LL-L "Etymology" 2008.02.24 (05) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  - 24 February 2008 - Volume 05
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From: "foga0301 at stcloudstate.edu" <foga0301 at stcloudstate.edu>
Subject: incommensurability and dual systems of loan words

Dear Ron,

     Thanks for your response.  That helps me to see where your thinking
goes.  I like it. I guess I'm talking about a way to apply this to a real
cultural problem (since I'm an applied linguist).  So, then, I'm looking at
the *specific* word families you mentioned (linked to English words *garden*and
*park*).  I used the semantic distinction (as I saw it) in using the words *
edge* and* enclosure* to speak of these two families—since that focuses us
on the 'epistemological work' that these families seem to be up to,
respectively.  The question here is this: Do we *divide* one idea from
another analytically, or do we *discover* them discursively one at a time?

    I guess to get at the very specific context I'm asking this question in,
I should have mentioned more about Byzantine social spaces and how they
divided up *public* and *private* lives differently than what our Western
heritage prepares us to contemplate.  That's the particular way in which I'm
thinking about incommensurable wordings.  The scholar who works on this best
is Peter Brown, but I don't have the specific citation handy. He is not at
all a linguist. His main contribution is/was to get Westerners to think
about how Byzantium evolved quite differently than the western parts of the
Roman Empire. This would go for Turkish/Ottoman history too.

   What your word play does is give Brown's theory another place to exist in
a visible way that would allow us to discuss this most elusive difference.
You're right that the whole of the Persian worldview gets transmitted into
Central and South Asia including this way of thinking about *private
spaces*and what we know about life-in-general due to what we
experience in this
space. In Byzantium, would say that such knowledge is more of a "discovered"
thing that has an inner shape but no corresponding outer reality of the type
that might be divided up into categories to process in the abstract.  For
example, the way Pakistanis get emotional and use their emotions socially is
more understandable (in my experience) if you think of the process in terms
of *discovery*— i.e., understanding is gained through empathy rather than
trying to move into a more rational sharable (public) space first.  In
the West,
I think we rely more on moving out of our emotions into common ground… then,
to negotiate a resolution, we must make the additional mental step of
putting up fences that function in this context to *define* the differences
we then use to *distinguish* our "views".  Practically, this allows us to
determine the existing hierarchical relations that would in turn determine
how these differences will be resolved politically. The whole of one's view
of democracy and the route to free self-expression is linked to this method
of dealing with difference. It's a big part of who we are culturally.

   So, then, how does the difference between *garden* and *park* play in
here?  Both word families contain words of both types (both describe *
enclosures* as well as *edges*). Yet it is possible (I'm saying) that they
do so from within these very different social frames—when used from within
the original cultural setting they (supposedly) emerged from. As a result,
it's possible to have two word families here with identical range of
meaning, yet totally different ways to connect the dots. That's a wonderful
thing, since it's very much advantageous to have two separate evolving
systems here that "do" the same work of describing the boundary of a space
and its inner dimensions. This is "useful" etymological knowledge in today's
world.  That to me is fascinating. If such a difference really does exist *on
an etymological level* and not just on a *semantic/epistemological level*,
then we can use this plentitude of words to speak of these most subtle
distinction—if only in a scholarly way.

   Well, at any rate, if this makes sense to you.  You might wish to post it
to the list serve. Not sure if it is an etymological topic still or a
sociolinguistic/cultural one.

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

Hello again, Gael, and thanks for the elucidation.

I believe that this thread is absolutely relevant to the List. It is by no
means extraneous to etymology either, since knowledge of social and cultural
evolution, historical events, migrations, interethnic contacts and so forth
allows us to come up with more educated proposals with regard to semantic
ranges, obviously in conjunction with sound frameworks at the historical
phonology end of things. History and comparisons of world views and social
dynamics offer guidance to and at the same time benefit from etymology.
Ideally, we would have historians and also cultural anthropologists with
diachronic research leanings on board.

Obviously I don't have all the answers, and my hope is that others will
chime in here anytime now.

Let's look at nomadic societies. From my own occasional contacts with nomads
and with people with recent nomadic pasts have have gleaned that there is
little or no distinction between private and public space (or spheres) among
such people. Things are different among sedentary peoples whose lives
revolve around land, livestock and other such property, thus also around
inheritance, all of which found extremes in urban environments. This is were
private versus common property and thus material competition play a role. In
feudalistic systems even people can be treated as property, and you'll see
significant property amassed by a powerful few, where you get closed estates
versus public domains.

At some point in time in Europe parks became large tracks of natural or
natural-looking land on which animals were kept for the hunting pleasure of
aristocrats. Commoners were usually allowed on those lands as long as they
did not go there to hunt. I guess that public parks associated with castles
and mansions developed from those.

However, are we able to tell what caused "park" and "garden" to go different
ways, or can we only guess?

I believe that in the case of the Persian tradition the garden (*bāġ* باغ)
was private and served as a metaphor for inner space, for personal
sanctuary, for the domain of one's private thoughts and emotions, and in
Sufi traditions as the space of higher, spiritual consciousness, visited by
the nightingale (*bulbul* بلبل > Turkic *bülbül*, Hindi* bulbul* बुलबुल) as
one's muse. Gardens did not play that significant a role in Europe's
medieval literary traditions. In fact, I think that, beginning with the 18th
century, it was a love affair with Persian literature (Goethe, Fitzgerald,
Emerson, Nietzsche, etc.) that helped the garden theme to come to the fore
in Western literature.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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