[lit-ideas] Re: Russian?

  • From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2014 13:32:05 -0330

I believe Chomsky has since recanted all that "innate rules" kind of stuff,
perhaps due to the compelling analyses provided by the likes of Baker & Hacker
who suggest, outlandishly, that a rule is a social sort of thing, not a
biological sort of thing (vide: *Language: sense and nonsense*). 

It should be noted that Okshevsky corroborated B&H's view in his previous post
of today, before returning to shovelling out his driveway and a path to the
compost.

Walter O







Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:

> This would be a pretty good way to rephrase it / explicate it except that I
> would like to keep the term 'pragmatics' because there is a distinction to be
> made between grammar (rules of language) and pragmatics (common usage). The
> expression 'a glass of tea' is not ungrammatical in English, only uncommon.
> The expression 'a box of pizza' might not be grammatical in English but it is
> still intelligible. The rules of grammar are somewhat less flexible than the
> pragmatic 'rules of thumb.' In my view, they are both largely contingent but
> with grammar rules one has to deal with Chomsky who claims that there is an
> underlying 'deep grammar' common to all languages, and presumably hard-wired
> in our brain structure, although nobody has managed to reconstruct it in
> terms of formal logic yet.
> 
> O.K.
> 
> 
> 
> On Saturday, January 4, 2014 8:55 AM, Donal McEvoy
> <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>  
> 
> >I'd suggest that most or 
> all of these supposedly unsayable things can become sayable, if the 
> pragmatics of language calls for them to be sayable.>
> 
> If I understand this 
> right, then it might be rephrased - avoiding terms like "unsayable" 
> which has a particular meaning in Kantian and Wittgensteinian approaches
> whereby the unsayable cannot become sayable, and also jargon like "the 
> pragmatics of language". Rephrased: most of what might appear to be some kind
> of nonsense in that it 
> violates some 'rules' in a particular language, would not be nonsense if that
> particular language had different 'rules' - and in many/most cases the
> 'rules' in a particular language could be otherwise because they 
> fall short of being strictly logical rules or rules that are inescapable for
> some other reason. 
> 
> 
> On this view, a 'box of pizza' may or may not be regarded as a proper
> construction depending merely on contingent and variable 'rules' in a
> particular language: and what is regarded as a proper construction in one
> language may not be so regarded in another. In one language referring to a
> 'box of rain' may be nonsense where it is used to refer to heavy rainfall, in
> another the expression a 'box of rain' may be an accepted idiom that refers
> to heavy rainfall.
> 
> It is therefore a sandtrap to mistake variable contingencies that govern
> 'sense' in a particular language for some kind of necessary truths as to what
> makes sense.
> 
> Expressions that deviate from norms of 'sense' are often not therefore
> nonsense in the sense that they are unintelligible: we can understand their
> 'sense' even if the expression deviates from norms of 'sense'. 
> 
> 
> This is very evident in language-acquisition: a child may grasp the term
> "bit" as a quantifier - as in "It's a bit scary". Here "a bit" means "quite".
> They then may apply this in a way that violates norms of sense as when they
> are asked how they are and reply "I'm a bit fine". We understand the 'sense'
> of "I'm a bit fine" nonetheless - it means something like "I'm quite fine".
> But somehow norms of language affect sense so that, in terms of those norms,
> "a bit" is apt to mean "quite" in "It's a bit scary" but not apt in "I'm a
> bit fine". For an adult to say "I'm a bit fine" might be taken as indication
> that they are not very fine at all (because of 'implicature' that only "a
> bit" is fine leaving the rest not fine), which is not the sense the child
> intends. 
> 
> 
> Might say more but need to mind 3 year old - and their language.
> 
> 
> Donal
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday, 3 January 2014, 22:54, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>  
> I'd suggest that most or all of these supposedly unsayable things can become
> sayable, if the pragmatics of language calls for them to be sayable. If we
> have no glasses and have to serve vodka in china cups, a 'cup of vodka' will
> quickly become a sayable expression. Simarly with a 'glass of soup' if we
> haven't got cups or plates. I don't want to get too Donally here, but really
> a distinction has to be made between linguistic pragmatics and philosophical
> logic. A statement like : "two cups of tea are five cups" violates logic,
> although to be honest I can imagine contexts in which even this is sayable.
> Human language isn't by any means literally translatable into the language of
> formal logic, or vice versa. End of sermon now, but this is meant as a
> serious comment.
> 
> O.K.
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday, January 3, 2014 6:14 PM, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
> wrote:
>  
> Po Russkie, a cup and a glass may be made of the same material - i.e.,
> plastic,
> glass - and still the former would be called "krushka" and the latter
> "stakan."
> The shape is the thing, though their edges are admittedly at times fuzzy.
> While
> there are plastic glasses and plastic cups, never the twain shall meet. 
> 
> Things never said in Russian:
> 
> - a glass of soup
> 
> - a cup of beer (unless of course all the glasses have been smashed in the
> fireplace and cups are all that remain.
> 
> - a glass of pizza
> 
> - a cup of pizza
> 
> - a glass of herring
> 
> - a cup of single malt (the Scots may contend this does not generalize to
> Scottish)
> 
> - a glass of borscht (a cup of borscht is perfectly
>  in order, though Russians
> prefer bowels))
> 
> - a glass of pieroshkis
> 
> I don't know who meant what in Julie's post, as my mug of tea is not
> empirical
> but purely transcendental.
> 
> Vsevo horoshovo,  Valodsya
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Quoting Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>:
> 
> > May I revise my statement about English?  I should have said that in the
> > part of the country I live in, American English does pretty much use "cup"
> > and "glass" to indicate the shape of a container, rather than what it is
> > made
>  of.  Which, oddly to me, is what
>  the quote indicates about the Russian
> > distinction (and "juxtaposes" it with the English distinction).  So either
> > she meant to say that Russian distinguishes between cup and glass based on
> > what they are made of, or Russian doesn't differ from English in this
> > particular case, or my understanding of the English useage is either faulty
> > or narrow.  I'm trying to figure out which...
> > 
> > Julie Campbell
> > Julie's Music & Language Studio
> > 1215 W. Worley
> > Columbia, MO  65203
> > 573-881-6889
> > https://juliesmusicandlanguagestudio.musicteachershelper.com/
> > http://www.facebook.com/JuliesMusicLanguageStudio
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 7:12 PM, <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > > Ia message dated 1/2/2014 7:58:57 P.M. Eastern  Standard Time,
> > > juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx writes:
> > > cups and glasses, but in Russian,  the difference between chashka (cup)
> > and
> > > stakan (glass) is based on shape, not  material.>>I wonder if she meant
> to
> > > say the opposite?  To me, in  English, the difference
>  between "cup" and
> > > "glass" usually is the shape.  Is  that different in Russian?
> > >
> > > Mmmm
> > >
> > > I wonder.
> > >
> > > But then I would think that:
> > >
> > > That glass is made of glass.
> > >
> > > is what philosophers (or Witters at any rate) would call a tautology,
> i.e.
> > > an item that does not "speak" about the world.
> > >
> > > Revising the etymologies may help, though -- or then, confuse one
> further!
> > > :) -- below.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Speranza
> > >
> > > ---
> >
>  >
> > > cup:
> > >
> > > from online source: Etymology Online:
> > >
> > > Old English cuppe, from Late Latin cuppa "cup" (source of Italian coppa,
> > > Spanish copa, Old French coupe "cup"), from Latin cupa "tub, cask, tun,
> > > barrel,"  from PIE *keup- "a hollow" (cf. Sanskrit kupah "hollow, pit,
> > > cave,"
> > > Greek kype  "a kind of ship," Old Church Slavonic kupu, Lithuanian
> > kaupas).
> > > The Late Latin word was borrowed throughout Germanic; cf. Old Frisian
> kopp
> > > "cup, head," Middle Low German kopp "cup," Middle Dutch coppe, Dutch
> kopje
> > > "cup,  head." German cognate Kopf now means exclusively "head" (cf.
> French
> > > tête, from 
>  Latin testa "potsherd"). Meaning "part of a bra that holds a
> > > breast" is from  1938. [One's] cup of tea "what interests one" (1932),
> > > earlier
> > > used of persons  (1908), the sense being "what is invigorating."
> > >
> > > glass:
> > > Old English glæs "glass, a glass vessel," from West Germanic *glasam (cf.
> > > Old Saxon glas, Middle Dutch and Dutch glas, German Glas, Old Norse gler
> > > "glass,  looking glass," Danish glar), from PIE *ghel- "to shine,
> glitter"
> > > (cf.
> > > Latin  glaber "smooth, bald," Old Church Slavonic gladuku, Lithuanian
> > > glodus "smooth"),  with derivatives referring to colors and bright
> > > materials, a
> > > word that is
>  the  root of widespread words for gray, blue, green, and
> > > yellow
> > > (cf. Old English glær  "amber," Latin glaesum "amber," Old Irish glass
> > > "green, blue, gray," Welsh glas  "blue;" see Chloe). Sense of "drinking
> > > glass" is
> > > early 13c.
> > >  The glass slipper in "Cinderella" is perhaps an error by Charles
> > > Perrault, translating in 1697, mistaking Old French voir "ermine, fur"
> for
> > > verre
> > > "glass." In other versions of the tale it is a fur slipper. The proverb
> > > about
> > > people in glass houses throwing stones is attested by 1779, but earlier
> > > forms go  back to 17c.:
> > > Who hath glass-windows of his own must take heed how
>  he throws  stones at
> > > his house. ... He that hath a body made of glass must not throw stones 
> at
> > > another. [John Ray, "Handbook of Proverbs," 1670]
> > >
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