Noun Classifiers and the Wari

From Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate:

In a previous book I mentioned that the language of the Wari people of the Amazon has a set of noun classifiers that distinguish edible from inedible objects, and that the edible class includes anyone who is not a member of the tribe.

Quine on Language

From the first chapter in Quine's Word and Object:

Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfil the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.

Searle on Derrida's Intellectual Influence

Searle on why the mind-boggling Derrida became so fashionable in literary theory departments throughout the world (found in a review of Culler's book on deconstruction, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism from the New York Review of Books, vol. 30, no. 16, 27th October 1983):

It is apparently very congenial for some people who are professionally concerned with fictional texts to be told that all texts are really fictional anyway, and that claims that fiction differs significantly from science and philosophy can be deconstructed as a logocentric prejudice, and it seems positively exhilarating to be told that what we call "reality" is just more textuality. Furthermore, the lives of such people are made much easier than they had previously supposed, because now they don't have to worry about an author's intentions, about precisely what a text means, or about distinctions within a text between the metaphorical and the literal, or about the distinction between texts and the world because everything is just a free play of signifiers. The upper limit, and I believe the reductio ad absurdum, of this "sense of mastery" conveyed by deconstruction is in Geoffrey Hartman's claim that the prime creative task has now passed from the literary artist to the critic.

Remedial French

I can read French reasonably well thanks to my already having grappled with Spanish and Portuguese, but I still have trouble with remembering the following little features:

QUI (subject) = who, which, that (of persons or things)
QUE (object) = whom, which, that (of persons or things)
DONT = of whom, of which (of persons or things)
LEQUEL = who, which, that (of two) (of persons or things)
DUQUEL = of whom, which, that (of two) (of persons or things)
AUQUEL = to whom, which, that (of two) (of persons or things)
DE QUI = whose, of whom (persons only)
À QUI = to whom, whose
QUOI = what (things only)
DE QUOI = of what (things only)
À QUOI = to what (things only)
QUEL, QUELS, QUELLE, QUELLES = which (persons or things)
LEQUEL, LESQUELS, LAQUELLE, LESQUELLES = sexed version of that or whom as in "La soeur de Jean, laquelle est riche".

---

CELUI = this (masc)
CELLE = this (fem)
CEUX = this (masc pl)
CELLES = this (fem pl)
CE = this
CECI = this here
CELA = that there
ÇA = that

---

NE verb PERSONNE = nobody (Je ne parle avec personne = I do not speak with anyone)
NE verb RIEN = nothing (Je ne pense rien = I do not think anything (nothing))
NE verb PAS ENCORE = not yet (Je ne joue pas encore = I do not play yet)
NE verb QUE = only (Je ne pense qu'à ma mère = I think only of my mother)

---

EN = of something or some person and is masculine, feminine, singular and plural = equivalent of DE plus a noun

J'en ai = I have of it, of them
En avez vous? = Have you some of it? Have you (of) them?
Combien en avez-vous? = How much of it (or them) do you have?
J'en ai une douzaine = I have a dozen (of them)
J m'en souviens = I remember it (EN used for verbs that require "DE" after them)

Y = there and used as preposition of place and object of verbs that require à = the chief difference between Y and EN is that Y is seldom used for persons.

j'y avais = I am going (there)
j'y ai ètè = I have been (there)

nous leur y en avons parlé = we spoke of them of it there

Duplicity, Language Profusion and the Personal

From George Steiner's After Babel:

'A comparison between different languages shows that the point about words is never their truth or adequacy for otherwise there would not be so many languages.' Or to put it simply: there is a direct, crucial correlation between the 'un-truthful' and fictive genius of human speech on the one hand and the great multiplicity of languages on the other.

and:

Most probably there is a common molecular biology and neuro-physiology to all human utterance. It seems very likely that all languages are subject to constraints and similarities determined by the design of the brain, by the vocal equipment of the species and, it might be, by certain highly generalised, wholly abstract efficacies of logic, of optimal form, and relation. But the ripened humanity of language, its indispensable conservative and creative force lie in the extraordinary diversity of actual tongues, in the bewildering profusion and eccentricity (though there is no centre) of their modes. The psychic need for particularity, for 'in-clusion' and invention is so intense that it has, during the whole of man's history until very lately, outweighed the spectacular, obvious material advantage of mutual comprehension and linguistic unity. In that sense, the Babel myth is once again a case of symbolic inversion: mankind was not destroyed but on the contrary kept vital and creative by being scattered among tongues. But in this sense also there is en every act of translation -- and specially where it succeeds -- a touch of treason. Hoarded dreams, patents of life are being taken across the frontier.

and:

Man has 'spoken himself free' of total organic constraint. Language is a constant creation of alternative worlds. There are no limits to the shaping powers of words, proclaims the poet. 'Look,' said Khlebnikov, that virtuoso of extreme statement in his 'Decrees to the Planet', 'the sub obeys my syntax.' Uncertainty of meaning is incipient poetry. In every fixed definition there is obsolescence or failed insight. The teeming plurality of languages enacts fundamentally creative, 'counter-factual' genius and psychic functions of language itself. It embodies a move away from unison and acceptance -- the Gregorian homophonic -- to the polyphonic, ultimately divergent fascination of manifold specificity. Each different tongue offers its own denial of determinism. 'The world, it says, 'can be other.' Ambiguity, polysemy, opaqueness, the violation of grammatical and logical sequences, reciprocal incomprehensions, the capacity to lie -- there are not pathologies of languages but the roots of its genius. Without them the individual and the species would have withered.

Divinations

I thank George Steiner for introducing me to the word moromancy in his book, After Babel, which means "a foolish divination".

Even More Palindromic Language Names

Rushdie's and my own ignorance become even more abominable with the discovery of the following palindromic language names that add to the other two already noted:

- Aja spoken in Sudan;
- Aka spoken in Sudan;
- Ama spoken in Papua New Guinea;
- Ama spoken in Sudan;
- Caac spoken in New Caledonia;
- Efe spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo;
- Erre spoken in Australia;
- Ese spoken in Papua New Guinea;
- Iaai spoken in New Caledonia;
- Kerek spoken in Russia;
- Kuk spoken in Cameroon;
- Laal spoken in Chad;
- Logol spoken in Sudan;
- Manam spoken in Papua New Guinea;
- Monom spoken in Vietnam;
- Nauruan spoken in Nauru;
- Noon spoken in Senegal;
- Ñuñ spoken in Senegal;
- Olo spoken in Papua New Guinea;
- Omo spoken in Papua New Guinea;
- Opo spoken in Ethiopia;
- Ososo spoken in Nigeria;
- Tennet spoken in Sudan; and
- Yaqay spoken in Indonesia (on the island of Papua).

The list above is a subset of those reported in the comments thread for this post on Language Hat, which has Ethnologue.com as a source.

The preponderance of palindromic language names on the single island of Papua, with a total of six in the list above and who knows how many more actually being spoken there, is most galling for the likes of fools such as me who think Malayalam is the centre of the palindromic universe.

Never again will I believe anything I read in a book unless it's been verified by the internet.

Rushdie Needs To Know About Kanak

The very first entry on this blog, written up and posted only two days ago, has been peddling lies!

Malayalam is NOT the only name of a language that happens to be a palindrome, and Language Hat (via Far Outliers) have shown up Rushdie's and my own shortcomings, for Kanak is also a palindromic language name.

Thus the list of languages whose names are palindromes that I know of comes to two: the Dravidian language of Malayalam found in Southern India (whose palindromic status was incorrectly heralded as unique in Rushdie's Midnight Children); and the Melanesian language of Kanak spoken in New Caledonia (whose palindromic status I noticed in a blog entry on Language Hat that had nothing to do with reading anything in reverse.)

Although I am decidedly disappointed at having spread inaccuracy on the internet, I am nevertheless decidedly delighted to say that an internet source is taking precendence over another of the hard-copy and bounded variety.

Malayalam, Blogolb and Rushdie

I've finally gotten around to reading the Booker of Bookers, Rushdie's Midnight Children, and along with his most enjoyable madhouse prose come interesting titbits (I'm still thrilled about discovering titbit is an acceptable variation of tidbit) relating to the subcontinent.

And I'd like to think it was because Rushdie knew I was going to read his book that he mentions, for no reason that seems related to the story as such, that India is host to the only language in the world whose name is a palindrome: Malayalam.

Wikipedia then furnished me with the further revelation that Malayalam also happens to be the longest single-word palindrome in the English language. Thus when it came to registering this very blog after having decided I've got too much time on my hands to let them just wander down somewhere between my legs, I fell under the spell of Jung's notion of synchronicity and proceeded to determine that these two events, the new blog and the linguistic fervour arising from titbits and palindromes, were definitely related.

But anything mentioning tits I did not think to be the finest thing for this website to have in a prominent place, so blogolb became the obvious, and some cantankerous bastards would say, rather unexciting choice for a title and domain name.

Unfortunately, this Michael and his dated "Thoughts" from 2003 have already taken http://blogolb.blogspot.com/, what looks to me like a Chinese site has already taken http://www.blogolb.com/, and my money-pinching ways have precluded me from buying http://www.blogolb.com.au.

So now I'm left with Thus Sprach... at the address that appears in your browser.

Enjoy.

Update: This blog has been up for only three days, but already I've had to post a correction related to this, my very first post.