[lit-ideas] Re: Russian?

  • From: Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2014 17:15:09 +0000

Dear WO can you  produce any evidence, within linguistics that (what you call 
rule) is innate is a trivial truth.
The late bake hacker are confused about what a rule is (but many other topics, 
see .g.  the late M.A.E. Dummett, see e.g the almost too polite UNSUCCESFUL DIG 
in phil quarterly, 1984, p 377 & ff)

-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Walter C. Okshevsky
Sent: 05 January 2014 07:02 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Omar Kusturica
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Russian?

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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