Subject
Re: more serendipities
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On 4/11/06 22:54, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Someone in our List asked me about the meaning of "apud" I often add when
> referring to an author's quotes. To my surprise I couldn't find entries for it
> in the dictionaries I consulted and neither Wikipedia and other on-line tools
> in English were of help.Finally I tracked an example for its use ( as the one
> I had in mind) by Thomas Carlyle.
> //snip
> ... was the saying of an ancient sage (Gorgias Leontinus, apud Aristotles
> Rhetoric, lib. iii. c. 18), that humour was the only test of gravity, and
> gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery was suspicious;
> and a jest which would not bear a serious examination was certainly false
> wit.Ibid. sect. 5.
>
> I always thought that "apud", in English texts, was regularly used. "Sorry, my
> latinism is showing"...
> Jansy
> .
> Jansy: I too enjoyed an early (1941-7) exposure to the Latin¹ -- back then,
> it was compulsory for the Open Entrance Scholarhips to Oxbridge *. O Tempus
> F**kit. One possible reason apud¹ has not survived as sturdily as other Latin
> editorial apparati (i.e., i.e. [id est]; viz. [videlicet]; q.v. [quod vide];
> ibid. [ibidem]; sic; et al. [et allii/et alliae/et allia] **; etc. [et
> cetera]; etc!) could be that apud¹ (also spelled aput¹) is one of those
> excessively ambiguous prepositions (not that the Englih have any right to
> complain):
> at; by; near; with; among; in; before; at the home of; in the time ofl; and
> FINALLY: in the works of!
>
> * This applied to all candidate streams: classics, modern
> languages/literature, history, science, mathematics. I mean to check if VN and
> his brother had to take any Entrance Exams for admission to Cambridge. Speak
> Memory¹ doesn¹t seem to mention such hurdles, and I don¹t have Brian Boyd¹s
> earlier bio [VNTRY] at hand. It¹s unlikely that VN or bro,¹ as fee-payers,¹
> needed vetting-in-Latin¹ in the 1920s.
>
** A point for doryphores: the abbreviation ibid.¹ needs the .¹
but some wrongly write et. al.¹ as if et¹ were also an abbrev. which it
ain¹t.
> Taking SES¹s advice, may I conflate (it¹s legal between consenting adults)
> comments on another concurrent thread?
>
>
> VERSE or POETRY?
>
> or Uncle Stan¹s Bland Guide to Semantics!
>
> 1. Words usually start life with reasonably narrow, useful semantic spreads.
> Otherwise, they tend to lapse into desuetude. (The Word Museums drip with
> nonce archaisms vainly awaiting transfusions.) Over time and space, the
> meanings of the survivors can & do multiply & shift, usually with no rational
> explanations. Seek meanings from agreed community usage¹ and context¹ -- not
> from sound, shape, spelling, and etymology. Easy for me (or anyone) to say!
> 2. Etymology is to Linguistics as Plumbing is to Hydrodynamics,
> 3. Proof of the quirks & mysteries of semantic shift is the existence of
> thousands of self-antonyms¹ (also called auto-antonyms¹ but avoid Galenus¹s
> confusing antilogy¹ ) -- words which can also validly carry their opposite¹
> meaning (common examples:
> cleft/let/dust/fix/oversight/qualified/ravel/vegetate. They exist in most
> languages. _Apud_: The Computer Contradictionary, SKB, MIT Press, 1995; p. 17;
> the first edition was The Devil¹s DP Dictionary, SKB, McGraw-Hill, 1981).
> These auto-antonyms are supplemented by the weirdness of IRONY. ³Swine! You
> say one thing and mean another!²
> 4. Dictionaries are useful descriptive summaries of past and current
> meanings/usages but even electronic gadgetry (e.g., OED3) cannot fully track
> emerging shifts, volatile jargon, and fly-by-day neologisms. Consult several.
> Use with care.
> 5. The curse of NL (Natural Language): words are defined¹ using other words,
> which are defined¹ using other words ... are there any lexical MONADS or
> atoms¹ that must somehow remain undefined and taken as read?¹ Think of all
> the essential but almost-unnoticed grammatical¹ words that cement the
> concrete words into defining semantic units: if¹ and¹ but¹ some¹ all¹ ...
> and pause to ponder that some languages get by without the¹ a¹ and is!¹ A
> commonsense escape from both monads and infinite regresses &/or endless loops
> (related but distinct concepts) is the patient HUMAN group interaction between
> users and usees¹ (see e.g., Walter Miale¹s helpful enumerational approach:
> offering suggested examples to clarify his own understanding of verse vs
> poetry.)
> 6. The curse¹ can be exaggerated into a deep despair that human-linguistic
> communications are forever doomed and saddled with irreducible ambiguities.
> But we do surprisingly well. My own love-affair with all things Nabokovian
> (extending beyond the teasing texts to the Nansen passport photographs of Vera
> & Dmitri [SM p. 294] would you believe real fireworks are exploding outside?
> remember, remember it¹s the 5th of November chez nous we celebrate the
> evisceration of a guy called Fawkes it¹s the only language these terrorists
> understand) -- but I digress. VN-as-novelist exploits NL¹s ambiguity;
> VN-as-taxonomist strives to conquer NK¹s ambiguity
> 7. Applying these rules¹: VERSE seems to start off as a LINE (based on the
> unit of a turning plough metaphor reminding me of the wonderful
> boustrophedon¹ where you plough/write alternatively from left-to-right and
> right-to-left; time-saving for oxen and serial-printers); whence verse¹ moves
> to a part of a text¹ (e.g., the Biblical Chapter and Verse) or a specific
> physical line of poetry, thence via metonomy to the whole poem. At some stage,
> we see VERSIFYING being applied with a touch of derog. to an activity somewhat
> less skilled than the art of writing poetry. In fact, in the Biblical analogy,
> the Scriptures were divided and numbered not by the inspired [sic] authors but
> by mere VERSIFIERS a boon to the pulpit thumpers. Note a related value
> down-shift: POETESS used to be a natural descriptor for Sappho or Vera N. As
> with AUTHORESS, we now find such gendering distasteful. I also have a feeling
> that POETIZE or even worse, POETICIZING, has grown an offensive aura, although
> my Penguin Dictionary gives them as harmless synonyms for adding a poetical
> quality.¹ We prefer to say that what Poets do is write Poetry¹ -- saying
> that X poeticizes¹ seems as sarcastic as X versifies?¹ Elsewhere, I have
> extended the notion of IRREGULR VERBS:
> I market/you sell/he-she peddles. I extrapolate/you conjecture/he-she guesses.
I write poetry/you versify/he-she raps
Stan Kelly-Bootle
>
>
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> Someone in our List asked me about the meaning of "apud" I often add when
> referring to an author's quotes. To my surprise I couldn't find entries for it
> in the dictionaries I consulted and neither Wikipedia and other on-line tools
> in English were of help.Finally I tracked an example for its use ( as the one
> I had in mind) by Thomas Carlyle.
> //snip
> ... was the saying of an ancient sage (Gorgias Leontinus, apud Aristotles
> Rhetoric, lib. iii. c. 18), that humour was the only test of gravity, and
> gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery was suspicious;
> and a jest which would not bear a serious examination was certainly false
> wit.Ibid. sect. 5.
>
> I always thought that "apud", in English texts, was regularly used. "Sorry, my
> latinism is showing"...
> Jansy
> .
> Jansy: I too enjoyed an early (1941-7) exposure to the Latin¹ -- back then,
> it was compulsory for the Open Entrance Scholarhips to Oxbridge *. O Tempus
> F**kit. One possible reason apud¹ has not survived as sturdily as other Latin
> editorial apparati (i.e., i.e. [id est]; viz. [videlicet]; q.v. [quod vide];
> ibid. [ibidem]; sic; et al. [et allii/et alliae/et allia] **; etc. [et
> cetera]; etc!) could be that apud¹ (also spelled aput¹) is one of those
> excessively ambiguous prepositions (not that the Englih have any right to
> complain):
> at; by; near; with; among; in; before; at the home of; in the time ofl; and
> FINALLY: in the works of!
>
> * This applied to all candidate streams: classics, modern
> languages/literature, history, science, mathematics. I mean to check if VN and
> his brother had to take any Entrance Exams for admission to Cambridge. Speak
> Memory¹ doesn¹t seem to mention such hurdles, and I don¹t have Brian Boyd¹s
> earlier bio [VNTRY] at hand. It¹s unlikely that VN or bro,¹ as fee-payers,¹
> needed vetting-in-Latin¹ in the 1920s.
>
** A point for doryphores: the abbreviation ibid.¹ needs the .¹
but some wrongly write et. al.¹ as if et¹ were also an abbrev. which it
ain¹t.
> Taking SES¹s advice, may I conflate (it¹s legal between consenting adults)
> comments on another concurrent thread?
>
>
> VERSE or POETRY?
>
> or Uncle Stan¹s Bland Guide to Semantics!
>
> 1. Words usually start life with reasonably narrow, useful semantic spreads.
> Otherwise, they tend to lapse into desuetude. (The Word Museums drip with
> nonce archaisms vainly awaiting transfusions.) Over time and space, the
> meanings of the survivors can & do multiply & shift, usually with no rational
> explanations. Seek meanings from agreed community usage¹ and context¹ -- not
> from sound, shape, spelling, and etymology. Easy for me (or anyone) to say!
> 2. Etymology is to Linguistics as Plumbing is to Hydrodynamics,
> 3. Proof of the quirks & mysteries of semantic shift is the existence of
> thousands of self-antonyms¹ (also called auto-antonyms¹ but avoid Galenus¹s
> confusing antilogy¹ ) -- words which can also validly carry their opposite¹
> meaning (common examples:
> cleft/let/dust/fix/oversight/qualified/ravel/vegetate. They exist in most
> languages. _Apud_: The Computer Contradictionary, SKB, MIT Press, 1995; p. 17;
> the first edition was The Devil¹s DP Dictionary, SKB, McGraw-Hill, 1981).
> These auto-antonyms are supplemented by the weirdness of IRONY. ³Swine! You
> say one thing and mean another!²
> 4. Dictionaries are useful descriptive summaries of past and current
> meanings/usages but even electronic gadgetry (e.g., OED3) cannot fully track
> emerging shifts, volatile jargon, and fly-by-day neologisms. Consult several.
> Use with care.
> 5. The curse of NL (Natural Language): words are defined¹ using other words,
> which are defined¹ using other words ... are there any lexical MONADS or
> atoms¹ that must somehow remain undefined and taken as read?¹ Think of all
> the essential but almost-unnoticed grammatical¹ words that cement the
> concrete words into defining semantic units: if¹ and¹ but¹ some¹ all¹ ...
> and pause to ponder that some languages get by without the¹ a¹ and is!¹ A
> commonsense escape from both monads and infinite regresses &/or endless loops
> (related but distinct concepts) is the patient HUMAN group interaction between
> users and usees¹ (see e.g., Walter Miale¹s helpful enumerational approach:
> offering suggested examples to clarify his own understanding of verse vs
> poetry.)
> 6. The curse¹ can be exaggerated into a deep despair that human-linguistic
> communications are forever doomed and saddled with irreducible ambiguities.
> But we do surprisingly well. My own love-affair with all things Nabokovian
> (extending beyond the teasing texts to the Nansen passport photographs of Vera
> & Dmitri [SM p. 294] would you believe real fireworks are exploding outside?
> remember, remember it¹s the 5th of November chez nous we celebrate the
> evisceration of a guy called Fawkes it¹s the only language these terrorists
> understand) -- but I digress. VN-as-novelist exploits NL¹s ambiguity;
> VN-as-taxonomist strives to conquer NK¹s ambiguity
> 7. Applying these rules¹: VERSE seems to start off as a LINE (based on the
> unit of a turning plough metaphor reminding me of the wonderful
> boustrophedon¹ where you plough/write alternatively from left-to-right and
> right-to-left; time-saving for oxen and serial-printers); whence verse¹ moves
> to a part of a text¹ (e.g., the Biblical Chapter and Verse) or a specific
> physical line of poetry, thence via metonomy to the whole poem. At some stage,
> we see VERSIFYING being applied with a touch of derog. to an activity somewhat
> less skilled than the art of writing poetry. In fact, in the Biblical analogy,
> the Scriptures were divided and numbered not by the inspired [sic] authors but
> by mere VERSIFIERS a boon to the pulpit thumpers. Note a related value
> down-shift: POETESS used to be a natural descriptor for Sappho or Vera N. As
> with AUTHORESS, we now find such gendering distasteful. I also have a feeling
> that POETIZE or even worse, POETICIZING, has grown an offensive aura, although
> my Penguin Dictionary gives them as harmless synonyms for adding a poetical
> quality.¹ We prefer to say that what Poets do is write Poetry¹ -- saying
> that X poeticizes¹ seems as sarcastic as X versifies?¹ Elsewhere, I have
> extended the notion of IRREGULR VERBS:
> I market/you sell/he-she peddles. I extrapolate/you conjecture/he-she guesses.
I write poetry/you versify/he-she raps
Stan Kelly-Bootle
>
>
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm