----- By J. L. Speranza
(do not forget the byline when
you contribute)
-------------------
----- JASON KENNEDY was referring at people who should NOT sound like a cow when they say "aun".
I was (and still am) wondering if 'aun' and 'aUn' are cognate. I think they are. In which case, I can't (or better KANT) see the rationale!
This below from online:
"In Spanish, the word "aun"
is written with an accent
only when it can be substituted
for the word "todavía",
for instance to mean "still".
For example, Aún podemos hacerlo.
(We can still do it.),
Aún hay esperanzas.
(There is still hope).
On the other hand, "aun"
has no accent if it means "even".
For instance,
Aun cuando quisiera, no podría hacerlo
(Even when I want to, I couldn't do it.)
Aun él tendrá que escucharme.
(Even he will have to listen to me.)"
Anyway.
People do speak, wrongly, I would say, of Grice and 'reading between the lines'. I recently sort of learned that this expression, which should have pleased, perhaps, Grice, comes from outdated methods of teaching, say, Latin, or Greek. The intralinear system. Nothing to do with the implicature!
---
But back to 'still' versus 'even'.
If the same lexeme "aun" happens to have two usages (however disparate) it seems pretty obscene to mark them diacritically.
One might just as well say, 'gay', meaning cheerful, and 'gAy' meaning 'homosexual', or 'LesbiAn', meaning 'from Lesbos' and "LEsbian" meaning "homosexual female' (In this case, the capital "L" works as diacritical).
Still, ... I mean, "aun". It does not seem Gricean, no?
It's a bit condenscending on the addressee (READER in this case). Shouldn't the person find out by his or her own lights? Usually, if it's a native speaker, or even if it's not (a dog isn't), the context should be clear enough. So it seems the accent is just there to _BOTHER_.
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This below from a 1885 interlinear edition of Cicero's four catilinarians by William Underwood, of the Hamilton, Locke and Clark series of interlinear translations. Underwood is "son-in-law and partner of the late Hamilton") It opens with a section,
ReplyDelete"Testimonials as to the merits of
the interlinear translation of
the Classics"
-- which features quotes from Milton, John Locke, and Sydney Smith
Here's what Smith says about the
"Hamiltonian system":
====
1st
Teaches an unknown tongue
by the closest interlinear translations
instead of leaving a boy to explore his way by the lexicon or dictionary.
2d.
It postpones the study of grammar till a considerable progress has been made in the language, and a great degree of practical grammar has been acquired.
3d.
It substitutes the cheerfulness and competition of the Lancasterian system for the dull solitude of the dictionary [...]
In fine, we are strongly persuaded that, the time being fiven, this system
will make better scholars; and,
the degree of scholarship being given,
a much shorter time will be needed.
If there is any truth in this,
it will make Mr. Hamilton
one of the most useful men of his age;
for, if there is
anything which fills reflecting men
with melancholy and regret,
it is the waste of mortal time,
parental money, and
puerile happiness, in the present
method of pursuing Latin and Greek."
(courtesy of D. Meadows, the rogue classicist).
But you are obviously aware that Spanish uses the accent mark as an inflector. Interrogatory pronouns have accent marks and relative pronouns do not. Certainly "qué" and "que" are cognate. So the question is why the written language bothers to inflect the word whereas the spoken language does not.
ReplyDeleteThe seminal work on this subject was done by G.B. Trudeau. It seems that the coach of the Washington Redskins (American Football team) had managed to sign Lava Lava Lennie, the Samoan linebacker, to a big contract. The bidding for Lennie's services was intense, and the press, well, pressed the coach to tell them how he had managed to land so valuable an athlete. The interview goes on for several frames, with the coach talking about his negotiating tactics, but, in the end, he says "and the pension fund was just sitting there.
Trudeau was probably drawing on the earlier work of the anonymous riddler who asked: If a hobo can make a whole cigarette out of four butts, how many can he make out of 16? The answer, of course, is five, because after he smokes the four cigarttes he has made from the initial 16, he has four butts left with which to make the fifth cigarette.
Economies of scale and targets of opportunity are the grist of the reductionist's mill. If a language bothers to have an accent mark, it would be an enormous waste of resources to use it just so people won't say "LoPEZ." I mean, the accent mark is just sitting there, like the pension fund and those four new butts. As my grandmother use to say about political corruption, "If you sit by a full bowl, you eat. (It rhymes in Russian.)"
--- Yes, that's good.
ReplyDeleteI do realise that 'que' and 'que' are cognate. Oddly, there was an old (I think Roman Polanski film) which opened in Buenos Aires called,
¿Qué?
--
One of the stupidest films I ever endured.
----
Yes, there's otiosity also in the opening question mark.
Incidentally, I would mention to Kramer that I use 'inflection', oddly, for morphological important things! Like "gratia Speranzae". To me, inflection is nominal (declension) or verbal (conjugational) -- (We've discussed this elsewhere in Th -- Theoria, our "Idle Days in Tuscany" that entertained us for the 4-weeks we spent there).
Oddly, Grice considers "stress", too, but alas he means,
He is a RAScal
-- i.e. suprasegmental. He will NOT be concerned with the proliferation of accents, etc, as the circumflex on the i of 'grice' in 'coup de grice' (in French) -- when pronounced with out it, it comes out as 'blow of cheese -- grie.
No, I wouldn't know!
But back to the 'inflection', as used by Kramer, by which he means, I understand, the
ReplyDeleteValley-Girl
thing
"She is stupid?"
"¿Usted come?"
i.e you eat?
--- Consider
The brief
¿Como?
versus
¿Cómo?
with the first meaning,
I eat?
and the second
How?
--- It seems otiose to think that _somehow_ as it were, a conversational move is thus made such that the partner in the conversational game will be _uncertain_ as to which interpretant was meant!
Surely, lingo teachers will say it's VERY important. Recall they are GRADERS: they are getting paid to _grade_ people! But on the whole, one should go with the flow, as Madonna would say -- and I won't be surprised if all those diacriticals are dropped once Spain really makes them into the S.T.U.P.I.D.s of the E.C. (European Community). "STUPID" being acronym for all those countries that will fall if Greece falls: Spain, Turkey, United-Kingdom, Portugal, Italy, and Dubai.
Ah well.
Grice on diacritical:
ReplyDelete"
STRESS
"Some cases of stress are
CLEARLY relevant to the
possession of CONVENTIONAL
meaning, such as (fixed)
stress on particular
syllables."
Kramer
JENnifer LOPez
JENnifer LoPEZ
"or a word, as in the contrast
between "cóntent" [sic with stress.
JLS] with the stress on the "o"
and "contént" [double quotes missing
in WoW:50 -- errata] with the stress on
"tent"."
"We should NOT, of course, here,"
Grice goes on,
"assign meaning to the stress
itself."
--- for Occam would THEN be turning in it!
"I am concerned NOT with cases of
that sort."
--- For William the Conqueror
got rid of them all aright.
"but with cases in which we think
of a word as being stressed,
and variably so, that stressed [?]
on some occasions but not on
others."
---
Once Grice was so into 'interrogative' mood operators, and assertive mood operators, that his colleague Richard Grandy coined
ReplyDelete'quessertion' (it had been used earlier by linguists)
to mean
?]- (i.e. assertion sign cum ?)
for the type of speech Grice would often indulge in, "Should I be allowed to suggest that..."
Grice on that type of intoning that we mark in English with "?" and in Spanish with TWO Signs, at the beginning of the intoning and at the end of it.
Grice writes:
"We might start by trying to think of STRESS as a purely NATURAL way of highlighting or making prominent, a particular word; one might compare putting some object (such as a new hat) in an obvious place in a room so that somone coming into the room will notice or pay attention to it. BUt there are various suggestible ways of doing this with a word, such as INTONING it or saying it in A SQUEAKY VOICE. Such methods would not just be thought UNUSUAL, they would be FROWNED ON."
Is he suggesting that we drop the 'intoning' thing, and go flat?
ReplyDeleteHe goes on:
"They [such methods such as intoning, which we mark in English with "?". JLS] would also very likely fail to achieve the effect of highlighting just because there is an approved way of doing this. So there is a good case for regarding stress as a CONVENTIONAL DEVICE for hightlighting. But to say this much is not to assign to stress a CONVENTIONAL SIGNIFICANCE or meaning: it is only to treat it as a conventional way of fulfilling a certain purpose, which is not yet established as a purpose connected with communication. But stress clearly DOES in fact on many occasions MAKE a difference to the speaker's meaning"
--- BUT NEVER TO THE SENSE!
Only to the implicatum, or worse, the implicature!
Grice: "Does this fact require us to attribute any conventional menaing to stress?"
ReplyDeleteSince Kramer and I and Jason and almost everyone who contributes to this blog -- Jones, join in here! --, do use "italic" as when we do italic, we may wonder if we are meaning a stress thing.
I do! I mean: when I italicise something, it's only to mark an intonational thing. But surely you cannot 'intonate' between the lines, hence the italic. It's not surprising the thing is called "italic" having seen them converse! (Those gestures!).
---- Grice goes on:
"In accordance with the spirit of Modified Occam's Razor, we might attribute conventional meaning to stress ONLY if it is unavoidable. Thus we might first introduce a slight extension to the maxim enjoining relevance -- [category of 'Relatio', 'be relevant'. JLS], making it apply not only what what is said but also to features of the means [emphasis mine. JLS] used for saying what is said. This extension will perhaps entitle us to expect that an utterance which it it within the [rational. JLS] power of the speaker to eliminate or vary, even if it is introduced unreflectedly [cfr. his PERE, principle of economy of rational effort -- 'unreflectedly done things are still things done rationally. JLS], will have a purpose connected with what is currently being communicated; unless, of course, its presence can be explained in some other way."
E.g. She is just a Valley Girl.
Grice goes on:
ReplyDelete"At least three types of context in which stress occurs seem to invite ordering."
"(1) One such context includes replies to w-questions [or as I prefer x-questions]. [I start to summarise as from now. JLS]
Who showed her asset?
_Jennifer Lopez_ did [I'm also adapting his examples. JLS]
Actually his example here may interest Roger Bishop Jones:
"Who paid the bill?"
"Jónes did"
---
"What did he do to the cat?"
"He kícked it."
---
Also: "SMITH didn't pay the bill; JONES paid it."
"In such examples, stress is _automatic_ or a matter of habit"
-- which is what Spanish lingo teachers wants us to have with _their_ things.
"(maybe difficult to avoid), and we are NOT inclined to say that anything is meant or implicated."
"However, the effect," Grice continues, "is to make perspicuous elements which complete open sentences for which questions (in effect) demand completion."
ReplyDelete"A second case. Such cases as incomplete versions of the conversational schema exemplified in the preceding example. WIHTOUT a preceding statement to the effect that Smith paid the bill, U says, "SMITH didn't pay the bill, JONES did." "Here, given that the sentence is to be uttererd, the stress may [well. JLS] be automatic."
"We are inclined to say [since the thing is volunteered] that the implicature is that someone thinks or might think that Smith did pay the bill."
--- "The maxim of relation requires that U's remark should be relevant to something or other, and U, by speaking as he WOULD speak in reply to a statement that Smith paid the bill, shows that he has such a statement in mind."
Cfr. "LOPEZ stole it"
--- the film with Jane Fonda that is.
--
There is a third case.
"U just says "Did NOT!", "LOPEZ didn't steal it". "U speaks as if he were about to continue as in the previous context. U therefore implicates that someone (other than Lopez, to wit: Fonda) stole the film, "Monster in Law" (?).
----
Grice wants to conclude -- this is the third William James lecture and it's past 7 pm! He goes on: "In general S(A) is contrasted with the result of substituting some expression B for A, and commonly U suggests that he wold deny the substitute version."
"But there are other possibilities". Sure.
In fact this possibility he mentions is pretty crucial to some:
"I KNEW that." --> i.e. I didn't MERELY believe that. Is that logical contradictory? I think so!
-- and as such has, in my opinion, to be construed as ironic and as a breach of Quality. -- but there are problems with the 'merely'.
Grice concludes this section, "If I say, "I KNOW that p", then perhaps there is a nonconventional implicature of strong or conclusive evidence (not merey thinking that p, with p true). Cf. 'He LOVES her'. And this is NOT the only interpretation of stress. It can also mean, "You don't need to tell me."
Etc.
Why is the first question mark otiose? I'd think the second one is! I like being told at the beginning of a sentence that it's a question. The accent helps, but sometimes there is no accent. (¿Verdad?)
ReplyDeleteAs for "como," If I mumble "tu comes" so that you think you understand me but are not quite sure, how do you reply?
I think a fluent reader of Spanish sees the first question mark and the accent (if there is one) and he knows what to do with the words even before he reads them. Rather than gloss the word by interpreting the accent, he understands the word with the accent as a different word from the same letters without it. The cues are a type of cooperation. Brevity is properly measured in time, not distance.
As regards stress and italics, there's an interesting parallel to Spanish. Just as the last syllable in most Spanish words that end in consonants are stressed on the last syllable, and an accent mark is used when the stress is elsewhere, most English sentences present the most important stuff at the end, and an intonation shift, indicated in writing by italic type is used to direct the emphasis elsewhere. Some stylists reoommend recasting the sentence to put the thing that matters at the end so that italic type is never necessary, but time is money, and the inflection is just sitting there.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGood about the rear end. That is strange. Yes, I agree that the second question mark _is_ otiose. I'll think about your other points.
ReplyDeleteI have to delete what I said, realising it was hideously wrong.
ReplyDeleteJason:
ReplyDelete"Él and el, also."
Right. Here, while the etymology seems identical (i.e. the cute little same one), I'd think there is, unlike the aun vs. aUn case, a MORPHOLOGICAL distinction?
'El' being pronoun and 'el' being article, which is, etymologically, some case I would think, of adjective, and thus of noun, originally.
I would think it all boils down or comes from Latin,
ille, illa, illud.
--- You GOTTA love the Roman "illud" because, in its Spanish version (not in French, not really in Italian), it is an atrophic atavic relic of the NEUTER gender -- "ello".
The issue is even more emphatic, I find, with "eso"
Roman:
iste, ista, istud.
This gives in Spanish
este esta esto
---- And to me it makes the WORLD of difference when I hear, someone opening my room, and saying...
QuE es estO?
i.e. what is THIS (neuter).
It would sound 'harsh' (as Grice notes Berkeley said) to say,
What is he?
Que es este?
where one could at least have the courtesy of asking 'who' rather than 'what' -- but cfr. "What is (he, this one?)?" "Oh, he is an architect."
So, I would think there is NO context where 'El' (stressed) and 'el' (unstressed, or unaccented) would be confused. "el", unaccented, cannot just _sit_ there. It would be like having a Brit band called "The The" or something. :). But the "El" accented, is "He", and while the thing is too abrupt to come out in, say, English, it seems common (in both usages of the adjective) enough in Spanish.
One may have to revise partes orationis in Latin (parts of speech), because the articulus I think WAS featured, but the Romans didn't have it:
"Homo" : the man, one man, all men, etc.
this man, that man, yonder man.
---
Why Spanish requires that 'el' qua pronoun be accented beats me. (As per internal rationale, as it were).
Who is Sylvia?
ReplyDeleteWhat is she,
That all our swains commend her?
The el thing seems to me natural. "El dijo" makes me think "What's a "dijo?") - it just looks like a masculine noun. And "el habla" looks like bad grammar. I think it's a neural accomodation. Accents are so cheap, why not use them to make things easier to read?
Will try! Especially as I learn the specific Ctrl Alt whatever for each of them, and the opening question and exclamation marks. One little bit we may consider as we go back to Jason's important point re: 'aun' stressed on the 'u' or not, is:
ReplyDelete-- the diachrony of this. Romans did not have the stress or 'accent' (as Kramer rightly has it). And I think Kramer is very right about the 'just sitting there'. They started sprinkling them in things like 'aun' to mark perhaps a mere distinction in something which was felt as a different 'sense'? I.e. like accenting 'vice' on the 'i' in Br. English to distinguish 'vice': a sort of sin, 'vice': a tool used by carpenters. And THIS may then connect with Grice's point as per above -- under 'Stress' in "WoW" as it pertains to the GRAPHIC medium. '_Reading_ between the lines', or reading the lines proper simpliciter, never mind between them. It's quite a little marvel, if you are in a better mode, how they did manage, and without any help from the Romans, either! :)
What the hell? I must have made a wrong turn back there. I came looking for God, that "in principio erat verbum" God, who without language would not be. I was expecting thunder voices rumbling across the sky but all I find is quibbling over accent marks and snickering over otiosities. We are language, embodied language, we are the God we seek, we are the universe, the galaxy, the quark, we are our only reason for living. I keep pushing outward, pressing forward with my ignorance as a kind of black light flashlight, following my confusion to a new awareness of our possibilities. Language is the galaxy we ride, racing ever outward at ever increasing speed, I don't care how U-speakers speak. I'm busy creating God.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Blogblather.
ReplyDeleteYou'll agree that the Word of God _can_ be read between the lines?
I suppose, Blogblather, you are allowed to post to this blog, so feel free. This particular thread is about the WRITING (on the body) as it were, of "meaning".
Diacritics _can_ be important. Especially the French 'circumflex'. Accent is ad-cantus, 'towards the song'. God likes a melody (or ditty). It pleases His Ear.
The circumflex, in particular, as in
coup de grîce
means that we do a diatonic scale over the 'i'. Etc.
Quibbling.
ReplyDeleteSuch a choice word.
And the quibbling with quibbling.
Choicer still. Will a kerfuffle result?
For me, zooming inward, zooming outward, it is all of a kind. I zoom, therefore I am.
"Kerfuffle" is one of my favorite words, but not as favorite as kankedort, which, presumably, was only recorded once in English usage, and that by none other than ole raptus himself Geoffrey Chaucer in Troilus and Crlseyde: "But now to yow, ye loveres that ben here, / Was Troilus nought in a kankedort, / That lay, and myghte whisprynge of hem here / And thoughte, O Lord, right now renneth my sort / Fully to deye, or han anon comfort!" [Bk. II, 1751 -- 1755]. Apparently I ruffled some feathers by my last post. Sorry about that, but that is why we live, or why I do, to turn over the tables of scholars in the Temple. It makes life interesting. Mike Geary
ReplyDeleteThanks to Jason and Mike for engaging in word play. Kerfuffle was possibly recorded more than once -- I'm sure twice.
ReplyDeleteKankedort, Geary writes,
"only recorded once in English usage"
TWICE. Vide: Geary, "Comment" to "Reading between the lines." Surely Kramer will note, rightly, that Geary does not _use_ 'kankedort', only _mentions_it.
From Chaucer:
"Was Troilus nought in a kankedort,"
--- whatstrikes the Griceian (I'm starting to use 'Griceaian' apres Kennedy) in me is how a hapax legomenon like that can get defined as "a state of suspense". Lexicographers are perhaps more divinatory than Grice would have allowed.
"Dark was the night as pitch, as black as coal,
ReplyDeleteAnd at the window out she put her hole,
And Absalon, so fortune framed the farce,
Put up his mouth and kissed her naked arse
Most savourously before he knew of this."
What is the status of a word of which there is only a single instance of its use in the literature?
Can it be defined? Does it mean anything?
On a similar note, I like this example from the Spice Girls
"Yo I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really
really really wanna zigazig ha."
Zigazig ha...
Yes, I think it does have meaning. I like your "Posh" Beckham (ha) 'zigazig ha'. Which we may retrieve via compositionality. A different sort of example is this letter that Edward Lear sent to his Viscount little friend. It's in a different post, so I cannot really retrieve it right now. But it's possibly all 'hapax legomena'. We don't know if the boy _replied_. And the OED while they do a lot of coverage for Lear were possibly thinking this is _too_ much.
ReplyDeleteBack to the intention: don't let's (sic) mind the lexicographers: that's their job and they get PAID for it (a reason why it annoys me when they go, with a straight face, "etym. unkn." -- can't they GUESS?).
The Gricean point is perhaps -- in the CONTENXT when the 'hapax legomenon' is uttered. Did it block communication. How did it proceed? A hapax legomenon IS a Gricean thing, because it did not seem to have blocked conversation, and yet it proves Grice's point of the PRIMACY of utterer's meaning, because anything having to do with the addressee's previous knowledge of how the population may have used the word before this present utterer is not only otiose but impossible!
This is the letter that Lear sent to the Viscount. The Viscount kept it for decades and it got finally published posthumously adding to a delightful example of Edward Lear's prose in correspondence. It is one of the lengthier things in this kind of so-called 'nonsense' literature. Here the facetiousness of the thing makes you wonder (but only wonder) that Lear may not have meant anything -- but we'll never know. And I'm sure the Viscount found a meaning in each of the little things ('words') as he read between the lines this charmer:
ReplyDeleteThrippy Pilliwinx,
Dear friend
Inkly tinksy pobblebookle abblesquabs?
Are you feeling ok?
Flosky?
Tired?
Beebul trimble flosky!
Never you mind!
Okul scratchbibblebongibo,
Just yesterday
viddle squibble tog-a-tog,
as I walked
ferrymoyassity amsky
the marshes
flamsky ramsky damsky crocklefether
I saw a toad
squiggs.
asleep.
Flinkywisty pomm
Sincerely yours.
----
Slushypipp
Ooops. I forgot the closing signature:
ReplyDeleteSlushypipp
Edward
---