It is not easy to criticize Yeat's poems over his every period, in a Short space, for his activities have been so varied and his works do not divide in fixed periods nor fit into convenient categories. During a long life, from 1865 to 1939, he was the wan young Celt haunting the twilight, the founder and director of the Abbey Theatre, the folklorist, and experimentor in Spiritualism,-and above these roles, prompting them all, he was a poet. During his life and also since his death, he has come to be criticized by various poets and critics, who have build up a variety of unconnected pictures. And the more he is criticized, the more elusive he has come. Even in his poetic life, he was the nervous romantic sighing through the reeds in the 'eighties and 'nineties and the worldly realist in the 'twenties, and the last romantic in his later years. E. Wilson praised Yeats' imagination connecting fantasies, myths, symbols and reality. S. Spender praised realistic and passionate Yeats. But J. M. Murry blamed Yeats' myths and romanticism. In spite of these writings, all through his poems, we are faced to various obscurities of his poems, above all, his obscure sense of reality. Perhaps he himself had many deep contradictions in his mind, and he covered his self at each time with mysterious masks. It is the aim of this essay, not to uncover these masks but to pry into them especially on realistic poems in the 'twenties. And to what extent he succeed or failed in connecting his myths and reality, is still left questionable from many critical points, and this problem I have tried to solve. The reference books as good guides to this study are, R. Ellmann's Yeats: The Man and The Masks (1948), S. Spender's The Creative Element (1953), and The Permanence of Yeats (1951) which contains E. Wilson's, S. Spender's, and J. M. Murry's analyses and many others.

View full abstract

This is a cursory study of the rhyming in Fragment A of the English version of Guillaume de Lorris' Le Roman de la Rose. Its chief objective lies in finding out how the French rhyming words were treated by Chaucer or by whoever made the translation of Fragment A. In some cases the original rhyming words are adopted almost without changes, while in some other cases one of the two rhyming words in the original is retained, the other being substituted with a different word of Romance or English origin. Curious instances can be noted, among which is found the English word fair (from fceger) is put in place of the French verb faire (from L. facere). Another point of interest to study is the method of translating those verses in the French original, in which the rhyming words are homophones, etymologically connected or otherwise.

View full abstract

It has generally been believed that Mod. St.E. [a:] before [f, s, θ] and before r or r and a consonant developed from ME. a [a] in this way: a>[ae]>[ae:]+[a:]>[a:]. This process of development, however, seems to me to be the least plausible one. The reasons are as follows: (I) It is safe to assume that there existed in some earlier Mod. E. period [ae] or [ae:] for a before [f, s, θ] in London dialect which ultimately became Standard English, but there is no evidence whatever of the existence of this sound in London dialect from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the following century, during which period ME. a in an independent position had been fronted to [ae]. (2) For a before r or r and a consonant, there is no conclusive evidence, if any, of the existence of [ae] or [ae:] in London dialect before the second half of the i 7th century. (3) And what is most important, there is conclusive or nearly conclusive evidence showing that there had existed [a:] or [a:] for a before [f, s, θ, r] as early as the second half of the 16th century. Therefore, if we accept the current view, we must assume that such a complicated sound change as fronting, lengthening and then retracting was accomplished within less than one hundred years. This is too much in too short a time. It is chiefly on this score that I find it impossible to accept the current view. Then, what can be a more plausible line of development? I think there are two which may be more reasonable. One is the line of development Prof. Kokeritz assumes. In his view, Mod. St.E.[a:] before [f, s, θ] comes from nothern dialect, which did not front ME.a to [ae] but retained it. as [a] and the one before r or r and a consonant is a direct lengthening of ME.a. This can be plausible enough. The other is the way in which ME. a not only before r or r and a consonant but also before [f, s, θ] was never fronted to [ae], but was directly lengthened to [a:] in London dialect, whence Mod. St.E.[a:] developed. When we take this view, some explanation is naturally required of [ae] or [ae:] for a before [f, s, θ] in London dialect in the earlier period, for which there is conclusive rhyme or jingle evidence. The explanation is that it came from southern dialect, where a before these consonants is generally pronounced [ae] or [ae:] even nowadays. I believe this line of development can be at probable as the one Prof. Kokeritz assumes.

View full abstract

1. The science of speech-sounds has been so observant of 'objectivism' as to neglect the objective value of the 'subjective' response on the part of the speaker; it has had too much of: dogmatic fiction deriving from the observers' preconceived 'systems'. A ture 'descriptive' science should have no 'system'. 2. To prove this, I instituted, in 1950, a questionnaire (III) at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to 48 Americans, most of whom were college students. 3. Question [2] gives us the following results: a. About 2/3 of the answerers recognize a double consonant after a strong short vowel before a weak syllable, unless influenced by word-formation, syllable structure, or, most seriously, spelling. (VII, VIII, and IX) But no consistency prevails. b. The responses to the questions in XI and XII prove that spelling, can hardly influence phonology without due grounds. The so- called 'spelling pronunciation' means, then, the healthy tendency among the speakers to try to conform sound to spelling, not any reckless distortion of their sound-images caused by spelling. c. [t〓], [d〓], [ts] and [tθ] seem to be fairly well-established single phonemes in some. (XII, XIII and XIV) d. In about 1/4 of the speakers, '-ng' is not [〓], but [〓g] or [ng] (XVI) About the same number have [-〓〓r], not [-〓g〓r], for longer and finger. e. Most important: For not a few, '-ng ' can be either or' [〓g, ng] according to circumstances. No consistency marks the English language today. f. For many, [ju:] is a single vowel both medially and initially. (XVII) g. For most of the speakers, Marx is not phonologically equal to marks. (XVIII) [-ks] is often 'flexible'. h. 14 out of the total 48 have [wr]. (XIX) 4. The above-mentioned conclusions were consolidated by the data from the questions other than [2].

View full abstract

General Semantics is not a new science. It dates back to 1933 when Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity was first published in New York. In view of the semantic disturbances prevalent all over the world, however, his contentions seem to deserve a renewed attention. The purpose of this paper is to review his theory from the purely methodological point of view. The modern trends of science of meaning may be safely divided into the science of methods and the science of signs. The logical foundation of General Semantics in a word the non-Aristotelian revision of all language activities in the light of all outstanding contributions of the modern sciences. General Semantics is a unified science. The claim for the anthropological revolution from the science of the man to the science of a man, in parallel with the scientific transformation from the, geometry to a geometry, from the Universe to a universe, implies the unique aspect of General Semantics. The theory of the structural unconscious supposedly imbedded in any form of linguistic representation is undoubtedly one of the major contribution's of General. Semantics. In the light of this thoery, the science of meaning will undergo a revolutionary change. The therapeutic aspect of General Semantics is omitted, as it is extensively dealt with by Mr. Hayakawa in his Language in Thought and Actim.

View full abstract