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Is language an organism? Ollivier Dyens seems to agree with this idea, go as far as to say that language is a virus (in a forthcoming paper, but implicit in La Condition inhumaine, Paris Flammarion, 2008). To what extent can this hold true for 19th century philologists? If Max Müller claimed that language is nature, and if nature is organic and evolutionary, is Müller Darwinian? And if viruses and genes are the substratum of life, can we go as far as Dyens? The question is at least worth pursuing.
We have evolved genetically because of language (those who couldn’t use it died). We contain it, but do we do so as a virus?
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A quote by the biologist Jacques Monod:
Beaucoup d’esprits distingués, aujourd’hui encore, paraissent ne pas pouvoir accepter ni même comprendre que d’une source de bruit la sélection ait pu, à elle seule, tirer toutes les musiques de la biosphère. La sélection opère en effet sur les produits du hasard, et ne peut s’alimenter ailleurs; mais elle opère dans un domaine d’exigences rigoureuses dont le hasard est banni.*
Le Hasard et la nécessité, Paris, éd. du Seuil, 1970, p. 135.
Can this be said of language? Is language nature, as the philologists of the 19th century claimed (such as Max Müller)? Does language, though operating upon the “products of chance”, equally operate “in a zone of rigorous requirements from which chance has been excluded”? This opens up a whole panorama of questions, to be pursued…
* [Quoted in the Trésor de la langue française: "Even today, many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even understand that, from a source of noise, selection could have drawn, for its own sake, all the music of the biosphere. Selection operates in effect on the products of chance, and cannot nourish itself in any other way; but it operates in a zone of rigorous requirements from which chance has been excluded." My translation.]
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Language is “Hazard”. The word “hazard” (“hasard” in French) supposedly comes from the Arabic az-zahr:
HAZARD: 1167, from O.Fr. hasard “game of chance played with dice,” possibly from Sp. azar “an unfortunate card or throw at dice,” which is said to be from Arabic az-zahr (for al-zahr) “the die.” But this is doubtful because of the absence of zahr in classical Arabic dictionaries. Klein suggests Arabic yasara “he played at dice;” Arabic -s- regularly becomes Sp. -z-. The -d was added in Fr. in confusion with the native suffix -ard. Sense of “chance of loss or harm, risk,” first recorded 1548; the verb sense of “put something at stake in a game of chance” is from 1530. Hazardous in the sense of “perilous” is from 1618.
Well, with this we can see that language is indeed perilous and full of chance.
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When looking up the etymology of the work “same”, how can one not feel wonderment and mystery? OK, maybe not everyone can get excited by such details:
SAME: perhaps abstracted from O.E. swa same “the same as,” but more likely from O.N. same, samr “same,” both from P.Gmc. *samon (cf. O.S., O.H.G., Goth. sama; O.H.G. samant, samt “together, with,” Goth. samana “together,” Du. zamelen “to collect,” Ger. zusammen “together”), from PIE *samos “same,” from base *sem- “one, together” (cf. Skt. samah “even, level, similar, identical;” Avestan hama “similar, the same;” Gk. hamahomos “one and the same,” homios “like, resembling,” homalos “even;” L. similis “like;” O.Ir. samail “likeness;” O.C.S. samu “himself”). O.E. had lost the pure form of the word; the modern word replaced synonymous ilk (q.v).
That was the dream of 19th century philologists, anyway, to find the common root of all languages, leading up to the original, pre-Babelic, Adamic tongue! And yet, as another French poet said (I will be quoting many more), “Etymologists, don’t jump too quickly! Isn’t it the case that two plants with very distinct roots sometimes mix up their foliage?” (“Étymologistes, ne bondissez pas! N’arrive-t-il pas que deux plantes aux racines fort distinctes confondent parfois leur feuillages?” Francis Ponge, Méthodes).
If we are talking about the “same” things, we are talking about similitude. Etymology often assumes similitude (that is, that an organic link exists between words and meanings), but the history of language has destroyed such easy connections between words. This destruction starts with the discovery that words don’t have a natural link to a stable concept. The “same” isn’t always the “same”, as in “together” and “same”. Yet we can sense this connection. One also assumes that the concept to which a word refers remains the same. So there’s a double movement, with the change of words and the change of concepts.
What’s left? Playtime, the sandbox; but seriously.
Ponge, the poet I referred to, had a book written about him by the late Jacques Derrida, titled Signéponge (in English, Signsponge). This title, and its translation, illustrates much about this change.
Signé Ponge = Signed “Ponge”, that which is signed with the name “Ponge” (the person and, more-so, the signature itself).
Signe éponge = sign spong, that the sign is a sponge.Signe et Ponge = Sign and Ponge, the sign and Ponge.
In English, you have the added element of pronunciation. Might we have a “punge” (as in a “pungent” sign)? Anyway, you can see that the word “signéponge” cannot be reproduced in English, and when an equivalent does come about, it produces different effects.
The signature is subject to scrutiny. What and who is “Ponge”?
I went to the supermarket and had to pay with a credit card. The cashier told me my signatures didn’t match. I replied, “well, if it was identical, wouldn’t I be copying, i.e. fraudulent?” Needless to say, she must have thought I was an idiot…
Filed under: Etymologies
The word “compte” in the expression “se rendre compte de quelque chose” (to realize something) comes from “com” (i.e. the Latin “cum” – “with”) and “putare” (to consider or to think); thus “compte” comes from the past participle “computus” (i.e. computed).
It’s interesting to think that counting and recounting are connected, that telling tales is like counting numbers. Hence the “false friend” (faux ami) in English, “account”, as in: “his account of things” vs. “her bank account”.
On the “banking” (i.e. the “counting”) side, there are similarities between French and English:
My bank account => mon compte en banque
Charge it to my father’s account => mettez-le sur le compte de mon père
To settle and account => régler un compte
My accountant => mon comptable
However, beware, “accountability” doesn’t become “comptabilité” (accounting). That is, “accountability” is related to the “telling” side of things, as in “responsibility”: you are able to give an account for the events, you can respond to the events, questions or accusations.
Getting back to the connection between counting and recounting, between numbers and stories… So to “se rendre compte de quelque chose” means literally to recount something back to yourself (sounds redundant – “rendre” means “to give back”; and “se rendre” is to give back to oneself); and “compte” refers back to “computus”. So even more literally, the expression means: oneself to give back the computed of something. Do you compute?
It’s interesting that the word “compute” has been appropriated by the world of computers. This makes sense, since computers are “with-thinkers” – they are tools that help the human brain, just as we have collaborators (“with workers”). Again, my colleague Émmanuel brought to my attention the French for computer, which is “ordinateur”, that which places thing is order, which involves a wholly other way of thinking about “computing” (Émmanuel, tu peux nous raconter l’histoire?).
Interesting to think of the computer as a story-teller. There are computers that can automatically generate stories, so that we might eventually be counting the computer’s accounts – i.e. examining the code, based on numbers. This hardly makes sense, yet (at least traditional) stories are linear in time, and follow a given sequence. Maybe counting and recounting were originally synonymous because when you tell a tale (“tale” comes from “tell”), you count the sequence of events, one by one, maybe even using your fingers to help you. This might have been the case with oral literature where one recited verse, something that has always been indissociable with numbers.
The word for “tale” in French is “conte”, which like “compte” comes from “computare”. To tell a tale is to “raconter”, to “recount”. The English comes via the Anglo-French and Old Northern French “reconter” or “recunter” (12th century). I get all this wonderful info from my giant Compact Oxford English Dictionary, the one that has nine pages compacted onto one, with a total of 27 columns of definitions per page:
Unfortunately, there’s no equivalent to this book in French. You have to go to the library and consult the multiple volume version, or else buy the cd-rom.
Next up, “simulations”. Please see the entry on “plex”, as I’ve altered it slightly.
Filed under: Etymologies | Tags: etymology, pli, poetry, radical, rhizome
See the FIRST blog below…
The root, “le radical”, is a HUGE key to understanding the origins of words, how languages work, and how they evolve. However, words tend to be more rhizomatic than radical. As rhizomes, they wander astray and start up again in various places, so it’s hard to pin down their movement across time and space – i.e. history and geography. Also, not only does this happen in one language, but across many languages.
The French word “pli” is one of the richest and most beautiful there is. Mallarmé, a 19th century poet, uses this word as a metaphor for the signification process as well as for poetry. It means “fold”, from which you get the verb “plier”, “to fold”. “Pli” comes from the Latin “plex”, also meaning “fold”. His famous poem, Sonnet en X, has an invented word, “ptyx”. Well, Mallarmé hoped that the word didn’t exist. Turns out it does: it means… you guessed it, “fold”, and perhaps became, you guessed it again, “plex”.
Here are some words in Latin that have the radical “plex”:
simplex, complex, duplex (ok… the last one is a “pretend” Latin word re-invented by real estate agents).
A whole slew of words (see previous post for examples in English) comes from this simple word. And the root itself changes. In French:
Ploy-/-ploi; -ple; -ble; -pli-, -plic-, -pliqu- etc.
so that we get:
employer, emploi; simple, triple, multiple; double, doubler; simplifier, explication, compliquer…
As my colleague Émmanuel Hérique has pointed out, there is a poetic beauty to all of this. Think of the word “to explain”, which literally means to “outfold” – or better, to “unfold”. “Explain” is thus quite a hands on word – it’s very graphic.
The critic Roger Pearson wrote a book about Mallarmé, Unfolding Mallarmé. The Development of a Poetic Art. This title is very illustrative, bearing in mind the importance of the word “pli” for Mallarmé. Pearson’s book attempts to “explain” Mallarmé, whilst referring to the notion of signification and poetic language as a process of “folding”, that must be “unraveled” (“untangled” or “unfrayed”), and, of course, “explicated”. The same can be said for the word “employed”. If you don’t like being employed, you can say that you are “in the fold”, like a sheep, or that you’re being “folded”. Multiple: many folds. Simple: same fold (“same” comes from the Sanskrit “sam”, “together”, via the word “sim”, as in “simulation”).
Check out the Online Etymology Dictionary, which helped me with some of this post.
Tune in next time for a discussion of simulations and accounts.
(For “rhizomes”, see Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille plateaux, A Thousand Plateaus.)
Post a comment, and I will re-ply.
I’m complicated, but quite simple; this I will explain.
I’m employed and apply myself; I have multiple accomplices; we are complicit; we deploy supple applications; we hope to triple, even quadruple, our employer’s two-ply display replicator.
