What's so Funny?

Kid gush, again--skip on if you have low tolerance...

So, my 6 year old has been struggling with humor for some time now. He laughs (and always has) at bodily functions, situational humor, slapstick--but word games, puns, etc...he's reasoning his way through.

I find this absolutely amazing.

It reminds me of Star Trek: TNG when Data (an android, in case you did not know) was sometimes striving to be more human. He would attempt jokes, jazz, emotions, etc...

My son is great because, unlike a self-conscious adult, when he does not get the joke, he will ask outright: "What makes that funny, dad?" Sometimes, anticipating he won't get a joke, I'll tell the punchline and immediately go into explication of it. He will interrupt me, "I get it, already." Other times, even if every word in the joke is w/n his vocabulary, he may still wrestle with the joke for days or weeks. Almost always, whenever he does finally get it, he dredges it up again from some fantastic memory bank, verbatim.

I imagine similar issues are afoot for people studying a second language. Since many puns and word-related jokes are on the fringes, border crossings of slang and such, I would bet they are not commonly covered in classes on language. I think it would be a super course, however, to have a capstone course on jokes in the language..."Humor in Klingon," for example.

A) What do you call a truckload of Bison?

B) What kind of spell turns you into a dinosaur?

C) Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Olive.
Olive who?


These are the kind of jokes he's now logged into his repertoire and fully understands. They're just the kind of stuff I like to use in class, too!

A) Buffaload
B) T-hex
C) Olive you!