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Re: [xmca] a Russian noun

I speak only of "unit" (as opposed to element) here, Achilles. Unity is something else, in fact unity implies a distinction!
As to decomposition, that can be an ambiguous question. The molecule can be further decomposed, into atoms, but only molecules are the units of physical chemistry, not atoms. Vygotsky says the unit cannot be further decomposed, and I agree with him in the above sense. 

Andy



Achilles Delari Junior wrote:
Sorry, is very difficult to talk about this questions (because I am not English speaker), but was not "it was the 'only one' (definite)" but "it was NOT the 'only one' (definite)" when I was trying to talk about articles uses with the Portuguese correspondent to English "experience"... Achilles. 

From: achilles_delari@hotmail.com
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: [xmca] a Russian noun
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:26:08 +0000








Thank you, Andy,

I wonder I understood better now.
In Portuguese is not the same. If I translate "uma unidade" (an unit, maybe) this can means "one unit among others", but if I translate "a unidade" (the unit), this will sounds as "the only one unit". We here call "definite article" (o/a; os/as) or "indefinite article" (um/uma, uns/umas), and I understand this is not the same distinction contable/uncontable, perhaps in portugues this "uncontable", occurs without articles. For us "experiência" ("experience") could be a general concept, uncontable, but we can say "Eu tive uma boa experiência" (I had a good experience?) = a contable... it was singular, for instance "to stay at Foz do Iguaçu Falls with family in last summer" - this was "uma boa experiência" (a good experience), it was the "only one" (definite), but seems to be "contable"... 
We have another problem here in Brazil, because from Russian to Portuguese, at least two different words can be translated as "experiência" (experience) = "perezhivanie", but also "opit". A Russian friend of mine, understand the all perezhivanie are opit, but not all opit are perezhivanie... Maybe for English this could be considered too... Perezhivanie in some aspects can be broader than your English "experience", but in other aspects your English "experience" can be broader than "perezhivanie" too... - "Broader" in "generalization degree", but not necessarily in "semantic field" and/or "objectal references" ("concrete contend") - if you use Vygotsky's terms from chapter 6 (Though an language) to the "system of coordinates" of a concept... But I guess some indistinction in translate equally "perezhivanie" and "opit" as "experience" in English and "experiência" in Portugueses, causes some problems too... Beyond this, sometimes you will find "perezhivanie" translated only

as  "emotion" too... what for me is not very appropriate...


But your question is different and I understand more philosophical, deeper question than my observations. Because if "Expecience is a unity of consciousness" can not have sense in English, maybe another word but "experience" must be used, because "perezhivanie" is a unit [edinitsa] of consciousness for LSV. There is also a difference between "unit" (edinitsa) and "unity" (edinstvo) in Vygotsky... what is very interesting too, because you can decompose a "unity" (edinstvo) into "units" (edinitsi) or in "elements" (this is what Vygotsky do not want to do), but a "unit" can not be decomposed more, a unit is un-decomposable dynamic reality... "Perezhivanie" is a methodological unit (edinitsa) for understand the whole consciousness "unity" (edinstvo). Somewhere in Vygotsky's texts I found "edinstvo" as "complex unity", and edinitsa as "simple unit"... I guess I can localize in English if could be usefu. But I saw only in Russian/Spanish-Portuguese, until now.

Achilles.


Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:42:15 +1000
From: ablunden@mira.net
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: [xmca] a Russian noun
Yes, I knew that articles were alien to the Russian language Achilles, but as you know, when a thought is translated into English, the problem arises and has to be resolved correctly, otherwise meaning is lost or distorted.
"Word meaning is a unit" doesn't have an article either, but the meaning is clear nonetheless because words are discrete entities in any case. "audio stream meaning" would be something quite different from "word meaning" for example.
"Experience is a unit" is senseless in English, because "experience" (same "emotional experience" or "lived experience") when used without the article, in English, is a mass noun, like "life" or "presence"; "experience" is not a unit; "episode" or "encounter" might be, but they take an indefinite article normally. So the sentence fails to convey the meaning. It sounds as if the claim is simply that experience is the subject matter, because "unit" clashes with "experience" and the reader's mind has to make some kind of correction.
The several overlapping translation problems around the word perezhivanie, which have been the subject matter of a number of xmca discussions, really compound one another, don't they. I believe I understand the word and I believe there is no satisfactory English equivalent, but the article should be used in this context. 

Andy


Achilles Delari Junior wrote:
See, Andy, 
This is not only for "perezhivanie":

"Grammar - Other: Russian has no articles. This causes significant problems because the whole concept of article use is alien to Russian learners of English, and the English article system itself is extremely complex."
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/russian.htm

or

"There are no definite or indefinite articles in the Russian language. The sense of a noun is determined from the context in which it appears. That said, there are some means of expressing whether a noun is definite or indefinite. They are:The use of a direct object in the genitive instead of the accusative in negation signifies that the noun is indefinite, compare: "Я не вижу книги" ("I don't see a book" or "I don't see any book") and "Я не вижу книгу" ("I don't see the book").The use of the numeral one sometimes signifies that the noun is indefinite, e.g.: "Почему ты так долго?" - "Да так, встретил одного друга, пришлось поговорить" ("Why did it take you so long?" - "You see, I met a friend and had to talk").Word order may also be used for this purpose, compare "В комнату вбежал мальчик" ("A boy rushed into the room") and "Мальчик вбежал в комнату
" 
("The boy rushed into the room").The use of plural form instead of singular may signify that the noun is indefinite: "Вы купите это в магазинах." - "Вы купите это в магазине." ("You can buy this in a shop." lit. "...in shops" - "You can buy this in the shop.")"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_grammar#Nouns


Therefore, this not only about countable and uncountable, but even about "definite" and "indefinite" - When Vygotsky said, for instance, about "perezhivanie is consciousness unit" - in English as in Portuguese will not the same if you translate "perezhivanie is AN unit of consciousness", ou "perezhivanie is THE unity of consciousnness". Don't you agree? Since "word meaning" is also an unit of consciousness" I had prefered "perezhivanie is an unity...", for instance.

Achilles.


Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:27:24 +1000
From: ablunden@mira.net
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: [xmca] a Russian noun
Thanks Bella. I think I asked this once before. I am getting deja vu! Anyways, ambiguity does the trick.
In the context of Vygotsky claiming that perezhivanie is a unit, it is senseless if perezivanie is taken as a mass noun, but makes perfect sense if it is taken as a countable noun. So since if it is context-dependent, it is "an experience." But it is never translated that way! And that's what confused me. 

Andy

Bella Kotik-Friedgut wrote:

You are right, Achilles: it depends on the context: if you speak about
perejyvanie as a psychological concept- experience, if about a
specific event- an experience.
Bella

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 5:55 PM, Achilles Delari Junior
<achilles_delari@hotmail.com> wrote:

There is no the gramatical class "article", in Russian... we must to translate in according to the context.Every words, not only "perezhivanie". Including "the psychology" an "a psychology". I have a Russian friend that speaks Portuguesetoo, and she have difficult in say "um" (a/an) or "o" (the)... But this is not a real answer to your question,Perhaps we/they can have "any way" to know. But certainly this will not be with an "article"...
Please correct me, Bella, and all Russian people. Is a major translation problem, for me.
Achilles


Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:42:29 +1000
From: ablunden@mira.net
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: [xmca] a Russian noun

Dearest Russian speakers, is there any way of saying whether
"perezhivanie" is a mass noun or a countable noun? I.e., can
we have "an experience" or only "experience" as a
translation of perezhivanie?

Andy

Achilles Delari Junior wrote:

Wagner,
In the text about "diagnostics" in Volume 5, Vigotski talks about development as"auto-conditioned" process.
Because development is not a "marionete" (how do you say in English?) conductedneither by the line of heritage  neither the line of environment. I do not read thisas "idealistic" - just because are not the "inner" factors the determinant... I read as"dialectical" - development is the own movement - that is just the contradictory interconstitution heritage-enviroment - that is "self-propultioned"... Think only development as "history" - what can determine history that not the own history? Nature? God? For a materialistic point of view history can not be determined from bellow nor from above... Therefore history only can be an integral, contradictorywhole process that determine the conditions for itself. What more?
This is my reading from this statement. Put it in a broader epistemological context.
I can localize what I said in Spanish, English, and Russian, if could be useful for youhere.
“a non-interrupted, auto-conditioned [somoobuslovlivaemyi[i]] process”








[i] “Самообусловливаемый процесс”.


We can see even in "The crisis of seven years" that environment is not "external"to the child, because he/she is an active component constiting his own socialenvironment too...
I understand this is at a proximal semantic field, close to your question.
Best.
Achilles.


Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:45:06 -0300
Subject: Re: [xmca] animated zpd
From: mcfion@gmail.com
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu

Hello Achilles and group,

I want to know where Vygotsky points out that the students interest are
inherent? Isn't it a bit idealistic?

Something like that startled us in our  last group meetings:

In this text "The Problem of Age" (
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1934/problem-age.htm - Thanks
Andy for the text) Vygotsky points out that:

"(...) development is a continuous process of self-propulsion characterized
primarily by a continuous appearance and formation of the new which did not
exist at previous stages."

The "sef-propulsion" caught our attention... So is development an inherent
movement too?  Is this related to the accusations made by Leontiev of
Vygotsky being an idealist? If it is the social environment that promotes
the development, how can it be self-propelled?

This development auto-propulsion has something to do with the ideas of
adaptation and evolution? Or has it something to do with the ideas of Engels
about the dialectic movement in nature?

And after reading some practical works based on Dewey and Engeström, i
though that the thinking of Dewey and Vygotsky were more close...

Sorry if my questions and appointments seem silly, but i am trying to get a
better understanding about Vygotsky's theories, Dewey theories, and most of
all, how to apply it... And i need to study a lot more about philosophy...

Wagner



On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 2:31 PM, Achilles Delari Junior <
achilles_delari@hotmail.com> wrote:


Vygotsky and Dewey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytRBWCks830&feature=related
:-)


Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:36:11 -0700
Subject: Re: [xmca] animated zpd
From: lchcmike@gmail.com
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
CC: vjchuck@yahoo.com

Alexei-- What is your interpretation of the Youtube zoned out clip? You

know

the context better than we do.
mike

On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 1:30 AM, Achilles Delari Junior <
achilles_delari@hotmail.com> wrote:


Yes Andy... sure.
Its only a little caricature... my feelings are very idiosyncratic, of
course. Maybe only an inoffensive joke. But I feel a little confused

because

for a millisecond I understand that the clip's goal could be help

somebody

to learn about that concept... and not only to make a little joke. But

this

can be because my boundaries with English too - is not so easy for me

to

perceive when something is ironic or not, even in Portuguese... you can
imagine in foreign languages. Even so, I preserve my considerations

about

the incongruence with a possible Vygotsky's aptitude with a child in

real

situations - more securely we can assume that there is no a vygotskian
aptitude being represented...
And yes Andy, you must to write, to create the clip. Even here we are
writing, as well. And this is not equal when we are talking face to

face...

But is very different you write a script for actors in a play, and

write a

scientific article that will be only read by the distant interlocutor,
without any image, as is the case of the transcription that they did in

the

clip from passages of the chapter six of Mind in Society.... =) This

is, for

me, one of the probable objective reasons because it sounds so

artificial

and potentially subject to be subjectively understood as some kind of
"irony" - perhaps directed to hypothetical people that only read

something

and literally repeat - not necessarily for better understanding about

the

matter... But if one not know for who this message is actually

directed,

some ambivalent meanings/feelings can be send/received... This can be
because the own "emotional polisemy" included in language too, In my

point

of view...
Well... all this was not for I comment here. I saw the clip since the

first

post, feel this things, and will not say nothing... But Denise's
considerations make some sense too me, and then I wrote.
All the best for you all, Andy, Denise and everybody.
Achilles.


P.S. The tool can be very interesting to create more clips, with other
voices too. I will enjoy to put Bakhtin talking to Michel Foucault for
instance! I have already some possible talks.  Maybe with some

traditional

introductory narrator voice, only to explain the goals...
=).......................


Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:41:54 +1000
From: ablunden@mira.net
To:
Subject: Re: [xmca] animated zpd

While I saw the clip as a somewhat crass interpretation of
ZPD, typical as Mike said, of those American interpretations
which the Russians so object to, I did not find it
disrespectful.

     See    http://www.xtranormal.com/

This is the application the maker used. It is very simple.
Anyone can do it, and of course, as Achilles sensed, you
*write* a script, and enter stage directions from a menu,
and it makes the video for you.

I think the maker probably thought it would be a good
teaching tool for communicating what they saw as the basics
of Vygotsky. The pallette of tools is very limited.

Andy

Achilles Delari Junior wrote:

I agree in found something disrespectul too, perhaps not indented

too...

This feeling is translated in my mind as an understanding that the

clip

seems to be some ironic/satiric. Because it shows certain

artificiality

(if not to say a excessive artificiality) certainly not

characteristic

in Vygotsky's relations with children - based in all narrative we

have,

including from his daughter Gita. There was also a text from 1931,

that

we found in the Volume about Defectology from the Works, titled
"Diagnostic of the devellopment and paedological clinic of the

dificult

childhood" (I'm puting in English from my Espanish version) - and

there

we can saw a very sensitive concern from Vygotsky about he himself

and

a

psychiatry working with him, attending a little boy and his mother

and

translating their experiencing in "thecnical" strange words, that

could

not really help the mother to understand better the real situation.

When

the mother asked for them what that words was meaning, they only

give

to

her the same narrative that she just had exposed to them.

Therefore,

Vygotsky turns concerned that he himself and the doctor did not

know

very well what was actually hapens with the child, and all the text

will

work around the methodogical problems involved in this simple

episode...

I understand that such an aptidude described in the clip souns as a
little irony, and could be give us an oportunity to think about...
Perhaps they was tring to popularize some definitions. But the
definitions was practically literal quotes from wrote language...
Vygotsky had a critics about persons that talk almost as they was
writing... I can localize this too. Of course the clip have not the
intention to be realistic... I think this was a kind of comic

irony...

if not very weel contextualized can sounds something disrespectful,

I

have to assume, and I feel something in this way.


Thank you.


Achilles.



 > From: dsnewnham@bluewin.ch
 > To: lchcmike@gmail.com; xmca@weber.ucsd.edu; ablunden@mira.net
 > Subject: RE: [xmca] animated zpd
 > Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:55:14 +0200
 > CC:
 >
 > This is not an academic remark but I found the clip

disrespectful

but

 > probably was not intended to be so... What would Vygotsky have

said

to such
 > a thing...where the mind is in society today?
 >
 > Denise
 >
 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:

xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On

 > Behalf Of mike cole
 > Sent: 22 August 2010 03:49
 > To: ablunden@mira.net
 > Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
 > Subject: Re: [xmca] animated zpd
 >
 > Makes one pause to think when the children of your critics

present

you with
 > a parody of their parents' ideas that they, presumably, take to

be

the true
 > grit. The basis for their belief, it seems, is greater belief in

the

 > American, oversimplified and linearized view of zones of most

proximate

 > developmental transformations (e.g., the ZOMPDT). What must

their

parents be
 > experiencing?
 > mike
 >
 > On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 6:24 PM, Andy Blunden <

ablunden@mira.net>

wrote:

 >
 > > Yes, so it intrigued me that it was circulated by a Russian,
educated and
 > > living in Moscow, etc., etc.
 > >
 > > Andy
 > >
 > > mike cole wrote:
 > >
 > >> This is a wonderful representation of a large proportion of

gripes

that
 > >> Russians have with non-Russian interpretations of the zoped,

Andy.

 > >> mike
 > >>
 > >> On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 11:21 PM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net<mailto:
 > >> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
 > >>
 > >> Found this via Alexey Melekhin's FaceBook page:
 > >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS_Ftio1ops
 > >> andy
 > >> --
 > >>


------------------------------------------------------------------------

 > >> *Andy Blunden*
 > >> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/<http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>

<http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>

 > <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/><
 > >> http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
 > >>
 > >> Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
 > >> Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss
 > >>
 > >>
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 > >>
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 > >>
 > >>
 > >>
 > > --
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<http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/><

http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>

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