Cross-reference

“ Cross referencing has its curiosities as well as other branches of our subject. [pg 75] Perhaps the most odd collection of cross references is to be found in Serjeant William Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown (1716; 5th ed., 1771; 7th ed., 4 vols., 1795) , of which it was said in the Monthly Magazine for June, 1801 (p. 419) : "A plain, unlettered man is led to suspect that the writer of the volume and the writer of the index are playing at cross purposes."
The following are some of the most amusing entries:
"Cards see Dice." ”

“ The referencing purpose is a good one, but our approach to cross-referencing is seriously underdeveloped. There are likely a number of ways this could be done, but I am loath to predict how that will develop over the years to come. ”

“ Now, though the world be divided into many nations, each of which, for the most part, has a peculiar language, speech, or dialect, yet have they ever concurred in the same numbers and persons, as much of the ground of right speech. For instance; I love, thou lovest, he loveth, are of singular number, importing but one whether in the first, second, or third person: also we love, ye love, they love, are of the plural number, because in each is implied more than one. ”

“ It may be presumed that he who undertakes to criticise the language of another should himself be perfect in the arrangement of his ideas, and of words to express them, and capable of composing similies that shall bear some reference to the subject illustrated. ”

“ The excellence of a translation will consist, not merely in the faithful rendering of words, or in the composition of a sentence only, or yet of a single paragraph, but in the colour and style of the whole work. ”

“ Independently of its special use in giving power of expression, translation is an indisputable source of progress in mental culture. Correct expression and correct thinking are one and the same. Great eloquence implies high intelligence. The act of mind by which a student assures himself of the exact sense of the foreign text, and the search for expressions which shall better render the thought of the author, are operations of high intellectual import. ”

“ What is commoner, even now, than to find the investigator of words and their origin looking round about him here and there, in all the languages, ancient and modern, to which he has any access, till he lights on some word, it matters little to him in which of these, more or less resembling that which he wishes to derive? ”

“ When the relative is the object of the verb, or is preceded in English by a preposition, a redundant personal pronoun is added after the verb, with or without a combined preposition, but a preposition is never placed before the relative particle a itself. ”

“ The continuity and similarity of the course of linguistic history in all its stages, and the competency of linguistic correspondences, wherever we find them, to prove unity of origin and community of tradition, are truths which we need to bear in mind as we proceed with our inquiries into language. ”

“ The difference may concern at most the ideas, or the sense but not the reference, or, finally, the reference as well. With respect to the first level, it is to be noted that, on account of the uncertain connexion of ideas with words, a difference may hold for one person, which another does not find. ”

“ To begin with, the simple type of correspondence we have been exhibiting can hardly occur when words are substituted for images, because, in word-propositions, relations are usually expressed by words, which are not themselves relations. ”

“ It is not doing so, for instance, to ask children what is the difference between the words see and look. (Can you see without looking? Can you look without seeing?) It gives precision to the understanding to discriminate what are often called synonymes, but which seldom mean precisely the same thing, unless, in our potpourri of a language they are mere translations, as for instance morsel and bit, respective derivatives from the Latin morsum and the English bitten. ”

“ No compositions will be found more difficult to be translated, than those descriptions, in which a series of minute distinctions are marked by characteristic terms, each peculiarly appropriated to the thing to be designed, but many of them so nearly synonymous, or so approaching to each other, as to be clearly understood only by those who possess the most critical knowledge of the language of the original, and a very competent skill in the subject treated of. ”

“ To be met, the non-expressed must be present in the listener, reader, or writer. Language must recreate the non-expressed, through the sequence heard, read, or written, and related to it, beyond the words recognized and the grammar used. Behind each word that people comprehend, there is either a common practical experience, or a shared pragmatic framework, or minimally some form of shared understanding, which constitute what is known as background knowledge. ”

“ Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis in Sentences.+—On pages 153-155 we have considered the principles of unity, coherence, and emphasis as applied to the whole composition. In much the same way these principles are applicable to the sentence. A sentence possesses unity if all that it contains makes one complete statement, and no more; and if all minor ideas are made subordinate to one main idea. The effect must be single. A sentence exhibits coherence when the relation of all of its parts is perfectly clear. ”

“ The modifications of meaning which a word has undergone as it had been transplanted from one soil to another, so that one nation borrowing it from another, has brought into it some force foreign to it before, has deepened, or extenuated, or otherwise modified its meaning,—this may reveal to us, as perhaps nothing else would, fundamental diversities of character existing between them. ”

“ The thought loses value for us as soon as we recognize that the reference of one of its parts is missing. We are therefore justified in not being satisfied with the sense of a sentence, and in inquiring also as to its reference. But now why do we want every proper name to have not only a sense, but also a reference? Why is the thought not enough for us? Because, and to the extent that, we are concerned with its truth value. ”

“ Comparison is the instrument with which science works, and a scientific grammar, accordingly, is one in which the comparative method has been applied to the relations of speech. If we would understand the origin and real nature of grammatical forms, and of the relations which they represent, we must compare them with similar forms in kindred dialects and languages, as well as with the forms under which they appeared themselves at an earlier period of their history. ”

“ Every sentence wherein a relative occurs, is complex, i.e., it consists of two propositions—the man who rides is come= (1) the man is come; (2) who rides. Here the relative who has no meaning in itself, but takes a meaning from the noun of the preceding clause.
2. The relative is the demonstrative or personal pronoun under another form.—The two propositions (1) the man is come; (2) who rides= (1) the man is come ”

“ For considering the vast variety of words, which any language, and especially the more copious ones furnish, and the infinite possible combinations of them into all the forms of phraseology, it would be very strange, if two persons should hit on the same identical terms, and much more should they agree in the same precise arrangement of them in whole sentences. ”

“ But whether the verb or the noun was the first to be invented is of little importance; nor is it possible for us, at the very beginning of our inquiry into the nature of language, to enter upon a minute examination of a theory which represents language as a work of human art, and as established by mutual agreement as a medium of communication. ”

“ We shall now seek the signs of literary relativity, not in the comparison of different species ofliterature, nor in the different characters of men and women in various stages of social life, but in that effort to transfer the thoughts expressed in the language of one social group into that of another, which we call translation. How far is accuracy of translation possible? It is clear that both in prose and verse there are difficulties in the way of the translator sometimes insurmountable. ”

“ It has been the effort of the author to connect the study of language with the study of other branches of anthropology, for a language is best understood when the habits, customs, institutions, philosophy—the subject-matter of thought embodied in the language—are best known. ”

“ In language there are three things:—Names, which are primarily the symbols of conceptions, and by consequence also of subjects. Second, there are Conceptions, which are the likenesses and impressions of the subjects. Whence in all, the conceptions are the same; in consequence of the same impression being produced by the subjects in all. But the names are not so, on account of the difference of languages. And thirdly, the Subject-matters by which the Conceptions are impressed in us. ”

“ Translation with a dictionary, which substitutes the fingers for the intelligence, and, scorning reason, proceeds from the sign to the idea, rests on the false principle of the identity of signification in the corresponding words of two languages. ”

“ A word is related by inflection when the office of the word in the sentence is pointed out thereby; thus, nouns are related by case inflections; verbs are related by inflections for gender, number, and person. All inflection for agreement is inflection for relation.
In English, three of the grammatic processes are highly specialized.
Combination is used chiefly for derivation, but to some slight extent for qualification and relation in the paradigmatic categories. ”

“ In a language which provides for the distinctions of person by particles prefixed or suffixed to the verb, it will scarcely be expected, that separate and independent relative pronouns should exist, or if such are to be found, their use, as separate parts of speech, must, it will have been anticipated, be quite limited—limited to simple interrogatory forms of expression, and not applicable to the indicative, or declaratory. ”

“ There are four ways and four ways only of furnishing a student with the meaning of given foreign units:
(1) By immediate association, as when we point to the object or a picture of the object designated by a noun or pronoun, when we perform the action designated by a verb, when we point to a real example of the quality designated by an adjective, or when we demonstrate in similar ways that which is designated by a preposition of place or certain categories of adverbs. ”

“ Defending diversities of translations, he says, "For that one interpreteth something obscurely in one place, the same translateth another, or else he himself, more manifestly by a more plain vocable of the same meaning in another place." ”

“ The necessity for open-mindedness, indeed, in some degree accounts for the tentative quality in so much of the theory of translation. Translation fills too large a place, is too closely connected with the whole course of literary development, to be disposed of easily. ”

“ The real opportunity for a fresh, individual approach to the problems of translation lay in consideration of the claims of the original author. Renaissance scholarship was bringing a new knowledge of texts and authors and encouraging a new alertness of mind in approaching texts written in foreign languages. It was now possible, while making faithfulness to source obligatory instead of optional, to put the matter on a reasonable basis. ”

“ What can the foreigner hope when he discovers that good judges of their language pronounce words differently? A mere English scholar who holds little intercourse with society, however familiar in his closet be his acquaintance with the words, and even their derivations, might fail in a material point, when using them in conversation or in a public speech. ”

“ In fact, every art is full of conceptions which are special to itself; and, as the use of language is to convey our conceptions to one another, language must supply signs for those conceptions. There are two ways of doing this: either existing signs may be combined in loose and cumbrous periphrases ”

“ When foreigners talk to us in a strange language, are we to say that we do not hear what they say, or that we both hear 156and know it? When unlettered men look at an inscription, shall we contend that they do not see the writing, or that they both see and know it? ”

“ To say in our tongue as precisely as possible what the [Pg 273] author has said in his is the translator’s first care, and to express, too, the material, literal, scientific meaning of this as it would appear to a reader of the original. Here there is no question of atmosphere, of suggestion, of connotation. The emotional element of literature may and indeed must be ignored here. The intellectual quality is the only thing to be regarded. ”

“ I shall in this chapter touch upon several other characteristics of composition, which, in proportion as they are found in original works, serve greatly to enhance the difficulty of doing complete justice to them in a translation.
1. The poets, in all languages, have a licence peculiar to themselves, of employing a mode of expression very remote from the diction of prose, and still more from that of ordinary speech. Under this licence, it is customary for them to use antiquated terms, to invent new ones, and to employ a glowing and rapturous phraseology, or what Cicero terms Verba ardentia. ”