[Xmca-l] Re: Agent, Range, and Beneficiary

[Martin John Packer]

Right, but my question was whether there is an English version of your translation.

Martin




> On Apr 5, 2016, at 10:41 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Martin:
> 
> No, we use the Russian. There isn't a German text for these lectures: it's
> the 2001 "Lectures on Pedology" which has not been translated into any
> language. I think we're the first, and it's going to be into Korean. My
> Korean is still not publishable, so I use English, that's all. (My English
> isn't really publishable either, but I found somebody who will edit it for
> free.)
> 
> It's true that Vygotsky uses German words when he first introduces the
> concepts: "Eigensinn" for wilfulness and "Trotz alter" for obstinacy. But
> he switches into Russian right away, and a lot of his examples are pure
> Russian (e.g. "Hu da!" for the critical threenager).
> 
> In the second (2001, Korotaeva) lecture,  which he begins by referring back
> to the unfinished work of the first (1984/1998 RCW/ECW) fragment, Vygotsky
> delivers the goods: he really does describe what is new, consider the
> central and peripheral lines of development that leads to it, and give the
> "zone of its proximal development"--that is, its relation to the NEXT zone
> of development (measured in years and not in minutes as is the fashion
> amongst impatient Western scholars).
> 
> This is the clearest example of critical periods as a "turning of the
> tables"--a moment when the child tries to become the SOURCE and not just
> the SITE of development, a moment when the child attempts to substitute his
> own developing volition for the influence of the environment.
> 
> Sorry--I got the title wrong last time. "Agent", "Range", and "Beneficiary"
> are part of Halliday's ergative model, a model which is becoming
> increasingly important in English (and is already very important in
> languages like Chinese). It's a model which gives the "Medium" of a
> process equal importance with the "Process" which unfolds through the
> medium, and in that sense it's quite different from, but complementary to,
> the kind of Subject-Verb-Object transitivity we see in most English
> grammars.
> 
> Compare:
> 
> "He shut the door." (Subject-Verb-Object)
> "The door shut". (Ergative)
> "She boiled the kettle." (Subject-Verb-Object)
> "The kettle boiled." (Ergative)
> 
> Cooking verbs ("The stew boiled"), verbs for operating machinery ("The car
> drives well"), and a wide range of scientific English ("Stalactites form")
> are better analysed ergatively, but pain and disease can be analysed either
> way:
> 
> "I am battling cancer." (SVO)
> "The cancer metastasized." (Ergative)
> "I am having a bad reaction to chemotherapy." (SVO)
> "Chemotherapy really sucks." (Ergative)
> 
> You can see that there are different theories of experience at work: one
> structure is good for emphasizing the role of man acting on an object in
> his environment (the "tool" relation which is placed at the centre of
> activity theory), while the other tends to work through the subject (the
> "internalization" relationship which Vygotsky himself emphasizes). One
> corresponds to the environmentalist, "brainwashing and torture" explanation
> of why 21 Americans didn't return home after the Korean war, while the
> other is much more internal and insidious.
> 
> Both are wrong of course, but that's the way with all these nature/nurture
> explanations: the truth lies beyond both extremes, since neither nature nor
> nurture nor even the two put together can ever give us free will.
> 
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University