty is an axiom of their theory, and despite the fact that the explanation is invalid: The fiftieth Monty Python movie rerun remains funny to some not because there are further cognitive elaborations discovered, but because the violations and the dead-pan normality interpretations remain convincing.

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... cases.¹³

A comparative phonetic study of the acoustic properties of the different vocalizations in crying, laughing, and gasping in pain is called for. What acoustical properties make them distinctively identifiable? How can they be convincingly synthesized or accurately recognized by machine? Are there learned, culture-specific, communicatively important features of these vocalizations? What is shared (and what can vary) among all the very different vocalizations that are identifiably of one type or the other?

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... attitudes.¹⁴

As much is implied by discussion in the speech communication literature recommending humor as a tool for speakers, teachers, and others who wish to communicate effectively (e.g., Tacey, 1967).

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... have:¹⁵

In doing ethnographic or other fieldwork to explore such questions, for example, one might also ask subjects what offends them, but that seems a more dicey method, since it is not a good thing to offend one's informants. Further, this tool is useful in everyday situations.

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