Re: Inherently Reflexive Verbs (was: mental masturbation)

(I fear that this will be more concultury than conlangy, and I promise
that if it deviates even more from the straight & narrow linguistics, I
will take it off the list...)

On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, Sally Caves wrote:

>
> Curiously, I've been doing some research on the topic of medieval
> masturbation in order to comment on Old English Riddle 12 (with a woman
> who is putatively masturbating in front of the fire).  There doesn't
> seem to have been a word for "masturbate" in medieval Latin.  I don't
> about classical Latin... Ray or somebody else can inform me, but Payer
> writes in _Sex and the Penitentials_ that the concept was expressed
> by a reflexive phrase like  _ipsa coitum habet_ (has sex with herself)
> or
> _propriis membris se ipsum violaverit_ ("has violated himself with his
> own members").  I can't believe this is true... the Penitentials would
> of course express it with a circumlocution, but weren't there vulgar
> terms in Latin? I think _masturbari_ is a late addition and coinage,
> but I'm away from the OED.
>
In the case of Classical Latin, I can only cite Adams (1982), and not
begin a classicist, I don't know how reliable he is. I'd be rather
surprised if from frico, sollicito, tango, tracto, contrecto, truso,
trudo, tero, haero, deglubo, glubo, rado, manus fututrix and molo none
had survived the fall of the empire... Besides,  _masturbari_ is attested
in Martial 9, 41: ...Omnia perdiderant, si masturbatus uterque...
(Not bad for a copy of Martial from 1853 - it's not bowdlerized, as
I feared when I bought it.) I'm also reminded of that charming miniature
in the Hours of Duc de Berry, where the peasants are warming their
nobility by the fire.

>
> And what would the Charyans say that the lovers were doing in Lamay-
> nerinmen?  We would call it mutual masturbation (at least that's how
> *I* interpreted the Denden poem, which is why I entitled it _Lreen_
> ("Fingers") in my interpretation.
>
Well, even in translation I wouldn't call it masturbation - being
Dutch I'd say 'handwerk', which perhaps can best be translated by
'manipulation' :-). Of course, as far as the Charyans concerned, that
is just part and parcel of _yavai_, which covers the entire spectrum of
'loving' (with physical attraction - love between parents and children
is _avan_) to 'having sex together'. You can exert yourself in _yavai_
without having to actually _qenan_. On the other hand, _qenan_ without
_yavai_ is unheard of. So what the lovers where doing was _yavain_,
'loving' - if the rabbit were actually chased into its lair, there
would have been _qenan_, but that's really just a term for one of
the many actions in the repertoire of a good _qaivan_.

(I've just been informed that this is probably a cultural/linguistic
issue: I tend to think of masturbation as a solitary act, and as soon as
lovers touch each other, it's no longer masturbation. In this respect
I think Denden is very much a calque of the way I think myself.)


Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt