{"id":286210,"date":"2018-08-23T15:31:19","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T15:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/08\/23\/bert-and-ernie-are-gay-allthingslinguistic\/"},"modified":"2018-12-11T02:45:05","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T02:45:05","slug":"bert-and-ernie-are-gay-allthingslinguistic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/08\/23\/bert-and-ernie-are-gay-allthingslinguistic\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-286210 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/08\/23\/bert-and-ernie-are-gay-allthingslinguistic\/attachment\/286211\/'><img width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/tumblr_o0urp1ukbU1qzt49co1_500-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/tumblr_o0urp1ukbU1qzt49co1_500-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/tumblr_o0urp1ukbU1qzt49co1_500-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"100vw\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bert-and-ernie-are-gay.tumblr.com\/post\/177249396091\/allthingslinguistic-technologistrevolution\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">bert-and-ernie-are-gay<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/allthingslinguistic.tumblr.com\/post\/142202729443\" target=\"_blank\">allthingslinguistic<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/technologistrevolution.tumblr.com\/post\/137380416349\" target=\"_blank\">technologistrevolution<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/emptymanuscript.tumblr.com\/post\/137338501864\" target=\"_blank\">emptymanuscript<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/flavoracle.tumblr.com\/post\/137210097457\" target=\"_blank\">flavoracle<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/isaacfhtagn.tumblr.com\/post\/137182419377\" target=\"_blank\">isaacfhtagn<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/mindcrankismycommander.tumblr.com\/post\/137180973112\" target=\"_blank\">mindcrankismycommander<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/bass-borot.tumblr.com\/post\/137179849866\" target=\"_blank\">bass-borot<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/bass-borot.tumblr.com\/post\/137178456886\" target=\"_blank\">bass-borot<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/mscottwrites.tumblr.com\/post\/137178382286\" target=\"_blank\">mscottwrites<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/shadow27.tumblr.com\/post\/137166574485\" target=\"_blank\">shadow27<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Chewbacca\u2026 his arms open.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This is some NEXT LEVEL nerd-ing and I nearly cried reading it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I don\u2019t get it<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Please explain ;_;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There is a star trek TNG episode where Picard encounters a race that doesn\u2019t speak in actual structured sentences but conveys ideas through story parralels. The ones referenced here are  \u201cDarmok and Jalad at Tanagra\u201d &#8211; cooperation, \u201cShaka, when the walls fell\u201d &#8211; failure and Temba, his arms wide\/open&quot; &#8211; signifying a gift. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/memory-alpha.wikia.com\/wiki\/Tamarian_language\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/memory-alpha.wikia.com\/wiki\/Tamarian_language<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>nice<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>OK, but here\u2019s what\u2019s awesome\/hilarious about this. <\/p>\n<p>The whole point about why communicating with the Tamarians was so frustrating was because all of their communication was contextual. The problem wasn\u2019t that Picard couldn\u2019t understand what words they were saying (the universal translator worked fine) the problem was that he didn\u2019t understand what THOSE WORDS TOGETHER HAD TO DO WITH ANYTHING. <\/p>\n<p>Why is this hilarious\/fascinating to me? Because this is essentially what people are doing today with memes. They are posting pictures and writing sentences THAT MAKE NO SENSE WITHOUT PRIOR CONTEXT. <\/p>\n<p>If Picard beamed down right now, and you told him that Data is a cinnamon roll\u2026 you are a Tamarian.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Reblogging because A) YES! and B) That commentary. It\u2019s so true, it\u2019s scary.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I also just want more. ^_^<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Actually, this isn\u2019t something just present in memes but it seems to be a foundation of human language and partly why a universal translator could never work (or if it somehow did, it should be programmable to handle Tamarian). It\u2019s just that most metaphors in language are so accepted or necessary to fluency that we don\u2019t really notice them (or they seem to be a common human perspective\u2026 which aliens don\u2019t necessarily have to share).<\/p>\n<p>It is why when speaking German I have to remember it is, \u201cHow much Clock is it?\u201d and not\u00a0\u201cWhat time is it?\u201d. The metaphor in English seems to be that moments are separate entities\/temporal locations that we visit through the day so we need to determine <i>what one<\/i> we are visiting now. Whereas in German, leaving aside the fact the\u00a0\u201cclock\u201d can clearly be a stand-in metaphor for\u00a0\u201ctime\u201d the overall metaphor there seems to be that moments in time are accumulative entities that we collect through the day and we need to determine <i>how much<\/i> we\u2019ve collected.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And speaking of time, human languages tend towards two metaphors, either favouring one or the other or happily indulging in both\u2026 either time is a stationary path which the focus moves along (\u201d\u2026 as we\u2019re traveling into the month February\u2026\u201d) or time is a river the flows past a stationary focus (\u201dhis birthday is rapidly approaching\u201d). Technically those are metaphors to handle an abstract concept, time could just as easily be metaphorically an object that \u201cappears\u201d rather than \u201capproaches\u201d or a location you \u201cturn towards\u201d instead of \u201cmove into\u201d\u2026 and I don\u2019t know if any human language allows you to metaphorically be a man in a boat traveling up a river (or what that would look like\/imply) but it is a possibility (especially if you are considering an alien perspective on time).<\/p>\n<p>Leaving behind time, some emotions are metaphorically a direction. Happy is up, sometimes way up\u00a0\u2018til you\u2019re\u00a0\u201con Cloud 9\u2033 (and there\u2019s no obvious reason for it to be the 9th cloud but you accept it) and on the opposite end of that spectrum sadness is down (in the dumps) when it isn\u2019t busy being a colour (blue). And naturally you yourself are a container for your emotions, or more specifically your heart is (at least in English, in Indonesian it\u2019s your liver) and the container can be put under pressure until it is\u00a0\u201cbursting with joy\u201d or it \u201cexplodes in anger\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>And then there are true idioms which actually do reference historic events (which is what I assume is happening in Tamarian\u2019s\u00a0\u201cShaka, when the walls fell\u201d) like\u00a0\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/meanings\/read-the-riot-act.html\" target=\"_blank\">Read The Riot Act<\/a>\u201d or if you\u00a0\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/thehindu\/edu\/2002\/11\/19\/stories\/2002111900100201.htm\" target=\"_blank\">heard it through the grapevine<\/a>\u201d your people had a mess of telegraph wires at some point and grapevines to compare them to. And\u00a0\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldwidewords.org\/qa\/qa-app1.htm\" target=\"_blank\">apple of one\u2019s eye<\/a>\u201d is weird for being a double metaphor\u2026 the pupil was once believed to be a solid object metaphorically called an\u00a0\u201capple\u201d but then, after Shakespeare popularized the phrase in reference to a person in terms of affection, and science let us know the pupil is not apple-like at all, it came to exclusively mean\u00a0\u201cthis person is very dear to me\u201d and we all forgot why apples were involved in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I am far from a linguistic expert so you should take this all\u00a0\u201cwith a grain of salt\u201d \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes, and there\u2019s even an Official Academic name for this: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Intertextuality\" target=\"_blank\">intertextuality<\/a>! Aka\u00a0\u201ctexts referring to other texts\u201d \u2013 whether those texts are song lyrics, proverbs, historical references, movie quotes, clich\u00e9s, memes, metaphors, in-jokes, parody, fanfic, and so on.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t even have to be as explicit as an idiom or metaphor: even a turn of phrase will do. For example, saying something\u00a0\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/allthingslinguistic.com\/post\/123673512622\/dear-people-learning-german\" target=\"_blank\">is a truth universally acknowledged<\/a>\u201d invokes Pride and Prejudice, or \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/allthingslinguistic.com\/post\/67308552090\/how-to-remember-the-ipa-vowel-chart\" target=\"_blank\">a thing of beauty and a joy forever<\/a>\u201d invokes Keats (although for me it invokes Mary Poppins, because obviously as a kid I watched that movie long before I\u2019d ever heard of Keats), or \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/allthingslinguistic.com\/post\/64034000834\/kethera-ineedtothinkofatitle-glowcloud\" target=\"_blank\">Strange women lying in rivers distributing words<\/a>\u201d invokes Monty Python. Intertexuality is one of the reasons people study literary works within the context of what other literary works were important at that place and time, so as to catch the intertextual references that the author may be making.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Intertextuality yes; and but also I think @technologistrevolution is talking about what cognitive linguists Lakoff and Johnson, in their 1980 <i>Metaphors We Live By<\/i>, called\u00a0\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Conceptual_metaphor\" target=\"_blank\">conceptual metaphors<\/a>,\u201d which map abstractions onto concepts with which we may already be familiar\u2026? Although I assume their research and that of their colleagues has been subsequently modified\/supplanted, because I am also not a linguist, just a literature PhD with a kink for strange women lying in rivers distributing words (which is how I\u2019m now quoting it from henceforth, <i>because perfect)<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>bert-and-ernie-are-gay: allthingslinguistic: technologistrevolution: emptymanuscript: flavoracle: isaacfhtagn: mindcrankismycommander: bass-borot: bass-borot: mscottwrites: shadow27: Chewbacca\u2026 his arms open. This is some NEXT LEVEL nerd-ing and I nearly cried reading it. I don\u2019t get it Please explain ;_; There is a star trek TNG episode where Picard encounters a race that doesn\u2019t speak in actual structured sentences but conveys &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/08\/23\/bert-and-ernie-are-gay-allthingslinguistic\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1366,1365,1367,677,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286210"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286212,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286210\/revisions\/286212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}