Re: More Etymology!


"Franz Gnaedinger" <frgn@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1166604377.980573.325260@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I was hungry for the real thing, language instead of linguistics, art
instead of art history, life instead of academe. So I studied
language.

Giotto developed techniques that went beyond those of his teacher
Cimabue, and Cimabue retained most of the old conventions of the
Byzantine school, but introduced greater naturalism in his treatment of
figures. Van Gogh in 1880 decided to head to Brussels
to begin studies in art. Mozart's father was one of Europe's leading
musical teachers, Plato grew under Socrate's guide, and Shakespeare had
an impressive familiarity with the stories by Latin authors, as is
evident when examining his plays and their sources. Einstein realized
the power of axiomatic deductive reasoning from Euclid's Elements, which
he called the "holy little geometry book". We can't find any man who
enriched humankind in shortage of teachers . What's a 'real' thing
without the
cultural mediation? Things show different layers of 'reality'. The same
thing, for instance a painting, is different depending on whether you
see it with the eyes of a greenhorn or of a specialist. My perception of
Velázquez's Las Meninas dramatically changed after reading ' The Order
of Things' by M. Foucault. You recognize a significant figure in your
apprenticeship, but your paths didn't cross and you didn't develop the
'revolutionary grammar of _functors_ and _arguments' of your teacher.
So, is your refusal to using mediations among you and the matter you are
examining an a priori refusal of cultural authorities?


There was only nonsense in books, and my teachers who had studied
could not provide answers either. [...] to think on my own, and go new
ways, all on my own.

While at the Gymnasium, Einstein clashed with authority and resented the
school regimen, "believing that the spirit of learning and creative
thought were lost in such endeavors", so he said: "Education is what
remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school". But
after abandoning his mediocre teachers, he studied the Maxwell's
electromagnetic theory, was presented with the works of Ernst Mach,
obtained his doctorate under Alfred Kleiner at the University of Zürich
and started submitting his series of papers to the "Annalen der Physik".
There are bad teachers and good teachers, but how can one, devoting
himself to a scientifical matter, prescind from scientists and proceed
all on his own? Aren't there any valid linguists but you?


Then, in 1974/75 I found my definition of language: 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 ...

Definitions work in analytical, delimited and formal fields, like in
geometry's theorems, but are of little use as foundation of a science:
the best definition of a science is constituted by its development and
its results. "The definition with which any science makes an absolute
beginning cannot contain anything other than the precise and correct
expression of what is imagined to be the accepted and familiar subject
matter and aim of the science. That precisely this is what is imagined
is an historical asseveration in respect of which one can only appeal to
such and such as recognised facts; or rather the plea can be advanced
that such and such could be accepted as recognised facts. There will
always be someone who will adduce a case, an instance, according to
which something more and different is to be understood by certain terms
the definition of which must therefore be made more precise or more
general and the science too, must be accommodated thereto. This again
involves argumentation about what should be admitted or excluded and
within what limits and to what extent; but argumentation is open to the
most manifold and various opinions, on which a decision can finally be
determined only arbitrarily."

Then I found that all six permutations of a three-
letter-word yield words around the same meme

Unfortunately not, Franz. I can find neither in baby talk nor in
studies on protolanguages a stage where the bases of speech are
constituted by permutations of three phonemes.

You are free to assume that early human language involved
long words

Never assumed, you can reread the entire thread.

You can see that with English, the words have become sadly brief. Only
German kept > some of the glory of early language, consider for
example the
Vierwaldstaetterseedampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaens-
muetzengoldsternglanz

I beg your pardon, but the glory of early languages is that of apes-like
'languages'. The progress is not from long-word to short-word or
viceversa, but from holophrastic to analytical expression.













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