Re: [lojban] SAE was lojban and PR

["John E. Clifford" <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

The examples given are from paralinguistic folklore (the 43 words for snow didn't happen to come up).  The pidgin involved is reputedly Anglo-Cantonese from the 19th century.  I don't know any of these languages either, so I have to rely on Whorf, although the Trobriand stuff is probably from Malinowski.  Tok Pisin would perhaps do as well as Chinese, but I don't know enough about to say. (I assume the determine 'pela' is from English "fellow", more or less).  Sad to say, except for being better at Chinese and maybe actually knowing a flux language, this is pretty much what people with opinions on SWH build on.

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On Oct 29, 2011, at 23:56, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:

> On Saturday 29 October 2011 10:42:57 John E Clifford wrote:
>> I see I should have used "allegedly" more freely in that note, especially
>> since this is a "SWH is false" week. I'm not sure what a sentence from each
>> such language would do, but I can cite the standard languages of the
>> various types. The plug-and-socket types are shown by SAE languages,
>> Chinese is usually given as a mass language (individuals as slices of the
>> bulk), Trobriand Island as kind (whole present in all its 'manifestations')
>> is usual.  Whorf's choices for flux languages are Menominee and Hopi.
>> Another type of language often talked about, but rarely (if ever) seen, is
>> the language which takes the world to be mere sense data popping into and
>> out existence instantaneously (maybe a kind of flux language).
> 
> "lo xamgu be lo trobriando cu xamgu lo trobriando vau po'o"
> That was all I knew about Trobrianders until I found out that the island is in 
> the Kula ring (a ring of islands near PNG where jewelries called mwali and 
> soulava are traded in opposite directions). I know nothing of the Trobriander 
> language, Menominee, or Hopi, and just a few smatterings of Chinese.
> 
>> As for missing the class, this stuff is often not in classes (I had courses
>> from both Leonard and Goodman and never saw any calculus of individuals)
>> but in stray reading (xorxes is a pro at this, thank God, so the stuff does
>> get down to us fairly rapidly).  There used to be a course on Whorf at
>> UCLA, though,  whence many of these jokes (although with a Scandanavian
>> like Harry Hoijer it is hard to be sure which ones are the jokes).
>> As for characteristic instances, the Pidjin "one piecee man" does for
>> masses, "gavagai" for kinds, and for processes, the Hopi name for Weeping
>> Springs is literally "flowing downward whitely".  Whether there is anything
>> to all this remains the question (Hoijer's last lecture "Any way you slice
>> it, it's still baloney").
> 
> What pidgin is that? I know a fair bit of Tok Pisin, in which one 
> says "wanpela man". "tu klok" and "tupela klok" are both valid Tok Pisin, but 
> not synonyms; they mean "two o'clock" and "two clocks" respectively. It does 
> have plural number, but not marked on nouns; the plural article "ol" (which 
> also means "they") marks a noun as plural.
> 
> Pierre
> -- 
> .i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do
> .ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga
> .icu'u la ma'atman.
> 
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