Friday foolishness: foreign words

[Salikoko Mufwene]

At 04:07 PM 9/15/2000 +0800, Larry Horn wrote:

>At 2:46 PM -0700 9/15/00, Salikoko Mufwene wrote:

>>Why would "voie unique" bring up the idea of "unique views?"
>>
>>Sali.
>>
>Well, if you had absolutely no idea what a "voie" was but you figured
>it was something unique that could be found on (or near) the road you
>were driving along, 'view' might be a reasonable (though obviously
>completely wrong) guess.  And they even look sorta similar.
>
     If I had that kind of confusion, I would have thought of the perhaps
psychologically implausible "voix unique" ('unique voice') but "vue unique"
('unique view') would probably not have been an alternative. (What do I
know about word associations in the first place?!) I suppose that when one
is on the highway, scenery signs are greater part of one's expectations
than than voice signs ::)

Sali.



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Salikoko S. Mufwene                        s-mufwene at uchicago.edu
University of Chicago                      773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924
Department of Linguistics
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html
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