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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Cognate languages - limitations

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  • From: George F Somsel <gfsomsel AT juno.com>
  • To: K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Cognate languages - limitations
  • Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 08:05:13 -0400

On Mon, 5 Sep 2005 08:39:06 +0100 "Read, James C"
<K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk> writes:
> Imagine 2,000 years from now a group of 'scholars' that go about
> studying the now dead English language.
>
> They stuble frequently upon the phrase 'what bad education'.
> They know that the construct 'what bad' usually indicates an
> exclamation of negativity but are not familiar with the
> term 'education'. What do they do? They look at the cognate
> languages!
>
> In the italian language they find the well documented phrase 'che
> maleducazione'. Reasoning that educazione is
> the cognate partner of education they assume that the meanings are
> the same. 'Che maleducazione' means something like 'What bad
> manners!' or 'How rude!' or something like that. They theorise that
> English has the same
> meaning and go off and check the data. They go off and find many
> phrases like:
>
> What bad education standards they have in Herts!
> What bad education standards they have in schools these days!
> What bad education methods they employ!
>
> Having analysed the data they see that the meaning of 'what bad
> manners' fits the context well and apart from one
> or two difficult examples they conclude that this is the correct
> meaning. Their work gets published and for generations is taught as
> well accepted scholarly work.
>
> A young student with little experience with English, but good
> linguistic instincts comes along and feels that the
> accepted view just doesn't feel right. He finds it difficult to
> reconcile this idea with the examples where, according to
> him, the context demands the idea of 'accademic schooling' to be
> understood. He is abruptly laughed out of class
> and fails his exams for agreeing with the scholarly concensus which
> is firmly based on the majorit of extant
> examples and a well attested cognate proof.
> Undettered he goes home and takes it upon himself to compare every
> extant example of the phrase and to put his
> theory to the test. After seeing that his interpretation fits every
> single occurence of the phrase and also seems to
> throw a clearer light on previously misunderstood examples. Not
> wanting to jump the gun he tries to prove his
> theory wrong but the more he does so the more his good linguistic
> instincts show him that his first instincts were
> right.
> As a last shot he searches throught the archives of italian
> literature and stumbles across an overlooked rosetta
> stone. He finds two parrallel newspaper articles talking about the
> increasing bad manners of youngsters with
> each passing generation. He notices that the term used in the
> italian version is 'maleducazione' where English
> talks of 'bad manners'. He now feels that he has conclusively
> gathered enough evidence to show that the
> 'scholars' got it wrong.
>
> He tries to publish his work but everyone ignores him. Why???
> Because he didn't get his degree!!! Why didn't he
> get his degree??? Because he didn't blindly agree with the
> 'scholarly' concensus.
>
> He decides to publish his work on public forums hoping to get a
> warmer welcome and bumps into a well lettered
> scholar. The well lettered scholar digs up a paper that comments on
> the newspaper articles and puts it down to
> idioma in an isolated example and challenges the youngster to prove
> that it is not just an isolated example of an
> idiom. The youngster insists that he needn't but the 'scholar'
> retorts immediately that as he is the one going against
> the 'scholarly' concensus the owness of proof is on him. The
> majority of the forum is impressed by the 'scholar's'
> resourcefulness and familiarity with 'scholarly' works and pays no
> heed to the enthusiastic youngster with no degree.
>
> Sound familiar?
_____________

It sounds to me like a highly improbable story which you have concocted
to justify yourself. I don't believe your complaint that you would have
had to compromise your beliefs. That's . . . (ummm) HOGWASH!

george
gfsomsel
___________




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