4.0556 Words: Plural Borrowing; Language in Dreams... (4/100)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 2 Oct 90 21:54:16 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0556. Tuesday, 2 Oct 1990.
(1) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 90 19:49:42 GMT+0100 (37 lines)
From: macrakis@gr.osf.org
Subject: 4.0518 Words: Borrowing and Plurals; ...
(2) Date: 01 Oct 90 22:21:34 EST (9 lines)
From: James O'Donnell <JODONNEL@PENNSAS.UPENN.EDU>
Subject: 4.0549 Misc. on ideas, writing, disciplines ...
(3) Date: Tue 2 Oct 90 08:05:03-PDT (26 lines)
From: Roland Hutchinson <R.RDH@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: 4.0532 Education and Writing
(4) Date: Thu, 27 Sep 1990 16:11 IST (28 lines)
From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1>
Subject: Re: 4.0525 Language learning -- Dreaming
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 90 19:49:42 GMT+0100
From: macrakis@gr.osf.org
Subject: 4.0518 Words: Borrowing and Plurals; 'their'; shortening (5/74)
Borrowing plurals as singulars probably depends on the function of the
plural in the two languages as well as morphology.
For instance, Turkish borrows a number of Greek plurals as singulars,
e.g. domates (tomatoes). There is no Turkish morphological
restriction I know which prohibits *domata. I would guess that it has
to do with different ways of expressing collectives. In Greek, `a
basket of tomatoes' uses the plural, while in Turkish it uses the
singular.
For a more complicated situation, cf. Arabic where there can be many
different (and even compounded) plurals. Thus in Turkish there is the
Arabic singular s,ey (= thing) which takes a regular Turkish plural
(in fact, Turkish plurals are always regular). However, the Arabic
plural of s,ey exists as a distinct word in Turkish--es,ya, which
means `things' in the sense of `baggage, stuff', and which can also
take a Turkish plural.
Getting back to English, note that `agenda' is a Latin neuter plural
and not a feminine singular, however `propaganda' is not even in the
nominative (although you might think it's the neuter plural `things to
be propagated', it actually comes from the phrase `Congregatio de
propaganda fide').
Since it would be out of place in this discussion to mention the
etymological plurals of `status' and `octopus', I won't.
Of course the standard gaffe is `media' (singular), which presumably
comes from 1) -a being a good singular ending and an unusual plural
and 2) the singular `medium' being a word restricted to the (over-)
educated.
Stavros Macrakis
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------22----
Date: 01 Oct 90 22:21:34 EST
From: James O'Donnell <JODONNEL@PENNSAS.UPENN.EDU>
Subject: 4.0549 Misc. on ideas, writing, disciplines ... (7/238)
Jargon and jargon. The Cambridge classicist Porson (c. 1800), the
finest Greek scholar of his age (and most others), was once, when not in
his cups, heard to say that he had a high opinion of Gibbon's prose in
*Decline and Fall* and that it would be a useful school exercise if
students were assigned to turn a page or two of it into English.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Tue 2 Oct 90 08:05:03-PDT
From: Roland Hutchinson <R.RDH@Macbeth.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: 4.0532 Education and Writing (3/82)
Frank Dane thus on substitute terms for "Educationist":
>Have you considered "Professor of Education" or "Education Professor"?
Although this clearly comes close to answering the precise question
that I asked rather than the one that I _meant_ to ask (and is
therefore just what I deserve), it fails to supply the need for a
general term.
"Education professor" leaves altogether too many co-conspirators
unindicted: Lecturers and other university teachers of
non-professorial rank, school principals and other administrators,
mambers of state textbook selection committees, overpaid consultants
to ETS, to name but a few.
Roland Hutchinson
Discipline-basher In Spite of Himself
rhutchin@pilot.njin.net
rhutchin@NJIN
P.S. Apologies for my having termed "educationist" a neologism. I
stand corrected.
-------
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------37----
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 1990 16:11 IST
From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1>
Subject: Re: 4.0525 Language learning -- Dreaming (4/103)
In response to Ruth Hanschka's query about Dreaming in other than the
Mother Tongue. I began learning Hebrew in my College days at Berkeley.
When I came to Israel, like many others I studied in what's known here
as an Ulpan (intensive modern Hebrew class). About three months into
this I had a terribly intensive dream set in a dark forest in Eastern
Europe. I was a boy who was told to look in the back of a horse cart
and discovered there a headless body. Woke up trying to stammer: Eyn
Lo Rosh -- He has no head. My first non-English language dream and one
of my first exposures to the delights of the Dream Work. Here's another
-- more comical -- example. In my youth in USA there was a commercial on
TV that featured a Chicken sitting on top of a Hellman's Mayonaise jar
-- reciting the slogan "Hellman's Uses the Whole Egg". One of my
earliest Hebrew dreams -- sortly after I began learning Bible was this
same visual scene, but with the Chicken reciting the verse: Sheqer
ha-HEN [actually the H is guttural], ve-hevel ha-yofi (Proverbs 31:30)
-- Grace ("Hen" in the Hebrew) is deceptive and beauty is illusory.
So here I am now many years later, having slipped over into the area of
Rabbinic Literature and planning to do a book on Midrash (famous for its
word plays) and Dreaming -- particularly the similarities in the thought
processes behind both. Any thoughts or bibliography from fellow
humanists that might be of interest would be highly appreciated.
Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem [HPUBM at HUJIVM1]