From disterh at VM.SC.EDU Tue Mar 5 17:52:35 2002 From: disterh at VM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 12:52:35 EST Subject: FW: New books: Indo-European Linguistics In-Reply-To: <3C7CD4C9.D1DE3C14@t-online.de> Message-ID: ---------- From: LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LINCOM EUROPA) Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 13:44:57 +0100 To: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Subject: New books: Indo-European Linguistics Please find a .pdf file added. best wishes Ulrich -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ll-lemos.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 102703 bytes Desc: not available URL: From slade at vonneumann.cog.jhu.edu Sat Mar 9 12:23:08 2002 From: slade at vonneumann.cog.jhu.edu (Benjamin Slade) Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 07:23:08 EST Subject: Q: 'khukuree', 'kukri' (Nepali) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Trying to determine the etymology of the Nepalese word 'khukuree' (the distinctive curved knife carried by Gorkha soldiers, see http://khukuri.netfirms.com for example photos). One problem is pinning down what the spelling actually is. KUKRI seems to the standard English way of writing it, but I've seen it written in Devanagari as /khukuri:/ and written by Nepalese companies also as KHUKHRI (in Roman letters). The closest I could come in Sanskrit is /khura/ which has a primary meaning of 'hoof', but can also mean 'razor' (it can also mean 'a kind of perfume' and 'the foot of a bedstead'). There's a related word /khurali:/ which means 'military exercise or practice of arms'. The /khura/ words in Sanskrit seem like a plausible start, but I'm not sure what the root of these is. Partial reduplication also seems like a possibility; as does the identification of the last element (-kuri/-kri/-khri) as original /kr/ (with vocalic R), as the general verb of action in Sanskrit. I was guessing it would ultimately derive from some PIE root meaning 'to cut'. But it could also be a 'meaningless' adaption/loan-word in Nepali (there's a story it evolved from the Greek 'kopis'). Anyone have any thoughts on this? Best regards, _____________________________________________________________________ Benjamin Slade Department of Cognitive Science Johns Hopkins University eMail: slade at cogsci.jhu.edu http://www.cog.jhu.edu/grad-students/slade/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NAAHAM TANTUM NA VIJAANAAMYOTUM | GÆÐ A WYRD SWA HIO SCEL NA YAM VAJANTI SAMARE'ATAMAANAAH | *Beowulf* (454) *Rg-Veda* VI.1.9(2) | | 'I understand not the warp, |'Fate goes always as She must.' nor the woof, nor the web that | they weave; moving to and fro | in the field of motion & labour.' | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ From karhu at umich.edu Wed Mar 13 22:15:43 2002 From: karhu at umich.edu (Marc Pierce) Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 17:15:43 EST Subject: Call for papers: Germanic Linguistics Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION 2002 CONVENTION Germanic Philology Discussion Group New York City 27-30 December 2002 Deadline for Abstracts: March 22, 2002 The Germanic Philology Discussion Group will be holding a meeting at the 2002 MLA Convention in New York. Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks in all areas of Germanic linguistics and philology. Please submit an abstract electronically to Frederick W. Schwink at schwink at uiuc.edu or send an e-mail to ask for more information. Deadline is March 22d. From X99Lynx at aol.com Mon Mar 18 21:44:50 2002 From: X99Lynx at aol.com (Steve Long) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 16:44:50 EST Subject: More on Carrots3/Poison Hemlock Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- This is the third part of "More on Carrots." - Sometimes we may interpret names in a way that conforms more to expectations that any possible reality. An example is the etymology that finds the word "carrot" coming from "Greek karton, carrot (from its hornlike shape)." (From the American Heritage D.E.L, in its appendix on IE roots.) Obviously, there were many, many, many plants with horn-like roots in ancient Greece. And it seems a fairly large number of them either were edible or could be made edible. And it looks like the root of the carrot may not even have been an important part of the plant at the time, compared to the very horn-like radish or fennel. There may be a better alternative explanation of the word carrot. This is the Lewis & Short entry for : "carrot, dub. in Diph.Siph. ap. Ath.9.371e; but, = gleanings of grapes, PLond.1821.202." The gleaning of seeds, leaves or flowers might explain the original meaning of the carrot word. is given as the Greek word for the caraway plant or seed. Other plants that are "gleaned" like fennel and anise are also commonly described as looking like the wild carrot and are in fact related. But there is another group of words that fits very well into. And those include , plunge into deep sleep or torpor, stupefy; , stupefying, soporific, applied to 'pharmaka'; heaviness in the head, drowsiness; , drowsy, heavy. Now we might think that all these drugged-effect words would have nothing to do with the carrot, IF we didn't know two other facts. One is that Queen Anne's Lace and carrot plants in general also have a very close resemblance to a close relative - the poison hemlock. One only has to search on the web with both names to see all the warnings (some from US state government agencies) about how easy it is to confuse QAL with Hemlock for those who gather wild edibles. The second fact is that Hemlock was not just used as a poison to kill Socratic types by ancient Greeks. Pliny goes on at length about hemlock's use as a recreational drug throughout the empire, particularly as some kind of a counterbalance to the intoxication of wine. Moreover, modern descriptions of hemlock "poisoning" are quite similar to those used to define the words mentioned above. So perhaps it's possible that "carrot" actually started as the name for a very similar looking plant -- the poison hemlock -- used as an intoxicant. One can only guess how the switch happened. Perhaps it was confusion caused by lost drawings or descriptions that did not distinguish enough between the two plants. Perhaps it was a marketplace trick that substituted the less harmful daucus carota for hemlock as a pharmaceutical wonder. But the switch is probably no more surprising than the one that transferred, centuries later in America, the "helmlock" name itself to a totally dissimilar, tall, yew-like evergreen tree. (END.) Steve Long From X99Lynx at aol.com Mon Mar 18 21:44:38 2002 From: X99Lynx at aol.com (Steve Long) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 16:44:38 EST Subject: More on Carrots2/Wild Ones Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- This is the second part of "More on Carrots." - Larry Trask wrote: "The word 'carrot', according to the OED, is recorded in English only from 1533. But two respondents have reported the word, spelled 'karette', in an English herbalist dating from about 1500 -- or before any cultivated carrots are supposed to have reached England." What should also be mentioned is that the earliest reference in OED is in fact to the "Daucus creticus.... mihi uidetur anglis esse, Wylde carot." Now, wild carrot not only implies the cultivated 'carot' were already around (or why make the distinction?), but also that both varieties were already being called carrots. And in English. A point here is that the carrot plant could have been cultivated -- well before the advent of the Dutch-Spanish-North African-Afghani variety -- for a large number of purposes. In fact, there's a yellow-rooted carrot still widely produced in many places specifically as animal fodder and it isn't ordinarily even classified as a separate subspecies. One of the other common names given for QAL is "cow's parsley" - the young carrot plant has leaves very similar to its relative, the parsley. Whether as animal feed or medicine or gruel or for flavoring, the carrot may have been cultivated all along. And once again it might have been a new use or a new group of users -- or maybe just Classically trained academic-type naturalists - who brought the carrot word into English. - Larry Trask also wrote: "Just to muddy the waters, Kluge, the standard etymological dictionary of German, insists that carrots are attested in the Stone Age stilt-houses of Switzerland, and that carrots were cultivated "early" by Germanic speakers. I really don't know what to make of this." What was found there were collected carrot SEEDS. The most likely inferences are that the seeds were collected either for consumption or cultivation. Carrot seeds have their own utilities in the literature, mostly herbal or "medicinal." And they certainly could have been cultivated for such a purpose. But it's also possible that these other uses may have contributed to the confusion surrounding the word "carrot." (END OF PART 2) Steve Long From X99Lynx at aol.com Mon Mar 18 21:44:28 2002 From: X99Lynx at aol.com (Steve Long) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 16:44:28 EST Subject: More on Carrots/Queen Anne's Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Awhile back Larry Trask posted some questions and a summary re carrots. Recently, working on something else, I came across some additional information that may supplement what Larry gathered and may also have some interesting implications for the historical linguistics of such things. 1. - There is a modern name for the carrot that did not appear in the summary Larry posted, but one that may be important in understanding the way in which both the names and the plant traveled in history. Today, the other name by which many of us know the "carrot" plant is "Queen Anne's Lace" (in the U.S. particularly.) Of course, Queen Anne's Lace is for the most part not cultivated and most horticulturists identify it as the "wild" carrot. But in some cases it may in fact simply be a feral carrot. The Integrated Taxonomic Information System identifies "Daucus carota ssp. sativus (Hoffm.) Arcang." as both the carrot and the wild carrot. ITIS does also identify a second subspecies carota (ssp. carota) that is exclusively wild. (USDA, NRCS. 2001. The PLANTS Database, Version 3.1 National Plant Data Center ((http://plants.usda.gov).) The roots of the wild and cultivated carrot do differ. But the wild varieties definitely can be made edible if harvested early enough. (It's even reported in some of the literature that laws had to be enacted to force English peasants to plant and eat the cultivated carrot because they preferred the wild variety.) What's important for this discussion is that the two types of carrot plants - above the ground - are for all practical purposes identical. Either kind of carrot only flowers in its second year. Cultivated carrots however are normally harvested early in the first season, unless they are being grown to produce seed. Just before flowering, their roots become hard and woody in the same way as the wild varieties. When seeds are being produced, the cultivated "orange" carrot must be protected against pollination by QAL or the progeny will lose the "recessive" trait of orange color and sometimes the fuller root. There's more detail and a photograph of cultivated carrot plants allowed to go "two-seasons" for seed production at the USDA Vegetable Crops Research Unit web site (http://www.hort.wisc.edu/usdavcru/simon/default.htm) The key here is that the cultivated carrot plant above the ground will look virtually the same as QLA, from the time it breaks ground to the time it flowers. Queen Anne's Lace is mentioned often enough in everything from poetry to travel guides to advertising, again particularly in the U.S. But my experience has been that it is pretty consistently a surprise for most folks to learn that it is the "wild carrot." Most early references to QAL don't mention carrots at all. The name itself - Queen Anne's Lace - poses a bit of a problem. Many references attribute the name to the time of Queen Anne in the early18th Century. See e.g., Haughton, C., Green Immigrants (1978). But no one who has researched this for me has found a reference earlier than 1883, and that in a pamphlet on ornamental gardening. It is possible that the name was part of the "Queen Anne's Revival", a decorative and clothing fashion movement that became hot about that time in England and the US. (Queen Anne is the only Queen with her own entry in the original OED, but the references are either to the saying "Queen Anne is dead" meaning "old news." Or to the revival fad and none of these are dated earlier than 1881. There is no reference to QAL in the first OED, but there are a lot of references to other "queen's-" plants, including tobacco as "queen's herb.") So, we might ask how two virtually identical plants - the carrot and Queen Anne's Lace - came to have two different names, almost to the point of two separate identities. One obvious reason might be that they served two very different functions. There's good evidence that the carrot plant - not native to the U.S. in either form - was introduced on two separate occasions to serve two very different purposes. One was as a food plant and the other was as an ornamental lace-like garden plant. And each time the plant carried a different name. What I think this tells us linguistically is that the singular plant of today's scientific Botany is not a good guide for how such plants were thought of or named in the past or among non-scientific types. In fact, a singular plant may have been in effect several completely different plants in the language of the past. And (more importantly) not because of confusion or different languages, but simply because that plant had different functions for different groups of people speaking the same language. We might expect cooks, farmers, gardeners, marketeers, herbalists, basket weavers, tanners, cowherds and housewives to potentially each have their own name for the same plant. But it may not always be apparent in the record what group of speakers were connected with what name, or which name came to be adopted by the chroniclers who finally came to report it in writing. (End of Part 1) Steve Long ...................... From wolfskil at MIT.EDU Wed Mar 20 17:50:30 2002 From: wolfskil at MIT.EDU (Jud Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 12:50:30 EST Subject: book announcement Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I thought readers of the Historical Linguistics List might be interested in these two books. For more information, please send me an email or visit the URLs listed below. Thanks! Jud Language, Brain, and Cognitive Development Essays in Honor of Jacques Mehler edited by Emmanuel Dupoux http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262041979 In the early 1960s, the bold project of the emerging field of cognition was to put the human mind under the scrutiny of rational inquiry, through the conjoined efforts of philosophy, linguistics, computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. Forty years later, cognitive science is a flourishing academic field. The contributions to this collection, written in honor of Jacques Mehler, a founder of the field of psycholinguistics, assess the progress of cognitive science. The questions addressed include: What have we learned or not learned about language, brain, and cognition? Where are we now? Where have we failed? Where have we succeeded? The book is organized into four sections in addition to the introduction: thought, language, neuroscience, and brain and biology. Some chapters cut across several sections, attesting to the cross-disciplinary nature of the field. 6 x 9, 562 pp., 21 illus., cloth ISBN 0-262-04197-9 A Bradford Book Flexibility Principles in Boolean Semantics The Interpretation of Coordination, Plurality, and Scope in Natural Language Yoad Winter http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262232189 Since the early work of Montague, Boolean semantics and its subfield of generalized quantifier theory have become the model-theoretic foundation for the study of meaning in natural languages. This book uses this framework to develop a new semantic theory of central linguistic phenomena involving coordination, plurality, and scope. The proposed theory makes use of the standard Boolean interpretation of conjunction, a choice-function account of indefinites, and a novel semantics of plurals that is not based on the distributive/collective distinction. The key to unifying these mechanisms is a version of Montagovian semantics that is augmented by flexibility principles: semantic operations that have no counterpart in phonology. 7 x 9, 328 pp., 15 illus., cloth ISBN 0-262-23218-9 Current Studies in Linguistics, Volume 37 ______________________ Jud Wolfskill Associate Publicist The MIT Press 5 Cambridge Center, 4th Floor Cambridge, MA 02142 617 253 2079 617 253 1709 fax http://mitpress.mit.edu From d.denison at man.ac.uk Fri Mar 22 16:03:47 2002 From: d.denison at man.ac.uk (David Denison) Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 11:03:47 EST Subject: MA courses including The /ru:ts/ of English Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >From September 2002 the School of English & Linguistics in the University of Manchester will be offering two MAs in English Language. The MA in English Language and Linguistics is primarily intended for applicants with some background in language study who are looking for a course that will prepare them to undertake independent doctoral research in their chosen field. The /ru:ts/ of English is intended for applicants with an interest in the history and varieties of English but with little or no experience of formal language study at undergraduate level. For detailed information please visit http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/PGdegree/englglx.htm http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/PGdegree/MAruts.htm General information is at http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/PGdegree/MANENGLG.HTM http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/Default.html (with apologies for the awkward demands of the case-sensitive webserver now used by the English Department) David Denison -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> David Denison Dept of English and American Studies University of Manchester | Manchester M13 9PL | U.K. +44 (0)161-275 3154 (phone) +44 (0)161-275 3256 (fax) d.denison at man.ac.uk (email) http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/staff/DD/ From d.denison at man.ac.uk Mon Mar 25 12:36:36 2002 From: d.denison at man.ac.uk (David Denison) Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 07:36:36 EST Subject: job: English Language Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The Department of English and American Studies at the University of Manchester has a three-year vacancy for a specialist in English Language. Please draw this to the attention of likely candidates. The closing date for completed applications is Friday 12 April 2002. The advertisement reads as follows: Applications are invited for a 3-year fixed term Lectureship in English from 1st September 2002 to 31st August 2005 in this RAE 5-rated department. The department is seeking to appoint a specialist in English Language with particular interests in text analysis and the language of literature. The successful candidate will also be required to contribute to introductory courses in literature and to assist in departmental administration and the pastoral care of students. S/he will have a completed or near- completed PhD and will be active in research. The appointment will be made at point 7 or 8 of the Lecturer A scale, £20,470 - £21,503 pa. Further information about the job (reference 211/02): http://www.man.ac.uk/news/vacancies/academic.html Further information about the department: http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/ -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< ><> David Denison | Professor of English Linguistics Department of English and American Studies University of Manchester | Manchester M13 9PL | U.K. +44 (0)161-275 3154 (phone) +44 (0)161-275 3256 (fax) d.denison at man.ac.uk (email) http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/staff/DD/ From disterh at VM.SC.EDU Tue Mar 5 17:52:35 2002 From: disterh at VM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 12:52:35 EST Subject: FW: New books: Indo-European Linguistics In-Reply-To: <3C7CD4C9.D1DE3C14@t-online.de> Message-ID: ---------- From: LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LINCOM EUROPA) Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 13:44:57 +0100 To: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Subject: New books: Indo-European Linguistics Please find a .pdf file added. best wishes Ulrich -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ll-lemos.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 102703 bytes Desc: not available URL: From slade at vonneumann.cog.jhu.edu Sat Mar 9 12:23:08 2002 From: slade at vonneumann.cog.jhu.edu (Benjamin Slade) Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 07:23:08 EST Subject: Q: 'khukuree', 'kukri' (Nepali) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Trying to determine the etymology of the Nepalese word 'khukuree' (the distinctive curved knife carried by Gorkha soldiers, see http://khukuri.netfirms.com for example photos). One problem is pinning down what the spelling actually is. KUKRI seems to the standard English way of writing it, but I've seen it written in Devanagari as /khukuri:/ and written by Nepalese companies also as KHUKHRI (in Roman letters). The closest I could come in Sanskrit is /khura/ which has a primary meaning of 'hoof', but can also mean 'razor' (it can also mean 'a kind of perfume' and 'the foot of a bedstead'). There's a related word /khurali:/ which means 'military exercise or practice of arms'. The /khura/ words in Sanskrit seem like a plausible start, but I'm not sure what the root of these is. Partial reduplication also seems like a possibility; as does the identification of the last element (-kuri/-kri/-khri) as original /kr/ (with vocalic R), as the general verb of action in Sanskrit. I was guessing it would ultimately derive from some PIE root meaning 'to cut'. But it could also be a 'meaningless' adaption/loan-word in Nepali (there's a story it evolved from the Greek 'kopis'). Anyone have any thoughts on this? Best regards, _____________________________________________________________________ Benjamin Slade Department of Cognitive Science Johns Hopkins University eMail: slade at cogsci.jhu.edu http://www.cog.jhu.edu/grad-students/slade/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NAAHAM TANTUM NA VIJAANAAMYOTUM | G?? A WYRD SWA HIO SCEL NA YAM VAJANTI SAMARE'ATAMAANAAH | *Beowulf* (454) *Rg-Veda* VI.1.9(2) | | 'I understand not the warp, |'Fate goes always as She must.' nor the woof, nor the web that | they weave; moving to and fro | in the field of motion & labour.' | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ From karhu at umich.edu Wed Mar 13 22:15:43 2002 From: karhu at umich.edu (Marc Pierce) Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 17:15:43 EST Subject: Call for papers: Germanic Linguistics Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION 2002 CONVENTION Germanic Philology Discussion Group New York City 27-30 December 2002 Deadline for Abstracts: March 22, 2002 The Germanic Philology Discussion Group will be holding a meeting at the 2002 MLA Convention in New York. Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks in all areas of Germanic linguistics and philology. Please submit an abstract electronically to Frederick W. Schwink at schwink at uiuc.edu or send an e-mail to ask for more information. Deadline is March 22d. From X99Lynx at aol.com Mon Mar 18 21:44:50 2002 From: X99Lynx at aol.com (Steve Long) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 16:44:50 EST Subject: More on Carrots3/Poison Hemlock Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- This is the third part of "More on Carrots." - Sometimes we may interpret names in a way that conforms more to expectations that any possible reality. An example is the etymology that finds the word "carrot" coming from "Greek karton, carrot (from its hornlike shape)." (From the American Heritage D.E.L, in its appendix on IE roots.) Obviously, there were many, many, many plants with horn-like roots in ancient Greece. And it seems a fairly large number of them either were edible or could be made edible. And it looks like the root of the carrot may not even have been an important part of the plant at the time, compared to the very horn-like radish or fennel. There may be a better alternative explanation of the word carrot. This is the Lewis & Short entry for : "carrot, dub. in Diph.Siph. ap. Ath.9.371e; but, = gleanings of grapes, PLond.1821.202." The gleaning of seeds, leaves or flowers might explain the original meaning of the carrot word. is given as the Greek word for the caraway plant or seed. Other plants that are "gleaned" like fennel and anise are also commonly described as looking like the wild carrot and are in fact related. But there is another group of words that fits very well into. And those include , plunge into deep sleep or torpor, stupefy; , stupefying, soporific, applied to 'pharmaka'; heaviness in the head, drowsiness; , drowsy, heavy. Now we might think that all these drugged-effect words would have nothing to do with the carrot, IF we didn't know two other facts. One is that Queen Anne's Lace and carrot plants in general also have a very close resemblance to a close relative - the poison hemlock. One only has to search on the web with both names to see all the warnings (some from US state government agencies) about how easy it is to confuse QAL with Hemlock for those who gather wild edibles. The second fact is that Hemlock was not just used as a poison to kill Socratic types by ancient Greeks. Pliny goes on at length about hemlock's use as a recreational drug throughout the empire, particularly as some kind of a counterbalance to the intoxication of wine. Moreover, modern descriptions of hemlock "poisoning" are quite similar to those used to define the words mentioned above. So perhaps it's possible that "carrot" actually started as the name for a very similar looking plant -- the poison hemlock -- used as an intoxicant. One can only guess how the switch happened. Perhaps it was confusion caused by lost drawings or descriptions that did not distinguish enough between the two plants. Perhaps it was a marketplace trick that substituted the less harmful daucus carota for hemlock as a pharmaceutical wonder. But the switch is probably no more surprising than the one that transferred, centuries later in America, the "helmlock" name itself to a totally dissimilar, tall, yew-like evergreen tree. (END.) Steve Long From X99Lynx at aol.com Mon Mar 18 21:44:38 2002 From: X99Lynx at aol.com (Steve Long) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 16:44:38 EST Subject: More on Carrots2/Wild Ones Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- This is the second part of "More on Carrots." - Larry Trask wrote: "The word 'carrot', according to the OED, is recorded in English only from 1533. But two respondents have reported the word, spelled 'karette', in an English herbalist dating from about 1500 -- or before any cultivated carrots are supposed to have reached England." What should also be mentioned is that the earliest reference in OED is in fact to the "Daucus creticus.... mihi uidetur anglis esse, Wylde carot." Now, wild carrot not only implies the cultivated 'carot' were already around (or why make the distinction?), but also that both varieties were already being called carrots. And in English. A point here is that the carrot plant could have been cultivated -- well before the advent of the Dutch-Spanish-North African-Afghani variety -- for a large number of purposes. In fact, there's a yellow-rooted carrot still widely produced in many places specifically as animal fodder and it isn't ordinarily even classified as a separate subspecies. One of the other common names given for QAL is "cow's parsley" - the young carrot plant has leaves very similar to its relative, the parsley. Whether as animal feed or medicine or gruel or for flavoring, the carrot may have been cultivated all along. And once again it might have been a new use or a new group of users -- or maybe just Classically trained academic-type naturalists - who brought the carrot word into English. - Larry Trask also wrote: "Just to muddy the waters, Kluge, the standard etymological dictionary of German, insists that carrots are attested in the Stone Age stilt-houses of Switzerland, and that carrots were cultivated "early" by Germanic speakers. I really don't know what to make of this." What was found there were collected carrot SEEDS. The most likely inferences are that the seeds were collected either for consumption or cultivation. Carrot seeds have their own utilities in the literature, mostly herbal or "medicinal." And they certainly could have been cultivated for such a purpose. But it's also possible that these other uses may have contributed to the confusion surrounding the word "carrot." (END OF PART 2) Steve Long From X99Lynx at aol.com Mon Mar 18 21:44:28 2002 From: X99Lynx at aol.com (Steve Long) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 16:44:28 EST Subject: More on Carrots/Queen Anne's Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Awhile back Larry Trask posted some questions and a summary re carrots. Recently, working on something else, I came across some additional information that may supplement what Larry gathered and may also have some interesting implications for the historical linguistics of such things. 1. - There is a modern name for the carrot that did not appear in the summary Larry posted, but one that may be important in understanding the way in which both the names and the plant traveled in history. Today, the other name by which many of us know the "carrot" plant is "Queen Anne's Lace" (in the U.S. particularly.) Of course, Queen Anne's Lace is for the most part not cultivated and most horticulturists identify it as the "wild" carrot. But in some cases it may in fact simply be a feral carrot. The Integrated Taxonomic Information System identifies "Daucus carota ssp. sativus (Hoffm.) Arcang." as both the carrot and the wild carrot. ITIS does also identify a second subspecies carota (ssp. carota) that is exclusively wild. (USDA, NRCS. 2001. The PLANTS Database, Version 3.1 National Plant Data Center ((http://plants.usda.gov).) The roots of the wild and cultivated carrot do differ. But the wild varieties definitely can be made edible if harvested early enough. (It's even reported in some of the literature that laws had to be enacted to force English peasants to plant and eat the cultivated carrot because they preferred the wild variety.) What's important for this discussion is that the two types of carrot plants - above the ground - are for all practical purposes identical. Either kind of carrot only flowers in its second year. Cultivated carrots however are normally harvested early in the first season, unless they are being grown to produce seed. Just before flowering, their roots become hard and woody in the same way as the wild varieties. When seeds are being produced, the cultivated "orange" carrot must be protected against pollination by QAL or the progeny will lose the "recessive" trait of orange color and sometimes the fuller root. There's more detail and a photograph of cultivated carrot plants allowed to go "two-seasons" for seed production at the USDA Vegetable Crops Research Unit web site (http://www.hort.wisc.edu/usdavcru/simon/default.htm) The key here is that the cultivated carrot plant above the ground will look virtually the same as QLA, from the time it breaks ground to the time it flowers. Queen Anne's Lace is mentioned often enough in everything from poetry to travel guides to advertising, again particularly in the U.S. But my experience has been that it is pretty consistently a surprise for most folks to learn that it is the "wild carrot." Most early references to QAL don't mention carrots at all. The name itself - Queen Anne's Lace - poses a bit of a problem. Many references attribute the name to the time of Queen Anne in the early18th Century. See e.g., Haughton, C., Green Immigrants (1978). But no one who has researched this for me has found a reference earlier than 1883, and that in a pamphlet on ornamental gardening. It is possible that the name was part of the "Queen Anne's Revival", a decorative and clothing fashion movement that became hot about that time in England and the US. (Queen Anne is the only Queen with her own entry in the original OED, but the references are either to the saying "Queen Anne is dead" meaning "old news." Or to the revival fad and none of these are dated earlier than 1881. There is no reference to QAL in the first OED, but there are a lot of references to other "queen's-" plants, including tobacco as "queen's herb.") So, we might ask how two virtually identical plants - the carrot and Queen Anne's Lace - came to have two different names, almost to the point of two separate identities. One obvious reason might be that they served two very different functions. There's good evidence that the carrot plant - not native to the U.S. in either form - was introduced on two separate occasions to serve two very different purposes. One was as a food plant and the other was as an ornamental lace-like garden plant. And each time the plant carried a different name. What I think this tells us linguistically is that the singular plant of today's scientific Botany is not a good guide for how such plants were thought of or named in the past or among non-scientific types. In fact, a singular plant may have been in effect several completely different plants in the language of the past. And (more importantly) not because of confusion or different languages, but simply because that plant had different functions for different groups of people speaking the same language. We might expect cooks, farmers, gardeners, marketeers, herbalists, basket weavers, tanners, cowherds and housewives to potentially each have their own name for the same plant. But it may not always be apparent in the record what group of speakers were connected with what name, or which name came to be adopted by the chroniclers who finally came to report it in writing. (End of Part 1) Steve Long ...................... From wolfskil at MIT.EDU Wed Mar 20 17:50:30 2002 From: wolfskil at MIT.EDU (Jud Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 12:50:30 EST Subject: book announcement Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I thought readers of the Historical Linguistics List might be interested in these two books. For more information, please send me an email or visit the URLs listed below. Thanks! Jud Language, Brain, and Cognitive Development Essays in Honor of Jacques Mehler edited by Emmanuel Dupoux http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262041979 In the early 1960s, the bold project of the emerging field of cognition was to put the human mind under the scrutiny of rational inquiry, through the conjoined efforts of philosophy, linguistics, computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. Forty years later, cognitive science is a flourishing academic field. The contributions to this collection, written in honor of Jacques Mehler, a founder of the field of psycholinguistics, assess the progress of cognitive science. The questions addressed include: What have we learned or not learned about language, brain, and cognition? Where are we now? Where have we failed? Where have we succeeded? The book is organized into four sections in addition to the introduction: thought, language, neuroscience, and brain and biology. Some chapters cut across several sections, attesting to the cross-disciplinary nature of the field. 6 x 9, 562 pp., 21 illus., cloth ISBN 0-262-04197-9 A Bradford Book Flexibility Principles in Boolean Semantics The Interpretation of Coordination, Plurality, and Scope in Natural Language Yoad Winter http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262232189 Since the early work of Montague, Boolean semantics and its subfield of generalized quantifier theory have become the model-theoretic foundation for the study of meaning in natural languages. This book uses this framework to develop a new semantic theory of central linguistic phenomena involving coordination, plurality, and scope. The proposed theory makes use of the standard Boolean interpretation of conjunction, a choice-function account of indefinites, and a novel semantics of plurals that is not based on the distributive/collective distinction. The key to unifying these mechanisms is a version of Montagovian semantics that is augmented by flexibility principles: semantic operations that have no counterpart in phonology. 7 x 9, 328 pp., 15 illus., cloth ISBN 0-262-23218-9 Current Studies in Linguistics, Volume 37 ______________________ Jud Wolfskill Associate Publicist The MIT Press 5 Cambridge Center, 4th Floor Cambridge, MA 02142 617 253 2079 617 253 1709 fax http://mitpress.mit.edu From d.denison at man.ac.uk Fri Mar 22 16:03:47 2002 From: d.denison at man.ac.uk (David Denison) Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 11:03:47 EST Subject: MA courses including The /ru:ts/ of English Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >From September 2002 the School of English & Linguistics in the University of Manchester will be offering two MAs in English Language. The MA in English Language and Linguistics is primarily intended for applicants with some background in language study who are looking for a course that will prepare them to undertake independent doctoral research in their chosen field. The /ru:ts/ of English is intended for applicants with an interest in the history and varieties of English but with little or no experience of formal language study at undergraduate level. For detailed information please visit http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/PGdegree/englglx.htm http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/PGdegree/MAruts.htm General information is at http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/PGdegree/MANENGLG.HTM http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/Default.html (with apologies for the awkward demands of the case-sensitive webserver now used by the English Department) David Denison -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> David Denison Dept of English and American Studies University of Manchester | Manchester M13 9PL | U.K. +44 (0)161-275 3154 (phone) +44 (0)161-275 3256 (fax) d.denison at man.ac.uk (email) http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/staff/DD/ From d.denison at man.ac.uk Mon Mar 25 12:36:36 2002 From: d.denison at man.ac.uk (David Denison) Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 07:36:36 EST Subject: job: English Language Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The Department of English and American Studies at the University of Manchester has a three-year vacancy for a specialist in English Language. Please draw this to the attention of likely candidates. The closing date for completed applications is Friday 12 April 2002. The advertisement reads as follows: Applications are invited for a 3-year fixed term Lectureship in English from 1st September 2002 to 31st August 2005 in this RAE 5-rated department. The department is seeking to appoint a specialist in English Language with particular interests in text analysis and the language of literature. The successful candidate will also be required to contribute to introductory courses in literature and to assist in departmental administration and the pastoral care of students. S/he will have a completed or near- completed PhD and will be active in research. The appointment will be made at point 7 or 8 of the Lecturer A scale, ?20,470 - ?21,503 pa. Further information about the job (reference 211/02): http://www.man.ac.uk/news/vacancies/academic.html Further information about the department: http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/ -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< ><> David Denison | Professor of English Linguistics Department of English and American Studies University of Manchester | Manchester M13 9PL | U.K. +44 (0)161-275 3154 (phone) +44 (0)161-275 3256 (fax) d.denison at man.ac.uk (email) http://www.art.man.ac.uk/ENGLISH/staff/DD/