Fw: [Lexicog] semantic domains

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk at qaya.org>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] semantic domains


> --- In lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com, "Translation MALI"
> <translation_mali at s...> wrote:
> > Peter,
> >
> > From my experience as a translation consultant in West Africa
> > I cannot confirm that prejudice that in many non-western languages
> > abstract concepts have to be expressed by verbs. Into one language
> > in West Africa with which I am familiar, both the Bible and the Qur'an
> > were translated, and a theological and philosophical vocabulary
> > exists. Ideas like Thorleif Borman's in "Hebrew Thought Compared
> > with Greek", claiming that Hebrew is dynamic and concrete
> > as expressed in the verbs as opposed to Greek being abstract
> > have long since been debunked. The danger with these generalizations
> > is that selected linguistic evidence is used to support preconceived
> > theories about the worldviews of other languages and cultures.
> > Ths ends in stereotyping and worse.
> >
> > Thanks for stimulating this discussion,
> >
> > Fritz Goerling
>
> Fritz, I was not trying to support theories like Borman's, or to say
> anything about worldviews. I was simply summarising the position
> expounded e.g. in "Translating the Word of God", by Beekman and
> Callow. According to them (p.217), "Abstract nouns, then, represent a
> mismatch or skewing between the semantic classification and the
> grammatical classification... In addition, languages differ
> considerably in the extent to which they use abstract nouns."
> Elsewhere I have heard suggestions that some languages have almost no
> abstract nouns, but I cannot confirm that.
>
> The best way I can clarify this is probably to refer again to the
> distinction between grammar and semantics. The point I was making was
> a grammatical one, that certain concepts are expressed with different
> grammatical forms in different languages. I was not making a semantic
> point, I was not suggesting that different semantics are used in
> different languages, and certainly not that it is impossible to
> express or translate abstract concepts into any language.
>
> As for translation, it is possible to translate complex texts into
> languages which don't have abstract nouns, as long as the translation
> is not expected to be highly literal. Indeed this has been done into
> many languages. The grammatical forms have to be adjusted so that the
> abstract concepts are described by verbs rather than nouns (Beekman
> and Callow etc give examples of how to do this), but with care the
> semantics can be preserved.
>
> Peter Kirk
>
>
>
>
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