[Xmca-l] Re: Отв: Отв: Re: Ilyenkov, Marx, & Spinoza

[Ivan Uemlianin]

Dear David

Thank you for clarification re "blackbird".

I'm afraid I still don't understand your term "natural" (e.g., intonation and stress vary between languages just as do vowels and consonants), but I will try to pick it up.

Best wishes

Ivan


--
festina lente


> On 4 Aug 2017, at 22:27, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks, everybody. Particularly for the Wallace Stevens. My supervisor,
> David Butt, did HIS PhD thesis on the lexicogrammar of Wallace Stevens! At
> first it looks like almost random, "une folie integrale", but when you
> analyze it into clauses, you find it is very finely wrought.
> 
> Vygotsky does talk about tossing coins ("the eagle and the bar" is the
> Russian version of heads and tails, and I gather that means that in the
> 1930s they were still using the one ruble coins of the Tsarist era). It's
> in the context of probability, and I think that the relationship between
> meaning and wording is not random folly, but a natural relationship,
> although to really see the pattern clearly you need to look
> probabilistically, because speakers have free will.
> 
> But the specific examples he uses of "double stimulation" in the second
> chapter of HDHMF are casting lots, tying knots (in your handkerchief, or in
> a quipu) and counting on your fingers. He calls them "rudimentary
> functions", things which once decided life and death questions, public
> executions and tax revenues of empire, but which now stand in the dusty
> corners of the cultural mind, a plaything for children or a way of deciding
> who buys the next round in the pub.
> 
> In Chapter Six (paragraphs 40-42), Vygotsky is talking about the experiment
> of "switching names", something I've been doing with real child siblings.
> In this case, it is calling a crow "pigeon" and a pigeon "crow". He says
> that it is impossible, because it would perturb expressions like "crow
> black" and "pigeon blue". Beyond the phonological system, there is a
> delicate woof and warp of wordings, and these wordings are all
> interdependent, both on each other and on our experiences of nature.
> (Actually, even the phonological system is not completely conventional,
> because of intonation and stress, which are natural. It's only
> articulation--the vowels and consonants that Saussure studied in
> proto-Indoeuropean--that is completely conventional)
> 
> Now, suppose we go one level higher--to meaning. We find that getting
> information from somebody is done through a particular lexicogrammatical
> pattern we call "questioning" while giving them information is done through
> a different pattern called "making statements". These are realized as
> interrogatives and declaratives respectively. Can we replicate Vygotsky's
> experiment here? That is, can we use interrogatives to give information,
> and declaratives to get information? Of course!
> 
> Do you not see how the blackbird
> Walks around the feet
> Of the women about you?
> 
> (That is, "There is a blackbird walking around the feet of the women about
> you.")
> 
> I do not know which to prefer,
> The beauty of inflections
> Or the beauty of innuendoes,
> The blackbird whistling
> Or just after.
> 
> (That is, "Which do I prefer?")
> 
> The relationship of information-getting and asking a question is
> natural--but it's probabilistic, because of human free will. So is the
> relationship between information-giving and making a statement. We can and
> do flout this natural relationship--not just in poetry, but in all kinds of
> "grammatical metaphors", like "Would you mind not cawing?" which is
> actually a command to a child not to yawn, or "Ontogeny recapitulates
> phylogeny", which construes a process as an entity rather than as a
> happening. But just because we have built devices that can flout natural
> laws does nothing to repeal them. Even the wing of the blackbird does not
> abolish atmospheric pressure or gravity, but only uses one to overcome the
> other.
> 
> 
> -- 
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
> 
> "The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit:
> Narrative and Dialogue in Story-telling with
> Vygotsky, Halliday, and Shakespeare"
> 
> Free Chapters Downloadable at:
> 
> https://www.sensepublishers.com/media/2096-the-great-globe-and-all-who-it-inherit.pdf
> 
> Recent Article: Thinking of feeling: Hasan, Vygotsky, and Some Ruminations
> on the Development of Narrative in Korean Children
> 
> Free E-print Downloadable at:
> 
> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/8Vaq4HpJMi55DzsAyFCf/full
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Aug 5, 2017 at 1:50 AM, White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> dear David,
>> 
>> 
>> speaking of blackbirds -
>> 
>> 
>> best,
>> 
>> 
>> phillip
>> 
>> 
>> Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
>> BY WALLACE STEVENS<https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wallace-stevens>
>> I
>> Among twenty snowy mountains,
>> The only moving thing
>> Was the eye of the blackbird.
>> 
>> II
>> I was of three minds,
>> Like a tree
>> In which there are three blackbirds.
>> 
>> III
>> The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
>> It was a small part of the pantomime.
>> 
>> IV
>> A man and a woman
>> Are one.
>> A man and a woman and a blackbird
>> Are one.
>> 
>> V
>> I do not know which to prefer,
>> The beauty of inflections
>> Or the beauty of innuendoes,
>> The blackbird whistling
>> Or just after.
>> 
>> VI
>> Icicles filled the long window
>> With barbaric glass.
>> The shadow of the blackbird
>> Crossed it, to and fro.
>> The mood
>> Traced in the shadow
>> An indecipherable cause.
>> 
>> VII
>> O thin men of Haddam,
>> Why do you imagine golden birds?
>> Do you not see how the blackbird
>> Walks around the feet
>> Of the women about you?
>> 
>> VIII
>> I know noble accents
>> And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
>> But I know, too,
>> That the blackbird is involved
>> In what I know.
>> 
>> IX
>> When the blackbird flew out of sight,
>> It marked the edge
>> Of one of many circles.
>> 
>> X
>> At the sight of blackbirds
>> Flying in a green light,
>> Even the bawds of euphony
>> Would cry out sharply.
>> 
>> XI
>> He rode over Connecticut
>> In a glass coach.
>> Once, a fear pierced him,
>> In that he mistook
>> The shadow of his equipage
>> For blackbirds.
>> 
>> XII
>> The river is moving.
>> The blackbird must be flying.
>> 
>> XIII
>> It was evening all afternoon.
>> It was snowing
>> And it was going to snow.
>> The blackbird sat
>> In the cedar-limbs.
>> 
>>