Carol and Edmund,

For what it's worth, let me add a few short remarks to what you have said.  The difference between what the words of language refer to and what the concepts and ideas of our culture(s) has been a grand conundrum for many years.  There is still a great deal of misunderstanding about it.  In 1892 Gottlob Frege published an essay in which he attempted to draw a line between the intensionality of the language (what the words refer to as concepts) and the extensionality of the real world.  Scientists even today want to build their models of the real world, but are forever deceived by the metaphors and actual designations of the words of language.  It was apparently after a great deal of stludy in aboriginal languages in America that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis came about. I believe this was an additional attempt to maintain the difference between what language tells us and what the instruments of science tell us.  Language sets up our disposition toward how we perceive the world.  I think that study and experience will eventually lead one to conclude that this deception must go beyond what might be obvious in metaphor and other even more subtle figures of speech.  - - ... etc., etc.

Bruce

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Carol Morrison 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2008 1:01 PM
  Subject: Re: Form and function


  Dr. Wright,
  Your discussion of words is fascinating. I do have a question about the following quote:
   "A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exist in nature."
  I have a bird sitting next to me right now, a macaw to be exact, that does exist in nature and will always be a noun, a thing, a bird. In that sense, don't true nouns really exist?
  Is this related at all to the discussion of which existed first, the object or the word to describe it? For instance, a "dog" did not exist in reality until the word "dog" invented by man denoted that the creature was in fact a dog. Or did the dog exist in reality if it has never been seen, observed, or acknowledged by man?
  Words like "parrot" can function differently, as in I can "parrot" someone, but I think macaw is really just a noun, no?
  Thanks!
  Carol

  PS. I am also wondering if there are other words that are truly just nouns.

  Edmond Wright <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
    Herb is surely right about degrees of constraint for the more one deviates,
    the more one is demanding of our fellow-speakers. I think teachers must
    still try to avoid giving the impression that he apportionment of function
    is a given of any kind outside curent usage. For the definitions of Noun,
    Verb, and we can include Adjective it is important not to fall into the
    prejudices about the real that language itself induces. Useful here to turn
    to what Jean Aitchison says in her interesting book The Seeds of Speech:
    Language Origin and Evolution (Aitchison, 1996: 133):


    'Nouns are at one end of a continuum, with words that retain their identity
    through time, such as dog, mountain, sky. Verbs are at the other end, with
    words that involve rapid change, such as jump, hit, swim. In the middle
    come properties, some semi-permanent, as in a large elephant, a round pond,
    a green frog, and some temporary, as in an angry bull, a happy baby, a hot
    day.' (ibid., 132)


    She then shows how languages differ in this regard, pointing out that there
    is an indefinite borderline between nouns and adjectives on the one hand,
    and verbs and adjectives on the other. She thus goes on to illustrate the
    point from English:

    'Some adjectives seem more like nouns, as in a gold watch, a tin tray,
    others more like verbs, as in a lasting peace, a whistling kettle.' (ibid.)

    What is important is to ask to what kind of a Ocontinuum¹ she is referring.
    It appears that she just means that there is a gradation of meaning in the
    words themselves so that we could set them out in some kind of ascending
    order from stability to changeableness. But what cannot be left out here is
    the actual continuum, the changeable real, Omatter¹, the Ohyle¹ of the
    Greeks, Heraclitus¹s flow of becoming < whatever you like to call it < upon
    which people are hopefully endeavouring, if they are not lying, to get a
    mutual fix with their statements to each other. As the word Oupdating¹ makes
    clear, this is a serious engagement with the contingencies of time. What we
    apply these functional devices we call Oparts of speech¹ to is a matter of
    human choice. The word Omatter¹ itself gives away the fact that we are
    trying to divide up the continuum of the real together so that our purposes
    will keep in harmony both with the real and with each other across persons.
    So what we apply them to must reflect our immediate and long-term
    preferences, those that our bodies and the society our bodies try to
    maintain out of the real in the hope of success, and not necessarily
    anything given in its separateness in the real. Consider these words of
    Ernest Fenellosa as he is reflecting on Chinese poetry (The Chinese Written
    Character as a Medium for Poetry, London: Stanley Nott, 1936: 511):


    A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exist in nature. Things are only
    the terminal points, or rather the meeting points of actions, cross-sections
    cut through actions, snapshots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract motion,
    be possible in nature. The eye sees noun and verb as one: things in
    motion, motion in things, and so the Chinese conception tends to represent
    them.'


    Edmond


    Dr. Edmond Wright
    3 Boathouse Court
    Trafalgar Road
    Cambridge
    CB4 1DU
    England

    Email: [log in to unmask]
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