Thursday, January 8, 2009
Arts Two Quick Thoughts
Posted by Charles Mudede on Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:36 PM
1)
What we don't have yet in the world is an explanation for the vowel shift that separates us from the world of Chaucer. Without this shift, Canterbury Tales would be an easy read. But why did this shift happen? What force was behind it? Urbanization? War? Technology? The climate? A change in the diet? It's amazing that there's no hard answer for one of the most spectacular cultural events in our language.
2) Foucault pointed out that, as an institution, the fundamental structure of science is constantly changing. One day, this is the paradigm; the next day, it is something else. Yet the institution of marriage has remained the same for over a thousand years. Why doesn't the structure of marriage change as often and radically as that of science? Indeed, if permitted to marry, gays would not revolutionize the institution but reinforce its core values. Gays would add even more life to this old institution.
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1
I don't have theknowledge to comment on point 1, but I don't there there's a single part of point 2 that isn't wildly inaccurate.
Major shifts in scientific paradigms are very rare, particularly within any single field and last I checked marriage isn't so much about aquiring property as is was 1K years ago.
Major shifts in scientific paradigms are very rare, particularly within any single field and last I checked marriage isn't so much about aquiring property as is was 1K years ago.
3
I would much rather struggle to understand a few old works like Chaucer than find myself bewildered by the vastly larger body of English written since then. Without the vowel shift I bet I couldn't follow one word of what I've just written.
4
Yet the institution of marriage has remained the same for over a thousand years.
No it hasn't.
"Marriage, a History" by Stephanie Coontz. Penguin Books.
No it hasn't.
"Marriage, a History" by Stephanie Coontz. Penguin Books.
6
1. You're right. That vowel shift is hard to wrap your head around. The difference between Chaucer and Shakespeare is remarkable. How is it that the language changed so profoundly between roughly 1400 C.E. and 1580 C.E., but from 1580 to the present day hasn't very much? We can understand Shakespeare with little effort, but Chaucer hurts.
Could it be the French influence on the language? Certainly in Chaucer's time the upper classes were still speaking French, so could their vowels have had a trickle-down effect?
2. #4 is right.
Could it be the French influence on the language? Certainly in Chaucer's time the upper classes were still speaking French, so could their vowels have had a trickle-down effect?
2. #4 is right.
7
1: Major sound shifts like this happen periodically in the history of every language (another big example is the consonant shift that distinguishes High German from the other Germanic languages: it took place around the 8th-9th centuries).
I don't think there are specific explanations for any particular sound shift, other than the general observation that over long periods of time languages are unstable. I have read that sound shifts initially take place among children who are in the process of language formation, and who somehow hear the speech around them differently from adults.
2. I think you are exaggerating the stability of the institution of marriage.
I don't think there are specific explanations for any particular sound shift, other than the general observation that over long periods of time languages are unstable. I have read that sound shifts initially take place among children who are in the process of language formation, and who somehow hear the speech around them differently from adults.
2. I think you are exaggerating the stability of the institution of marriage.
8
The Canterbury Tales were written in Middle English, not English. The evolution from Middle English to what we consider "modern" English can't be whittled down to mere "vowel shifts," Charles. There are several minor incarnations separating them. They are related, but distinct, languages.
You may as well ask how Latin turned into Italian, or Spanish, or any of the Romance languages. There's any number of factors that contributed, and it's not like it happened overnight.
"Spectacular cultural event"? No. Natural progression of an inherently mutable medium? Yes.
You may as well ask how Latin turned into Italian, or Spanish, or any of the Romance languages. There's any number of factors that contributed, and it's not like it happened overnight.
"Spectacular cultural event"? No. Natural progression of an inherently mutable medium? Yes.
9
Charles, I'm just curious what you meant by your point #2. As everyone else has pointed out, the institution of marriage has obviously evolved over time (property rights, arranged marriages, marriages for love, etc.). You're a smart guy, so I'm assuming you realize this... are we to take your point #2 a different way?
10
I vote for the Plague: "some theories attach the cause [of the Great Vowel Shift] to the mass immigration to the south east of England after the Black Death, where the difference in accents led to certain groups modifying their speech to allow for a standard pronunciation of vowel sounds. The different dialects and the rise of a standardised middle class in London led to changes in pronunciation, which continued to spread out from that city.
The sudden social mobility after the Black Death may have caused the shift, with people from lower levels in society moving to higher levels (the pandemic also hit the aristocracy)."
Since nausea was one symptom of the Black Death, you might say the cause of the Great Vowel Shift was the Great Bowel Shift.
The sudden social mobility after the Black Death may have caused the shift, with people from lower levels in society moving to higher levels (the pandemic also hit the aristocracy)."
Since nausea was one symptom of the Black Death, you might say the cause of the Great Vowel Shift was the Great Bowel Shift.
11
ditto on the Foucault was an idiot theme.
And multiple dittos re marriage.
There is no such thing as the "institution of marriage." Even more, the idea that marriage hasn't changed in a thousand years is rubbish.
Spend a half hour reading any intro to anthropology text book written in the past 75 years and you will be richly rewarded.
Charles, you clearly have slighted Engels in your reading. He did a marvelous analysis of how industrialization was killing the traditional family and was leading to the rise of (gasp, horrors) the nuclear family.
Marriage as most folks in the west know it is less than 200 years old. And for most of the world, doesn't exist.
And multiple dittos re marriage.
There is no such thing as the "institution of marriage." Even more, the idea that marriage hasn't changed in a thousand years is rubbish.
Spend a half hour reading any intro to anthropology text book written in the past 75 years and you will be richly rewarded.
Charles, you clearly have slighted Engels in your reading. He did a marvelous analysis of how industrialization was killing the traditional family and was leading to the rise of (gasp, horrors) the nuclear family.
Marriage as most folks in the west know it is less than 200 years old. And for most of the world, doesn't exist.
12
In defense of Foucault, I think Charles has wildly misrepresented his perspective on scientific institutions -- in fact I challenge Charles to come up with a passage in any of Foucault's work where he says that "the fundamental structure of science is constantly changing." That's simply a gross misreading of The Birth of the Clinic, or The Order of Things -- I don't even know where Charles getting that from. Maybe Slog readers shouldn't assume that Charles is the best authority of Foucault before they bash him.
The idea of scientific progress as a shift in paradigms doesn't come from Foucault anyway, it's from Thomas Kuhn's 1962 classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And Kuhn doesn't say that these shifts occur over night, or constantly, but take place over the course of centuries.
The idea of scientific progress as a shift in paradigms doesn't come from Foucault anyway, it's from Thomas Kuhn's 1962 classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And Kuhn doesn't say that these shifts occur over night, or constantly, but take place over the course of centuries.
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