Oh but she couldn't "let it go" could she?
Say I *invented* a word (which would indicate the ontology of language
as it is usually thought of-- that is, this word would be the root of
all subsequent words used to refer to what I was referring to with this
"original" word). Say this word was then taken up by the populice.
Even assuming that I had no reason for inventing the word (that it
didn't look like something or sound like something)... the people who
chose to use the word fit it into their vocabulary by associating it
with other words they already used or somehow gave the word a personal
*meaning*.
But what if *this* "meaning" (as we must further assume) is similly
based on words which regress back to an original that was "invented";
then, we cannot assume "meaning" (since if we assume that all words were
traced back to an invented word we must assume that there is no applied
meaning to them as each word is no more meaningful than the original
word that was "invented" without attention to meaning)?
So we assume tht words are not just "invented". All words are traced
back to letters. All MEANING is traced back to a time prior to letters,
I will assume... to a time when relationships between things were noted.
These relationships were represented by letters (pictorigraphically)...
these letters formed the first words... these words were the basis of
future words.
The *meaning* of a word, then, is more closely tied into the letter than
the word entire. At the very least, we might say that both the word and
(I theorize) the LETTERS have been retained as working together to
relate the meaning of a thing.
When looking at words which sound alike one notes that they often refer
to a similar relationship which one might observe between objects of a
particular type and which function in a particular way together (thus,
the sound of words have a "meaning" as to the function-- and thereby the
form-- of an object or objects).
I assume the attitude which refuses to accept the form/function
relationship of words is the same attitude which assumes that words are
just "made up" things that could refer to anything these people choose.
Brett Lane Robertson
Indiana, USA
www.window.to/mindrec
news:alt.pub.coffeehouse.amethyst
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Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 17:10:46 -0800 (PST)
From: Eva-Lise Carlstrom <eva-lise@efn.org>
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: Re: virus: Language
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On Wed, 1 Apr 1998, Brett Robertson wrote:
> The word "fuck" also sounds similar to fork, frolick, fickle, fake,
> flake, and fink, etc. All these COULD have in common that which is
> forked (as in a choice, or conjunction). The term as it might appear if
> examining the ontology of the letters themselves (as if the letters
> represented various relationships, like a forked tree or a broken branch
> might represent the f and the k, or whatever) and these relationships
> survied as the words spelled similarly, would indicate that "fuck"
> represents a certain combination of relationships-- and none of this
> describes how the term might come to be vulgar.
>
> What is more likely is that the term described a common relationship
> between objects of particular configurations and was used widely by
> common people... thus the term came to be "vulgar" (meaning common or
> mean... average)
While letting Brett's idiosyncratic free-associations on phonology go by,
I will make a comment on the last paragraph. This is actually a fairly
common pattern in the history of English: the common people referred to
something by an Anglo-Saxon term, and the upper classes referred to it by
a Latin-derived French term, and both ended up in the huge vocabulary of
Modern English, with different connotations or applications. For
instance, the words for common livestock (pig, cow, chicken, etc.) are
Anglo-Saxon, reflecting the language of the commoners who cared for them,
while the words for the meat of various aniamls including livestock and
game are from French (beef, venison, pork, derived from the French terms
that apply to both the animal and the meat), reflecting the language of
the nobility on whose tables they ended up. Similarly, our common swear
words (fuck, shit, cunt, etc.) are Anglo-Saxon in origin and were the
terms in ordinary usage among the peasantry, while the more polite terms
are from the Latin for the same things.
--Eva
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