Jane's Posts

Sep 2 1998 12:00 am


P1:
I think it has a lot to do with where "dearest" falls in the sentence. As the salutation to a letter (e.g., "Dearest Angela, . . ."), I think it sounds old-fashioned but nice. But in a spoken sentence (e.g., "Are you ready, Dearest? It's time to go.") it sounds just plain old-fashioned or dialectical.


P2:
Dialectical?

I was struck by your use of this word because my initial reaction was, How can a single word be dialectical. Then I thought, maybe he meant to say that it sounds like dialect.

Off to the dictionary to try to fill in a gap in my understanding, viz., why do these two words have such different meanings? Do they share the same root? And I still don't know. The OED gives for "dialect" L. dialectus, from a Greek word I obviously can't type here but which would transliterate as dialektos. For "dialectic", it gives OF dialectique from L. dialectica from Greek (transliterating again) [the] dialektike (that final "e" represents an aspirated eta).

Any classical scholars out there who can explain the relationship between these two words?

I am not a classicist, nor do I play one on tv. Oddly enough, I do have a bachelor's degree in classical studies, though. I almost minored in linguistics, too. The following is my guess on the etymology.

Patronius used "dialectical" to mean "characteristic of a specific dialect." A linguist may have used "dialectal," but that doesn't mean you have to.

In ancient greek dialegesthai (pardon the transliteration) meant "to converse." The "dia-" prefix can translate as either "between" or "against" in different words. The two meanings of the adjective "dialectical" descend from the different paths that the original word took. Speech "between" (don't flame me, I know it's "among") people who follow the same patterns of usage is called a "dialect". Logic reasoning developed through a process of argument (Socrates, Plato, etc.) or speaking "against" each other. This is where we got "dialectic."

"Dialectical" is used to mean "pertaining to or characteristic of" either a dialect or a dialectic. So the meanings end up quite different.


jane