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Slow to digest, but of durable value... thanks, tsuwm.
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seeing as I got lost in about the second sentence, does he ever explain why the sounds sl and du are the ones that developed to be negative?
formerly known as etaoin...
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Slow to digest, but of durable value
You bein' dissed, tsuwm?
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bein' dissed
Slim chance, ducks.
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Take the Michael ~ mer-oiiiii? :)
As to the argument of the paper, if I understand the outline, his argument is "that the integrated factors of phonetic motivation, psycholinguistic processes and socio-cultural motivation are responsible for the Proteus-like resilience and power of the 'pejorative' sl- schema and the historical localisation of the pejorative du- schema. That is to say, rather than any one of these factors being responsible for schema development, this is a combinatory process."
Or in plainer English, it's a combination of factors based on submorphemic characterisations ~ on which we subsequently accrete a complex association of cultural values. So if two or three words group around a common soundscape and have a similar tonality of meaning or social denotation, it's very likely that other words based on a similar 'scale' will be modulated in their structure to end up according with the same sounds. For example, if you notice (consciously or unconciously register) that words like crack and smack are part of a common family, it's not surprising to find yourself coining a neologism in a comic such as "thwack". [Yeah, I know Michael, it's at this point you tell me the OED cites thwack from about 932AD but :) ]
At least I think this simplification is at the root of the processes the author discusses, which are obviously more subtly examined in all their complexity.
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>it's at this point you tell me the OED cites thwack from about 932AD..
wrong, duack-breath. but it did come along about 1530 ce, as we find Heywood writing, "I shall bete her and thwak her." and the venerable bard, in 1607: Here's he that was wont to thwacke our Generall, Biggus Martius., proving once again that he fronted the blacklisted Julius (Kaiser) Brooks.
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does he ever explain why the sounds sl and du are the ones that developed to be negative? Well first, if you (or anyone) thinks I'm going to actually READ all of something like that, then you have me confused! But, I would venture to guess that nowhere in there does he allege that these are the only two sounds that have, uh, slipped down to the dungeon. (And I'm sure also that he isn't saying that all words with these sounds are pejorative; look at slim and slender, for ex.) I think it makes sense, when you think about it, that images/emotions would come to be associated with certain sounds--that's how we get onomatopoeia, after all. And it only takes a slightly larger stretch of the imagination to think of these same associations carrying over to similar words/sounds. Interestingly enough, I was doing an unrelated search just a little while ago, and came across a post that not only reflects my own mindset, but may even have influenced it (too long ago to remember for sure, Sweetie), and was hoping to find an apt spot to quote it. Here 'tis: What I am moving towards is the general *belief that what distinguishes us at our very core is our tendency to make patterns. This is true of language, true of visual sense, and surely true of the other ways we think, such as forming theories. We tend to adopt short-cuts (perception theory is littered with examples of how the brain ‘fools itself’) and discard material that doesn’t sit happily with our frame of reference – because ultimately it is not the veracity but the aesthetics of the pattern that counts to a key part of our imagination!
As a matter of fact I believe this is what John Keats means by “beauty is truth…” http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=7585
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thank you, mav and Jackie. I think that's what I was thinking. no, really.
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'Course you were, Honey!
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