<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">=========================================================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 24 February 2008 - Volume 05<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
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=========================================================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: "<a href="mailto:foga0301@stcloudstate.edu">foga0301@stcloudstate.edu</a>" <<a href="mailto:foga0301@stcloudstate.edu">foga0301@stcloudstate.edu</a>></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: incommensurability and dual systems of loan words<br></span><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Dear
Ron,</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">
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 <i>specific</i> word families you mentioned (linked to English
words <i>garden</i> and <i>park</i>). I used the semantic distinction (as
I saw it) in using the words <i>edge</i> and<i> enclosure</i> 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 <i><u>divide</u></i> one idea from another analytically, or do we <i><u>discover</u></i>
them discursively one at a time? </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">
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 <i>public</i> and <i>private</i> 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. </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">
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 <i>private spaces</i> 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 <i>discovery</i>—
i.e., understanding is gained through empathy rather than trying to move into a
more rational sharable (public) space first. In the <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1203905579_0">West, I</span> 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 <i>define</i> the differences we then use to <i>distinguish</i>
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. </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">
So, then, how does the difference between <i>garden</i> and <i>park</i> play in
here? Both word families contain words of both types (both describe <i>enclosures</i>
as well as <i>edges</i>). 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 <i>on an etymological level</i> and not just on a <i>semantic/epistemological
level</i>, then we can use this plentitude of words to speak of these most subtle
distinction—if only in a scholarly way. </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">
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.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Gael Fonken
</p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br>From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>><span></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: Etymology<br><br>Hello again, Gael, and thanks for the elucidation.<br><br>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.<br>
<br>Obviously I don't have all the answers, and my hope is that others will chime in here anytime now.<br><br>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. <br>
<br>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. </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br>
However, are we able to tell what caused "park" and "garden" to go different ways, or can we only guess?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br>
I believe that in the case of the Persian tradition the garden (<i>bāġ</i> 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 (<i>bulbul</i> بلبل > Turkic <i>bülbül</i>, Hindi<i> bulbul</i> 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.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Regards,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Reinhard/Ron</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
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