LL-L "Etymology" 2008.02.24 (03) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  - 24 February 2008 - Volume 01
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From: foga0301 at stcloudstate.edu
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" -on the value of wild ideas

Dear Ron and all Etymology practitioners out there,

     I'm still trying to connect.  Okay, I think I see the distinction
you're making here when you say: *"**I'm not saying it but throwing it out
there as a wild idea."  *That's okay with me that you're not sure about the
idea you're proposing. I wasn't asking you "to be sure".  I just didn't know
if that was the hypothesis you were "throwing out there".   I love it the
way it is.  My additions from sociolinguistic theory were meant to add on to
it some observations that relate to issues of *incommensurablity* between
the thought worlds of Persia and Western Europe.

    I'm working on another topic that is equally hard to nail down "for
sure"—which is the way epistemological differences don't translate exactly.
I'm looking at subtle slippages between words like *enclosure* and
*edge*that open up hidden perceptual connotations
*that don't have any referent *beyond their culture of origin. We can
translate most of what a word means, but not these hidden things that hold
the deepest meanings.  So…. when you hold out two nearly identical word
families [garden and park] that have nearly identical semantic fields, and
you point to profound (or even possibly profound) etymological
distinctions,… well, then you give me a place to start adding
socio-perceptual distinctions that would add credibility to what you're
"throwing out there".

  Okay then just think for a minute about there possibly being such a thing
as two parallel ways to talk about *enclosures* and *edges*. If you're right
about these wild ideas of yours, then *both* these terms can move across
cultural/worldview boundaries with the *one* having a deeper Persian take on
space relations (enclosures being linked to Persian ways of thinking) and
the *other* having a deeper Western take on space relations (such that the
edges between spaces are the focus).  This is a huge difference, and one
which notoriously *incommensurable.* It would be "nice" if we had a way to
talk about such differences.  But given the reality that these are often
misunderstood in cross-cultural exchanges, you would expect these two ways
to speak of enclosures and edges as confusingly imprecise—and falsely
interchangeable.

   The reality is that it is easy not to get the deeper meaning of any such
word when it is used outside its cultural of origin.  One can *say* the word
and one's foreign audience simply *hears* a different word (semantically).
 The full semantic range of such wandering words would then turn out to be
identity on the surface, which is what you get when you put both your
hypotheses side-by-side as I did. It looks like you have no basis for
claiming ["saying"] that they are distinct families, except perhaps at this
deepest level when the entire worldview underlying a word needs to shift in
order to move it into a new cultural 'region' or way of perceiving space.

   Okay, so, I too have a wild thought, I must admit.  But might it be that
yours and mine are stronger together? That's the real question I have for
you: is what you do think of what I have added to your idea?  If you dare to
put your two hypotheses side-by-side… are they strengthened by what I add? *
Despite* the semantic overlap between these word families, do they still
make sense as markers of deeper epistemological distinctions that would
otherwise not ever be commensurable?  Oh my, that's a hard question even to
express, let alone confirm as true since people rarely (if ever) worry if
they are using such words precisely like this.  But I'm only "throwing it
out," as you say. It's interesting to think of such verbal precision as even
being possible. But if it were, just think of the kinds of conversations it
would lead to between Muslims and the Western Christian tradition. In a way,
your twin hypotheses make a wonderful way to start such a conversation
(whether or not they are correct as stated)….

that's enough for one email….

Gael Fonken

Ron wrote:

"Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of etymology, Gael! It offers
thrilling rides through time and space, and it also offers new ways of
looking at cultural concepts, social evolution and human perception. Some
find those rides addictive. *It's not all frivolous fun.* You often stop in
wonderment when you realize that it all boils down to a fairly small number
of word roots. And at that point *it no longer seems absurd* to go beyond
what we now consider a language family, to consider relationships on grander
scales."

I can relate to this kind of wildness…. Thanks.
----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology

Hi, Gael!

That's a tough one indeed. I'm not sure I got it. I think you are talking
about semantic shifts in lexical exportation and the fact that loanwords
don't usually come with their entire historical, philosophical and cultural
baggage, that therefore a combined approach might yield more precise
findings with regard to semantic loss or detail in semantic shift.

Words tend to undergo semantic shifts and expansion already within a given
language or within a close-knit language group. In most cases it is semantic
expansion, very often followed by semantic loss, namely loss of intermediate
steps. (Bear in mind that the number of word roots within a family tends to
be surprisingly small and that semantic expansion is thus necessary.)

Consider the case of the already mentioned cognates: **tūn* > German
*Zaun*'fence', Low Saxon
*Tuun* 'fence' ~ 'garden', Dutch *toen* 'garden', Scots *toon* 'town',
English "town," or **gata* > German *Gasse* '(small, narrow connecting)
street', Scandinavian *gata*, *gade* 'street', Middle Saxon *gate* (fem.)* ~
gatte* (neut.) 'alley', 'passage way', 'opening' > Modern Low Saxon
*Gatt*'passageway', 'aperture', 'opening', 'anus', 'backside',
'buttocks' (also
Dutch and Afrikaans *gat*), and also > English "gate."

In the first example, the earlier postulated Indo-European idea of "woven
branches (for fencing)" ended up not only meaning "fence" but also that
which the fence encloses: "garden" (which is related to "yard" which goes
back to IE **ĝhordo-* "woven branches (for fencing)" < IE **ĝher-* 'to
enclose', cf. Altaic: Mongolian *ger* 'homestead', 'home' '(movable) house',
'yurt', but that's another story ...) Where this shift from to "garden"
occurred, the intermediate step of "fence" got lost and another word is
needed for it. In Britain, descendants of **tūn*** came to denote the entire
fenced-in homestead, then probably a cluster of homesteads, and it made the
transition to a larger community, hence "town." A native English speaker
without this knowledge would not think of weaving branches into fencing when
he or she thinks of the meaning of "town." The weaving bit became irrelevant
when cognates of this group became generalized as "barrier" to include any
type of enclosing, such as walls and ramparts. And here we go outside
Germanic and consider Celtic **d**ūn*: Old Irish *dún*, Galish *dûnum*,
Scottish Gaelic *dùn*, Welsh *din* 'heap', 'walled structure', 'fortress'
(cf. Scottish Gaelic *Dùn Èideann* 'Edinburgh'). I don't think that the leap
from 'edge' to '(outside) barrier' to 'fence' is a great one.

Especially when words are adopted across greater genetic and cultural
distances they tend to be initially semantically narrow, limited by the
cultural contexts within which the adoption occurs. However, once they are
nativized (as most loanwords eventually are) they may begin their own,
internal semantic shifts and expansion, and the greater the cultural
distance between the languages involved is less cultural reference there is
and thus the freer a loanword is to develop semantically independently.

However, in many cases cultural ties are close and lasting even between
genetically supposedly unrelated languages. The case of Persian **bāġ* and
its journeys into South and Central Asia may serve as an example here. In
the areas that are now Pakistan and Northern India and also throughout
Islamicized Turkic-speaking Central Asia (emanating from Persianized urban
centers such as Tashkent, Bukhara and Samarkand) Persian literature,
especially Persian poetry and song, used to be and in many cases still are
considered supreme, and this tradition migrated west into Azerbaijan and
Turkey. Anyone with what was/is considered a good formal education was/is
able to read and appreciate Persian literature, and writers in Indo-Aryan
and Turkic languages have been emulating it, very often slavishly so. Such
writers and their readers tend to be intimately familiar with Persian
imagery and metaphors, and this includes those that cannot read Persian
themselves. In other words, prestige and familiarity allow entire cultural
constructs to spread and last.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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