Script-Based Semantic and Ontological Semantic Theories of Humor

Abstract

This chapter deals with two of the three major linguistic theory of humor, the script-based Semantic-Script Theory of Humor, or SSTH, and the Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor, or OSTH. It addresses a number of issues, and the transitions may be sharp and also addresses the theory and practice of ontological semantics without humor and, following that, its application to humor. The chapter addresses more complexity in humor, analyzing another joke informally and then theoretically. SSTH, the first generation of the linguistic theory of humor, was a purely linguistic application of semantics to verbal jokes. OSTH, the latest, continues the enterprise on the advanced foundation of the latest theory of linguistic semantics. But the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) was an attempt of an interdisciplinary theory, including linguistics but not limited to it. Information about the world comes from the OST ontology, a constructed model of reality, a theory of the world.