This Week in Google Alerts: story with Gaiman

Gerry Quinn · 19 Feb 2011, 18:09 · from 2011-February.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:09:05 -0000
Subject: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: story with Gaiman
References: <463075.91314.qm at web161801.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <E54662648F9046AEBE71AE389A13758F@jill>

From: "Marc Aramini" <marcaramini at yahoo.com>

> This perspicuous language they speak, where one meaning corresponds to one 
> word (how could present be now and gift?), is the height of irony in 
> regards to Severian and his tale, and this is something that always 
> surprised me.  How any language could approach a one to one relationship 
> between symbol and symbolized seemed an impossibility as fantastic as the 
> alzabo, and Severian's entire tale seems to belie this clarity of meaning 
> in language ("he was the smallest of those dead" for example, is 
> completely ambiguous).  It's pretty clear when Johnson tried to compile 
> his dictionary with the protestant ethos of scripture (the word of God was 
> immutable law) that it was an impossible task, rife with interpretation.

You make a good point [though I don't see what is ambiguous about "he was 
the smallest of those dead" - but then again I don't remember the context]. 
A real human language must surely tolerate ambiguity.  Indeed we have almost 
proof of this in the shape of another language we encounter, that of Loyal 
to the Group of Seventeen!  This language is clearly inefficient, but it 
seems certain to be full of ambiguity.

Perhaps Thea is not very thoughtful, or perhaps Wolfe just stuck in the line 
about ambiguity as a joke.

- Gerry Quinn

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