http://zelligharris.org/Minimalist.pdf

Harris' footnote here gives a rare glimpse of his social philosophy, which was for him a matter of deeply committed practice and not a merely theoretical espousal: "The pitting of one linguistic tool against another has in it something of the absolutist postwar temper of social institutions, but is not required by the character and range of these tools of analysis." It is entirely in keeping with his views, for example, that he did not seek to impose them upon others. The absolutism Harris mentions here is also seen in the recurring demand for `the' `correct' grammar of `the' language. An early instance of this is the controversy over non-uniqueness in phonology, alluded to earlier, and Householder's famous (and oversimplifying) dichotimization of `God's Truth' linguists vs. `hocus-pocus' linguists (see Hymes & Fought 1981:150- 151). Harris admitted different, non-unique descriptions by application of alternative distributional procedures, so long as, given the primitive contrasts, "the defining of the elements and the stating of the relations among them be based on distribution, and be unambiguous, consistent and subject to check" (1951a:9). "In any case, there is no harm in all this non-uniqueness, since each system can be mapped onto the others, so long as any special conditions are explicit and measurable" (1954:5; Harris [1951a:32] gives an earlier formulation). The notion that there is some sort of harm in non-uniqueness reflects a conception that because the ideal of science is to give a "correct" description eventually, failure to find "the correct" description at every stage constitutes failure to be scientific. Hymes & Fought (1981:148- 149) identify this character in Trager's insistance that one start with phonetic data and proceed in rigid, stepwise fashion, never mixing levels, in contrast with Harris' much more flexible (though no less rigorous) approach. 31 Harris' footnote here reads: Because of the mass of idiomatic and quasi-idiomatic expressions in language, each type of description has to treat of various special small categories of words, and in some cases even of unique words. But in the case of string and transformational analyses, and less adequately in the case of constituent analysis, the statements for aberrant and idiomatic material can be made in the terms of the given description (constituent, string, or transformation) or in limited extension or weakenings of the rules of that description. In these analyses, the treatment of difficult material does not require us to go completely outside the terms of the given description into the terms of another or into the metalanguage. In the elided text is a slightly different statement of the footnoted passage: "Each of these properties can be used as the basis for a description of the whole language because the effects of the other properties can be brought in as restrictions on the chosen property". In this formulation, the import of added restrictions is emphasized. 32 Contrast this with the long-running controversies over the generative capacity of one or another formal metalanguage, construed as systems of generative rules for language.

how a Chinese poem is translated

Winding Up
by Derek Walcott

I live on the water,
alone. Without wife and children,
I have circled every possibility
to come to this:
a low house by grey water,
with windows always open
to the stale sea. We do not choose such things,
but we are what we have made.
We suffer, the years pass,
we shed freight but not our need
for encumbrances. Love is a stone
that settled on the sea-bed
＃13
under grey water. Now, I require nothing
from poetry but true feeling,
no pity, no fame, no healing. Silent wife,
we can sit watching grey water,
and in a life awash
with mediocrity and trash
live rock-like.
I shall unlearn feeling,
unlearn my gift. That is greater
and harder than what passes there for life.

mod_virgule running on Amazon Web Services

just a note to test syndication/blog feed back to v2dev.p2b.tv

张千帆VS张维为：西方民主还是中国模式？ by 宋鲁郑

From http://songluzheng.bokerb.com/633505

北京大学法学院张千帆教授和复旦大学张维为教授有许多共同点：都姓张，都是上海人，都是海归，一个长期留美，一个长期旅欧。但更令人关注的是两者的不同：一个是西方民主的信奉者，一个是中国模式的推崇者。世人颇为期待的是，当这两位学者相遇时，将会撞出何等的火花。

著名的自由派刊物《炎黄春秋》2014年12月号发表了张千帆教授的文章《民主是绕不过的坎》----评《中国震撼：一个“文明型国家”的崛起》。

张千帆教授选择《中国震撼》做为双方观点交锋的切入点，确实显示了学者的眼光：中国国家主席习近平阅读此书之后，就把它推荐给了世界银行前行长罗伯特·佐利克(Robert Zoellick)等人物；2012年6月20日，英国牛津大学中国中心为张维为教授的《中国震撼》一书举行了专场研讨会；此书曾荣膺《光明日报》2011年度光明书榜十大图书、《中外书摘》2011年度十大好书、新闻出版总署全民阅读办2011年度大众喜爱的50种书·文化类、河北省阅读办2011年度十大好书等好评，而且早已译成英文，成为西方主流学者研究和引用的对象。西方主流媒体如BBC、纽约时报也多次采访。

张爱玲：诗与胡说

【点评】
张爱玲（１９２０—１９９５），１９２０年９月３０日出生于上海，１９３０年改名张爱玲；１９３９年考进香港大学；１９４１年太平洋战争爆发，投入文学创作。两年后，发表《倾城之恋》和《金锁记》等作品，并结识周瘦鹃、柯灵、苏青和胡兰成；１９４４年与胡兰成结婚；１９４５年自编《倾城之恋》在上海公演；同年，抗战胜利；１９４７年与胡兰成离婚；１９５２年移居香港；１９５５年离港赴美，并拜访胡适；１９５６年结识剧作家赖雅，同年８月，在纽约与赖雅结婚；１９６７年赖雅去世；１９７３年定居洛杉矶；两年后，完成英译清代长篇小说《海上花列传》；１９９５年９月逝于洛杉矶公寓，享年七十四岁。
《诗与胡说》：张爱玲的文章以想像丰富细腻，语言华美而著称，即使是带有说理议论性质的文章也是如此。从这篇文章透露出了张爱玲的一些文学主张，她非常反对繁文缛节的文学，而对于那些语言整洁干净，意境深远的作品则大为推崇。对于新诗的发展也提出了她自己的想法和见解，她对于语言的驾驭可以说是独具匠心。

[郑子宁] 从野鸡到凤凰：法语的"黑历史"

[郑子宁] 从野鸡到凤凰：法语的"黑历史"
2014-11-24 17:43:36
今天说起法语，很多人都有美好的印象，仿佛它是爱情的语言、艺术的语言……甚至不少人会认同《最后一课》的说法，觉得法语是全世界最美丽的语言。

但是揭开法语光鲜的外表，它作为一门高尚语言的历史却并不长久。法语究竟是如何从一门边鄙小语化身为"白富美"语言的代表呢？

——谈美国学者研究中国现当代文学的两本近作

书评：在革命中国发现普遍性
其他 创作
王璞 发表于：
《文景》2010年7/8月
在革命中国发现普遍性
——谈美国学者研究中国现当代文学的两本近作

本书评曾发表于《文景》，链接如下http://www.douban.com/group/topic/14161005/