blend: "slowly by s lowly"

[Peter A. McGraw]

Did the glosses make it clear that there was actually a negative
connotation to the expressions?  I don't know about the other Balkan
languages, but I remember reading once that in Albania, when you meet
another party trekking through the mountains, the prescribed greeting is,
"How have you come?" and the required response is, "Slowly, slowly."  The
account didn't elaborate, and I suppose the response could have some
negative connotation, but it seems to me it could also imply something more
like "slowly and steadily" or "slowly and carefully."  Given the
distribution of the expressions, I suppose the key to all of them is likely
to be found in Turkish.

Peter Mc.

--On Tuesday, January 13, 2004 9:51 PM -0500 Laurence Horn
<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

> Curiously, I was just earlier this evening reading Brian Joseph's
> "Editor's Department" at the start of my newly arrived copy of
> Language (79:4, p. 681), in which the author refers to a variety of
> expressions in different Balkan languages (Turkish, Macedonian,
> Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian), all glossed literally as "slowly slowly"
> (or perhaps "slowly by slowly"), implying a more negative outcome
> than "slowly but surely".  Actually the Greek is closer to "quietly
> by quietly", but with the same force.  Maybe Francona's use was



*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************