languagehat.com

Many of the papers in Verbal Aspect in Discourse (1990, ed. Nils B. Thelin) look worth investigating:

In the light of growing insights into the universal temporal-semantic nature of aspectual distinctions, today’s aspectology has broadened its attention from restrictedly event-defining functions of aspect on the sentence level towards its primary perspectival functions on the discourse/situation level. Hereby it attempts to relate these functions to each other in ways that stimulate consistently language processing on a more solid perceptual-conceptual and pragmatic basis. Reflecting in various ways this general tendency. The 13 papers collected in this volume are oriented to four fields of research: (1) Developmental properties of aspect and tense; (2) Ideo-pragmatic and conceptual-semantic correlates of aspect and the perspectival organisation of discourse; (3) Aspect, case and discourse; (4) and Aspect in literary discourse. The editor’s Introduction gives a comprehensive survey of contemporary aspectology and its development towards a proper integration of discourse/situation conditions. Besides cross-linguistic considerations (including English), the languages analyzed specifically are Russian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, French and Finnish.

But I was immediately attracted to “Notes on the ‘Metaphysics’ of Russian Aspect” because it’s by Boris Gasparov, whose book on Ferdinand de Saussure I raved about here; I thought his analysis was interesting enough to quote in extenso, and I hope those of my readers who know Russian (or just have thoughts about aspect) will weigh in. Gasparov begins:

1. The past two decades have been marked by significant progress in the study of the meaning of the aspectual forms of the Russian verb. Throughout several decades, linguists were aiming at finding a common basis by which to unite the infinite variety of concrete meanings taken by the forms of perfective and imperfective aspect (Perf. and Imp.) in various specific cases. Striving for the attainment of this end, linguists have appealed to the ever broader and more abstract semantic categories in order to formulate in a more generalized and more coherent way a strategy which speakers of Russian follow in their use of aspectual forms. Each time, however, that research reached a more generalized level, it appeared that even at this level there existed a variety of relevant factors which had not been previously noticed. Consequently, the picture of the use of aspect at this new level split again into a series of particular cases which, in their turn, suggested the necessity of a new, still more generalized and abstract approach.

He summarizes the history of such attempts (structural studies, functional studies, and the narrative approach), then moves on to his own:
[Read more…]

By request of J.W. Brewer, I hereby open the floor to discussion of the Obotrites, or (as the case may be) Obodrites. Wikipedia:

The Obotrites (Latin: Obotriti, Abodritorum, Abodritos) or Obodrites, also spelled Abodrites (German: Abodriten), were a confederation of medieval West Slavic tribes within the territory of modern Mecklenburg and Holstein in northern Germany (see Polabian Slavs). For decades, they were allies of Charlemagne in his wars against the Germanic Saxons and the Slavic Veleti. […]

The Bavarian Geographer, an anonymous medieval document compiled in Regensburg in 830, contains a list of the tribes in Central Eastern Europe to the east of the Elbe. The list includes the Nortabtrezi (Obotrites) – with 53 civitates. Adam of Bremen referred to them as the Reregi because of their lucrative trade emporium Reric. In common with other Slavic groups, they were often described by Germanic sources as Wends.

The substantially longer Russian article gives the pleasingly Russianized term бо́дричи as well (which makes one think of бодрый ‘cheerful, bright, vigorous’), and there is (oddly) a separate article under that heading. I was hoping Barford would discuss them in his The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe, but although he mentions them fairly often (as Obodrites) it’s just a selection of random facts (battles, conversions, etc.). Nobody seems to venture an etymology (Wiktionary: “Происходит от ??”). Any and all thoughts are welcome!

Once again I need help with a mysterious UK usage, so I turn to the assembled multinational multitude. In Rosamond McKitterick’s LRB review of House of Lilies: The Dynasty that Made Medieval France by Justine Firnhaber-Baker (archived), she writes:

Firnhaber-Baker’s account of the fifteen kings and their many military campaigns is entertaining, unfailingly lively, occasionally a little rackety; it is in essence a collection of royal portraits, focusing more on individual lives than political processes and the wielding of authority.

I am only glancingly aware of the word rackety, and I would have guessed it meant ‘making a racket’; this is indeed the first sense in the OED (entry revised 2008): “Obtrusively noisy or cacophonous; clattering, rattling; boisterous, rowdy” (1796 One of my cows, that was afflicted sorely with, as he called it, a racketty complaint in her bowels. S. J. Pratt, Gleanings Wales, Holland & Westphalia (ed. 2) xiv. 228), but there is a second sense “Characterized by or inclined to dissipation; disreputable” (1884 Their boys are all jolly, nice young fellows. All have turned out so well, not one of them rackety, you know. American Naturalist vol. 18 109) — Green has it as “of objects, insalubrious; of individuals, characterized as immoral” (1929 [UK] J.B. Booth London Town 106: Rackety young fellow-about-town). Does anybody have a sense of what McKitterick means by it here?
[Read more…]

As I was investigating something else, I discovered Yiddishland:

YIVO is pleased to introduce Yiddishland: Countries, Cities, Towns, Rivers. This is the first attempt to collect and publish all Yiddish place names of Central and Eastern Europe in one book. We have now made available place names found in all the countries of Eastern Europe.

Yiddish place names are both a fascinating topic and something of a sore subject. Because everywhere they have lived, Yiddish speakers have been a minority, and since the language has almost never had government recognition or backing, it is miraculous that standardization has been possible. In the case of place names, standardization has been particularly difficult, as the Yiddish folk designations for cities, towns, rivers, and even city streets have often been ignored by the speakers themselves, not to mention Yiddish journalists and writers who are more familiar with the official names. Thus, a gazetteer of Yiddish place names has been a desideratum for many, many years. In YIVO-bleter VII (1934:229), the editor notes that Saul Chajes’s list of Yiddish place names, which was published in that issue, will be “an important contribution to the Yiddish geographical index that is being prepared by the philological section of YIVO,” which to the best of our knowledge never appeared.

As with so many other projects, the late Mordkhe Schaechter took it upon himself to collect and publish a definitive list of Yiddish place names. Although he did not live to complete the project himself, his extensive card files, with nearly 6,000 Yiddish place names culled both from oral interviews and printed sources, were donated to YIVO. The gazetteer, titled Yiddishland: Countries, Cities, Towns, Rivers, has been compiled in its present form by Paul Glasser, who supplemented Schaechter’s files with more recent published data and with Internet sources, particularly with respect to official names. Although Schaechter collected Yiddish names from around the world, the present work is limited to approximately 3,000 locations in Central and Eastern Europe, specifically present-day Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine, as well as the European regions of Russia. This includes what Mikhl Herzog (1965:7) designates “Yiddish Language Area (1938),” as well as neighboring countries with at least a few Yiddish place names of long standing.

[Read more…]

A few weeks ago Hippophlebotomist mentioned the “Alarodian hypothesis”; having looked it up, I thought it was intriguing enough to give its own post. Wikipedia:

The Alarodian languages are a proposed language family that encompasses the Northeast Caucasian (Nakh–Dagestanian) languages and the extinct Hurro-Urartian languages.

The term Alarodian is derived from Greek Ἀλαρόδιοι (Alarodioi), the name of an ethnic group mentioned by Herodotus which has often been equated with the people of the kingdom of Urartu, although this equation is considered doubtful by modern scholars. A leading Urartologist, Paul Zimansky, rejects a connection between the Urartians and the Alarodians. Nearly nothing is known about the Alarodians except that they “were armed like the Colchians and Saspeires,” according to Herodotus. The Colchians and Saspeires are generally associated with the Kartvelians and/or Scythians, neither of whom spoke a Hurro-Urartian or Northeast Caucasian language

Historically, the term “Alarodian languages” was employed for several language family proposals of various size. Sayce (1880) employed the name for a small group that comprised Urartian (then called “Vannic”) and the Kartvelian languages (Georgian, Laz, Mingrelian, and Svan). In 1884, the German orientalist Fritz Hommel further included all languages of the Caucasus and the ancient Near East which did not belong to the Indo-European, Semitic, and the now obsolete Ural–Altaic language families, e.g. Elamite, Kassite. Later, he extended the Alarodian family to include the pre-Indo-European languages of Europe, e.g. Lemnian, Etruscan, Ligurian. Karel Oštir’s (1921) version of Alarodian included all aforementioned languages, further Basque, Sumerian, Egyptian, the Cushitic and Berber languages. The historical Alarodian proposal – especially Oštir’s maximal extension – was however not well-received by the majority of scholars (“Ce petit livre donne le vertige”—”This little book makes one dizzy”, A. Meillet), and eventually abandoned.

The term “Alarodian languages” was revived by I. M. Diakonoff for the proposed language family that unites the Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian languages. Work by I. M. Diakonoff and Starostin (1986) asserted the connection between “Nakh-Dagestanian” (NE Caucasian) and Hurro-Urartian on the basis of comparison of their reconstruction to Proto-Nakh-Dagestanian, later published in 1994 with Nikolayev.

I like the “vertige” quote — Meillet! thou shouldst be living at this hour: linguistics hath need of thee…

Also, this gives me an opportunity to link to Dravido-Korean languages, a piece of weirdness John Emerson (who used to propagate Dravido-Everything around these parts) shared with me recently. Enjoy!

My wife and I are watching The Crown and are greatly enjoying it, as well as learning quite a bit about British history (don’t worry, after each episode we check on the dramatic license the writers took). We’re now on the fourth season, which brings the advent of Margaret Thatcher as played with frightening accuracy by Gillian Anderson. (Point of Hattic interest: the accents of the English characters seem to be spot-on; those of the would-be Americans are awful — JFK, Jackie, LBJ, the astronauts, none of them are remotely believable.) And suddenly everyone was using the slang term “wet,” which I remembered from the ’80s but had no real sense of other than knowing it was a putdown. So I checked the OED:

15.b. Inept, ineffectual, effete; also as quasi-adv. and in combination wet fish, a wet individual, a ‘drip’. Also spec. in Politics (see quots. 1981, 1983). […]

1916 I’ll give yer a clip ‘longside the ear’ole if you ain’t careful. Don’t act so wet.
‘Taffrail’, Pincher Martin ii. 27
[…]

1924 A man is wet if he isn’t a ‘regular guy’; he is wet if he isn’t ‘smooth’; he is wet if he has intellectual interests..; and he is wet..if he is utterly stupid.
P. Marks, Plastic Age 192
[…]

1969 The Jesus of the Gospels can be a bit of a wet liberal at times.
K. Amis, Green Man iv. 180
[…]

1980 The contrast between the splendid façade and the rather wet interior of the man [sc. Havelock Ellis], who was kind and gentle and distinguished, but also distressingly absent, indifferent and faint.
Times Literary Supplement 28 November 1355/2

1981 The term ‘Wet’ was originally used by Mrs Thatcher, who meant it in the old sense of ‘soppy’, as in ‘What do you mean the unions won’t like it, Jim? Don’t be so wet.’ It meant feeble, liable to take the easy option, lacking intellectual and political hardness. Like so many insults, it was gleefully adopted by its victims, and so came by its present meaning of liberal, leftish, anti-ideological.
Observer 26 July 12/3

1982 In considering the promotion of wet (or wettish) Ministers, she will tell herself that Pope was right.
Listener 23 December 6/3

1983 Britain’s Tory Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, began this vogue terminology by contemptously dismissing dewy-eyed dissenters from her arid Right-wing policies as ‘wet’.
Age (Melbourne) 5 October 13

(I thought “contemptously” in that last citation must be a typo, but it turns out the OED has it as a variant spelling, and a Google Books search finds lots of examples.) So we see that it is in fact associated with Thatcher, but I confess I still have only the vaguest idea of what it means. Oddly, Green has no examples of the Thatcher-adjacent use.

A decade or so ago I read and enjoyed a bunch of Vladimir Odoevsky’s stories from the 1830s (see this 2014 post); now, quite by accident, I’ve wound up reading another one and enjoying it as well: Сильфида (1837), translated as “The Sylph” by Joel Stern in Russian Romantic Prose: An Anthology (Translation Press, 1979) and by Neil Cornwell in The Salamander and Other Stories (Gerald Duckworth, 1992). It starts off as a series of letters by Mikhail Platonovich, an urban gentleman who, to cure his case of “the spleen,” has moved to his late uncle’s country estate (a nod to Eugene Onegin), where at first he is charmed by his neighbors and their simple, ignorant existence. Eventually they too bore him, but he discovers his uncle’s hidden library of alchemical and Kabbalistic works and begins reading and experimenting, at first skeptically. In the meantime he gets engaged to his neighbor’s daughter Katya, and invites his correspondent to the wedding. But then, by dissolving a turquoise signet-ring in a vase of water placed in the sunlight, he creates “an amazing, indescribable, unbelievable creature: in short, a woman, barely visible to the eye” — this is the titular sylph. She takes him on some sort of metaphysical voyage and shows him a better world, and he loses interest in the one he’s living in, including his fiancée. When his alarmed friend brings him back to reality (with the aid of a doctor and “bouillon baths”) he is resentful; he goes ahead and marries Katya, but tells his friend (in Cornwell’s translation; for the Russian, click on the Сильфида link and search on “Так довольствуйся же этими похвалами”):

– Then be satisfied with their praise and gratitude, but don’t expect
mine. No! Katia loves me, our estate is settled, the revenues are collected
on time – in a word, you gave me a happiness, but not mine: you got the
wrong size. You, such reasonable gentlefolk, are like the carpenter who
was ordered to make a case for some expensive physics instruments: he
didn’t measure it properly and the instruments wouldn’t go in – so what did
he do? The case was ready and beautifully polished. The tradesman re-
ground the instruments – a curve more here, a curve less there, and they
went into the box and fitted nicely. They were a pleasure to look at, but
there was one problem: the instruments were wrecked. Gentlemen! instru-
ments are not for cases, but cases are for instruments! Make the box
according to the instruments and not the instruments according to the box.

– What do you mean by that?

– You are very pleased that you have, what you call, cured me: that is to
say, blunted my perceptions, covered them with some impenetrable shell,
made them dead to any world except your box…. Wonderful! The instru-
ment fits, but it is wrecked: it had been made for a different purpose….
Now, when in the midst of the daily round I can feel my abdominal cavity
expanding by the hour and my head subsiding into animalistic sleep, I
recall with despair that time when, in your opinion, I was in a state of
madness, when a charming creature flew down to me from the invisible
world, when it opened to me sacraments which now I cannot even express,
but which were comprehensible to me… where is that happiness? Give it
back to me!

That was unexpected, and I liked it. Anyone who wants to explore the story further (and has access to JSTOR) should read Christopher R. Putney’s “‘The Circle That Presupposes Its End As Its Goal’: The Riddle of Vladimir Odoevsky’s ‘The Sylph’” (Slavic and East European Journal 55.2 [2011]: 188-204), which focuses on the philosophy of Schelling and the mysterious reversal of the protagonist’s name — for a summary, see Erik McDonald’s 2011 post.
[Read more…]

I ran across a reference to Adelbert von Chamisso [ˈaːdl̩bɛʁt fɔn ʃaˈmɪso] (who came up here in the context of “translingualism” in 2021) and suddenly wondered what kind of name Chamisso was. A little trawling produced this footnote from the Transactions of the English Goethe Society VII (1891-92), p. 109:

* Einem alten Hause entsprossen. Chamisso’s words. Works (2nd edition in 6 volumes), Vol. I., S. 5. This edition will be used for all subsequent quotations. The name Chamissot occurs ᴀ.ᴅ. 1305. Other forms are found : Chamizzot, Chemizzot, Chamisso, perhaps also Chamesson. In Oporto there is living a Senhor Chamiço.

I don’t know whether anyone has traced it farther back, but I love that final line “In Oporto there is living a Senhor Chamiço.” I wonder what his story was?

John Bartlett reports for NPR about another attempt to revive a language on the verge of extinction, this one in Chile:

Ckunsa, the language of the Lickanantay people who have lived in the Atacama Desert for more than 11,000 years, was declared “extinct” in the 1950s. But it is still very much alive in the depths of the desert.

“I don’t accept that my native language is extinct,” spits 50–year-old Tomás Vilca under the patchy shade of an awning.[…]

However, Chile is multilingual. Alongside Spanish, Aymara and Quechua are spoken in the north of the country and up into Peru, Bolivia and northern Argentina. Down in picturesque Patagonia, there are a handful of Kawésqar speakers; and Mapuzugun, the language of the Mapuche people, Chile’s largest Indigenous group, is spoken widely in the forests and valleys around the Bio Bío River. Out on Easter Island, which has been part of Chilean territory since 1888, Rapanui is spoken by the Indigenous population. […]

“At school they’d tell me I was speaking ‘Bolivian’ – that I wasn’t talking like a Chilean,” remembers Vilca. “They stamped Ckunsa out of us from an early age. After that, my parents started to teach me Spanish so I didn’t suffer any more discrimination.”

[Read more…]

Back in April I posted about bumbershoot, pointing out that it was not, despite what Americans tend to think, a Britishism; at the end of the post I said “Ben posted it in connection with his forthcoming book Gobsmacked! The British Invasion of American English, which I’m sure will be well worth reading.” Well, the book is now out, and the Guardian has run a long excerpt from it that discusses the terms bit, cheeky, clever, early days, and gutted. But it begins thus:

I am an American, New York-born, but I started to spend time in London in the 1990s, teaching classes to international students. Being interested in language, and reading a lot of newspapers there – one of the courses I taught was on the British press – I naturally started picking up on the many previously unfamiliar (to me) British words and expressions, and differences between British and American terminology.

Then a strange thing happened. Back home in the United States, I noticed writers, journalists and ordinary people starting to use British terms I had encountered. I’ll give one example that sticks in my mind because it is tied to a specific news event, and hence easily dated. In 2003, it became clear that the US would invade Iraq. Months passed; we did not invade. Then we did. Journalists faced a question: what should we call that preliminary period? In September 2003, the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman chose a Britishism, referring to “how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war”.

Run-up, previously unfamiliar in the US, quickly began to be very widely used. I know because of the app Google Books Ngram Viewer, the online tool that can measure the relative frequency with which a word or phrase appears in the vast corpus of books and periodicals digitised by Google Books (including separating out British and American use). Ngram Viewer shows that between 2000 and 2005, American use of “the run-up to” increased by 50%. […]

I date the run-up (that’s an alternate meaning of run-up: “increase”) in Britishisms to the early 1990s, and it’s surely significant that this was when such journalists as Tina Brown, Anna Wintour, Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens moved to the US or consolidated their prominence there. The chattering classes – another useful Britishism – have a persistent desire for ostensibly clever ways to say stuff. They have borrowed from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, teen culture, African American vernacular, sports and hip-hop, and they increasingly borrow from Britain.

I liked the opening nod to Saul Bellow, but what really struck me was that I had no awareness of the fact that run-up was a Britishism. I must have realized it at the time, but I guess I’ve seen it (and used it) so often since that it’s simply become an unremarkable part of my dialect. (I asked my wife, and she had the same reaction.) Does this still smack of the UK to any of my American readers?

(A tip of the Languagehat hat goes to that great link-finder Trevor.)