LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.04 (02) [E]

Sat Oct 4 18:42:30 UTC 2008

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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.03 (05) [D/E/German]

For the Lexical Bunch, Mark, Ron, Marlou, Arend and Ron.

Mark made the remark that: By the way, I believe a "blad" can mean "page" or
"newspaper" in some of the Germanic languages.

Yes, not only that, but in Dutch the word "blad" has two different plurals.

 blad/bladeren for the leaves of trees and flowers;

and blad/bladen for things that can give you nasty papercuts, like newspaper
and grass and also flat things on which you can set something down, with the
meaning of tray, or table leaf.

But then we do not know "blad" in the meaning of  English "blade"

Have fun with that one! Jacqueline

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From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.03 (05) [D/E/German]

Dear Mark Brooks and other Lowlands eager beavers,

I'm sure this has been written up before here, but nennyhow:

When the 11th and 12th Century Norman overlords wanted

 porc

veau

boeuf

venaison

mouton

lambeau

chèvre

they had to translate into the Anglo-Saxon of the farmers who supplied
them:

 porc                swin

boeuf               neat, oxa, cu

veau                cealf

venaison          heorot (M.E. dere)

mouton            sceap

agneau            lamb

chèvre             geiz

poule              cicen

Sorry, I don't have the middle French used by the Normans. I know "venaison"
came into use a century later, but it fits the pattern. They would have said
"cerf". And English speakers never have adopted chevre or poule.

Generally we use the French derived words for the "supermarket meats" and
Old English derived terms for the beasts on the hoof.

Jorge Potter

----------

From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.03 (02) [E]

Dear Ron:

Subject: LL-L - Lexicon

You close this letter with the question, "Does language influence
perception?" I'm sure it does; pointing out with a note of levity, if it did
not there would be no point in diplomacy.  What do they say about a
diplomat? His job is to tell a man to go to Hell in such a way that he looks
forward to the trip.

You moderate your language to influence the perception of your conversant.
On another front, it was George Orwell who persuasively introduced the
concept of 'Newspeak', a language in which it would not be possible to talk
treason. Literacy is exactly like numeracy, if a tad more subtle.. If you do
not have the symbol you cannot pass along the concept. You may not
necessarily (unless you were extremely alert) even notice the lacuna. I am
told the Japanese use the English word 'privacy' because no such concept
used to exist in the culture *or* the language, & until introduced by
Westerners, no such notion existed. Language surely does influence
perception.

'From the ox onto the ass', lexical enrichment surely depends largely on the
kind of blending that occurred. Now when more remotely related languages
with little or no common lexicon blend, one inevitably finds the daughter
language's lexicon borrowed from both parent languages, & usage of each term
weighs differently according to the context of the borrowing. On the other
hand, with the blending of languages that are more closely related, & which
therefore have a high degree of shared words, one finds that the terms
unique to one or other falls away, leaving only those found in both tongues.
The result here,* provided* that were the only mechanism in play, would lead
to lexical impoverishment.

(Pardon, Ron, Company, this is a pet issue of mine). Now as I see it
agglomerative blending occurred between Late Old English & Early
Norman-French. These tongues are not so close, & Modern English betrays
in its borrowings an acquired proclivity that starkly illuminate the
economic status from the kitchen-table to the dinner-table of for (your
example), such words as 'bullock', 'sheep', 'pig' & 'deer' as
against 'beef', 'mutton', 'pork' & 'venison'.

Ablative blending on the other hand happens when more closely related
languages are re-integrated. Afrikaans is one of those languages born of
ablative blending of many related Lowlands languages & dialects. I
discovered for myself, travelling through Europe, that as long as the people
were speaking simply, it was often perilously easy to follow conversation in
the streets between Austria & the Netherlands. However, when those who chose
to do so tuned their style up a notch or so it became considerably harder to
follow. Your example of the 'cushion' & 'pillow' is a good one, & Afrikaans
follows Low Saxon in this regard, illustrating both blending processes in
each distinct language.

Of course with the paucity of ore (undifferentiated terminology) the
ablative dialects must move back from the 'borrowing' to the 'engineering'
of terms, & this is in my opinion the mark of vibrant & creative language in
an expanding culture. We use for example 'bromponie' = (rumble-pony) for
an old-maid of an English word, 'moped', or small motorcycle. This is not to
be confused with the genuine 'powered bicycle', properly called a
'help-my-trap' = (help-me-peddle). What is that delightful Flemish word for
a helicopter, something about a windmill? It seems to me Scots does a whole
lot of this 'engineering'. Ah, what a fine string!

Yrs in great pleasure,

Mark.

----------

From: Mike Morgan <mwmosaka at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2008.10.03 (02) [E]

And it is interesting that, whereas the "mixed languages" (in R/R'S
sense of the term, not in the more standard linguistic terminological
usage where Ma'a / Mbugu and Michif are mixed languages) go for
lexical enrichment with independent, unrelated lexical items, the
"unmixed language" (again in R/R's sense of the word) go for exactly
the same strategy that we find in Pidgins and Creoles:
e.g.,  Tok Pisin: skin = skin
skin diwai = (tree) bark
skin banana = banana peel
skin pilo = pillow case
skin pas = envelope

This seems to be exactly parallel to the two examples from Germanic
that R/R gives:
> necessary in certain contexts. For instance, English has "cushion" and
> "pillow" where Low Saxon usually uses küssen (Küssen) for both (German
> Kissen, related to "cushion") and specifies kopküssen (Koppküssen "head
> cushion") for "pillow" only if necessary.
...
> If you
> absolutely need to specify the idea of "petal" you would have to say
> bloydenblad (Blödenblatt, German Blütenblatt "blossom/bloom leaf").

English of course ALSO has hundreds of examples of this second method
of lexical enrichment as well:
melon <> water melon
cheese <> cottage cheese (which is NOT a cheese in Russian, but a
whole 'nother concept)
mushroom <> enoki mushroom (enoki of course is NOT a subtype of
mushroom in the Japanese conceptual system, but a separate entity ...
albeit one related to mushrooms)
...

regards from Bombay

Mike || マイク || माईक || Мика || માઈક || მაიქ || ਮਾਈਕ || מייק || மாஇக்
|| ما یک || Mihangel ================ Dr Michael W Morgan Managing
Director Ishara Foundation Mumbai (Bombay), India ++++++++++++++++
माईकल मोर्गन (पी.एच.डी.) मेनेजिंग डॉयरेक्टर ईशारा फॉउंडेशन (मुंबई )
++++++++++++++++ 茂流岸マイク(言語学博士) イシャラ基金の専務理事・事務局
長 ムンバイ(ボンベイ)、インド

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Lexicon

Thanks for all the goodies above, "guys"!

Jacqueline, the difference in pluralization is very interesting to me, for
it seems that the semantic range of one word (*blad* 'leaf') was first
extended from "plant leaf" to include "leaf of paper". Obviously this
happened in other languages as well. However, the fact that different plural
forms are now used in Dutch, namely that there are separate morphological
treatments, indicates to me that Dutch has taken one step further by making
the two independent words. In other words, Dutch has made them into
synonyms. This is an interesting process. I wonder if in some Low Saxon
dialects this happened also, for the word *blad* has several possible plural
forms (*bladen*, *blade*, *blaë*, *bloeden*, *bloede*, *bloeë*, *bloed'*, *
bleder*). There's another twist: the extension "plant leaf" > "leaf of
paper" applies to Latin *folium* (*fŏlĭum*) as well! Now, before you all go
and claim that it was under Latin influence that Germanic languages imported
the extended meaning, let's bear in mind that *folium* in the sense of "leaf
of paper" applies only in *Late* Latin (added to earlier *plagula*, *charta*and
*schedula*). I don't know if this means Medieval Latin or an earlier form.
If it is Medieval Latin it would be theoretically possible that the
extension was imported from Germanic to Latin and not the other way around.

Mark, while on a related note, I meant "Does language influence perception?"
with regard to a more fundamental level:

   - If in a given language two items have unrelated names (e.g. "cushion"
   vs "pillow"), do speakers think of these items as unrelated?
   - If in a given language two items have related names (e.g. *Kissen* vs *
   (Kopf-)Kissen*), do speakers think of these items as related or even as
   the same item with slight variation?

Of course, you might argue that this is a "chicken or egg" question, since
related naming usually presumes perceived relatedness to begin with. But I
am talking about us, those that carry on the linguistic heritage, come into
contact with each other and learn each other's languages, thereby are
confronted with apparent differences in perception.

When in my earlier years I occasionally mixed up English "pillow" and
"cushion", native speakers thought it was absurd to even think of doing
that. It was similar with "pie", something with which I did not grow up and
filed away as a subcategory of "cake" (i.e., a "filled cake" being made with
batter and baked), which native speakers found absurd and funny, because to
them they shouldn't even be linked.

These days I've been watching the development of an imported vegetable that
has been gaining popularity in the "West", mostly because of its reputed
medicinal properties:

Chinese: 苦瓜 (Mandarin kǔguā)
Japanese: ツルレイシ, 蔓茘枝 (tsurureishi), 苦瓜 (nigauri)
Okinawan: ゴーヤ (gōya)
Korean: 여주 (yôju)<http://pam.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Japanese&action=edit&redlink=1>
Vietnamese: mướp đắng, khổ qua
Thai: มะระจีน (marajin), มะระ (mara)
Indonesian: peria
Malay: pokok peria katak, ampong
Tagalog: apalaya
Telugu: కాకర (kākara)
Bengali: করলা (kôrolla)
Gujarati: કારેલું (kāreluṃ)
Hindi: करेला (karelā)
Urdu: کریلا (karelā)
Farsi: کمبوزه (komboze)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_melon

Although the exact origin of this tropical vegetable is unknown, here in
North America it is perceived as Asian, predominantly Chinese, secondarily
East and West Indian. I assume that it was Chinese traders that translated
its name into English inappropriately as "bitter melon". The Chinese
word 瓜stands for the family of
*Cucurbitaceae*, including cucumbers, gourds, melons, pumpkins, luffas and
watermelons. Chinese people using English tend to use "melon" to refer to
all of them, which is quite inaccurate. If this particular vegetable has to
be named with one name of the family it would have to be "gourd" or
"cucumber", certainly because of its shape, flesh and seeds. Some people *
are* trying to remedy this by insisting on calling it "bitter gourd". But it
seems to be a losing battle. Granted, this vegetable is an acquired taste,
being quite bitter. (You need to know how to prepare it.) What I have
observed is that people that try it for the first time tend to be horrified
if they are not "mentally prepped" but expect a certain taste because of the
name "melon". They like to tell horror stories about it and thus deter
others from trying it. I bet that the vegetable would be more successful in
the Western market if it were called "bitter gourd" or "bitter cucumber",
for this would influence associations and expectations.

What's in a name, huh?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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