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Post by joustos on Oct 1, 2020 22:24:45 GMT
Page 1
On different days, weather and health permitting, I am going to write a tract (small treatise) about the field of study or investigation called "Logology" (= the study of Discourse or Speeches). What I call Philology used to be called, on occasions, Philology, and it was believed that the divine Hermes was the father of Philology or the first philologist (and the father of instrumental music, succeeded in music by the divine Apollo). {Notice how I have been packing information and realize that you are doing philology. This speaking/writing style of mine is not poetic and is not pleasant.} I have never taken courses in linguistics or etymology. So, I will not regurgitate things I learned formally. However, for years I have been doing etymology of words of many languages such as my native language, Anglo-Saxon (Old English), Basque, Eblaite (Canaanitic Syriac), and obscure Etruscan (which I translated -- made clear -- by doing the etymology of many of its words). What is an etymology and how is it done? This is one thing I will discuss and exemplify, so that some readers can become apprendices of the art of etymology and practise it for their native language, if so they wish.
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Post by joustos on Oct 9, 2020 23:17:09 GMT
Page 16 A Digression from what was discussed on Page 15:
{{I spoke of styles of thinking or of written discourse, since thinking, talking, and writing are things that flow, like rivers, and, like the surface of a river, those flowings can be either smooth (rectilinear) or convoluted (corrugated), as when the river water hits a large rock in the river, or, better yet, when the sea is agitated and forms rolling waves. The point is that all of these movements have a texture, a tessitura, a weaving pattern, which also music has and has been talked about for a long time in Music Theory. Incidentally, one curriculum of studies in Medieval European schools consisted of Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music, which are branches of Pythagora's philosophy. However, the "music" that was taught and learned was not the music we play and hear, but MusicTheory (the discourse on the nature of natureLogic, not of Aciustics of music -- its sonority, its composition/texture or way whose tones are woven together, etc.. Today we call "musicologist" a person who examines the sounded or written music that was crated by a particular person. I am not a professional musicologist, but, years ago, I was able to investigate the texture of music which was being heard from a Compact Disc, and I did some "etymology" of music in the sense that I understood how "tonality" is constituted in compositions and that it is correlated to Italian Renaissance poetry, which means that I had known/understood the "tonality" of that poetry. It make sense to say now that those tonalities are cognate. So, my own music theory/discourse is empirical rather than speculative or, for that matter, experimental, as in the case of Pythagoras.
By the way, the Medieval theologian-philosopher St. Bonaventure at one point said that he was not writing something new; rather, he was weaving together what others had said or thought). So, he was obviously referring to the texture if his thinking -- rather than the texture of his spoken or written composition. As he wove older thoughts together, he could examine whether his com-position or "syllogism (syn-logos" is coherent (analogously to "con-sonant") or contradictory. Coherence, validity, etc., are matters of Logic, not of Acoustics. His theory (discourse, view) of Thinking is psychological, as it speaks of the soul or mind. He who examines the esthetic value of music, poetry, etc., of the legality of speaking out, warning, proclaiming, etc., of the morality of what is being said, or of the accuracy of what is thought or pronounced is a value-thinker, an axiologist. (Phychologists, axiologists, et al., are philosophers(seekers of true knowledge).}}
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Post by joustos on Oct 10, 2020 20:04:38 GMT
Page 16 Continuation of the discussion about kind of etymologies on Page 13: but a brief digression to begin with : {{I just noticed in my present writing that I made a mistake, not a typographical mistake, but a violation of the conventional English rule that one should not begin a sentence with words like But, And, With, etc., because these words are conjunctives (connectors) between two words, as in "Jack and Jill went up the hill". I also noticed that in Page 13, I used words inconsistently: I placed the word "Wine" where I should have put the word "Oil", wherefore a reader finds my discourse meaningless. However, I was stating a comparison, and if the reader pays attention to the context or framework of the speech, he realizes that the word "Wine" is a foreign intruder. And now I notice, too, that the word "And" has two different uses or functions: It groups together two individual realities, so that my above sentence could be rephrased thus, " Jack together with Jill went up the hill." On the other hand, I stated 'Jack and Jill went up the hill" and, later on, I stated "Jack together with Jill went up to the hill"; that is, I added one statement to another." In this case, I did this and I did that; the "And" is additive, not conjunctive. What is the function of "And" in "Two and three make five"? '"Two combined with three make five". Hence, conjunctive! (Properly speaking, "The latest 'And' is conjunctive".}} One final analysis of an etymology in the "Online Etymological Dictionary" before making a substantive continuation:
By chance I came across the entry "Focaccia". This is an Italian word that is used by some English-speakers, so, it can be treated as an English word. It is an imported word which has not undergone any mutation or mutilation of the written form. [One is said to speak broken Italian, if he mutilates/corrupts Italian words that are uttered by Italians. As I said before, in the transition, words do not mutate by some law of nature, or by speakers who have the same biological speaking apparatus, but possibly because of some hearing defect, or because of some speaking habit. For instance, many English-speaking people prefer to use short words, wherefore they abbreviate native and foreign long words they hear. So, for example, when Italian said or wrote "pianoforte", they said or wrote "Piano". (This English word has even entered the Italian language.) "Violincello" became "Cello" universally; though retaining the Italian C sound (as in "CHase"). "Photograph" became "Photo/Foto", an so forth].
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Post by joustos on Oct 11, 2020 16:34:33 GMT
Page 17 Direct continuation of my story on Page 16: Now, I have been talking about the ethnicity of the word "Focaccia", but, to tell the truth, that Dictionary author stated the ethnicity of the word (the entry) in question, by writing in this fashion: "focaccia (It. focaccia)…". {My own typical way of scribing/graphing/writing the same locution is: || "Focaccia" (It. Focaccia)…) ||} {I have just invented vertical parentheses/brackets, which look like two walls of a room. I furnished the room (the empty space) with words.} Then he said that a focaccia is a bread baked on a fire [rather than in an oven]. Actually a focaccia is not a roasted dough. As we cook it nowadays, and as an ancient Roman gastronomist said, it is cooked on a stone slab which is heated by a fire underneath. So, in effect, a focaccia is heated dough or a fire-dough.{I am in the process of doing the etymology of the word in question.} In fact, the Italian word for "fire" is "fuoco" and my native dialectical [southern Italian] word for "fire" is "fuocu". Furthermore, my "fuocularu" and the English "fireplace" are names of a hearth, namely a confined space where logs are burned in order to heat a room or to cook something. In conclusion, the terms Foc- and Fuoc-are homophonic (equally sounding), and Foc-, Fuoc-, and Fire are synonyms (mames that have the same meaning). Voila`, a focaccia is -- as we know how it is produced -- a "fire-bread". (Furthermore, by looking at a focaccia, we know that it is a flat bread. We also know that the dough is "un-leavened" ("a-zzimo" in Italian, or "a-zymos" in Greek). A fire-bread or a fired-dough or a heated-dough (not merely warmed/riscaldato, and not a burned-dough). {When discussing a real object that was named, one is doing philosophy, not logology/linguistics.}
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Post by joustos on Oct 11, 2020 21:16:33 GMT
Page 18 Substantive Continuation of Page 17
What ground/reason do I have for saying that the three aforementioned terms (Foc-, Fuoc-. and Fire) are synonyms? The reason is not that they sound alike, for "Fire" is not at all a homophone in that bunch of terms. I have circumstantial evidence that they, or some of them, have the same meaning (evidence for the establishment of the similarity of their meaning): An Italian and an Englishman together point at a certain object and respectively say, "Fuoco!" and "Fire!" They are mentally denoting (pointing at) the same object. I as a watcher and listener understand what they say; that is, I acquire the denotation/meaning of their spoken words. If I explore the nature of an object called "Dog" and thus get to know what a dog is, this knowledge or notion of the dog is the other meaning of the word "Dog". The same meaning-acquisition method can be used for the words "Fuoco" and "Fire". { So, Meaning can be either denotational or / Notional/Connotational in nature.} sh as
Incidentally, could it be that "Fuoco and "Fire" are homophones, even though they do not seem to be so to me? {"They do not seem to be so to me" = … // Oh, no! I'll come back to this later.} "Fire", pronounced in Old English similarly to "Mirror", could be spelled as "Pyre", a word that sounds like and looks like the Greek "Pyre". We learn from translation-Dictionaries that this Greek word means "Pyre; Pira in Italian", which is a stack of logs on fire.
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Post by joustos on Oct 12, 2020 3:32:19 GMT
Page 19 Substantive Continuation of Page 18
Out ofcuriosity, I consulted the Liddell-Scott "A Greek-English Etymological Dictionary" and I had the pleasure of reading some of its pages.(Its entry-words are written down in Greek letters. Here I transliterate them into Roman letters, which are also the English letters.) I found this information that is pertinent to the topic under discussion. [The words I will put in square brackets are my words.] Ecce/Here it is [in Latin]:
--- PYR [which denotes Fire, the fire of a hearth/fireplace/fuoularu, or of a furnu/oven] =[corresponds to][Umbrian/Italic]-Pyr = [Norse]-Furr =A.S.[Anglo-Saxon/Old English]-Fure. {This old English word, can also be written as "Fyre", that is, by using the Greek letter Y, which is called Ypsilon. The confusing problem here lies in the fact that the Greeks had two styles of writing. A certain sound was notated by the letter Y or by a letter that looks almost like our Roman U. When people read, or are presently reading either letter, they utter the sound which is in the English word "rUde" or the sound which is in the English word "physics". So, if the Greek word "Ypsilon" is new to you, how are you going to pronounce it? In the manner of either "*OOpilon" or "*EEpsilon", or, in Roman spelling, either "Upsilon" or "Ipsilon".}
--- [Ionic] Pyre, [Doric] Pyra =[denotes] any place where a fire is kindled.
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Post by joustos on Oct 12, 2020 19:13:15 GMT
Page 20 A revision of Page 19: Page 19 Substantive Continuation of Page 18
Out of curiosity, I consulted the Liddell-Scott "A Greek-English Etymological Dictionary" and I had the pleasure of reading some of its pages.(Its entry-words are written down in Greek letters. Here I transliterate them into Roman letters, which are also the English letters.) I found this information that is pertinent to the topic under disc ussion. [The words I will put in square brackets are my words.] Ecce/Here it is [said in Latin]:
--- PYR [which denotes Fire, the fire of a hearth/fireplace/fuoularu, or of a furnu/oven] =[corresponds to][Umbrian/Italic]-Pyr = [Norse]-Furr = A.S.[Anglo-Saxon/Old English]-Fure. {This old English word can also be written as "Fyre", that is, by using the Greek letter Y, which is called Ypsilon. The confusing problem here lies in the fact that the Greeks had two styles of writing. A certain sound was notated by the letter Y or by a letter that looks like a small Roman U. When people read, or are presently reading, either letter, they utter the sound which is in the English word "rUde" or the sound which is in the English word "toY". So, if the Greek word "Ypsilon" is new to you, how are you going to pronounce it? You are going to pronounce it as either in "rUde" or in "toY". In other words, you could transcribe that Greek sound in the English way: either "OOpsilon" or "EEpsilon", or, in the Roman or Italian way: either "Upsilon" or "Ipsilon". What is the true sound of the Greek Y/U? We do not know, but perhaps we can find out by listening to a modern native Greek read the graph Y/U. Meanwhile, we do not know whether the following words are correctly graphed/written for modern foreigners who employ one and the same graphic alphabet: Fuocu, Furnu, Fire, Fyre, Phyre, Phyre, Pyre, Fure, Pur, Pure.}
--- [Ionic] Pyre, [Doric] Pyra =[denotes] any place where a fire is kindled.
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Post by joustos on Oct 12, 2020 21:11:48 GMT
Page 21 Continuing from the last line on Page 20:
If Pyre/Pira means/refers to any place where fire is kindled, then the word "Pyle" is a referencing or denotating word. [What I am implying here is that the Meaning of a word is the Denotation of the word. If I know (am acquainted with) that which is being referred to, the knowledge/cognition/conoscenza constitutes the Meaning/Connotation of a word. In effect, the word "Meaning" means either Denotation or Connotation. A single cognition can be called also an idea or the concept (of an object). So, one method to find the meaning of an obscure word is to behold a demonstrative deed: A man has a finger or a stick that he points toward a body or an event and utters its name (or a word he invented). The man I, so to speak, showing an object or drawing attention to an object. (This can be done also by shouting, "Ecce homo"/"Here is the man".)
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Post by joustos on Oct 13, 2020 17:38:51 GMT
Page 22 Substantive continuation of Page 19 or 20. Here is the developed Page 21:
Page 21 Continuing from the last line on Page 20:
If Pyre/Pira means/refers to any place where fire is kindled, then the word "Pyle" is a referencing or denotating word. [What I am implying here is that the Meaning of a word is the Denotation of the word. If I know (am acquainted with) that which is being referred to, the knowledge/cognition/conoscenza constitutes the Meaning/Connotation of a word. In effect, the word "Meaning" means either Denotation or Connotation. A single cognition can be called also an idea or the concept (of an object). So, one method to find the meaning of an obscure word is to behold a demonstrative deed: A man has a finger or a stick that he points toward a body or an event and utters its name (or a word he invented). The man is, so to speak, showing an object or drawing attention to an object. (This can be done also by shouting, "Ecce homo"/"Here is the man".) A word can be use to either indicate or to demonstrate something. {When we talk about the uses of locutions -- words, phrases, etc.--
we are doing Semiotics, for lack of a better word.} To resume the discussion: Greek Pyre and Pyra seem to be the very English "Pyre" and Italian "Pira" respectively. If we understand, if we know, what the latter two words mean, then we understand what those two Greek words mean. Both Greeks, Englishmen, and Italians know what a pyre is: a stack of logs set on fire (a set of burning logs for funerary purposes, not for cooking o for heating a room). Why then do our English-speaking Dictionary authors say that a pyre is a place where a fire is kindled? Probably because a Hearth is also called a Fire-place in English (that is, a place where a fire is kindled). Actually,i if an ancient person were looking at a confined ground where there are burning logs, and said "Hearth", he would be naming one whole object that has two parts, a piece of earth and a set of burning logs, or a container and a content. In fact, there are other two-part objects (*binary objects), where one part consists of something burning:
As the Dictionary points out, the Greeks called "Pyreion" any earthern pot that contained charcoal [burning coal]. This complex object can be moved from room to room. In Italian it is called "Braciere" [S-It. "Vrashera"]. Literally, "a charcoal bearing thing", as a "Bracia" is a piece of charcoal. [Greek "The-ion" = "Abode of a god; temple".}
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Post by joustos on Oct 13, 2020 23:27:28 GMT
Page 23 Substantive Continuation of Page 22.
An aside: {While leafing through an online Italian dictionary, I happened to see the entry "Braciola", which caught my eye, because I realized that this word contains the term "Bracia", which is the fire-word under discussion. I know what a braciola is, but I was curious about the way the author was describing it: A [thin] slice of bovine [usually veal] or suine meat cooked either on a fire [grilled] or in a frying pan. A thin slice of veal is called "Veal Cutlet" or, in Italian, "Cotoletta di Vitello". // Obviously the term "Braci-" is akin or affine to "Bracia/Charcoal", and that's the reason why a moment ago I adduced the word "grilled", but I have no idea about the meaning of the second term, "-ola". It is rare term. The word "Stagnola" is the name of a thin foil that has the color and luster of Stagno/Tin. So, a Stagnola is a Tinfoil. However, it is no true that a Braci-ola is a charcoal-like foil. It seems to me that the word "Braciola" is an adjective (a qualifier) that is being used as noun -- a frequent action that speaking people perform. Possibly the original name was "Carta Stagnola" in the same manner as "Carta Viola" (= "Paper violet in color"). Furthermore, "Canzone Spagnola" means exactly "Spanish Song". So, "-ola" = "-ish", and "Cotoletta Braciola" means something like "Charcoal-Fashioned Cutlet". Thenceforth the word "Braciola" was used to mean what "Cotoletta Braciola" means. [More will be said on the operations of shifting and transferring in the course of speaking.]}
Back to my course of speaking: The author of the earliest mentioned Online Etymological Dictionary provides some historical information as to when and where the word Fire and affine words were used. When he mentioned the affine words "Focal" and "Focus", he mentioned that they were used in photography a long time ago and, I wish to add, they had nothing to do with fire, its burning power, its color, it generation, etc. Rather, they were used in discussions about light and specifically in discussing "painting/writing with light" [which is exactly what the word "Photo-graphia" means, thanks to an accurate coiner of this Greek-language word]. 'Focus" and "Focal Point" were used as interchangeable terms (as synonyms). The point in question I not a point of view (the spot from which one looks at something), but the point to which an eye is directed, the point which is viewed. Analogously, a photographic camera -- a Camera Obscura, a Dark Room -- which has a lens like the one in the eye -- is oriented toward the spot which is the center of a circle of things one wishes to paint. (The canvas or tablet lies behind the lens.) What is the mental picture that a looker gets?
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Post by joustos on Oct 14, 2020 21:10:07 GMT
Page 24 Substantive Continuation of Page 23
Did I say, "A circle/area of things"? I did, but I did so improperly, because only such things as triangles and squares can lie on a circle. Physical things such as trees, houses, and bottles of wine, are only in a sphere/globe, because they are three-dimensional. I see such things when they are illuminated, when they are struck by the light that comes from a lamp. So, if there is a lamp at the center of the sphere, that's the Illuminating Point. If there is a fire at the center of the sphere, that's the firing/blazing/flagrant/fiery point which be called "Focal Point" or "Hotpoint", and the fire which is burning/blazing at that location can be called "Fire/Focus". What has this new terminology got to do with light? Nothing, but if we place a lamp (a light generating entity) at the center of a sphere and talk analogously, we can say that the center is the lighting/incandescent/phosphorous point; and the lighting lamp (which produces also heat) can be called Light/Phos. {Why do we sometimes talk analogously? What is the realistic/historic reason, the bridge, for shifting from from a spontaneous framing of our discourse to an imitative framing of a discourse? Presently the bridge is mentioned by the author of the Dictionary in question: Archimedes and later mathematicians and exprimentalists discovered that if light strikes a curved/concave mirror, the light rays, which seem to be rectilinear, are deflected by the concave mirror to one spot (of a surface) and the spot starts to burn literally. As any fire is luminous (light-bearing), the burning spot is a very intense light [From this fact, I infer that the travelling light and the traveling fire/heat are physically one and the thing. The field of study of these phenomena is really one field, Thermodynamics, even though this word refers only to heat. (It's more tiring to say "Thermo-Photo-Dynamics".] In conclusion, the terminology that pertains to Fire was used strictly for speaking about Light. So, the word "Focal Point" can mean also "
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Post by joustos on Nov 23, 2020 4:12:16 GMT
Page 25 substantive continuation of Page 24
... the word "focal point" can mean also "illuminating/luminous point''. However, all of this terminology I have bea houseen discussing is not used in photography literally. The gazed point of a landscape or scene, or the point to which a camera is directed does not have a specific name, but the camera man sees the object, upside down, at the center of his glass-window before inserting a photographic plate or film there. He adjusts his camera so as to focus on the object he wants to photograph, and he adjusts the lens or objective in such a way that the received image is clear rather than fuzzy. When it is clear, then, he says, the camera is on focus. (We need not discuss the physical reasons why a clear image can be formed and why the photographer's terminology is actually inaccurate.) This light-terminology is also improperly used in speaking of perspective viewing and perspective design. Briefly: During the Renaissance, some Italian painters (Alberti and others) devised a method of painting or drawing "in perspective", that is, according to the way we actually see things in a landscape, citiscape, or scene, not as we know them in isolation. (Hence, theirs is called "optic perspective".) If we stand in front of a window and we gaze at a distant point (like the peak of a mountain), we see that trees or houses looking smaller and smaller as they are more and more distant from us. If we look down a straight road, it looks narrower and narrower as it is more distant from us. So, there is an inverse proportion between the size of a seen object and its distance from the viewer. The most distant point we gaze at is called the focal point of our vision. At he same time, there must be the sun somewhere in the sky, so that, depending on its position, i
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Post by joustos on Nov 23, 2020 17:00:57 GMT
Page 26 substantive continuation of Page 25 but, please, make mental corrections of grammatical and typographical mistakes while you read, since I cannot edit my posts after a short period of time. Thank you. // As I was about to say: … depending on its position, a house in your landscape, is partially well illuminated, while other visible parts are in penombra (almost in the shadow). A curved surface, such as a human face, has a bright area (directly under the sun) while other parts are gradually darker and darker. (Painting which respects this optical phenomenon is said to be in chiaroscuro, in the gradual process from brightness to darkness.) Now, if you do not already know how to draw in perspective, take a plain rectangular sheet of paper, which represents the scene you see from your window. As you stand up straight, the level of your eyes corresponds to the objective horizon of the scene. Draw a very thin line about three fourths from the bottom of the sheet. What lies beneath the horizon is land; what lies above the horizon is the sky. About the middle of the horizon, place a dot. It is the focal point, the point on which your gaze is fixed. Place also a dot in the sky, near the north-eastern part of the sheet. This dot represents the morning or afternoon sun, which may be actually drawn or painted there. Now, near the south-western part of the sheet, draw the front of a building, a small rectangle surmounted by a triangle. This figure has five conspicuous points. From the focal point, draw thin lines ("perspective" lines) to these five points. About two inches away from the right corner draw a line , parallel to right side of the building front, between the perspective lines that reach this right side; so, you have just drawn the visible back corner of the building (which is obviously shorter than the front corner). Draw a line, parallel to the side of the triangle, from the top of the back corner to the perspective line that reaches the apex of the triangle. You have just drawn the visible half of the building's roof. Put two windows in the right wall of the second floor. Be inventive: Draw a perspective line to the middle of the frontal corner; it represents the division between two floors. So, in the upper half, draw two perspective lines, which will be used to draw the top and the bottom of the windows, as far apart as you wish. Draw the sides of the windows perpendicularly to the ground of the building. You can draw front windows by drawing parallel lines that start from the corner points of your previous window perspective lines. (We are not going to discuss the optical shrinkage of things that happens horizontally or the way to systematically design it.) If your scene is a sea, remember that the sea seems to rise toward the horizon. Boats on it follow the rules of the just described Vertical Perspective. Now it's afternoon. Draw perspective lines from the sun to the corners of buildings; etc.
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Post by joustos on Nov 23, 2020 20:06:39 GMT
Page 27 continuation of Page 1: Languages and Linguistics In many ancient cultures, what we call Language was called Tongue, since the tongue is the conspicuous modulator of the human voice, whereby words are formed. Anyway, we still speak of somebody's evil tongue (invective language), or of somebody's accusatory/chiding tongue, or of a child's annoying tongue (loquacity -- constant speaking). The Greek name of a tongue is either Glossa or Glotta. Today, the term "Glottologist" is used to mean "an investigator/analyst of some particular [ethnic] language", not "the speaker of a language". Such an investigator/analyst is also called a Linguist -- a name which is derived from the Latin word Lingua [= Tongue] > Loquor [= I speak], which is a cognate of the Greek "Lego" [= I speak, also = Greek Lexeo, as well as Greek Phemi.] One of the earliest glottologists/linguists of some Indo-European language was Panini, who, around the 4th century B.C., investigated his own language, Sanskrit. He was born in the Hindus Valley (now Pakistan), which for a long time was part of what was called India. Sanskrit was one of the languages that were spoken in India, and it was the language used in the Vedas (scriptures/literature), a language very close to Ancient Persian on the eastern side of Mesopotamia. He named some ten predecessors who were also linguists. Anyway, we have his writings, which show a classification of what we call Parts of Speech, namely Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, etc. He thus started writing the general Grammar of Indo-European languages. Thereafter some Europeans believed that Sanskrit was the mother-language of all other Indo-uropean languages, whereas some recent European glottologists have attempted to show (in vain, I say) that these languages derived from Semitic (Hebrew, Canaanite, and Akkadian). Actually Akkadian is derived largely from Sumerian [written in cuneiforms], a Mesopotamian language that is not Semitic and is akin to Ancient Greek. [As I have shown, Etruscan, Basque, Anglo-Saxon, and Syriac-Canaanitic Eblaite, are also akin to Ancient Greek.]
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Post by joustos on Nov 23, 2020 21:48:44 GMT
Page 28 Substantive continuation of Page 2 In the 14th century, the Italian scholar and Poet, Dante, wrote, in Latin, an essay,"De vulgari eloquentia".The word "Eloquentia" = "eloquence; language. The Latin "vulgus" ="the common people", but if today we say, "vulgar language" we mean "obscene or street language". He meant the language spoken in his days by the common people, whereas the Church and professional people (lawyers, physicians, etc.) wrote in Latin. The language of the common people was a broken Latin. In his hometown, Florence, and generally in Italy, the popular language (now called Vernacular) no longer had passive verbs, and the case-endings of nouns were omitted, wherefore prepositions became necessary. The vernacular nouns derived usually from the accusative singular of the Latin nouns. For example, the Latin locution, "mihi placet ars" [= "Art is pleasant to me; I like art" became "mi piace l'arte". {The accusative case of Ars was Artem, and no article existed in Latin.} This is a perfect Italian locution. // So, in his "About the Vernacular Language" , Dante set out to refine the language of the common Italian people and give it the status that Latin had. He composed, in Italian (the vernacular language), a very long poem, "La Commedia" (thereafter called, "The Divine Comedy"), which describes his imaginary voyage to Hell (Inferno), Purgatory, and Paradise, where he met many historical people, with whom he conversed in Italian. On his way to Hell, he was guided by Virgil, the author of the Latin "Aeneid", which was the model of his own poetic work. On his way to Paradise, he was guided by the beautiful Beatrice, with whom he had fallen in love by the Arno River, in Florence. The road to Paradise was lined up with angels who played and sang the church music he actually knew in Florence. Dante was a poet of the "dolce stil nuovo" (the new mellow style) that Cavalcanti and others had been developing after the Provenzal Trobadores (troubadours, poets-singers), whom Dante himself loved and even quoted in The Comedy. By example, they prompted the composition of poems in the vernacular language of nations, rather than in Latin. However, even in the 17th century, Newton wrote his "Principia Mathematica" in Latin as the international language of Europe.
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Post by joustos on Nov 24, 2020 0:10:03 GMT
Page 29 substantive continuation of Page 28
The French made a distinction between LANGUE and LANGUAGE. Langue = Tongue, which is the name of what we call Language -- the French language the Latin Language, the English language, or any other ethnic language. The English word "Language" derives from the French word "Language", but this French does not mean "Tongue or Language." On one hand, it means any system or communication (which includes Sign Language)"; on the other, it (which = Italian Linguaggio) refers to the language that is fashioned by an individual speaker. So, they give an example, " The language of Moliere (the playwriter) is.... such-and such." In this case, the French word "Language" is practically the same as "language style". At any rate, the distinction in question is within an ethnic language, whereas Dante was distinguishing Latin as a professional language from Broken Latin which constituted derivative languages such as Italian, Spanish, Roumanian, etc. // I do no wish to identify "Linguaggio with "Language style" (poetic style, oratorical style, conversational/colloquial style, discourse that systematically adduces either mythology or theology or authorities, autobiographical style, and so forth), since there is a distinction between a speaker who uses already-made phrases (as some students of a foreign language do) and a speaker who, though using ethnic words, constructs his own discourse. The latter speaker's language is a "private" language, peculiar to him, wherefore it can be called a Linguaggio or, better yet, in Greek, "idioma"/idiom. But beware, the Spaniards use the term "idioma" to mean what we call "language"; I learned from experience that they hate using the Latin term "lingua", which literally means "tongue". In English, an idiom is a peculiar expression of an ethnic language; it could be substituted by a "linguism". In one of the Arktos threads, Th Great Schism of Catholic and Orthodox churches, I spoke of customary Greek metaphorical speaking (after the personification of nature-gods), as possibly in contradistinction to literal Aramaic speaking. The so-called Figures of Speech are actually processes of private/inventive speaking -- idioms/linguisms.
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