Lunatic Lovers of Language

Lunatic Lovers of Language PDF Author: Marina Yaguello
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines the creation of imaginary languages in history and fiction as an expression of the search for an original and primitive or universal language. The author's other works include "Les Mots et les Femmes" (1978) and "Alice au pays du Language" (1981).

Lunatic Lovers of Language

Lunatic Lovers of Language PDF Author: Marina Yaguello
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines the creation of imaginary languages in history and fiction as an expression of the search for an original and primitive or universal language. The author's other works include "Les Mots et les Femmes" (1978) and "Alice au pays du Language" (1981).

Imaginary Languages

Imaginary Languages PDF Author: Marina Yaguello
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262547155
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Get Book Here

Book Description
An exploration of the practice of inventing languages, from speaking in tongues to utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics. In Imaginary Languages, Marina Yaguello explores the history and practice of inventing languages, from religious speaking in tongues to politically utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics. She looks for imagined languages that are autonomous systems, complete unto themselves and meant for communal use; imaginary, and therefore unlike both natural languages and historically attested languages; and products of an individual effort to lay hold of language. Inventors of languages, Yaguello writes, are madly in love: they love an object that belongs to them only to the extent that they also share it with a community. Yaguello investigates the sources of imaginary languages, in myths, dreams, and utopias. She takes readers on a tour of languages invented in literature from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including that in More’s Utopia, Leibniz’s “algebra of thought,” and Bulwer-Lytton’s linguistic fiction. She examines the linguistic fantasies (or madness) of Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr and Swiss medium Hélène Smith; and considers the quest for the true philosophical language. Yaguello finds two abiding (and somewhat contradictory) forces: the diversity of linguistic experience, which stands opposed to unifying endeavors, and, on the other hand, features shared by all languages (natural or not) and their users, which justifies the universalist hypothesis. Recent years have seen something of a boom in invented languages, whether artificial languages meant to facilitate international communication or imagined languages constructed as part of science fiction worlds. In Imaginary Languages (an updated and expanded version of the earlier Les Fous du langage, published in English as Lunatic Lovers of Language), Yaguello shows that the invention of language is above all a passionate, dizzying labor of love.

Lunatics, Lovers & Poets

Lunatics, Lovers & Poets PDF Author: Daniel Hahn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
Twelve contemporary stories inspired by Shakespeare and Cervantes, to mark the 400th anniversaries of their deaths. Introduced by Salman Rushdie.

Language Through the Looking Glass

Language Through the Looking Glass PDF Author: Marina Yaguello
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780198700050
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Get Book Here

Book Description
What can wordplay--as understood in the broadest sense--teach us about language, its functions, characteristics, structure, and workings? Using Lewis Carroll's Alice as a starting point, Yanguello takes the reader on a vivid and unconventional voyage into the world(s) of language, charting the major themes of linguistics along the way. This is an entertaining and original introduction to the nature of language that will appeal to students and teachers alike.

Serendipities

Serendipities PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231500149
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description
Best-selling author Umberto Eco's latest work unlocks the riddles of history in an exploration of the "linguistics of the lunatic," stories told by scholars, scientists, poets, fanatics, and ordinary people in order to make sense of the world. Exploring the "Force of the False," Eco uncovers layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, such as Columbus's assumption that the world was much smaller than it is, leading him to seek out a quick route to the East via the West and thus fortuitously "discovering" America. The fictions that grew up around the cults of the Rosicrucians and Knights Templar were the result of a letter from a mysterious "Prester John"—undoubtedly a hoax—that provided fertile ground for a series of delusions and conspiracy theories based on religious, ethnic, and racial prejudices. While some false tales produce new knowledge (like Columbus's discovery of America) and others create nothing but horror and shame (the Rosicrucian story wound up fueling European anti-Semitism) they are all powerfully persuasive. In a careful unraveling of the fabulous and the false, Eco shows us how serendipities—unanticipated truths—often spring from mistaken ideas. From Leibniz's belief that the I Ching illustrated the principles of calculus to Marco Polo's mistaking a rhinoceros for a unicorn, Eco tours the labyrinth of intellectual history, illuminating the ways in which we project the familiar onto the strange. Eco uncovers a rich history of linguistic endeavor—much of it ill-conceived—that sought to "heal the wound of Babel." Through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, and Egyptian were alternately proclaimed as the first language that God gave to Adam, while—in keeping with the colonial climate of the time—the complex language of the Amerindians in Mexico was viewed as crude and diabolical. In closing, Eco considers the erroneous notion of linguistic perfection and shrewdly observes that the dangers we face lie not in the rules we use to interpret other cultures but in our insistence on making these rules absolute. With the startling combination of erudition and wit, bewildering anecdotes and scholarly rigor that are Eco's hallmarks, Serendipities is sure to entertain and enlighten any reader with a passion for the curious history of languages and ideas.

In the Land of Invented Languages

In the Land of Invented Languages PDF Author: Arika Okrent
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0385529716
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
Here is the captivating story of humankind’s enduring quest to build a better language—and overcome the curse of Babel. Just about everyone has heard of Esperanto, which was nothing less than one man’s attempt to bring about world peace by means of linguistic solidarity. And every Star Trek fan knows about Klingon. But few people have heard of Babm, Blissymbolics, Loglan (not to be confused with Lojban), and the nearly nine hundred other invented languages that represent the hard work, high hopes, and full-blown delusions of so many misguided souls over the centuries. With intelligence and humor, Arika Okrent has written a truly original and enlightening book for all word freaks, grammar geeks, and plain old language lovers.

A Lover's Discourse

A Lover's Discourse PDF Author: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0809066890
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Barthes's most popular and unusual performance as a writer is "A Lover's Discourse," a writing out of the discourse of love. This language primarily the complaints and reflections of the lover when alone, not exchanges of a lover with his or her partner is unfashionable. Thought it is spoken by millions of people, diffused in our popular romances and television programs as well as in serious literature, there is no institution that explores, maintains, modifies, judges, repeats, and otherwise assumes responsibility for this discourse . . . Writing out the figures of a neglected discourse, Barthes surprises us in "A Lover's Discourse" by making love, in its most absurd and sentimental forms, an object of interest." Jonathan Culler

Imagining Language

Imagining Language PDF Author: Jed Rasula
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262681315
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 644

Get Book Here

Book Description
When works such as Joyce's Finnegans Wake and Stein's Tender Buttons were first introduced, they went so far beyond prevailing linguistic standards that they were widely considered "unreadable," if not scandalous. Jed Rasula and Steve McCaffery take these and other examples of twentieth-century avant-garde writing as the starting point for a collection of writings that demonstrates a continuum of creative conjecture on language from antiquity to the present. The anthology, which spans three millennia, generally bypasses chronology in order to illuminate unexpected congruities between seemingly discordant materials. Together, the writings celebrate the scope and prodigality of linguistic speculation in the West going back to the pre-Socratics.

Stalin on Linguistics and Other Essays

Stalin on Linguistics and Other Essays PDF Author: P. Gray
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403919232
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book Here

Book Description
Piers Gray was one of the most brilliant literary writers of his generation. These essays ranging from Oscar Wilde to Levin, from Shakespeare to pulp fiction, use the full resources of literary and linguistic analysis to produce a reading of European culture and society in the twentieth century. In his final posthumous essay On Linearity , Gray summons all his reading and knowledge to deliver his final judgement on life and death.

A Graveyard for Lunatics

A Graveyard for Lunatics PDF Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006224213X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
Halloween Night, 1954. A young, film-obsessed scriptwriter has just been hired at one of the great studios. An anonymous investigation leads from the giant Maximus Films backlot to an eerie graveyard separated from the studio by a single wall. There he makes a terrifying discovery that thrusts him into a maelstrom of intrigue and mystery—and into the dizzy exhilaration of the movie industry at the height of its glittering power.