law-3
Explanation
The Joke
A man proudly proclaims: "Behold! I, the great Jakurinski, have discovered the fundamental law governing pronunciation changes for several sounds in a dialect spoken by coastal Croatians during the thirteenth century!" The caption below reads: "Science Fact: Linguists have the most permissive use of 'law' found in any scientific discipline."
The Humor
The comic pokes fun at how linguists use the word "law" compared to other sciences. In physics, a "law" describes a universal, fundamental truth about reality (like the law of gravity). In linguistics, a "law" can describe a highly specific pattern of sound changes in a particular dialect spoken in a narrow geographic region during a limited historical period. The humor comes from the contrast between the grandiosity of the word "law" — with all its connotations of universal, immutable truth — and the incredibly narrow, hyper-specific phenomenon it describes. The fictional "Jakurinski" announces his discovery with the dramatic flair of someone unveiling a fundamental truth of the universe, when really he's found a pattern in how some coastal Croatians pronounced certain sounds 700 years ago.