LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.06 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 06 October 2008 - Volume 02
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From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.05 (01) [E]

Dear Heather, Luc, Ron, Jorge, Mike & All:


Subject: LL-L "Lexicon"



Heather wrote:

I have always be intrigued by the relationship of telling / recounting a
story e.g. conter/raconter  erzählen   all these have to do with NUMBERS! &
 counting.



& Ron notes the intimate relationship between 'count' &c. as in number &
'recount' as in anecdote &c. in an Indo-Germanic context, but it is broder
than that, being manifest in the Semetic languages too. Hebrew applies the
root S.P.R equally to number, 'mispar' &c. & tale, 'sippour' &c. This, guys,
must be a really *old* link.



Luc: Ja, language is not, as you say, & cannot merely be, merely a sum of
it's own properties, because it is necessarily a communication, a bridge,
between disparate phenomena with different properties, & they will
inevitibly also have a part to play. There would be no point in
communication between identical phenomena.



There is more, though. As J.C. Smuts pointed out, holism has a bearing in
any union of parts, in terms of which the union is itself a further property
necessarily unmanifest in & quite unrelated to any separate part. To me,
Chomski disappoints because his speculations do not take account of this,
the wonderful increase in capacity that language acquires in increasing
orders of magnitude following systematically increasing complexity. Binery
computers are a good example of the phenomenal carrying capacity of a *
multipally-structured* system of nothing but 'on' & 'off'.



Heather, Ron:

About veal; bear in mind calves are a *by-product* of the dairy industry.
The cow comes into milk only for the calf. Remove the calf & milk the cow.
This accounts for the availability of veal, calf-skin vests & vellum - also
the fine strong teeth (& bones) of Western women, where milk is so important
to the diet of growing children.



Yrs,

Mark

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From: Jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.05 (01) [E]

Dear Heather,



you wrote:

I have often wondered whether the fact that there is no difference in name
between the animal and the meat was an indication that 'lamb' and 'chicken'
were NOT eaten as meats by our medieval forefathers.

It might have been too wasteful to eat a lamb when it could easily feed many
more people after a breeding / shearing life and then be known as 'mutton'

Absolutely convincing. I myself don't know lamb or calf meat from my youth -
we just ate castrated or female sheep of an age of about one(?) year, pigs
of a size of about 450 pounds or ox meat. But a kind of chicken we had,
because our clucking hens (Low Saxon: *'Kluck-Hen'*!) breeded on our farm,
exclusively their or their mates' own eggs (not, as today, substituted by a
breeding plant), and the male chicken were separated before they became
fertile. One  cock was left, and to avoid inbreeding it was butchered one
time a year (nono - not always the same one *g*) and replaced by another one
from a neighbour.

Similarly a chicken produced eggs and so was not destined early in its life
to the pot. I keep my hens until they die of old age c 4-5 years and can
promise you that even long slow cooking would produce little of value
besides stock!

Wow!! You nearly seem to be a self-supporter, with all your additional fruit
and vegetable! Applaudable, really!!



...that even long slow cooking would produce little of value besides stock



I'm not sure I understand you correctly - just bouillon??

Did you ever try a pressure cooker? I promise you - the meat of the oldest
bird (like even 30 years old wild goose) will become delicate, feathery(?)
('zart') and thus even the meat of an old hen gives a very good, delicate
soup or fricassee. I use to add a wild dove into the pot - they are
incredibly aromatic. (But - five years??? Kill them when they cease to
produce an egg daily - after a guessed time of max. 3 years.)



(BTW: Heather, if you're still interested in the 'tell/count'-relations just
have a look at GRIMM here:
http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/WBB/woerterbuecher/dwb/wbgui?lemid=GA00001
under
the lemmata *'erzählen'*, *'zahl'* etc. It's a confusing lot of stuff, too
much for just a quick glance...)



Kind regards! Hope you're well after this last rain attack...!



Jonny Meibohm
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