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George Steiner's after Babel1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Extract
In coming to talk about George Steiner's extraordinary tour de force, a work that was clearly designed to be a masterpiece and so narrowly and peculiarly falls short of that aim, I feel rather like an inverted Balaam, for unlike Balaam I came to bless and not to curse, to appreciate and not to disparage. And now I stand here, not without awe before so monumental an achievement, yet full of doubts, questions, uncertainty, even some distrust.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 403 - 420
- Copyright
- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1976
References
2 Steiner, George: After Babel: aspects of language and translation, xi, 507 pp. London, etc.: Oxford University Press, 1975. £8.Google Scholar
3 Numbers xxii-xxiv.
4 See pp. 60 and 67; of. Ullendorff, in BJRL, XLIV, 2, 1962, 455 ff.Google Scholar
5 Steiner's remarks on p. 59 lack precision and adequate literary documentation. He is, however, right to refer to Boret, A.'s important Der Turmbau von Babel.Google Scholar
6 See Gaster, T. H., Myth, legend, and custom in the Old Testament, New York, 1969, 308 ff. and 657 ff.Google Scholar
7 Even the use of ‘ultimately’ cannot make this an acceptable proposition: it would be hard to connect σημαίνω ‘to make signs’ with semen, verb sero ‘to sow’, which might well have to be placed with the Semitic zr'.
8 cf. Barth, J., Nominalbildung, Leipzig, 1889, § 212, c.Google Scholar
9 I am unable to trace the quotation alleged to derive from Chomsky, 's Aspects of the theory of syntax, 121–2.Google Scholar
10 Professor R. H. Robins has been kind enough to remind me that Indo-European participial clauses do indicate gender, especially the ancient IE languages.
11 I have not so far seen Gipper, H.'s Gibt es ein sprachliches Relativitätsprinzip?Google Scholar, to which Professor Robins has very kindly drawn my attention.
12 Elsewhere Steiner quotes with approval Roman Jakobson's observation that Chomsky's epigones ‘often know only one language—English—and they draw all their examples from it’ (p. 234). And Steiner himself raises the question: ‘Might it be that the transformational generative method is forcing all languages into the mould of English, as much 17th century grammar endeavoured to enclose all speech within the framework of classical Latin?’ (p. 106).
13 Aspects of the theory of syntax, 27–8.Google Scholar
14 On pp. 98–100 Steiner has some highly pertinent observations on these points. See also pp. 106–7. On the other hand, S.'s objections to Chomsky, as set out on pp. 464–5, do not seem to me to amount to a serious assault on the Chomsky bastion.