[lit-ideas] Re: Russian?
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2014 18:23:12 -0330
Here's a hypothesis for all you linguistic relativists to chew on:
It is a conceptual/logical truth that "believe" / "belief" does not permit a
procedural sense. You cannot "believe how" something. You can believe that,
believe in, believe for, but no natural language could permit a procedural
sense of "believe" / "belief."
OK, one more. While "knowledge" permits a propositional (k-that) and a
procedural (k-how) sense, there is no such thing as "knowing to." So one can
learn how to tie one's shoes and learn that Wolfau is in Austria through the
acquisition of one kind of knowledge or another. But one can't learn to be
courageous, just or kind simply through the acquisition of a form of knowledge.
Dispositions are as such not reducible to propositional or procedural knowledge.
A necessary conceptual feature of language thus provides an educational lesson.
(Lesson courtesy of Israel Scheffler.) Or not.
Then there's also JTB theory and Kant's moral categories, but I'm still weak
from the cold and the shoveling and the 10 hr power outage to mention these.
Having returned from the 16th century,
Walter O
Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> >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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