If you have any respect for me, don't read this thread.

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The discussion begins with a celebration of the Bucs winning the NFC South and transitions into a conversation about language and its evolution. A user shares interesting linguistic facts, such as the historical use of the -en suffix for plurals and the origins of words like "hussy" and "husband." The conversation shifts to personal anecdotes about travel experiences on airplanes, highlighting the types of people one might encounter during flights.Participants express their thoughts on the nature of fun and relationships, with some humorously discussing the challenges of dating and social interactions. The dialogue also touches on the complexities of language change and the connections between language, culture, and human interaction, referencing historical linguistics and notable figures like Otto Jespersen and Ferdinand de Saussure. The thread concludes with a light-hearted exchange about personal interests in linguistics and semiotics, showcasing a blend of humor and intellectual curiosity.
  • #51
honestrosewater said:
Dream on, babe. :-p You only got your hopes up because our phone lines were down the last two days.
Nice problem! Phone: the most annoying invention of human!:rolleyes:


Hm, is 23 young? Perhaps you're young until you stop having fun. :lightbulb: I guess figuring out what I want is turning out to be more difficult than I expected and I was just looking to vent a little and get some input from other people. Anywho, I don't want the kind of fun I was thinking of anyway. I want the good kind of fun.

The best kind of fun: sleeping and having sweet dreams!:-p (Ok it's what I need now but I have to wait a bit more.:zzz: So I admit that it's the best thing only when you're sleepy not all the time!)
 
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  • #52
honestrosewater said:
I thought I was your hire goon.
Oh, no, I'm a hired goon, that's right... Loser.[/color]

I like using edits to make people look nonsensical.

So where's my Twix?
 
  • #53
SpaceTiger said:
I like using edits to make people look nonsensical.
You like doing what with cherry jello, a top hat, and two penguins?
So where's my Twix?
Here, take it. I'm too sexy for your Twix. Here, I'm too sexy for my shirt too.

GO BUCS!11 Woo!
 
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  • #54
honestrosewater said:
Cool, huh? :cool:
Very cool; this proved to me that http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/saussure.html was the father of semiotics for a reason. It also tells me that an English major isn't necessarily the useless topic as it's made out to be.
 
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  • #55
EnumaElish said:
Very cool; this proved to me that http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/saussure.html was the father of semiotics for a reason. It also tells me that an English major isn't necessarily the useless topic as it's made out to be.
Why an English major? Do they study semiotics? Perhaps in connection with literature and pop culture?

If it interests you, the laryngeal hypothesis was part of his work in linguistics using the comparative method. I think the basic idea is that language (sound, in particular) changes in regular ways over time, so if you suspect that a group of languages have a common ancestor, you use the rules of language change to try to reconstruct this ancestor. If you can't reconstruct an ancestor, the languages aren't related (or your rules are wrong).

What interests me most is not language families or change per se so much as what gives rise to the rules of language change and other things related to the history of language. I read a short article about race by Dawkins the other week that got me thinking about the connections between language and mating. I wonder how often people who don't share a language end up having children (who usually inherit their parents' language(s)). It's the strongest nongeographic barrier I can think of.

If you like Saussure, you might want to check out Wilhelm von Humboldt's work on language. He was another who had some of the first 'modern' ideas in linguistics.
 
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  • #56
honestrosewater said:
Why an English major? Do they study semiotics?
Hmmm, I thought they might. If they don't, then I have to agree that it is useless as a major. :biggrin:
What interests me most is not language families or change per se so much as what gives rise to the rules of language change and other things related to the history of language. I read a short article about race by Dawkins the other week that got me thinking about the connections between language and mating. I wonder how often people who don't share a language end up having children (who usually inherit their parents' language(s)). It's the strongest nongeographic barrier I can think of.
I see your point. Isn't that true for almost all human interaction? For example, business transactions? In The Name of the Rose, Eco has some of his characters speak in a mixed European language. ("Half English, half French, and half Latin" may be how Yogi Berra would have put it.) Do you find this realistic? Do you think it is mostly due to cross-lingual marriages among the European peoples during the middle ages?
If you like Saussure, you might want to check out Wilhelm von Humboldt's work on language. He was another who had some of the first 'modern' ideas in linguistics.
I will check out WvH.

So, are you a linguist, or a logicist?
 
  • #57
EnumaElish said:
I see your point. Isn't that true for almost all human interaction? For example, business transactions?
Isn't what true? That most direct interaction is between people who share a language?
In The Name of the Rose, Eco has some of his characters speak in a mixed European language. ("Half English, half French, and half Latin" may be how Yogi Berra would have put it.) Do you find this realistic?
In an Italian monastery in the early 14th century? Well, Italian monks speaking Latin wouldn't surprise me. :-p But I just don't know enough to say. Middle English, which was influenced heavily by Anglo-Norman, an Old French dialect, was spoken in England at that time, and by some counts, Modern English's lexicon might also be described as half (Old) English, half French, and half Latin. Maybe Middle or Modern English was the inspiration.
Do you think it is mostly due to cross-lingual marriages among the European peoples during the middle ages?
No idea.
So, are you a linguist, or a logicist?
I'm interested in and have studied a little of both. They overlap a lot. If I ever go to school, I'll study linguistics; I'm especially interested in mathematical and computational linguistics, language acqusition, the syntax-semantics interface, and um, how writers make artistic choices or what makes an utterance beautiful (pleasing to the senses and the mind) -- I guess you could call it a kind of scientific study of poetry, so the relevant parts of phonetics, physiology, music theory, and who knows what else. I want to write a program that can write the next Hamlet ...or die trying. Er, I would die trying, not the program. I'd like to figure out a better way to state that sentence too... :redface:
 
  • #58
Isn't what true?
When you posted "It's the strongest nongeographic barrier I can think of," I thought you were making a reference to how languages leap over geographic barriers through intermarriage, so I surmised that this must be true of other types of human interaction, like commerce. But I may be mistaken in my interpretation.
If I ever go to school, I'll study linguistics
What, you didn't go to school and yet you are so knowledgeable in linguistics and logic?! That's an admirable feat.
 
  • #59
EnumaElish said:
When you posted "It's the strongest nongeographic barrier I can think of," I thought you were making a reference to how languages leap over geographic barriers through intermarriage, so I surmised that this must be true of other types of human interaction, like commerce. But I may be mistaken in my interpretation.
Oh. I meant that language can segment and isolate populations, as can geographic barriers like mountain ranges and bodies of water. I was just thinking about how well a person's family tree might match their native language's family tree. The places that leap first to mind where I might expect the human and language trees to differ are where they include humans who weren't treated as or allowed to act as humans, for example, being taken from their homes and traded as slaves. It's not really something I'm pursuing; just some recreational ruminating. :biggrin:
What, you didn't go to school and yet you are so knowledgeable in linguistics and logic?! That's an admirable feat.
Thanks, that's nice of you. :smile: I still have plenty to learn.

So are you interested in semiotics?

Oh, by the way, I read this today in the book that started this thread, Otto Jespersen's The Philosphy of Grammar:
... Now all this can be shown to have a curious connection with the extension of a great many verbs by means of -en which took place from about 1400 and gave rise not only to the forms happen, listen, frighten, but also to verbs like broaden, blacken, moisten, which now are apprehended as formed from adjectives, while originally they were simply phonetic expansions of existing verbs that had the same form as the adjectives.
 
  • #60
honestrosewater said:
So are you interested in semiotics?
I took some electives in college that covered the structuralist approach and, by implication, semiotics. I think I took an anthropology class and one of the main characters was Claude Lévi-Strauss who was a structuralist and developed structural anthropology. As far as I can remember, he analyzed human culture (or human interaction) essentially the way semiotics analyzed a language. All of which tells me that you're not far off to relate languages and cultures.

Oh, by the way, I read this today in the book that started this thread, Otto Jespersen's The Philosphy of Grammar:
Thanks for mentioning it here.
 
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