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One day, someday, Dear Faldage, that special day when you are speaking to yourself, ask yourself... What three elements are logically and semantically necessary to delimitate the term "word"? List them. (1) a referent (2) a symbol for the referred. (3) a mind that recognizes the association. Now ask that grumpy Scotch-Irish-German person that lives inside of you this simple question... If we remove a single one of these three elements from the mix do we still have a "word"? Now see how pleasant life is when we all come to an understanding. 
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Well now damnit boys we are speaking English here and the bounds of the English language knows no license. Here music has liberty over meaning and meaning means even better if it can be incorperated into a cute turn of phrase.
Damn we are lucky.
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Are you sure this is "Jer. xv.7", jheem?
You're kidding, right? Sometimes it takes me a moment or two. But the citation of chapter and verse is correct. Anyway, the Hebrew has "I will winnow them with a winnowing fork" and I see that one of the meanings of fan is a machine for winnowing, so I guess King James' committee of translators got it right.
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Personally, I think discussions about grammatical rules at this literary elevation are about as useful as comparisons of a turboprop with an F16.
Sorry to have bothered you, but I thought the original posting asked a question about whether the noun diaspora could modify the noun Moroccans. I could be wrong, I probably am, or I could be digressing, but heck, that's pretty much SOP aboard the good ship HMS AWADtalk. Folks purdy much talk about what they feel like talking about.
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Rules of grammar are made to be broken by accomplished writers with the talent and boldness to transcend traditional limits, not so much by breaking the rules as by breaking new ground ... just as a figure skater breaks new ground landing the first "quadruple".
Well I agree with you, being a "descriptivist" rather than a "prescriptivist" when it comes to grammar in general.
Some will take it as instructive, myself included, that the editors of the American Heritage Dictionary cited as a leading example of this usage, a usage which precisely mirrors Lawrence Wright's usage, to wit: "West African diaspora" - "Morrocan diaspora".
I disagree. That example, "West African diaspora" uses an adjective (West African) to describe the noun (diaspora). In fact it would have been better if Wright had said "Morrocan dispora." What he wrote was "diaspora Moroccans." My gripe is due in part to the fact that Wright could have used a simpler and more direct term: immigrants.
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that grumpy Scotch-Irish-German personDear amemeba: Speaking as one with Scottish ancestors, I protest your imputation of Faldage's temperment to his Scotch-Irish-German forebears. You could throw in a whole stew of far-flung nationalities and there would still be no accounting for it.
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Sorry to have bothered you
You didn't "bother" me, jheem.
I simply expressed the personal opinion that such discussions are not "useful" when we are scrutinizing the articulations of an accomplished writer whose articulations are more worthy of emulation than quibbles.
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My gripe is due in part to the fact that Wright could have used a simpler and more direct term: immigrants.Since you are a "descriptivist", and not a "prescriptivist", our differences are not ideological, and that is certainly a relief, AW. Still, I can't agree that "immigrant Morroccan" means the same thing as "diaspora Morroccan". An "immigrant" is one who emigrates, usually alone or with their family, to make a new life in a new country offering new opportunities for individual advancement. A "diasphora" is an entire community of people who feel stigmatized as a community in their homeland. They emigrate to escape persecution. A good example, I suggest, is the Quakers who landed on Plymouth Rock. BTW I do not think there is any qualitative difference between "diaspora Morroccans" and "Morroccan diaspora".
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I simply expressed the personal opinion that such discussions are not "useful" when we are scrutinizing the articulations of an accomplished writer whose articulations are more worthy of emulation than quibbles.
OK, just wanted to make sure the linguistics horseflies weren't goading you. Now that I know I can adjust my behavior accordingly. For the record I never said anything about the writer of the phrase "diaspora Moroccans". But perhaps that's a quibble.
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OK, just wanted to make sure the linguistics horseflies weren't goading you.
I don't consider you a "linguistic horsefly", jheem ... particularly since you and I are in full agreement [and have been from the outset]:
"just two nouns (in compound) the first modifying the second, like arthritis sufferer ... It's a pretty common phenomenon. I'd find diasporic or diasporal Moraccans to be less satisfactory than diaspora Moroccans."
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come to an understanding
I thank you, amilœba, for at least attempting to supply a definition. It's more than I've gotten from anyone else.
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_____________________________________________________ I thank you, amilœba, <- spelling error) for at least attempting to supply a definition. It's more than I've gotten from anyone else.____________________________________________________ And thank you too Faldage, your kindness is exceeded only by your charming ability to equivocate. Now will you please stop indulging my bruised ego and answer the question at hand... (1)A referent
(2) a symbol for the referent
(3) an entity that can perceive the association. Are these the delimitating components of a "word"? Can you name any other qualities that might further delimitate this definition and still have universal application for all words; even those spoken on Mars and the Moon?
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Still, I can't agree that "immigrant Morroccan" means the same thing as "diaspora Morroccan". Just to clarify -- I don't think they mean the same thing, I just think that "Morroccan immigrants" would have been more appropriate.
An "immigrant" is one who emigrates, usually alone or with their family, to make a new life in a new country offering new opportunities for individual advancement ...which, I gather from reading the argument, applies to the vast majority of Muslims who have moved to Spain and other European countries.
A "diasphora" is an entire community of people who feel stigmatized as a community in their homeland. They emigrate to escape persecution. ...yes but I don't see how this applies to Morroccan immigrants or even the occasional individual Morroccan refugee seeking asylum for some particular reason. But then again I am ignorant of the sociopolitical details of Morroccan life.
BTW I do not think there is any qualitative difference between "diaspora Morroccans" and "Morroccan diaspora". I think the former refers to a more finite number of individuals who belong to a larger group, which is described as a whole by the latter term. But we are picking at nits! I propose that we all meet at The Algonquin for drinks tonight at 7:00.
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I apologize, ayouyouba. Your definition is attually® quite good. I only object to your inclusion of such things as traffic lights as words. Of course, that's a pretty fuzzy area, since a good definition would somehow have to differentiate between a red traffic light and the ASL sign for "stop!"
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>good definition would somehow have to differentiate between a red traffic light and the ASL sign for "stop!"
Or, indeed between a red traffic light and the sign for "stop!" in any SL.
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>..differentiate between a red traffic light and the [A]SL sign for "stop!"
I'd suggest adding something along these lines:
4) an entity that can communicate the association
(tricky, that.)
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_______________________________________________________ I'd suggest adding something along these lines: 4) an entity that can communicate the association. ___________________________________________________ I don't know, tsuwm, but I can see how the addition of a communicator could sharpen the distinction between an accidental environmental association such as a photographic, and therefore symbolic, representation of a nubile and nude female form when seen by a hot-blooded adolescent male, as compared with the more word-like allusions to the circumstances of human coupling that can be read in Harlequin paperback books of romance. But what happens then to the information laden dance of honeybees? Some biologists consider their dance much more than just math or mere words, some consider their elaborate wiggling display which gives detailed account about the world around them, a virtual language. Who here is the origional communicator? Another pertinent point... Can a real object "symbolize" another real object such as the natural association of Mount Fuji with the nation of Japan? If so then is "Mount Fuji" a word? ( I refer, of course, to the physical reality of the mountain and not the mountain's name) And is Pavlof's bell a word or just an expectant ring? (I just threw that in.)
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If Mt Fuji is a word, then I demand to know its antonym.
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What is a word?
1) It's that thing, what you look it up in the dictionary, and you say it to people and they might get mad or they might look it up in the dictionary or maybe if you spelled it wrong you could lose points on the essay question or if you say it to your mama she might wash your mouth out with soap. Or else laugh and tell your daddy.
2) It's what the W stands for in AWAD.
Respectfully submitted,
A person whose screen name is a noun modifying another noun, if you choose to write it that way
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I don't see how this applies to Morroccan immigrants or even the occasional individual Morroccan refugee seeking asylum for some particular reason.
You have made your case very persuasively, AW, and it is a thing to be admired on that count alone, whether or not the writer Wright has stretched the meaning of "diasphora" to the point of misuse (as you suggest).
I haven't read Wright's article so I took his usage at face value. I assumed that he was talking about a community of persecuted Morroccans who have left the country on that account as a matter of choice, rather than involuntarily in the case of refugees.
Which raises another question. Where do you draw the line between "refugees" and "diasphora"?
Many, if not most, of the Jews who escaped Hitler's Germany and the Nazi occupation in Europe were quite literally running for their lives, not unlike refugees.
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If Mt Fuji is a word, then I demand to know its antonym.
This might sound like a blinding thrust into the obvious, but a word is anything which is intelligible to the reader or the hearer as a communication with a meaning which is understood, or which is understandable by studying the language or culture of the communicator.
Therefore, "Mt Fuji" is a word, or perhaps two words, and it matters not if it has an antonym or an unclnym. It is a word in any event, or, more precisely, it is two words together producing a name, and that name is a word.
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Which raises another question. Where do you draw the line between "refugees" and "diasphora"? Many, if not most, of the Jews who escaped Hitler's Germany and the Nazi occupation in Europe were quite literally running for their lives, not unlike refugees.
Yeah that's a good question. A diaspora seems to me to describe the movement of a people on a massive scale (the African diaspora), or it can apply to individuals who are part of that movement (including those descended from the translocated individuals). There are ways that diaspora and refugee intersect and ways that they don't. An African slave forcibly shipped overseas is clearly not a refugee, although later they might seek asylum in a free state and become a refugee from slavery.
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re:Many, if not most, of the Jews who escaped Hitler's Germany and the Nazi occupation in Europe were quite literally running for their lives, not unlike refugees.
yeah, but the 'diasphora' of the jews didn't take place in the middle of the last century.. jews leaving eastern europe were refugees.--it might be called a 'modern diasphora' but most don't see it that way.
the diasphora took place long ago, when jews were driven out of traditional homeland on eastern mederterranian. (and end up in places like spain, eastern europe, parts of north africa and else where)
Jerusalum was a capital city of 'jews'(some 3000 to 4000 years ago! --but go back 200 years in times, and area today know as 'isreal' -Jews were in the minority.
there were some jews, many christians, and more muslams. the area was part of turkish (Ottoman) empire.
its a hard case--i know, i have irish citezenship, because irish goverment felt, many irish left ireland not by choice but by economic nessecity.. and they felt they, and their children and their childrens children should not be 'punished'. many jews were forced out of what is now isreal (under threat of death)--many generations ago.
how many generations of force emmigation are needed before the 'forcers' of emigration can say, 'all of the X are gone, and gone for X generations, and now this land is mine, for me and my people(forever!)'?
(a question that could also be asked about northern ireland!)
that's a good deal of what is at the heart of the conflict in mid east. Is the land of Isreal a jewish homeland? or did they 'forfiet it' when they were forced to leave? (and does the group or groups that forced them to leave get to call the land theirs forever? or do they too have to forfiet it if someone forces them out?
same question come up in americas (especially north america)all the time. who owns the land? do the displaced 'first people' have rights to it? and to how much? and can they dislodge current residents (occupiers!) or not?
Many of the first people on north america are gone (intentional and unintentional genocide)--but does that that mean their children, and their children's children still have to forfiet rights to their homelands?
the questions raised by middle east conflict are by no means unusual, or limited to that place! and there are no easy answers--in North america, or in mid east.
(one might say, no matter what happened in past, isreal won right to land in 1948, and has continued over the years to maintain the 'right of ownership'. previous 'owners' aquired the land buy sword, and later generations lost by sword.. and that's the way it goes--basicly, that is what US government/people have done in north america.)
who are the 'rightful people' of UK? picts? are there any left? celts? Angles? Saxons? Danes? 'french Normen'?--(in the future will it be the Pakastanis'? the Jamacains? )
I haven't read article.. and i don't know what is behind Morrccan's leaving (are they being forced, by gun, or economic nessicity, or on religious grounds? or are they chosing to emigrate.? (and what is choice? how bad do things have to be economically to be called force? stavation? or just lower middle class existance?)
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A lot of you have spent a goodly amount of time providing your opinion on this, but seem not to have read the ariticle linked in the original post. (context is meaningful.)
I may be the only one who was bothered by the use of diaspora in the context of this article, but I'd be more willing to accept that if I thought anyone else had read it.
-ron o.
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I may be the only one who was bothered by the use of diaspora in the context of this article, but I'd be more willing to accept that if I thought anyone else had read it.
I read it. So what's your gripe? A quick google around the web shows that many journalists are writing about a kind of Muslim diaspora (Turks, Moroccans, etc.) in Europe, and how various terrorist organizations recruit from young men among them.
The Spanish authorities traced a document found in the van near the Madrid train station to Moroccans living within Spain, longterm: a kind of diaspora.
Is your objection because the diaspora being written about was not Jews, but Muslims? It seems that the meaning of diaspora has extended itself into other ethnicities and religions.
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Is your objection because the diaspora being written about was not Jews, but Muslims?
yep.. and with a terrorist connection at that -- it was the first time I'd seen it used in that sort of context, and I just found it jarring; if it has become commonplace, so be it.
(I guess I'm somewhat surprised, in an age when you can hardly utter once-innocent words such as niggardly, to find somewhat of a counter-example. otoh, there's a completely different mechanism at work.)
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I read it. So what's your gripe? A quick google around the web shows that many journalists are writing about a kind of Muslim diaspora (Turks, Moroccans, etc.) in Europe, and how various terrorist organizations recruit from young men among them.
Well perhaps those journalists have been misusing the word. It seems to me that Middle Easterners, regardless of religion, are moving to Europe by choice to enjoy economic and social advantages of Western culture, just as people in earlier centuries immigrated to the U.S. for economic opportunities. Honestly, I think it's just a P.C.-ism. "Immigrant" is out, and "diaspora" is in because it vaguely smacks of victimhood. Middle Easterners may be leaving behind economic hardship, but things were hardly much worse during the Irish potato famine.
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Honestly, I think it's just a P.C.-ism. "Immigrant" is out, and "diaspora" is in because it vaguely smacks of victimhood. Middle Easterners may be leaving behind economic hardship, but things were hardly much worse during the Irish potato famine.
Which is why folks have written about the Irish diaspora. I didn't say I agreed with it, I said I could understand it in the context. I think it smacks of PC to try to regulate how people use words in general. The original Diaspora to the Persian empire was less a matter of forced removal of Jews from Jerusalem and its environs than the later Roman-induced diaspora as a consequence of the their losing a war of rebellion. That diaspora more to do with Cyrus allowing subjects from different parts of his empire to immigrate to Babylon.
I myself would probably not use the term anyway. As it evokes all kinds of problematic rhetoric.
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Which is why folks have written about the Irish diaspora. I'll drink to that. I think it smacks of PC to try to regulate how people use words in general. Well I hope I'm not "regulating" the use of words -- just offering up my two cents as a lowly reader. As an aside, here's an interesting article on Jews returning to Russia after having previously immigrated to Israel: http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2ED268F8
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here's an interesting article on Jews returning to Russia
Thanks, nice article.
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... things were hardly much worse during the Irish potato famine.There is actually such a thing as "Irish Diaspora Studies." http://www.bradford.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
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________________________________________________________
This might sound like a blinding thrust into the obvious, but a word is anything which is intelligible to the reader or the hearer as a communication with a meaning which is understood, or which is understandable by studying the language or culture of the communicator.
Therefore, "Mt Fuji" is a word, or perhaps two words, and it matters not if it has an antonym or an unclnym. It is a word in any event, or, more precisely, it is two words together producing a name, and that name is a word.
______________________________________________________
So right you really are, wordminstrel, but, arr-uh, your obviousness doesn't translate into the sublime finesse of the hitherto electronic conversation. Namely...
Here we are investigating the extent of word meanings in-as-much as they can confine ( and thereby delimitate definitions in a socratic manner.) Obviousnessly, you can restrict a definition to fit a form that is functional. Semantically.
But...can we invent a form which provides insight into the nature of human communication by the delimiting nature of semantical modeling?
I think we can.
(by-the-way, what is an unclymn?)
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Can a real object "symbolize" another real object such as the natural association of Mount Fuji with the nation of Japan?
If so then is "Mount Fuji" a word?
(I refer, of course, to the physical reality of the mountain and not the mountain's name.)
Therefore, "Mt Fuji" is a word, or perhaps two words
not wanting to signify pedanticism (heaven forfend), but haven't we begged the question?! or something?
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I think not, Mister tsuwm, the question "What is a word" is fundamental to a Judaic Christian understanding of the purpose and make up of the Universe.
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God and the Word was God.
From this it is easy to infer that the Word, or at least a mathematical formula for the existence of a Universe, preceded the Universe.
Inherent in the understanding of any such formula, obviously, is the reason for the existence of all of the contributors to this Awad board; including a tsuwm, a Father Steve, or a lowly ameba, or even a Wordminstriel or a Faldage.
Pedanticism, indeed...Repent!
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Repent!
upon careful consideration, I've decided rather to choose nepenthe; thank you very much.
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One might attempt to wash away that bitterness with a dram or two of old style Absinthe.
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And here I was, content in my misguided, benighted fantasy that the majority of earthlings who were not reared under Judeo-Christian precepts had them some words, too, even if sometimes they look funny.
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Matters of orthodoxy aside, it is interesting that the Book of Genesis describes "The Word" as the thing that precedes all else. Not knowing much about Bible studies, I wonder if this is an accurate translation of the original (Hebrew I assume), or did the original text have a different shade of meaning? I'd love to hear what Father Steve has to say on this.
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No, no. Not Genesis. The first few lines of the first chapter of the Gospel According to Saint John. Not written in Hebrew. Most likely composed in Greek.
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