Reality Equation

its all the same. just as with “hello!” and “how are you?”
what in the world does “hello” mean?
would i really care how you are or is there anything i will do about it?

you should have known better living in nepal, dude.
“babu, bhat khayo?”, “babu, chiya khayo?”, “kaha jana lako?”

i wished people “happy new year” early in the morning, and one in particular replied “happy new decade”. does it mean he wont wish me a happy new year? and good fortune shall find me anytime in the new decade?

happy new year to you too. (whatever that now means)

add to that the regional differences in a language, aussie how’s it going? how is what going? or what’s up? how do you explain that lol! I was one of those people who’d been replying happy new decade when wished with happy new year because turn of the new decade means new ways to do things. all decades seem to have certain attributes attached to them like looking at the music scene the rock n’ roll of 60s, rock and more progressive rock of the 70s, glam rock of the 80s, grunge of the 90s, well the 2000s seems to be a bit of a blur but anyway you get the gist.

add to that the regional differences in a language, aussie how’s it going? how is what going? or what’s up? how do you explain that lol! I was one of those people who’d been replying happy new decade when wished with happy new year because turn of the new decade means new ways to do things. all decades seem to have certain attributes attached to them like looking at the music scene the rock n’ roll of 60s, rock and more progressive rock of the 70s, glam rock of the 80s, grunge of the 90s, well the 2000s seems to be a bit of a blur but anyway you get the gist.

No way, dude. There’s an internal logic to these expressions. The difference is that with other statements–ones that satisfy whatever criterion isn’t satisfied for you with “Happy new year” etc.–the logic is explicit or easily accessible.

For instance, “How are you?” can make perfect sense if you think that “are” is not functioning as a copula or an auxiliary, but rather that it’s functioning similarly to “existing” (as in “You think, therefore you are”). So “how” interrogates “existing.” I think this is wrong, though: it’s a contraction of “How are you doing?”, which follows standard English question syntax, making ‘are’ an auxiliary verb. In this case, though, “doing” becomes the existential activity, intransitive (c.p. “You think therefore you are doing something”).

Similarly, imagine you wish somebody who didn’t speak English well “Happy New Year!” He does a double-take, so you decide to repeat it more clearly: “Have a happy New Year!” Now, it’s very common that we ascribe to objects what is really a property of the mode of representing or perceiving those objects. For example, I say that the indian food we had today was super shitty even though what “super shitty” describes is the sensation I had upon eating the food. This is a super common–not cognitive error, but QUIRK–and it’s understandable if you consider that until the advent of modern philosophy, people rarely emphasized the distinction between subject and object, in that the concept of “subject” wasn’t fully delineated. There are some who say the Greeks invented “the self” (whatever that means…). So it’s easy to see how this logic is expressed in “Have a happy new year!” It’s the same logic expressed in “Have a tasty meal!” And to answer your question, I think its use is to wish a happy New Year’s eve/day experience, in the same way we say “Merry Christmas.”

Similarly, prosody and gestures are systematic and goal-oriented, even if they don’t feel that way relative to more explicit communication. You should see some of the schemas phonologists have developed to explain why we make sounds in the way we do. I guess you could lump “filler language” in with this category, too–”Ahh, so you’ve come!” performs a function even if it’s difficult to describe explicitly. That’s not to say there’s not a qualitative difference between “filler language” and the type of language I’m using now: for instance, high-functioning autistics have trouble with one but not the other.

Sorry to ramble, but I think it’s important that “ordinary,” non-explicit language use be studied just as rigorously and systematically as explicit language use.

Oh, btw, I’ve heard “goodbye” is a contraction of “God be with you.”

hahaha…. so Sadu..