LINGUIST List 5.1309

Fri 18 Nov 1994

Disc: Political Correctness, Who/animacy

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Dan Maxwell, Re: 5.1281 Political correctness
2. "Jules Levin", RE: 5.1290 Sum: Who animal

Message 1: Re: 5.1281 Political correctness

More on "politically correct" and Chairman Mao: I have a book called -The
Execution of Mayor Yin and Other stories from the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution- by Chen Yo-hsi based on the author's experiences
while living in China from 1966 to 1973. One of the stories is called
"Chairman Mao is a Rotten Egg". This is what the author's four year old
son was heard shouting while playing one day. It seems that he and his
friends were having fun trading insults, first of each other, then their
parents, and finally chairman Mao. This was of course not considered to
be a politically correct thing to do, so questions were asked. Perhaps
the little boy had heard his mother saying this? The author writes: "So
many parents had said to me, 'A child may steal or rob, but he must never
commit a political error.'" This appears to be rather clear evidence
that the concept of political correctness was important in China at the
time.

Dan Maxwell

Message 2: RE: 5.1290 Sum: Who animal

)1)
)Date: Sat, 12 Nov 94 17:25:11 EST
)From: amrjupiter.cs.wayne.edu
)Subject: Summary: Who animal
)
)The only language so far identified which
)uses the equivalent of 'who' in this situation in Russian, while
)German, Danish, French, Dutch, and I am pretty sure (although my
)judgements are somewhat rusty here) Polish all use 'what', as
)does English obviously.

The essential point here about the Russian
is that this must be connected to the category of Animacy in Russian
in which animals, like humans, are animate. The pronoun 'chto' 'what'
is strictly inanimate and could not be used without a serious grammatical
clash in a sentence "What did you see lurking in the woods...?" --an
animal is implied in English. Here Russian NEEDS 'who' to carry the
animacy. Hence 'kogo vy uvideli...', NOT *chego vy uvideli... (Pardon
my asterisk)
 --Jules Levin

University of California
Riverside, CA 92521