The Global Evolution of Words
A METHOD OF SCANNING DICITIONARIES CAN REVEAL THE SEMINAL CONCEPTS OF LANGUAGE ~ A UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT HEAD CALLED THIS "THE MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERY OF THE CENTURY"
Above is an example of one page of my first book The Global Evolution of Words. It shows the arrangement of Meaning Groups (in left-most column) first into Sub-Clusters. When Sub-Clusters can be seen to share a commonality, it is presumed that the only commonality that could arise between them, and account for their existence, would be an attribute of the very earliest primally-shared experience. These earliest experiences are termed “Primary Concepts”.
Scientist Dr. Helen Eberle, also wife of an eminent mathematician, asked me one question. “How did you choose the words that you put in the collection?” Her death prevented me giving her an answer. I give it to you.
HOW I CHOSE THE WORDS THAT I COLLECTED
My reading process in this first-ever collection of dictionary entries began by my looking for clues in dictionaries as to the possibly earliest meaning of the family name, Canning. Someone you may have heard of, initials L.C., zen Buddhist name Jikan ~ which means Time, or Timeless, as you like ~ suggested a title for that first book, saying from his seat in our late-night-empty zen center tea room: “I’d call it ‘Speculations on the Origins of the Family Name Canning’. And so I did. But we both didn’t know at that point that Canning was not a family name, it was a tribal name, from Stonehenge.
Finding nothing in the history books, I guessed that the root syllable of Canning might contain meanings that would shed light on the origin of the name. So at first I read only the section of each dictionary for the words beginning with the spelling C-A-N. But realizing that spelling would not have been fixated at the dawn of language, I enlarged my reading to spellings of other velar consonants: K, G, C, even Ng.
At first I took no notes whatsoever, I just relaxed in the quietude of the elegant Doheny Library at USC and read the chosen sections of their large selection of translating dictionaries. After a week or so I took a break and went to the Linguistics department and let them know I was using the school’s library, and why. That resulted in a request from O - - - - - University to have a copy of my work.
Surely! I continued collecting.
One language’s dictionary had a CAN-word (as I called them) that was defined simply “rod”. That stuck in my mind, for some reason :-) Rods bring up images of canes, candles, an Anglo-Saxon word for the male organ, and the like. It occurred to me to look up the English word “rod” in a language far removed from the first rod definition, and see if that language’s word for rod was a CAN-word. And it was! The chase was on! From then on, I began noting down the commonalities I had already found after months of reading dictionaries. There were a dozen or so concepts I could remember just off the top of my head.
The “CAN” set of definitions is very cohesive in every language I read, which were 40, from all parts of the globe. For that reason I was able to follow an invariable PROTOCOL in reading and making notations. If you want a cheap but ground-breaking hobby, and you like relaxing in libraries, it is THIS:
Choose a name or word that intrigues you no end, and has a velar-based root syllable (one that begins with K, G, C, Ng).
Read translating dictionaries for words that have their first syllables spelled with any velar consonant (K, G, C, Ng) followed by any vowel (since vowels are infinitely mutable), followed by N. (The final N is a special case, fit for an entire study in itself.)
For the first while, read ALL the words of that type in the current dictionary.
When, in different languages, three words are found to have very similar meanings, name their commonality as nearly as possible, and pencil it on the heading of a lined page in a ringed notebook. (Include a good set of alphabet tabs, one divider for each letter, which might be found in Pasadena, California and possibly nowhere else.) This creates your first Meaning Group.
Pencil the three words and verbatim definitions (within reason) on that page of the notebook.
On the reverse side of each stiff tabbed alphabet divider, pencil in the Meaning Group titles so far included.
At the bottom of that page, pencil in the likely alternate titles that you do NOT use, followed by an arrow pointing to the Meaning Group title you’ve made where the words ARE being recorded. This will help immensely.
When you cannot find any new Meaning Groups by the above method, you have finished the collecting phase of your hobby. (Don’t worry ~ be happy! ~ if years have passed.)
The fun part follows: putting everything into an Apache Open Office freeware spreadsheet. You will ensconce yourself somewhere for six weeks, download the spreadsheet, and begin entering all you’ve put into your notebook into the spreadsheet, in something like the format in the example (above).
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