Linguistic cynicism

Wittgenstein writes in PI 336 that

The case is similar to the one in which someone imagines that one could not think a sentence with the remarkable word order of German or Latin just as it stands. One first has to think it, and then one arranges the words in that queer order. (A French politician once wrote that it was a peculiarity of the French language that in it words occur in the order in which one thinks them.)

The parenthetical remark, of course, invites us his readers to fancy ourselves above all that; we think, oh, you silly Frenchman (or perhaps, you silly politician), perhaps that is true of your thoughts, but that is only because French is your native language, the one in which you learned to think, and had you been raised to speak a different language you would have had exactly that thought about it, no matter its word order.  And of course (we continue to think) the same obtains, with what needs to be changed changed, with us ourselves; we are enticed to think ourselves above the French politician in this respect (consider, for instance, our reading material! We are much higher-minded) and not likely to be taken in by such provincial claptrap.

Nevertheless, take a not even particularly egregious example of the front-loading of participial phrases:

Niemand hat die symbolische Struktur der aus dem Zusammenhandeln von Menschen sich ergebenden Stabilisierungen durch rituelle Vergegenwärtigung besser herausgearbeitet als Gehlen.

Here I want to say, no way, anonymous publishing house scribe. No fucking way is the order in which the words occur in the text the same as the order in which you thought them.  Nuh fucking uh.  (Even though really it's not all that implausible. Nevertheless!)

(Of course the French politician is almost certainly wrong; at least, regarding English, a language of whose speaking there is none more native than I, words occasionally occur to me in an order that accords neither with my intent nor with grammar, and I don't see why the case should have been different with that character or, in principle, anyone else.)

Comments

[Standpipe Bridgeplate]

a language of whose speaking there is none more native than I

This is so fucking meet.

[rd]

speaking the day's deepest thoughts...
papaver somniferum

(Issa meant poppies :)