cross-linguistic metaphors (fwd)

[Jill Greer]

Thanks, Brian - I'm fine, and you are well versed in diverse fields, as
always! We could go even further than the cog-sci folks, and posit that
there is a universal human fear of the dark from when dangers and demons
went bump in the night, and a universal gravitation toward (sun)light,
for life itself, excluding those nocturnal critters, of course :) ! 


>>> Bryan James Gordon 02/23/11 12:35 AM >>>
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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