Conference thebay::joyoflex

    >Orthography recapitulates etymology
    
    Or, as some of the other notes complain,
    
    Orthography capitulates to sociology

          ... and don't worry, I *will,* I *will!!*  :-)  Thanks!

                     ===== begin forwarded mail =====
    Who penned the immortal words "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"?
    The answer is ... (the envelope please) [great fanfare]: Ernest
    Heinrich Haeckel (1834-1919).
    
    And who wrote "Ontology recapitulates philology"?  The answer is:
    James Grier Miller.  (Quoted by Willard Van Orman Quine, in the
    frontispiece to his book "Word and Object".)
    
    Cheers -- Norman
                     ===== end forwarded mail =====
    OK, now would some wiser one explain this to me?  Cheers, Dan

    �    OK, now would some wiser one explain this to me?  Cheers, Dan
    
    Wiser?
    
    I'll explain the bit I understand, to the extent that I understand it.
    
    Ontogeny is the development of a being (Gk o[that's a long one]n).
    Phylogeny is the development of a race (Gk phylos).
    What Haeckel was saying (if you informant is right - which I don't
    doubt) is that an individual, in developing, retraces the developmental 
    path of the race. [Note: I don't think `race' here refers to the
    sort of grouping of racial characteristics that we usually understand 
    as `race', but rather any collection of entities - for example,
    a child might acquire speech sounds in the same order in which
    the language acquired them. {Metanote: this example is completely
    unfounded. It's just an instance of the sort of context in which
    the `o. recap. ph.' tag might be used. I can't think how anything like
    this could be proved. But it's interesting, and not entirely unrelated,
    that a person with a wasting disease that affects speech loses
    speech sounds in the reverse order from the order a first-language-
    acquirer learns them in.}
    ]
    
    b

    ... it was the James Grier Miller quote that I couldn't interpret worth
    a darn.  And, for that matter, my own pseudo-corollary in .5 as well!!
    
    But that was a fascinating tidbit about wasting diseases and the loss
    of phonemes in reverse order...  Possibly because the last-acquired
    required the most muscular and neural complexity (e.g., try to get a
    90-year-old Chemistry Professor to say "phenolphthalein":-)...

    Re .4
    >                 ===== begin forwarded mail =====
    >Who penned the immortal words "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"?
    >The answer is ... (the envelope please) [great fanfare]: Ernest
    >Heinrich Haeckel (1834-1919).
    >
    >And who wrote "Ontology recapitulates philology"?  The answer is:
    >James Grier Miller.  (Quoted by Willard Van Orman Quine, in the
    >frontispiece to his book "Word and Object".)
    >
    >Cheers -- Norman
    >                 ===== end forwarded mail =====
    >OK, now would some wiser one explain this to me?  Cheers, Dan
    
    Sure, which part do you need help with?
    
    >                 ===== begin forwarded mail =====
    >                 ===== end forwarded mail =====
    
    This means that the text in between, but not including, those two lines,
    was received from some third party, not addressed directly to this
    conference, but the poster is only forwarding the contents to us.
    (In this paragraph, "those two lines" means the two rows of text that I
    quoted here, not the equals signs; and the text in between the two lines
    does not mean the words "begin [or end] forwarded mail" which appear in
    between the equals signs.)
    
    >The answer is ... (the envelope please) [great fanfare]: Ernest
    >Heinrich Haeckel (1834-1919).
    
    This means that my namesake is pretending to be a Master of Ceremonies
    at a hypothetical awards meeting.  It also means that someone named
    Haeckel, who died in 1919, first wrote the words "Ontogeny recapitulates
    phylogeny," which did not die in 1919.
    
    Whoops, better quit while I still have my head.
    
    -- Norman

    I don't think you're alone in not undertanding the James Grier Miller
    tag, Dan. I wouldn't be surprised if _he_ didn't either - just making
    the play on sounds (ont => ont, phylo- => philo, geny => logy). Look
    after the sounds and the sense looks after itself - only in this case
    it doesn't, and we're bamboozled into making sense of it.
    
    Your `muscular and neural complexity' idea sounds good, but I'm not
    sure how it fits in with the (dimly remembered) fact that we acquire
    some sounds in an order that doesn't seem to have anything to do
    with complexity - p/b before t/d, t/d before k/g (perhaps this is
    something to do with articulations a child can _see_ being made).
    But, for all I know, consonants articulated further back _may_
    involve increased muscular/neural complexity, just because there's more 
    flesh to move the further in you go.
    
    b
    
    ps for nit-pickerss -
    I'm not impressed by counter-examples like `But _my_ baby son
    called me gaggy'; I'm not talking about random instances of
    consonants that _seem_ to work (for the speaker) - I'm talking
    about learning to use certain sounds systematically.

    re "Ontology recapitulates philology"
    
    Ontology: the study of being
    Philology: the study of langauge
    
    The phrase means "The philosphic topic of 'what is the nature
    of existence?' winds up re-creating the linguistic structures
    and re-capitulating the history of the language used in the
    discussion".
    
    For example, the fact that English (and other languages) allow
    speakers to form nouns from all verbs, combined with the existence
    of a verb "be" allows us to form the noun "being".  If we jump to
    the conclusion that this noun has a referent, then we can have lots
    of fun arguing about the nature of being, whether it is necessary,
    how it differs from non-being and becoming, etc., etc.
    
    There are languages which don't have the verb "be".  They may 
    lead to other philosophical navel-gazings, but they don't lend
    themselves to this particular one.
    
    So it's not only clever, it makes sense.
    
    		-John Bishop

    I was just rereading this string and I re-encountered .8, which was
    imho a masterful job of ... I dunno whattheheck! but I remembered the
    utter confusion that it caused when I first encountered it...  It felt
    a bit like I was going completely bonkers, because the universe of its
    discourse was only tenuously connected to what I was expecting it to
    be.  It took a real effort of will to buckle down & figure out what was
    happening...  Lotsa fun!!  :-)
    
    I guess it's taken me a couple of days to realize what actually
    happened here.  I returned to .8 as if to a nightmare successfully
    resolved, and with the realization that it had been, in its weird way,
    an enjoyable experience!!  Tnx again...  ya nut!  :-)

    A special kind of pun depends on taking things overly literally.

    ... I think I know what you mean -- but I can't dredge up any examples.
    
    However I have little doubt but that Norman, *you* can...  ?
    
    After all, PUNS are the special province of JOYOFLEX and anyone that
    claims knowledge of another lode of the little honeys has to bring a
    couple in to the Claims Office once in a while, just to validate that
    they ain't Fool's Puns...