h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bingo! It's his background you don't understand, not his language. But once you'd stalked a few antelope across the veldt you'd be able to chat away fine.

Seems that Wittgenstain and Chomsky are working in entirely different territories?

Getting there. What Wittgenstein is saying (as I understand it) is that background is essential to understanding, to all use of language. Language cannot be divorced from the life that gave rise to it.

In that case...

I'll admit that I have not studied Wittgenstein in anything approaching detail...but it always seemed to me that he was saying - at length and somewhat opaquely - something that is blindingly obvious with even the most cursory knowledge of psycholinguistics. I'm not even sure if he can claim to have said it first.

Well if that's the measure of how his ideas have become commonplace, perhaps that's some success. They were not such blinding glimpses of the obvious when he wrote them down . . . there wasn't such a thing as psycholinguistics when he died in 1951.

A rare interesting detail in an otherwise mindnumbingly boring morphology book:

In West Greenlandic there is a single word-form meaning "You simply cannot pretend not to be hearing all the time":

tusaa + nngit + su + usaar + tuaannar + sinnaa + nngi + vip + putit

tusaa + nngit + su + usaar + tuaannar + sinnaa + nngi + vip + putit

= hear + negative + intransitive-participle + pretend + all-the-time + can + negative + really + second-person-singular-indicative

<> - which is obviously your problem with them.

Edward, Lewis may have been odiously sexist, and jingoistic, but he was both before he ever went near Christianity.

I think your rationalist prejudice is blinding you to these facts... and do you mind, please, being a bit considerate and stop prefacing half your posts with the name of the Lord as a swearword, in a cod Irish accent? It's not clever, just silly.

In West Greenlandic there is a single word-form meaning "You simply cannot pretend not to be hearing all the time":

That is so

>> ..ethics, for instance, makes no sense in language, its truths cannot be said, but only shown. <<

Or, actions speak louder than words.
And since we can observe that most actions are not thoughtless we can conclude that thought is independent of language. It is not for nought that some actions are called unspeakable.


~jwf~

>> ..a single word-form meaning "You simply cannot pretend not to be hearing all the time":
tusaa + nngit + su + usaar + tuaannar + sinnaa + nngi + vip + putit <<


I wonder if that would be the (in)famous 'quiet-word-in-your-ear' we hear so much about. Even the walls have ears.

~jwf~

I'm happy to be silly. And no cod Irishism was intended. 'Jaysus' is what I always say - and not in an Irish accent. I may well go on saying it from time to time.

If anyone believes it is overly offensive, there is a small icon to the right that can be clicked. This will cause my post to be refered to the Moderators who will then take a view as to whether use of the term contravenes site policy. I will happily accede to their wishes.

To quote a Dublin child:

"It's 'Jesus' for prayin' and 'Jaysus' for cursin'."

It would be an excessive loss to have one of your lapidary posts deleted for such a trifle, should the editors agree to the yikes.

However I doubt they would. One can say much worse in print, even in polite society.

"It's 'Jesus' for prayin' and 'Jaysus' for cursin'."

That brings up a fascinating philosophical/linguistic topic: why is the best also the worst?

I think it's the transgression of a taboo that's at work here - taking the word out of its priestly context. English isn't as rich in blasphemy as other languages (Well, with the exception of Irish English: 'Holy Mary Mother of God!'). Quebec French uses various combinations, variants and transformations of Chalice, Host and Tabernacle. The Anglo-Saxon taboos are pee-pees, ca-ca and reproductive matters.

I'm given to understand that when Finns stub their toes, they say 'In the restaurant!!!'. Why would this be? Onomatapoeia? A substitution for something more taboo? (like 'sugar!' and 'fish!'

The French do the latter too. foutre->fîcher.

'Lapidary.' That's something to do with butterflies, isn't it?

Speaking of Irish English, taboos and other matters, a friend of mine saw an "Irish" t-shirt with the letters F C E K on it.

Lapiday is polished gems, I think. The process of polishing gems makes an irritating scratching sound.

I wish I could remember which French writer it was who yearned for the invention of a 'pointe d'ironie' - so that the prose of such as Voltaire could be annotated to show when a deadpan joke was intended.

Monsieur Smiley perhaps?

Lapidary does indeed mean in this usage "worthy of being carved in stone". I know that because a music critic once mentioned my lapidary programme notes, and I had to find out whether this was a boot or a bouquet.

There is more to be dug out of this than the transgression of taboos, I feel. Anyway my brother who worked in an Italian restaurant kitchen tells me that the Italians have blasphemies that the Irish would never dream of. He would only tell me the milder ones such as (look away Adelaide) Porco Dio.

That is beside the point; the point is, why is the mere mention of the best imaginable (God etc) or the most pleasant (f**k etc) automatically the worst thing you can utter?