Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Ancient Ways of Speech and Ancient Modes of Thought
Calvert Watkins (1933-2013), "The Black and White Adunaton," in his Selected Writings, ed. Lisi Oliver, Vol. III: Publications 1992-2008 (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 2008 = Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 129), pp. 814-818 (at 818, footnote omitted):
The Irish on the Guinness advertisement is "Ní féidir an dubh a cur ina bhán air," i.e.
"Black cannot be made white."
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'Ancient ways of speech', and 'ancient modes of thought', as I have sometimes sententiously evoked them, turn out not to be very different from what we say and think ourselves, right now. This is one of the lessons of philology and historical linguistics. The adunaton as a figure of speech is still with us, and the antithesis of black and white is created afresh with every dawn. Any one of us could produce examples galore. Let me here offer only one, a visual image from twentieth-century Ireland, in fond memory of Conn Ó Cléirigh. It has the classic linguistic form of adunaton. The 'familiar substance in the culture' and its attendant message may be left to speak for themselves.
