Make Me One with Everything

Glen drew my attention to a Language Log post a couple of months ago, which commented on the cultural knowledge you needed in order to get the joke

The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza joint and says, “Make me one with everything.”

Actually, the way I heard this joke years ago was, “What did the Zen master say to the hot dog vendor?”, but no matter. Glen wrote:

But oddly, given the source, the post doesn’t mention the linguistic knowledge (perhaps implicit) that you must also have. It seems like the joke requires understanding how direct and indirect objects can occupy the same spot in a sentence.

Indeed it does, and more specifically, it requires knowledge of two different syntactic frames that make can fit into. To the right is a diagram of make me one with everything with its meaning of “make for me a pizza that has every topping on it”. The first branch is the verb make; the second branch is the NP consisting of the pronoun me. The third branch is the NP one with everything, which itself consists of the NP one, modified by the PP with everything.

Now let’s take a look at the diagram for the other meaning. Which one, though? There is the Zen punch line reading: “Unify my essence with that of the universe.” But there’s also another reading where one with everything still refers to a pizza with all the toppings: “Turn me into a pizza that has every topping on it.” That’s the reading Glen and I would play with when our baby sister Ellen (she’s a second-year medical resident now, by the way) would ask us, “Will you make me a peanut butter sandwich?” We’d say, “Sure! Abracadabra — you’re a peanut butter sandwich!” Then she’d say, “No! A real peanut butter sandwich!” And we’d say, “Oh, well why didn’t you say so! You’re a real peanut butter sandwich!”

The “turn me into a pizza with everything” reading would correspond to … well, actually, that would correspond to the same structure I had in that last diagram. In fact, so would the nirvana reading. Some ambiguities just don’t correspond to different syntactic structures. To distinguish the structures associated with these different meanings, we need to label the branches with not only their syntactic categories, but also the grammatical functions that the phrases they’re labeling play. The diagram on the left below belongs to the no-funny-business meaning, with me as indirect object, and one with everything as direct object. The one on the right belongs to the funny “you’re a pizza” reading, with me as direct object, and one with everything as a predicate complement. And … it also belongs to the funny Zen reading. The two funny readings still are identical structurally. Unless…

It seems to me that the special meaning of one to mean “integrated with, coextensive with” is more of an adjectival meaning. But it’s hard to find a reason to justify that claim. You can’t have comparative or superlative forms of this adjective: *oner, *onest. It can’t be used attributively: *a one-with-everything Zen master. Of course, there are other adjectives that aren’t gradable, such as binary and nonexistent, and other adjectives that can’t be attributive, such as asleep, ajar, afraid, etc. But having one of those properties would make for a more decisive labeling. There is one fact, though, that may be what is tilting me toward an adjective diagnosis: You can only use one with X as a predicative when it has this meaning. You can’t use it as a subject, direct or indirect object, or object of a preposition: [*]One with everything just walked through the door, [*]I saw one with everything. (The asterisks mean that the sentence is grammatical, but not with the meaning you’re looking for.) So with that in mind, we could diagram the Zen meaning of make me one with everything like this: