blend: "slowly by s lowly"

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:51 AM -0800 1/14/04, Peter A. McGraw wrote:
>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.
>

Brian Joseph was talking optimistically about developments auguring a
brighter future of the field of linguistics, including the MSU
Institute and various outreach programs in the schools, and in that
context applied the "Balkan phrase" in its various reifications, to
which he added a footnote indicating that "this phrasal Balkanism
carries perhaps a somewhat negative implication that results may
never be achieved, and that is most assuredly not the case for
outreach efforts in linguistics; thus, to put it in a more positive
light, one might characterize the progress as happening 'slowly but
surely'."

larry