[lit-ideas] Re: Russian?
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2014 11:43:32 -0500 (EST)
My last post today.
In a message dated 1/4/2014 2:55:05 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Might say more but need to mind 3 year old - and their language.
One problem here is that while one CAN say,
"That glass is made, obviously, of glass"
and treat this as 'analytic' (vide Grice/Strawson, "In defense of a
dogma").
it would be ungrammatical, "except under very special circumstances", as
Grice's favourite phrase goes, to utter,
"That cup is made of cup"
-- which, however, would seem equally obvious to Aristotle.
Cheers,
Speranza
---
J.C.:
"Any Russian speakers here? I was reading an article this evening and
found something confusing to me. Since I have no knowledge of Russian, I
don't know if the woman being quoted was uncertain of her English, if she
doesn't know Russian, or if there's some other oddness here...I thought you
might be able to shed some light??? The quote that puzzles me is:
<<If people speaking different languages need to group or observe things
differently, then bilinguals ought to switch focus depending on the language
they use. That's exactly the case, according to Pavlenko.For example, she
says English distinguishes between 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?
The article is here, if you're interested.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/12/30/258376009/how-language-seems-to-shape-ones-view-of-the-world?utm
_content=socialflow&utm_campaign=nprfacebook&utm_source=npr&utm_medium=faceb
ook
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