LL-L "Lexicon" 2011.04.26 (01) [EN]

Tue Apr 26 18:23:28 UTC 2011

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L O W L A N D S - L - 26 April 2011 - Volume 01
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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2011.04.25 (03) [EN]

I believe meaning drift affects all languages, especially when a word is
borrowed precisely because there is no native equivalent.  The potato is an
example: French and Dutch went down the descriptive route: "earth apple",
whereas English borrowed a native word - except that the Carib *batatas* is
a root plant totally unrelated to the common spud as we know it.  But any
language encountering a foreign thing or idea is going to have the same
dilemma, whether they had an empire or not.  Mexico was never part of the
British empire, but we still have to call an enchillada something, be it
enchillada or Mexican cheesy bean roll.

If it comes to that, I've never had a Mexican enchillada in Mexico, so I
don't even know if the things I've eaten in Australia or England are
actually enchilladas at all.  What I think of when I see or hear the word
might be quite different from the Mexican concept.

Paul

Paul

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From: Sandy Fleming <fleemin at live.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2011.04.25 (03) [EN]

> From: Pat Barrett <pbarrett at cox.net>

> Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2011.04.25 (01) [AF-EN]

> The reason I'm going into such detail on this is that I think of my
Pakistani friends who use English in a way, esp vocabulary, that can be
quite misleading e.g. "rush" meaning 'a crowd'. "There was quite a rush at
the airport" would make me think of people running for planes whereas they
would simply mean a lot of people.

> How do we "control" (impossible) the proliferation of meanings? Maybe it
is to specify the cultural-geographical context. I think only English and
Spanish and French, due to colonial empires, have this problem.

Surely proliferation (of semantic interpretations, phonemes, syntax and so
on) is the norm? Even smallish islands like Britain have a large number of
languages and these languages have a large number of dialects. National
publishing and education gives the illusion that language is or should be
reasonably stable, but that's a recent and unregulated phenomenon. The
benefits of regulating language seem illusory to me.

Your Pakistani friends only use language in a way that misleads you, it
doesn't mislead them! I think you need to explain why you consider this to
be "misleading" in a general sense.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Minohara Tomoki <t-minohara at HOTMAIL.IT>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2011.04.25 (01) [AF-EN]

Beste Piet,

Hartelijk dank voor je gedetailleerde uitleg.
Als je zegt, is het beter "ranch" als leenwoord laten staan.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranch

De reden is dat de structuur van "ranch" is
verschillend van "boerderij", is het niet?

Als mijn uitlegging correct is, wordt het woord "boerderij"
gebruikt zowel om een "landbouw" als een gebied voor het fokken.
Het is onjuist om de definitie van "boerderij" te beperken dat
een gebied voor allen landbouwproducten (bv. groenten), niet
voor het fokken is.
Is het correct?

Met vriendelijke groet,

Tomoki

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From: Minohara Tomoki <t-minohara at HOTMAIL.IT>
Subject: Lexicon

Dear Lowlanders,

I would like to know if the definition /meaning of the following expressions
in English and Dutch is same or not.
(Ik zou graag weten als de definitie /betekenis van de volgende zinnen
in het Engels en Nederlands dezelfde is of niet).

quit job = met werken stoppen, ontslag nemen
retire from a company = , ontslag nemen, met pensioen gaan

Example (Bijvoorbeeld):

If a 65-year-old man says "I will quit my job next month",
this phrase implies two cases:
- he quits his job but it is uncertain if he gets pension.
- he quits his job to get pension.

Als een man, 65-jaar zegt dat "Ik stop met werken volgende maand",
betekent deze zin impliceert twee gevallen:
- hij stopt met werken maar het is onzeker als hij pensioen ontvangt.
- hij stopt met werken om pensioen te ontvangen.

Thanks for your feedback.
Hartelijk dank!

Tomoki

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From: "dealangeam" <atdelange at iburst.co.za>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" [AF-EN]

 Dear Lowlanders,

Pat Barrett wrote:

“How do we "control" (impossible) the proliferation of meanings? Maybe it is
to specify the cultural_geographical context. I think only English and
Spanish and French, due to colonial empires, have this problem.”

This question connects to one of my passions the last thirty years -
Irreversible Self-organization (ISO)

There is evolution in far more worlds than the biological world. For the
biological world we have Darwin’s theory. It has been improved so much that
after 150 years it explains more than 95% of how life evolved. Its central
feature is the “time tree of life”.

Unfortunately, Darwin’s theory cannot explain other physical “time trees”
like that of geology and climatology.  Even more worse, after many thousands
of attempts, it cannot explain spiritual (mental) “time trees” like in the
evolution of language, music, economy, crafts and technology.

The reason is that Darwin’s theory does not make use of any universal
physical law like the Law of Gravitation. Even worse, there is not even one
universal law for both the physical and spiritual (mental) worlds. However,
the Law of Entropy Production (LEP) has already been discovered about 150
years ago. It is a universal and phenomenological law like the Law of Energy
Conservation (LEC). Unlike all other universal physical laws, it is
extremely difficult to understand correctly.

In the early 1950's, Ilya Prigogine began to study not only LEP, but also
how entropy gets created. Then, in the late 1960's, he began to study the
consequences of entropy production. I began to study his work closely
because of my research on soil science and especially the evolution of
soils. In 1977 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on
LEP and its consequences. In 1984 he was the senior author of a book “Order
out of Chaos” together with the philosopher Isabella Stengers.

The book took the scientific world by storm. But it did not change
scientific thinking (like the theory of Copernicus) as was expected, In my
opinion, the reason was two fold:

(1) To understand LEP and how entropy gets produced, requires excellence in
the hard core sciences like mathematics, physics, engineering and chemistry.
Only those scientists which defy the specialization of the natural sciences
and have a passion for wholeness of science are motivated to understand it.
They are few and far between.

(2) To learn something of anything requires knowledge of LEP and entropy
production, not of the physical world, but of the spiritual (mental world).
Sadly, there was no empirical evidence that LEP also acted upon the
spiritual world.

In 1982-83 I made an empirical discovery by accident while trying to improve
the learning of university students in chemistry. Were it not for my
experience in soil science and knowledge of Prigogine’s work, I would not
have recognised the importance of this discovery. LEP does indeed act on
also the spiritual world with all its consequences as in the physical world.

However, trying to publish the results, first in an educational journal and
afterwards in a chemical journal, were met with scorn and derision. It was
even considered as bad science fiction because it required a greater
paradigm shift than that to accept Copernicus’ theory. As a result of this,
I had to make all my future investigations on my own, having no other
scientists helping me to shape my thoughts. But it gave me immense joy for
almost thirty years now.

Pat, you question “How do we "control" (impossible) the proliferation of
meanings?” has to do with Irreversible Self-Organization (ISO) as a
consequence of LEP. Words do not have any meaning, unless we create them for
conveying meaning and afterwards attach other meanings to each of them. It
is a result of the “ISO of consciousness”, or in older almost useless terms
“the evolution of mind”.

Your observation “”"control" (impossible)” is magnificent. It means in terms
of ISO that the evolution of the connection between words and their meanings
is a SPONTANEOUS process. Trying to force this connection is to overrule
this spontaneity. In almost all attempts it will destroy the connection
intended. It is because it destroys the self-control of ISO itself.

I interpret your word “proliferation” as the time-tree of meanings. It is
like the time-tree of geological, soil and biological species. Trying to
prevent this “proliferation”, is in ISO known as reaching the equilibrium
state. The past, present and future become the same. Even using tenses in
verbs in languages become obsolete. It is simply death.

In Afrikaans we have a far reaching construction to deal with this
“proliferation” of meanings in any noun or verb. Like in most languages we
have adjectives to specify the meaning of a noun and adverbs for verbs. But
we also have the construction “writing or speaking them fixed (fastened)”.
It is called in Afrikaans “skryf of praat woorde vas”. The rule is

1) write or speak fixed (“vas”) where you must

2) otherwise, write or speak loose (“los”) whenever you can.

For example, in the recent discussion on what the translation of ‘ranch’
would be in Dutch, we will write and speak of it in Afrikaans as one word
“beesplaas” (‘cattleplace’) rather than two words “bees plaas” or “bees
boerdery” (‘cattle farm’). Studying an Afrikaans dictionary will reveal far
more than a thousands words similar in construction to this example

It is a construction which is even intuitively grasped by the Xhoisan,
Banthu and Asian speaking peoples. When they use it in their own languages,
it is frown upon. It is because in ISO, emergences in any species (resulting
in two species) is by far an emergence between that species and a closely
related other species. It is considered as alien.

I have a strong hunch that Low-Saxon will become a very important language
once again when some of the Dutch dialects and German dialects emerge
spontaneously as one modern version of Low-Saxon. The other dialects will
follow suite. However, what lacks is the passion for working towards such an
emergence.

Only 100 copies of Edgar Alan Poe’s first book was printed. He was the USA’s
most imaginative writer. Only some of them got sold. Today a original copy
of that book is worth about $200,000. I have written a manuscript on my own
discoveries. I eventually decided not to publish it because perhaps not even
10 copies would have sold. I have written it in Word Perfect, but still has
also a MS Word 97 version of it. Contact me and i will send you a copy of it
in WP or DOC format.

This reply is a little over a thousand words. I can extend it by another
thousand of words, but this will have to do. The thought which i want to
stress, is that the spontaneous evolution of natural languages will have to
be by way of Irreversible Self-organization (ISO). There is no other
possibility witnessed by 14,700,000,000 years of evolution since the Big
Bang.

Mooi loop.

At de Lange

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