[Ads-l] quote: fire in a wooden box

Wed May 25 02:09:05 UTC 2016

Dear ADS Mailing List and David Gold:
  For the completist: The Google Books database contains a 1901
edition of volume 2 of Fritz Mauthner's opus (in full view) which
includes the pertinent quotation in German. Here is the citation
information together with a link. Two translations into English are
given further below (please double-check for errors):

Year: 1901
Title: Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache: Zur Sprachwissenschaft
Author: Fritz Mauthner
Volume 2 (Zweiter Band)
Publisher Information: JG Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger G.M.B.H, Stuttgart
Chapter 1: Was ist Sprachwissenschaft?
Quote Page 18
Database: Google Books Full View

https://books.google.com/books?id=BNo4AQAAMAAJ&q=%22nicht+das+Aeussere%22#v=snippet&

[Begin excerpt]
Schlimm für den Menschen, wenn er die Sprache selbst zum Gegenstande
einer Wissenschaft zu machen wagt; Gegenstand der Erinnerung und
Zeichen der Erinnerung, Stoff der Erkenntnis und Form der Erkenntnis
fallen dann zusammen.  Wie soll da das Gefäss den Inhalt fassen?  Ist
es nicht, als ob man ein Holzfeuer in einem hölzernen Ofen anzünden
wollte?  Muss das Innere nicht das Aeussere zerstören?
[End excerpt]

[Begin excerpt of translation in David A Reibel's PDF]
This is unfortunate for the person who dares to make language itself
into the subject of a science.  The object of memory and the symbol of
the memory, matter of cognition and form of cognition, fall then
together.  How shall then the vessel contain the contents?  Is it not
then as if one tries to light a wood fire in a wooden oven?  Must not
the contents destroy the container?
[End excerpt]

[Begin freer translation from David A Reibel's PDF (see cite in paper)]
Unfortunately, making language itself into the object of scientific
investigation destroys the boundary between the token of a memory and
the memory itself, between the cognition of form and substance. How
can the vessel hold its contents? Isn’t it like lighting a wood fire
in a wooden stove? Won’t the inside destroy the out?
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 8:48 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> On May 24, 2016, at 3:56 PM, Geoffrey Steven Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I'm pretty sure it is in the Joos reader. And my memory is that it was not linguistics in general, but rather semantics in particular.
>
> Really?  I don't recall semantics even being mentioned in the Joos reader. Lots of phonology and morphology, a bit of syntax, but no semantics.
> I remember the bit about languages differing from each other without limit and the bit about how only children demand explanations, and how there is a child in each of us but descriptivism makes a virtue of not pampering that child.  Waaaah waaaah.
>
> I'll try to see what I can find--my copy is still somewhere on my office shelves.
>
> LH
>
>> He had a number of italicized comments about articles and I think it's one of those.
>>
>> Unfortunately my copy is in a box in the garage, as we are about to do house renovations.
>>
>> Joos, Martin (ed), 1966. Readings in Linguistics I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
>>
>> Geoff
>>
>> Geoffrey S. Nathan
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>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2016 3:47 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: quote: fire in a wooden box
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      quote: fire in a wooden box
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> query from David Gold dl.gold at yahoo.com
>>
>> As a student of linguistics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I remember r=
>> eading the quip "linguistics [or maybe it was: defining linguistics] is lik=
>> e making a fire in a wooden box," that is, language is used to describe lan=
>> guage.
>>
>> I have a vague recollection that the quipster was Martin Joos or some other=
>> American structuralist (Bloomfield? Bolinger?).
>>
>> Now that I want to cite the quip, I cannot find the exact wording or the au=
>> thor. Might you know?
>>
>> ....
>>
>> AMZ: if you respond, please send a copy of your e-mail to David Gold, who's=
>> not a subscriber to this list. (i am not a good forwarding service.)
>>
>> arnold=
>>
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