[lit-ideas] Re: Russian?
- From: Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2014 17:52:59 -0600
If you tell a three year old here that something is a bit scary, they'll
largely ignore the warning. "A bit" means "just a little" or "slightly".
A few years ago, a new acquaintance of mine said that John was going to be
gone for a minute. I ran some errands, came back a good two hours later,
asked where John was, and my acquaintance said, "I told you he was gone for
a minute!". After some Abbott and Costello type conversation, we realized
that by "for a minute" I mean "for a brief time" and by "for a minute" she
meant "for an indefinite and possibly lengthy time". I've never really
understood how "minute" gets to imply something lengthy, but whaddo I know.
The article which triggered my original question was all about language
acquisition and fluency development. Any general reactions to this?
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=facebook
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 Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 12:51 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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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