Acta Iadertina, Vol. 1 No. 1, 2004.
Original scientific paper
The elements of philosophy of language in Tolkien's "History of Middle-earth"
Josip Ćirić
; University of Zadar
Abstract
We can recognise in Tolkien's "History of Middle-earth" his attitudes, as a linguist, toward the nature of language. This inquiry is based upon presuppositions of projective nature of fantasy literature, analogistic theory of word's nature in the philosophy of language, and phonetic iconicity theory. The analysis of Croatian traditional bestiary concludes that we can identify these phenomenons by means of statistic method, in this case, for phonological feature of discontinuity. Tolkien is the author of fourteen artificial languages, and he made plain in vocabulary and in the structure of the letters the idea of concordance between a language and the world: phonetic structure, connotative associations and structure of tengwar are in tune with ethical dimension of referred objects. In the end, several researches are stated that confirms our presuppositions in non-fantasy surrounding.
Keywords
analogistic theory; philosophy of language; phonetic iconicity; magical thinking; Tolkien
Hrčak ID:
190045
URI
Publication date:
1.1.2004.
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