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Showing posts from March, 2014

You like شعبي things...

Does language shape the structure of our reasoning, or do our (culturally-influenced) thoughts structure our language , are questions I have always found captivating. It’s a little like the chicken and the egg of linguistics. While I sit around feeling captivated, so have others before me all be it a lot more productively. Arab philosophers of the 8 th to 10 th century sat around among themselves too, but in assemblies of great minds to discuss the origin of language... a few centuries of bewildering mental activity before maqbul and makruh were pushed off the boat and 7lal and 7ram took over as the only subjects worth waking up for. Whether language influences our thoughts or our thoughts influence our language, it is observable that we express our thoughts outloud according to a preset shape, along distinct terms of references, patterns of thoughts in essence, and we are predisposed to follow these. Two blocks in an Algerian pattern I am learning to discern ...