[Xmca-l] Re: Vowels Are From Venus

[Ivan Uemlianin]

They are neither antithetical nor couplets. They are both Chinese idioms (成语 chéngyǔ "set phrase") meaning roughly  "superlatively good" (as James wrote).

nb the 青 qīng in the first phrase is better translated into English as blue. 青 is one of those colour terms that can mean green or blue.

Ivan

--
festina lente


> On 29 Oct 2017, at 09:10, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> Thanks David,
> 
> I am always fascinated by insights into how language is used in different ways to nuance and shade meanings.
> 
> Can you explain how these couplets are 'antithetical'? The second one clearly juxtaposes merging and emerging but I was intrigued by how the furnace burning with a pure green hue is seen as an antithesis.
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Rod
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
> Sent: 29 October 2017 00:28
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Vowels Are From Venus
> 
> You notice that James gives us two antithetical couplets, each of four syllables (Chinese, like child protolanguage, doesn't differentiate vowels and consonants).
> 
> 炉火纯青
> 出神入化
> 
> Lú huǒ chún qīng  (the fire of the furnace burns a pure green hue) Chū shén rù huà (The god emerges and merges, comes out and goes in)
> 
> I haven't actually rendered the feeling that a Chinese person feels on hearing these expressions, any more than the words "consummate" or "superb" communicate the thought.
> 
> For one thing, my translation is too labored and literal; a a Chinese person doesn't analyze so literally and the imagery is largley "automatized" rather than visualized.
> For another, the four character line has a history that goes all the way back to the Book of Songs (11th C BCE) and all the way up to the antithetical couplets peasants put on their doorways as Spring Festival in the the countryside
> 
> (But James is right: the idea of antithetical couplets is a kind of natural dialectic built into the Chinese language.
> Somedays, like today, I find it that it influences the way I write in
> English.)
> 
> David Kellogg
> 
> 
> 
>> On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 6:21 AM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I often find it interesting to read David’s words, good and catalytic
>> to me.
>> 
>> I’ve been working on the Peirce-Vygotsky project and Peirce’s idea of
>> final logical interpretant which I take to be a qualitative
>> transformation, perhaps equivalent to “a dialectical leap”. To me,
>> this transformation is not only attributable to an accrued
>> quantitative change but also bears itself the heritage of all the
>> earlier qualitative changes. So, the resultant final logical
>> interpretant encapsulates both qualitative and quantitative changes.
>> 
>> By the way, on the face of it, “a dialectical leap” is a more
>> congenial and customary concept to most Chinese people (from Mainland)
>> due to historical reasons.
>> 
>> In a stage drama, I agree with David that an actor’s privileged access
>> is a real problem for him. This privileged access will have to be
>> calibrated or attuned to a dialectical leap in such a way that the
>> actor needs to make a choice from the plenitude of signs that are
>> constantly on the move both consciously and subliminally. However, in
>> the case of Peking opera, a dialectical leap is far more complex since
>> there is more to it. The actor is involved in an organic combination
>> of vocal performance, acrobatics and dance etc. Perhaps, dialectical
>> leap is not quite a right word to reflect what is perceived as the
>> essence of Peking opera: 炉火纯青 consummate, and 出神入化
>> superb.
>> 
>> James
>> 
>> 
>> *James Ma*  *https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
>> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>   *
>> 
>> 
>>> On 28 October 2017 at 00:26, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I've always been restless with the idea that language is a
>> self-organizing
>>> system, or that it has a "fractal" structure in the sense of the
>>> "self-similarity" we find in a fern leaf--the same structure at
>>> every level. I suppose my impatience is ideological: I believe
>>> language organization is semantically driven (and semantic structure
>>> is a realization/transformation of some of the structures found in contexts).
>> So
>>> I don't think that vowels and consonants organize themselves into
>> syllables
>>> without human intentions, nor do I think that syllables will form
>>> words unless somebody makes them do it. As for grammar, it seems to
>>> me that to expect that even the very limited grammar found in this
>>> paragraph you are reading should somehow be "thrown up" by the words
>>> I am using and their elective affinities is a little like expecting
>>> medieval cathedrals to be thrown up by the mutual attraction of the stones that compose them.
>>> 
>>> Yes, I know. Consonants are what happen in the absence of vowels (at
>>> the ends of vowel phrases). Vowels are what happen at the ends of consonants.
>>> As soon as you have breath, vocal cord vibration, and a beginning
>>> and an end to it, you have the primitive structure (Optional
>>> Consonant)
>> Mandatory
>>> Vowel (Optioinal Consonant), and from this we can derive all the
>>> possible syllable structures of any language. You can do the same
>>> trick at any
>> level
>>> of language: If you have a morpheme like "work" or "play" you can
>>> add a bound morpheme to either end ("re~" and/or "~ed"),and if you
>>> have a
>> clause
>>> like "Work!" you can add a bound clause to either end ("If you are
>>> so willing~" and/or "so as to enrich yourselves!") and the existence
>>> of xmca itself shows how this principle works on units above the
>>> clause--Mike's last post is not really intelligible without my
>>> preceding one, and mine
>> is
>>> not really intelligible without James's, etc.
>>> 
>>> But I'm not talking about the various forms of language, potential
>>> and real; these are of course the affordances of the stuff of which
>>> language
>> is
>>> made, just as the limits of what you can do on a canvas has
>>> something to
>> do
>>> with the consistency of the paint. I'm talking about what people
>>> actually do and not just what they may or might do. So for example
>>> when we look at "To be or not to be" or at the speeches we find in
>>> "Shajiabang" or even,
>> as
>>> Mike suggests, at the language of everyday life, we find that vowels
>>> tend to carry the feeling of what we say (that's why they are
>>> elongated in tonics and why they are directed in tonality).
>>> Consonants, on the
>> other
>>> hand, work better for the nuances of thinking. That's why we sing
>>> the vowels, but spell with consonants; why Ophelia says "Oh what a
>>> noble mind is here o'erthrone!" but Hamlet says "Nymph, in thy
>>> orisons be all my
>> sins
>>> remembered!". And so once again we find that feeling and thinking
>>> are
>> both
>>> linked and distinct, to say the which is surely to say no more and
>>> no
>> less
>>> than to say that they are joined/separated by a dialectical leap.
>>> 
>>> David Kellogg
>>> 
>> 
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