cross-linguistic metaphors (fwd)

[Bryan James Gordon]

Wow this is an engaging thread! I miss when we had more of these.

Hi Jill, how are you? I think, unfortunately, a native speaker could only
help us to reject, not to confirm, the hypothesis, because of course you're
right, if she or he did confirm that it's the colour term ska being used, we
would not be able to rule out English influence. Universal metaphors have
attracted some research lately in cognitive science, where they go under
names like spreading activation and stereotypic processing. For a while this
very question of whiteness/clearness-as-good/skillful/safe, darkness-as-bad,
was getting referenced in cog-sci colloquia every other week. Ugh. There are
some metaphors that have indeed proved robust cross-culturally in labs
(inasmuch as labs can be cross-cultural!) - things that are generic like
horoscopes - things like high-pitch-as-piercing/whining/uppity. I'm guessing
most universal metaphors are this trivial or more so. The only truly
inescapable metaphor is the linguistic expression as a metaphor for its
referent.

One thing that makes me skeptical of the clarity-metaphor's necessity is
that many languages, including Umoⁿhoⁿ and Baxoje, have a word for "clear"
that is *not *ska, but rather the other common Siouan word for white, sóⁿ
[są] (U) / tháⁿ [θą] (B).

But the arguments Bob, Rory and others have made in favour of the metaphor
are also quite compelling.

It's hard to decide.

2011/2/22 Rory M Larson <rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu>

> I'm open to the possibility that some ska's might be a different word,
> perhaps related to shkoN.  To make that connection, we'd have to both lose
> the nasalization and do a Siouan sound-symbolic fricative ablaut shift.
>
How distinctive is nasality on unstressed final low vowels anyway? Think
about gthéboⁿ "ten", which only a few people pronounce that way anymore: it
has become gthéba for many others. The sound-symbolic fricative ablaut is a
nifty proposal. A connection to -shka would be interesting. I'd given it
some thought, but nothing obvious really sticks out. Of course in Baxoje
forms like shga~sga~thga~xga~hga often vary sociolinguistically or
stylistically (i.e. some of them are "old" forms, others are "Jiwere" forms,
etc.), so maybe this has something to do with how Baxoje uses non-cognates
to express the same meaning.

In the dictionary Jimm gives Lakȟota bléza "sane", Dakhota mdéza "clear",
Hocąk péres "clear, sane, intelligent" as cognates of brédhe. I suspect a
connection also with grédhe "many-coloured". Interestingly, rédhe is
"tongue". Umoⁿhoⁿ gthéze is "spotted/rippled", maybe they don't say bthéze
because they say wazhíⁿska instead, maybe one of the speakers has heard a
word like bthéze before?
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