I grew up speaking English and Spanish, so from an early age I’ve been forced to appreciate the fact that languages are far from being rigid “codes” in which one set of words simply replace another. Indeed, there is a temptation to go far to the other side, and to assume that the idiomatic parts of language are arbitrary and reflect no underlying truth about the human psyche. But Derek Bickerton’s book Bastard Tongues caused me to think a bit more about language structure. Bickerton has done extensive research into creole languages, and has uncovered a number of striking similarities of usage among disparate creoles which can be explained neither by the parent languages of the creoles, nor by social or literary contact between the various creole areas. So it would appear that we are looking at something deep about the human mind: that even if the specific words are not hardwired into us, and even though we have the capability to learn any language, there are still certain forms that we naturally fall back on when we are forced by circumstance to improvise expressions.
When I look at structural (as opposed to phonetic) similarities between languages, I now pause to wonder whether such a similarity is due to evolutionary forces or to the human mind itself. One such example came to mind as I read Genesis 1.11:
Let the earth bring forth grass . . .
Thinking of what might replace the now-obsolete “bring forth,” the first suitable substitute to come to mind was the verb “produce.” If we break both expressions, there is an interesting resemblance. In English, bring forth is a bit of an odd expression, when we consider that it is derived from bring and forth (synonymous with forward). And the word “produce” comes from the Latin pro (“forward”) and ducere (“to lead”). So for some reason, English has two different ways of saying “produce” which literally derive from the idea of leading forward, even though two different sets of words developed this way. So is this coincidence merely a product of the shared ancestry of English and Latin, or is it something deeper? Perhaps one way to find out would be to see whether other languages, unrelated to English or Latin, have any ways of saying “make” which come from “lead forward.”
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parallelism in english and latin constructions
I grew up speaking English and Spanish, so from an early age I’ve been forced to appreciate the fact that languages are far from being rigid “codes” in which one set of words simply replace another. Indeed, there is a temptation to go far to the other side, and to assume that the idiomatic parts of language are arbitrary and reflect no underlying truth about the human psyche. But Derek Bickerton’s book Bastard Tongues caused me to think a bit more about language structure. Bickerton has done extensive research into creole languages, and has uncovered a number of striking similarities of usage among disparate creoles which can be explained neither by the parent languages of the creoles, nor by social or literary contact between the various creole areas. So it would appear that we are looking at something deep about the human mind: that even if the specific words are not hardwired into us, and even though we have the capability to learn any language, there are still certain forms that we naturally fall back on when we are forced by circumstance to improvise expressions.
When I look at structural (as opposed to phonetic) similarities between languages, I now pause to wonder whether such a similarity is due to evolutionary forces or to the human mind itself. One such example came to mind as I read Genesis 1.11:
Thinking of what might replace the now-obsolete “bring forth,” the first suitable substitute to come to mind was the verb “produce.” If we break both expressions, there is an interesting resemblance. In English, bring forth is a bit of an odd expression, when we consider that it is derived from bring and forth (synonymous with forward). And the word “produce” comes from the Latin pro (“forward”) and ducere (“to lead”). So for some reason, English has two different ways of saying “produce” which literally derive from the idea of leading forward, even though two different sets of words developed this way. So is this coincidence merely a product of the shared ancestry of English and Latin, or is it something deeper? Perhaps one way to find out would be to see whether other languages, unrelated to English or Latin, have any ways of saying “make” which come from “lead forward.”
Related Posts: