Notes
- p.2
language/dialogue - opening yourself up, therefore the powerful are silent
- p.5
bourgeoisie language - argument forms direct - few subordinate clauses - "hypotaxis to parataxis"
- p.13
richness of primitive language
- p.15
Darwin and relation between high/low race (!)
- p.16
dolphins lucky not have opposable thumb (because language plus thumb leads to oppression)
- p.17
Vandals, Huns and Mongols destroyed Middle Eastern and Asian civilisations (AC suggests reason for European pre-eminence)
- p.19
"modern man is moving swiftly to plain language, reduced vocabulary and an absence of memory"
- p.25
language verb/object order and Gaelic special case for "to be"
- p.25
"Reason … is probably something that is taught, whereas language is universal …"
- p.26
unique qualities of humanity - walking and talking
- p.28
Bushmen "Where we die, we die" - sedentary Egyptians needed afterlife journey to make up for those missed in this life
- p.34
language is the history of a people
- p.39
critique if Pinker's 'mentalese'
- p.40/41
problem of translation - uniqueness off languages
- p.41
picture pairing - English and Indonesian tense structures affects pairs
- p.44
quoting Pinker who cites Berlin and Atran - 'universal categories for flora and fauna (me) seems to contradict Lakof
- p.57
"the social mind" - linked through language (c.f. A Mind so Rare)
- p.60
Francis Yates - easier to remember language when associated with images along an itinerary (c.f. Wanderlust - importance of walking!)
- p.61
Galileo "every memory fades if not stimulated by images form the external world"
- p.61/62
- Hasidic story - shortening memories with each generation leading to shortened itineraries ,,, and further from God
- p.63
Zulu - rich and naturally alliterative inflections
- p.63/64
importance of rhetoric
- p.64-67
the power of narrative - woman caught in adultery, Madame Bovary, Garibaldi
- p.69
the tablets in the library of Ninevah crushed beneath the feet of early archaeologist seeking vases and weapons
- p.69
written language "dead" - Sartre "graveyards are peaceful places, and the most pleasant ones are called libraries"
- p.71
"In oral society poetry was both mnemonic and aestheticism…" writing challenges the former
- p.71
"with the invention of writing … the social mind becomes tangible"
- p.71/72
imperialism as simplifier of language (me) in 20th C media!
- p.73
Sartre - reading "an act f generosity" - as reader opens their mind to the author (me) N.B. in Semitic languages also the reader is part of the record as needed to fill in vowels
- p.74
writing and professionalism … but (me) maybe more important to have cast and role in oral tradition where memories persist in people?
- p.74/75
Zhuangzi (about Tao) - reading clogs the brain; Bacon an intellectual, but also early anti-intellectual; Zhuangzi - words dangerous as they lead to action (!)
- p.76
the physicality of libraries - armies can destroy wisdom of centuries in hours - but clay tablets vitrified 9fixed forever) by fire whereas papyrus burns … (me) what of digital media
- p.77/78
bibloclasts (me!) - illiterate and religious
- p.84
radical way to deal with copyright infringement - denounce as heretic
- p.85
physical decay of books - from oral, through writing and pronto to digital media - information must be constantly recreated/re-represented (but information persists in copies)
- p.85
Machiavelli "I was sitting on the bog when they brought me your letter"!
- p.86
- Horace - do not publish for nine years "the word once set forth can never come back" - c.f. Twitter??
- p.87
Doni (1551) "we paper-shitters"
- p.87
empiricism vs literature - Vesalius anatomist "leave your books"
- p.89
imp. of translations of Bible for Slovenian and Welsh compared to Knox's English rather than Gaelic or Scots
- p.93
Dr Johnson - two kinds of knowledge "what we know and what we know how to find out"
- p.95
Donald Macdonald "the English do not have a soul, they have understatement"
- p.96
Latin was a language because "although people disagreed over what correct latin was, they accepted that there was such a thing as correct Latin"
- p.97
Welsh - attempts to eradicate in late 19th C
- p.98
critique of English - fair?
- p.100
language depletion 90% loss by end of century
- p.101
the distinct character of a language
- p.106/107
Tessa Jowell - Gaels not as vociferous as Welsh language movement
- p.123
network effects for English
- p.128 (on)
imp of register - adapting language to context
- p.140
language divides us … but …
- p.141
common language (Serbo-Croat) may intensify misunderstanding (me) sharp distinctions often less problematic than fuzzy boundaries
- p.143
pop music as promulgator of English (trusting future of culture to the teens?)
- p.154
the power of the periphery - Western isles used to be greatest prop. of doctors, lawyers, graduates (me) maybe also revivals and protestant ethic?)
- p.157
human thrive on disorder and chaos but have innate drive to order it
- p.165
"language is a gift from the past"
- [A
Mind so Rare] :author: Merlin Donald :isbn: 0-393-04950-7
- [Wanderlust]
:author: Rebecca Solnit :isbn: 1844675580