Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)

Paying homage to my good alas departed friend An Elk
by attempting a reconstruction of her lost second theory

At age fourteen I had an insight: when I do a chore in
a clever way I can save energy, so intelligence may be
linked somehow with energy? In 1970 I asked a physics
professor at a private meeting and he said no, I must not
confound intensive and extensive quantities (whatever
this means). A first confirmation came from Eric Chaissac
who says that information _is_ a form of energy. A couple
of days ago I remembered my good friend An Elk, whose
life had come to a tragic early end. The fossils in sci.lang
(the ones of my generation, that is) will remember her quite
famous theorem, her first theory, which is her's and belongs
to her alone, and, ahum, follows along this line: dinosaurs
are thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle, and
thin again at the other end ... An Elk, a dear friend of mine,
as I should have said above, once remarked unto me that
she had a second theory in mind that shall be a general
theory wherein her dinausaur theorem will just be a special
case. Now let me pay homage to An Elk by attempting a
reconstruction of her lost second theory, and thus free her
from the mockery piled upon her poor self by the notorious
Monty Pythons, who were at least honest enough to call
themselves "whacky boys."

Picture a cosmic brontosaurus rotating around his gravity
center, shed a stroboscopic light on him, and you may see
a pattern of a galaxy: bulk of matter in the center, spiral arms
- or necks and tails of the dragon - around the center, and the
ring of potential earths in the outer region, much as the beast's
brain. Actually, a galaxy forms a sphere of dark matter, as does
a solar system, with a disk in the center; again the Elk principle
in a general form: thick in the middle (disk), thin and thinner
when removing from the central disk. Or consider vision. We
just see a tiny spot of our visual field clearly, due to the fovea,
everything else unclearly, yet we have the feeling that we saw
all clearly, owing to our knowledge that helps the eyes (we see
what we know, said Goethe), and our mobile attention that
enlarges what we focus on while blending out the other regions
of our visual field; also applies to the other senses (from my
theory of perception from 1974/75, you may look up my page
An Allegory of Seeing, on my website). The tiny spot we see
clearly is just about the size of the sun or the moon on the
sky. The organization of vision certainly is a most intelligent
one, and resembles a cosmic order. This makes me wonder
whether intelligence might be at the very heart of matter and its
alternate form energy. If so, intelligent design and evolution must
not be at war - evolution is a friend of intelligent design. Albert
Einstein overcame the former idea of an ether, a sea of particles
filling the empty space, yet it seems now that even space-time
requires particles, revealing the same organization once again:
no even distribution over any axis, but periodic concentration.
In other words: An Elk rules. We may fully understand her
second theory only when we have really abandoned Lego
physics and biology of the still mechanistic era and see the
entangled world of quantum physics come full swing. Let me
foresay a discovery for that time: An Elk's general theory
predicts not only the bulk of matter in the center of a certain
space, it also predicts filaments going out from the center,
in the special case of her DT (dinosaur theorem) neck and
tail of the dragon or brontosaurus, and this predicament
of filaments is all but trivial. Filaments are present in the
highest form of organization known to us earthlings, in the
gray matter of our very brains.

Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch

..




More on English "language"

The memes at the core of a word are like a gravity
center about which meanings gather and revolve;
language is per definitionem carried by needs and
wishes (- language is the means of getting help,
support and understanding from those we depend
upon in one way or another --- and every means of
getting help, support and understanding may be
called language, on whatever level of life it occurs);
words form in contact with human crafted things;
and they are ruled by physiology. How can we
possibly bring all these aspects together?

Let me ponder the case of clicking L as part of
a hypothetical language of very early hunters who
were stalking game. They used a weapon, say,
a spear (we have 400,000 years old wooden lances
of Homo heidelbergensis, very old weapons indeed).
First one must produce a spear, then one must
learn how to use it properly, only then can one join
a hunting party. In order to give a thrust more punch
one draws the arm that holds the spear backward,
and then pushes or throws it forward with full power,
thus yielding more effect. Successful hunting requires
tactics, reasoning and talking, only then does one go
on a hunt, and the preliminary steps - making a weapon,
learning how to use it properly, thinking out tactics and
bespeaking the strategical moves - all these hold ups
guarantee a successful hunt, which, of course, has the
purpose of stilling hunger and satisfying one of our most
forceful and vital needs.

All these aspects are ingeniously combined in the
clicking L - the tongue doesn't just produce the first
click that comes handy or rather tonguy, emphatic D
or T, no, it curves backward, strokes all along the arc
of the palate, and smacks full power on its wet bed,
producing a satisfyingly loud click, and in the end
the tongue enjoys a juicy meal ...

This must be the reason why the clicking L of the
hypothetical early hunter language when stalking
game was preserved all along to English language.
The English could say tonguage, but no, they
borrowed French langue and say language that got
more smack. The Romans could have said dingua,
but no, they turned it into lingua, more smack.
The same may have happened many times before,
and testifies to the work of the homeotic meme
in the group of memes at the core of a word.

Some stations of the hypothetical homeotic way
toward language: clicking L - Magdalenian LOG
with a clicking L - ancient Greek logos (glossa
from a permutation of log, glo) - English language
and logic.

Next time: a homage to my good alas departed
friend An Elk, with an attempt at reconstructing
her second theory

Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch


A correction, and an apology to Ranijt Mathews

In several previous messages I said agriculture
started in 9000 BP in the Harran plain just south
of Goebekli Tepe. It started earlier at the base of
the Karacadag east of Goebekli Tepe, where the
oldest cultivated grains have been found to date.
Early agriculture and the late phase of Goebekli
Tepe overlapped. The lion pillar building - not
certain whether it was a real building, a roofed one,
and the animals could also be tigers or leopards -
belongs to a later phase, and the relief of a woman
with the round head of a mushroom that reminds
me of certain clouds, and the long hanging labiae,
a case of macronymphilia, but here to understand
as a sign of the rain goddess, I dare say, an
emanation of the early goddess AC-CA or AKA,
earth and sky, surviving in the Indo-European earth
goddess akka, belongs to the latest phase and
marks the transition of the apparently 100 per cent
patriarchal hunter community of Goebeli Tepe and
the Urfa region to the equitable gender model Jan
Hodder found for Chatal Hoeyuek in 6000 BC or
8000 BP (if memory serves), and the female religon
of Old Europe according to Marija Gimbutas, heyday
between 6000 and 3000 BP, clearly going along
with agriculture that must have been a mainly female
invention and achievement.

Ranijt Mathews asked me a couple of very good and
inspiring questions. I have been impatient with him,
for which I apologize. He was right in mentioning dingua
as origin of Latin lingua, and thus he helped me to
further develop my model of a word. Here is the new
step I took. The meme at the center of a word may be
a group of memes, among them a homeotic meme
that keeps a word in its morphospace. The tools of the
homeotic meme are folk etymology and borrowings from
other languages. And the homeotic meme relies on
physiology, especially the mouth and tongue, and on
a neurological network that preserves the values of words
(my attempt at reconstructing Magdalenian one year ago
relied mainly on this network, was done for the most part
subconsciously, the words just popped up, in the right
place, and let me recognize the fine tool of permutation).
I postulate a very early language of clicks that was used
by hunters stalking game, perhaps in the Middle Stone
Age in South Africa, 75,000 years ago, or still earlier
somewhere else in Africa, or even by Homo erectus.
The clicking L and other clicks survive in the language
of the nearly extinguished Xan in South Africa. The
homeotic meme would have preserved the clicking L,
bringing it back several times. Words develop, split up,
drift apart and away, whereupon they are brought back
by the homeotic meme, and if it must use folk etymology
and borrowings. Walde mentions dingua as the origin of
Latin lingua, a case of folk etymology, dingua linked with
ligere, however, he says that lingua can't be deduced from
one single Indo-European word, he mentions many more
words that played or may have played a role, D and T
and L words. I see the homeotic meme act here, taking
an opportunity of restoring the old clicking L, turning
dingua into lingua. Another opportunity occurred when
the English borrowed French langue for language. They
could have used their tongue, and say tonguage, but no,
language got more smack, preserves the old clickling L.

Next time: more about the memes at the base of
English language

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
    ... non-verbal language yourself. ... by attempting a reconstruction of her lost second theory ... An Elk, a dear friend of mine, ... and testifies to the work of the homeotic meme ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
    ... confirming my old opinion that language is not at all ... by attempting a reconstruction of her lost second theory ... An Elk, a dear friend of mine, ... and testifies to the work of the homeotic meme ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
    ... More on English "language" ... game was preserved all along to English language. ... and testifies to the work of the homeotic meme ... The meme at the center of a word may be ...
    (sci.lang)