language processing | language and mind

May 3, 2013

Governance of the tongue

Filed under: language, language bias, language processing, language use — teresapelka @ 8:40 am

The “government of the tongue” has had two most prominent treatments: religious and poetic. The two may have stood at even dramatic odds, some preachers seeking consistency with early Christianity, poets cherishing the beauty of language itself. A linguist and a poet a bit, I will try to put consistency and beauty in the focus together.

James 3, Taming the Tongue

³When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. ⁴Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. ⁵Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. ⁶The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

James chapter 3 might be the sternest condemnation of a body part seen and heard of ever. Still, one may compare a sermon by Thomas Boston,

The keeping of the tongue is one of those duties that entitles a man to safety from evil times, and therefore must now be urged as a seasonable duty. The wisest monarch could hardly govern a great part of the world; how difficult then must it be to govern a world, and that a world of iniquity. The tongue is a world of iniquity, a heap of evils; as in the world many things are contained, so in the tongue. This world of iniquity is divided into two parts, undue silence, and sinful speaking. These are the higher and lower parts of this world, yet quickly may men travel from the one to the other.

Thomas Boston on the keeping of the tongue

James’s words are fierce. The apostle yet is determined to appeal to the early Christian, a human being likely to face persecution to involve bodily damage. James’s allusion to fire is strictly metaphorical, and the apostle does not condemn language. He advises considerateness in language use.

The context is not the same with Thomas Boston. The intimation of physical peril is gone; the metaphor of a sear on the conscience is used in the negative. The preacher refers to hierarchical verticality ― the upside of godness and the downside of evil ― again, to counsel on reasonableness in language use. The present day perspective on freedom of speech would not support many of the guidelines.

Both texts may be appreciated for their use of metaphor. Naturally, there would not be any original Christian matter advocating fire to introduce or instill belief. The fact was recognized by John Paul II apologizing for the Inquisition.

We can find the original Christian matter in the Bible. The matter does not imply any necessity of physical restraint on speech; the metaphor shows in the variety of translations:

James 1:26

²⁶And if any man guesseth himself to be religious, and refraineth not his tongue, but deceiveth his heart, the religion of him is vain.

²⁶If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.

²⁶Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.

²⁶If anyone deludes himself by thinking he is serving God, when he has not learned to control his tongue, the service he gives is vain.

²⁶If a person thinks he is religious, but does not keep his tongue from speaking bad things, he is fooling himself. His religion is worth nothing.

²⁶Wer sich für fromm hält, aber seine Zunge nicht zügeln kann, der macht sich selbst etwas vor. Seine Frömmigkeit ist nichts wert.

²⁶So sich jemand unter euch läßt dünken, er diene Gott, und hält seine Zunge nicht im Zaum, sondern täuscht sein Herz, des Gottesdienst ist eitel.

Joseph Butler came closer to the literary and linguistic sense of government,

Grammar The influence of a word over the morphological inflection of another word in a phrase or sentence.

Joseph Butler says,

The translation of this text would be more determinate by being more literal, thus: “If any man among you seemeth to be religious, not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.” This determines that the words, “but deceiveth his own heart,” are not put in opposition to, “seemeth to be religious,” but to, “bridleth not his tongue.”

Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel, by Joseph Butler (1827 edition)

Frugality would be less desirable in literature and poetry, fineness not to denote prolixity.

The Government of the Tongue_Seamus Heaney and T.S. Eliot memorial lectures

The thought of the government also happens to bring on awkward re-phrasings,

In the process of doing justice to the events of political violence―and in particular death―poetry could not help but forge a higher consciousness of these events that was political in its ironic detachment from claims as to the necessity of such violence. The achievement of this alternative form of politics, this government in exile, was to establish that identity and belonging are aspects of consciousness and imagination, rather than of territory and power.

I cannot help but disagree on inevitableness of ironic detachment, as well as identity belonging with imagination.

The Government of the Tongue Lexis Nexis

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April 21, 2013

The president, the queen, and the dear, one and only head

Filed under: citizenship, grammar, language, language processing, language use — teresapelka @ 7:08 am

My dear head does not give me headaches and this is one of the reasons I literally love it. Should I write, ‘my dear Head…’ ?

Some guys will tell you to spell words with capital letters for respect. You say ‘the Queen’s English’, and you say ‘the Chairman’, the guys would argue. Well, but then you’d have to look respectful about the Nazis and the Jihad …

Human thought has had the human body in view. We humans have heads of sentences and clauses; we have heads of states. And we humans could not live without own heads cozy with own necks. This might be the reason for some singularity in the use of capital letters.

The capital, that is, big letters work along with the way we orient in the reality. There are no proper nouns objectively, proper nouns are nouns as perceived by humans. I do not and would not advocate misspelling family or second names. This is, however, a human idea to spell them with big letters, and not any supernatural endowment.

With heads of states, relevance would matter most. The President would be the relevant president in office. The Queen would be the relevant ruler. Therefore, I would not have it for a mistake, if an American or person of a nationality other than British would write, ‘the queen’ about Elizabeth II. Ms. Windsor is not the head of the U.S.A. or all countries, she is the head of the UK and the Commonwealth. It might be actually un-diplomatic towards other rulers, if to try to nominate the one and only crowned head.

Well, plurality could come naturally cumbersome: one head not giving you headache, no one can tell what would be, should you have two …

What if you’d have two heads of states to write about in one essay, for example? The language matter happens to pool information also on reference. Just as one can write the Flag for the American (or another, relevant) flag, one can write the American president and the English queen, not capitalizing either — again, for diplomacy’s sake. Naturally, the phrases ‘Mr. Obama’ or ‘Ms. Windsor’ could not be taken for terms of offense.

The Queen’s (or King’s) English is a phrase not to refer to any particular person. England has had quite a few queens and kings so far. The phrase denotes the Standard English or Received Pronunciation. Viewing the phrase as belonging with one person only and making a proper noun reference could compare with coining ‘standard terms’ such as ‘Stalin’s Russian’ or ‘Hitler’s German’. The English themselves might go unhappy, however they are experts at splendid isolation.

Feel welcome to see the Word Reference forum,

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2544184

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April 13, 2013

It, him, or her: America, the world, and the human being

Filed under: cognitive progression, etymology, language, language processing, language use, philosophy, psycholinguistics, psychology — teresapelka @ 11:19 am

Martin Buber by Andy Warhol

Martin Buber would envision the human being in a bit of an embryonic role. I can agree that human cognition has its limitations, yet an embryonic status about human minds looks exaggerated. The matter evidently evolves round personal pronouns.

The philosopher, whose earnestness of study I do not mean to question, would yet see humans as entities in incessant ties; he would only differentiate this persistent condition into the I-You and I-It relationship. Simply speaking, every human would be an “I”. And every human would be always in a relationship, to a “You” or to an “It” — like an embryo, incapable of independent living.

Buber’s famous essay on existence, Ich und Du, has been about as famously translated into I and Thou. Arguments on philosophical intricacies have not convinced me on the alleged non-existence of an English word for the German ‘du’. It would not be just me, looking to the translation for Bist du bei mir — If you are with me.

There a few more unconvincing “details” about Buber philosophy and its followers. Let us think about the word “being”. It is construed with the third person singular, “it”. However, if we modify this word with the adjective “human”, we refer to the “human being” as “him” or “her”.

According to Buber, the world would be an It. We yet may think about a world as by a man or by a woman, in which case the semantics would play its good trick and add male or female attributes to the notion of the world. Naturally, everyone may try own perception on The World According to Garp.

Semantics is the language matter about meaning. This meaning may be not bound by singular, isolated lexical items. A “human being” may be a male or a female. A “world” can be a male or female world.

Languages also happen to have arbitrary, grammatical gender. In French or Spanish, a “book” is going to be a “him”. In Russian, a book is going to be a “her”. Ancient Romans had a day-book or diary for an “ephemeris”, a “her”. This arbitrary gender has had nothing to do with recognizing sex, since the beginning of time: mostly males were literate in ancient Rome.

Let us think about reference to countries: English would speak about a country as an “it”. French or Spanish would have their “pays” or “pais” for “males”. As regards home countries, the legitimate Italian “she”, “patria”, would keep company to the legal French “patrie”, Germans remaining unpersuadable on their “Vaterland” : there would be “Muttersprache”, but “Mutterland” would mean the country of origin, not the home country. American English would allow both fatherland and motherland, the home country or homeland prevailing.

Importantly, whether fatherland or motherland, when we go back in our thoughts, we use the third person singular again, “it”. We would say, “My fatherland, it …” We would not say, “My fatherland, he …” We also can say, and the vast majority would say, “America in its time …”

Well, America is a name of a country, same as Germany, France, Italy, or any other name of a country, fair and square. Concluding, human thought is not reducible to three pronouns, “I”, “you”, and “it”. Already the pronouns may have and often do have connotations to other pronouns, which — though potentially arbitrary — is a real factor to influence the way we formulate our thoughts.

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June 28, 2012

Magic mirror on the wall, which is the fairest of them Englishes all?

Filed under: language, language processing, language use, life — Tags: Constance Markievicz, English language, Eva Gore Booth, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, List of dialects of the English language, Snow White, W. B. Yeats — teresapelka @ 4:03 pm

‘Magic mirror on the wall,

who is the fairest of them all?’

Picture: Snow White in her glass coffin

I know not what the younger dreams -

Some vague Utopia – and she seems,

When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,

An image of such politics.

Many a time I think to seek

One or the other out and speak

Of that old Georgian mansion, mix

pictures of the mind, recall

That table and the talk of youth,

Two girls in silk kimonos, both

Beautiful, one a gazelle.

William Butler Yeats remains consistently rumored to have had a weakness about Eva Gore Booth and Constance Markievicz. Looking to the contour of the ‘politics’, ‘seek’, ‘speak’, and ‘mix’, one might think that things were so, indeed. Overcoming is part human life.

Yeats wrote about the women’s aging in unfavorable terms. He put himself to distrust with occult empathies and automatic writing. The overtly suffering semantics of ‘The Second Coming’ could not explain the discredit to human intellect that Yeats gave, praising Mussolini. Still, he wrote in an autonomous variety of English, that is, Irish English.

Let me think about the language matter and Dante.

A faithful witness. Thou shalt leave each thing

Beloved most dearly: this is the first shaft

Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shalt prove

How salt the savor is of other’s bread;

How hard the passage, to descend and climb

By other’s stairs.

(Paradiso, XVII; The Harvard Classics series edited by Charles W. Eliot, translation by Henry F. Cary, Grolier Enterprises, Danbury, Connecticut, 1980.)

Would there be the better and prettier, or the uglier and worse — varieties of English? Could we say there is one English language, THE English language? To me, implying a superior status about any of the contemporary Englishes is like putting the Snow White in her glass coffin.

A language variety can be an independent language within a group of languages of the same kind. American English is a variety of English coequal with British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, Scottish, Irish, and other recognized Englishes of the world; none is superior or inferior (Travelers in Grammar 2).

Not only does the beauty I beheld

Transcend our lives, but truly I believe

Its Maker only may enjoy it all.

(Paradiso XXX, Project Gutenberg, translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, e-text prepared by Dennis McCarthy, Atlanta, GA).

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June 10, 2012

Apples grow on noses: two languages – two minds?

Filed under: language, language processing, language use, psycholinguistics — teresapelka @ 12:18 pm

Kids may take language tasks easy. Adults might take some more time. The New Scientist of May 5th, 2012 provides an article by Catherine de Lange, ‘Mon espirit paratage – My two minds’, that proves it.

“Speaking a second language can change everything from problem-solving skills to personality. It is almost as if you are two people”, she says (or they say). The author quotes an experiment to compare the cognitive progression in monolingual and bilingual children.

“Both monolinguals and bilinguals could see the mistake in phrases such as ‘apples growed on trees’, but differences arose when they considered nonsensical sentences such as ‘apples grow on noses’. The monolinguals, flummoxed by the silliness of the phrase, incorrectly reported an error, whereas the bilinguals gave the right answer”.

I am bilingual and I am completely flummoxed. Monolingual kids can hear or read fairy tales. If you told a monolingual kid that long, long time ago, there was a kingdom where apples grew on noses and roses flew to sea, you wouldn’t hear anything like, ‘gramma is amphigo-ree’, unless the kid would be poking you. Bilingual kids, on the other hand, do not have their vocabularies for lexicons of empty items.

A kid speaking English and French will not have pain for bread, whatever you’d feel like saying about his or her syntactic capacities. More, any attempts at negotiation could look only sick. Seriously sick. Mal a l’oreille.

To appreciate kids’ syntactic abilities, you need to use empty lexical items. For example, ‘Phimos bimoes’, right or wrong? Kids knowing the singular, ‘Phimo’, and the infinitive, ‘to bimo’, would not be likely to show differences, monolingual or bilingual. Bilingualism is not a dissociative disorder.

Bias flaws also another experiment quoted in Catherine de Lange’s article. Mexicans were asked to rate their personalities in Spanish and English. She says, “Modesty is valued more highly in Mexico than it is in the US, where assertiveness gains respect, and the language of the questions seemed to trigger these differences. (…) When questioned in Spanish, volunteers were more humble than when questioned in English”.

Languages, Spanish included, are spoken worldwide, in various cultures and by people of different social standings. Never try to tell a Spaniard that humility would come from his or her language (!)

Feel welcome to visit my grammar blog, travelingrammar.com. My project uses virtual lexical items to enhance syntax. Virtual items do not deny sense: Form can’t be empty. You bet. A todas luces.

Important: the project is not an experiment.

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May 26, 2012

Glossolalia: impediment versus gift

Filed under: language, language processing, psycholinguistics, psychology — teresapelka @ 12:28 pm

When you ‘speak in tongues‘, you produce unintelligible speech. This sure is strange, as humans usually talk to tell, unless the purpose would be the word play known as poetry. Is strange behavior really divine?

Imagine someone asked if this would have been their pair of dirty socks in the middle of the lounge carpet when the very important people that contractors happen to be came to talk sense. What one could hear, might be: “AAAA-R-GH. Nope. Whatsoever”. The AAAARGH might even become suggestive of the Great Vowel Shift should the contractors have left — this meaning no cash and no holiday.

Purposely unintelligible speech would avoid natural phonology. This avoidance still would have phono-articulatory patterns. Let us think about something like “Me tum gade the bock be ore”. The pattern here is the bilabial stop [b] gradually to replace the bilabial nasal [m], the concomitant alveolar [t] and [d] to precede the dental [th], with a potentially velar [g] intermittent to the [t] and [d] — vowels vacillating front to back, high to low.

I have emulated the pattern myself; it is nothing inspired. It could be transformed into “My mum made me mock me more”, if to think about heat and similar influences to the human brain that cause glossolalia and phonologically driven discourse. Would the non-speech be mandated by a higher agency?

Recently, a man standing in the street gave me copy of the Bible, the Recovery Version, printed by the Living Stream Ministry Anaheim, California. I have compared the passages about the Holy Spirit with the American Standard Bible, my quotes come from the latter.

“And when they lead you to judgment, and deliver you up, be not anxious beforehand what ye shall speak: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye; for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Spirit.”

The passage hardly could concern unintelligible speech, as it says about delivery in or under judgement. The delivery would be assisted by the Holy Spirit. Another passage concerns salvation and the Holy Spirit; it would imply to take the matter of the Spirit — and, therefore, intelligibility — serious.

“Verily I say unto you, All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and their blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: ^3:29but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”

Naturally, a deity to advise damage to speech might not gain authority. What new tongues would the Bible speak about?

“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation.’ ‘And these signs shall accompany them that believe: (…) they shall speak with new tongues … “

Preaching the Gospel to new people most probably involved speaking their languages. Intelligibility not imposing any requirement to make oneself comprehensible to everyone, let us compare ‘language’ and ‘tongue’ in dictionaries.

TONGUE

Etymology: Middle English tunge, from Old English; akin to Old High German zunga tongue, Old Norse tunga, Gothic tungo, Old Latin dingua, Latin LINGUA.

LANGUAGE

Etymology: Middle English langage, language, from Old French, from langue tongue, language (from Latin LINGUA) + -age — more at TONGUE.’

(Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002.)

Looking to etymologies and contemporary uses, as well as regarding American English, there is nothing to substantiate any interpretation of the lexical item ‘tongue’ for incomprehensible speech. Would the Greek-derived ‘glossolalia’ justify the interpretation? Let us look up word origins. How could we derive the lexical item ‘glossary’?

Etymology: Medieval Latin glossarium, from Latin GLOSSA, a difficult word requiring explanation.

A glossary can be ‘a collection of textual glosses or of terms limited to a special area of knowledge or usage.’ (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged).

How come ancient Romans had difficult words for ‘glosses’? Latin and Greek were the two most prominent languages of the Antiquity, the language ‘affair’ was not too hot, however. The contemporary word ‘gloss’ may be derived from the Greek GLOSSA, tongue, language, word. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition).

The Greek item ‘lalia’ could be interpreted as ‘speaking, speech’. One could be speaking difficult words. One could be a kiddo acquiring speech. Kids begin or start ‘speaking in words’ some time in their lives. Before that, the speech of the young human may be unintelligible.

Well, there might be no reason to make the human an ugly bebe : ‘tout petit enfant; enfant dont la conduite est par trop puerile, ou adulte qui manque totalement de maturite’, says Larousse online — hot affairs are infrequent.

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April 28, 2012

Burning the Flag – where is the language?

Filed under: language, language processing, language use, law, psycholinguistics — teresapelka @ 10:46 am

Having earned a legal badge with the EzineArticles should not make one overconfident, I realize. The legal profession is a depth of recondite detail the Supreme Court has the right to firmly deliberate. The linguist I am, I yet can venture a few observations on speech – and this has been quoting freedom of speech to have invalidated prohibitions on desecrating the American flag.

United States versus Eichman, United States versus Haggerty, Texas versus Johnson: all case disputes argued violation of free speech under the First Amendment. Haggerty’s case would have the implication to make the Flag necessarily your piece of cloth before burning. If the Flag belongs to an institution like Seattle’s Capitol Hill Post Office, you can be fined.

Let me think. I do not need to burn the Flag to think. I imagine a human being burns something. Is there a speech sound produced, should the human just silently sit by, let us say, a campfire, warming his or her hands? Is there any written or printed stretch of language to emerge from the flame? Should one try to interpret the wood or coal crackling and hissing as stanzas, quatrains, epodes? Can you hear the anacrusis?

I could not, and there is nothing wrong with my hearing. Non-verbal acts such as burning do not produce language. The facts are exactly the same with tools such as hammers, saws, wrenches, screwdrivers, and whatever a handyman’s bag might contain: there is no speech produced with the use, unless the guy happens to be eloquent, interesting, and whatsoever handsome (I have to admit I’m not really talkative).

Non-verbal acts are not proper means or tools to convey speech and language. The Flag itself – the many the people, the many the answers; ask someone what the Flag looks like and what it symbolizes: the many answers you get, none will be identical, each with specific and individual language.

The First Amendment does not allow abridgment of free speech. Should burning the Flag be a speech act, what do you do if the Flag would be burning on a barrel saying ‘TNT’ – would putting it out be against the law? The First Amendment forbids reducing free speech.

Some psychologists would have the tendency to ascribe language to non-verbal phenomena. They would call it a ‘body language’. Let us think about the Anders Behring Breivik trial. The shrinks in the courtroom spent some time interpreting his ‘body language’. One of the shrinks said in an interview that a single, particular gesture of whisking the shoulder could have meant Breivik’s want to ‘put things in order or to shake off guilt’.

The fact is that the shrink ascribed her linguistic structuring to a gesture of no syntax. More, the structuring could produce non-specific results real-life. For example, ask the recycling guys what message they get if you whisk your shoulder and not say a word. Would they take it for a clear message that you want your trash removed (shaking off guilt has collocations with purification and therefore cleanliness), or you want something fancy heaped (order has collocations with arrangement and that could be random, without any notion of removal from a place). Anyway, it’s your backyard.

A flag of a country obviously is worth more concern than trash you might take the care to express verbally about.

Language requires syntax, lexemes, and grammar. Seeing the American flag displayed against a wall over a poster of an overt female offering erotic dances – which is not a figment of my imagination – I do not get a thing. There is no language logic. And I do not believe the regard would require any improving my brains. Someone has got an expressive disorder.

Propagating expressive disorders is not of my interest. I enclose photographs of the improper display of the flag under separate links. They might be considered parental advisory.

http://teresapelka.com/2012/04/28/burning-the-flag-where-is-the-language/imag0031/

http://teresapelka.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/imag0030.jpg

http://teresapelka.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/imag0029.jpg

http://teresapelka.com/2012/04/28/burning-the-flag-where-is-the-language/imag0032/

The Flag Code may be found here,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Flag_Code,

http://www.usflag.org/uscode36.html,

http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30243.pdf, and many other places.

I have put the American flag on my grammar book cover. My grammar project is not a napkin and it is not a sarong, regarding the US Code.

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September 10, 2011

No gramma

Filed under: grammar, language, language processing, language use — teresapelka @ 12:25 pm

There is not grammar without a mind. There is no mind without reckoning about ‘where’, ‘when’, and ‘how’.

‘Jill is a reedy yet energetic figure, her rebellious and dark, almost black hair flying in the September Paris wind. Jill is a very resolute person, one to walk big steps and breathe deep.’

‘But the large apron knotted on his left hip in a kind of – Jill has never been sure – stevedore or half hitch, you could think he is some athlete, here for a plate of Mussels à la Marinière himself.’

‘ Madame Règle is not a systematic person at all. The only regularity about her would be the two or three books she always carries fastened to her bag with a scarf or, actually, a variety of scarves of many colors and fabrics. That is, the books are not the same books every day, and the choice of the scarf sure depends on some totally unpredictable factor, just like the exact time for lunch, for which you have to assume the broad time frame of about sixty minutes to commence, or not happen altogether.’

‘ There is an anecdote associated with Benjamin Franklin about a man who asked a smith to make his ax especially sharp and ended up turning the grindstone himself. Jill is a grindstone to turn about good food. There is no telling her that good food could be bad and she likes French cuisine.’

‘ Would our egos stay on our cognitive maps for our hearts and minds?’ Travelers Part Two Preview pages 1-34

The work is registered for the ISBN, yet it is still a project.

Feel welcome to visit my grammar web log, http://travelingrammar.wordpress.com/

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August 28, 2011

Me proper tongue

Filed under: language, language processing, language use — teresapelka @ 12:58 am

There is no agreement in the present day neurology on the human senses, their number, role, and classification. Various language cultures would have the secondary brain receptive areas for gnostic regions; some would try to find one gnostic area to explain the whole brain. It’s gotta be good for one to know where they are for one to know what they are speaking about.

The mixup becomes serious when it comes to the tongue. Touch happens to be associated with exteroceptors. The tongue may be better off in the mouth.

I am definitely not an advocate of sorting out everything about the human being, especially in any absolute manner. My thing here is about the phonetic placement methods in speech training or re-training. Obviously, if the thing works for you, you go for it. All along, think whose tongue your tongue really is. My tongue has got to be mine to be my tongue, to me.

This is where some attention for the dispraised proprioception might help. Phonetic placement would put most emphasis on touch. There are touch receptors in the tongue and they are very sensitive. Yet, being touched in the tongue can be invasive and unpleasant (discomfort may make language learning a fiasco).

Speaking gives a much different sensation from that of being touched in the tongue. Further, however the tongue may touch the teeth or the palate for some speech sounds – what about vowels? They may be pronounced without occlusion.

The tricky part about hearing is that it is part intracranial. Most kids produce ‘crazy’ and loud sounds, which could be actually part practicing this inner hearing capacity. It is not gone with adulthood.

Speaking deliberately quiet with ear plugs – easy, your eardrums are not gonna like touch, either – can help realize the ‘inner ear’. A still better environment could be water. Just remember to switch the jacuzzi off and keep your head comfortably supported, obviously your face above the water and your ears in it. Full swimsuit, you can take the goggles off should you want to do some reading. I could also ‘sell’ here the laziest way to swim in the world ever. You can lie your back on the water just minding to hold some air in your lungs (and breathing, of course). It is going to keep you on the surface of a quiet lake. Whisper is good for the more advanced.

Vowels happen to be low, mid, and high. Vowel height seems to have given rise to some of the differences in contemporary interpretations of Latin. According to one of the schools, your read the letter /c/ as [k] before low vowel letter representations (please feel welcome to see ‘The game of the ziggurat’). The contemporary ‘aftermath’ could be the way people say /cat/, /cost/, /coast/, etc. Before the mid and high vowel letter representations, you’d pronounce /c/ as [c] or [ts], dependent on transcription.

This stipulated ancient Latin speech sound would be similar to the way you say /tsar/ in English. German has it in /zeit/, ‘time’; American has it in /zeitgeist/, ‘the general intellectual, etc. climate of an era’. Again, the contemporary ‘aftereffect’ could be the way people say /cell/, /cinema/, or /cycle/, there being a degree of overlap between /y/ and /i/ in Modern English. Another school would have the Latin /c/ for [k] regardless of aftereffects. [1]

Nature has had it that the brain needs to come before the tongue in speech. The phonetic placement method could not work for me. Generally, practicing with focus on hearing and tongue position can bring better effects.

‘Travelers in Grammar – The Whole Journey’, http://travelingrammar.com/.

[1] The disputed /u/ is reported to have developed from /v/. The Latin /c/ may be considered to have been interpreted as /k/ before non-vowel letter symbols, too. The Latin ‘caelum’, ‘sky’, ‘heaven’ would be a [tselum] or, more contemporarily, [tchelum]. The two letters stand for one sound, the mid [e]. The mid [e] also happened to be spelled as /oe/. According to older versions of the Latin alphabet, /cujus/ or /cuius/ ‘(of) which’, ‘whose’, ‘who’, ‘what’ – dependent on the time and epoch – could be transcribed as /cvivs/, for example. Latin alphabet evolved over ages, its knowledge belonging initially mostly with augurs, who kept things complicated enough.

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July 8, 2011

Mark Twain’s cigar

Filed under: books, language, language processing — teresapelka @ 8:34 am

Mark Twain remains rumored to have said he was ‘just moving’ when a woman ‘caught’ him carrying a box of cigars and reminded him of his promise to quit smoking. Cancer has been recently linked to a genetic factor (feel welcome to see the Eureka alert); the theme here is whether you might need the so-called ‘substances’ to write.

It is sure important to have substance in your story. Twain, ‘the greatest liar’ himself, wrote stories full of life and in good literary style. Obviously, the substance here does not denote nicotine, which is an unsuccessful competitor to acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter. An unsuccessful competitor does not change the organism’s preference for the natural neural messenger. Simply speaking, your nervous system is going to choose its own acetylcholine if you give it a chance – the reason why people quitting smoking happen to hate even a scent of it.

As for alcohol, four percent beverage such as beer will not make your nervous system dependent. Things go different round twenty percent drinks. Humans are ‘part electric’ and twenty percent or higher alcohol alters neural action potentials with regard to chemoaffinity. Alcohol takes your minerals and these are necessary for your molecular markers to work – this is why if you start with it, it may be your problem to quit (it’s best never to try, especially when pregnant). Careful diluting alcohol – chemically, precipitates are not solutions that is, single-phase liquids. Trying to dilute spirits, for example, forms a precipitate, not a solute. This means that the high percent particles remain high percent particles even after considerable time lapse, they are only rarefied. Obviously, drink driving is a crime whatever the alcohol, and for that you don’t think even about a beer. There is always some influence to your action potentials and this, even if low, can change your reflexes. Sure it is not a crime to relax after work.

Things can go much more serious as for serotonin. Narcotics like LSD and its derivatives may successfully compete with your natural chemoaffinity. Human DNA repairs, but your time could be up to five years before your receptors are back to norm. LSD before or during pregnancy may give your offspring an impediment – again, it’s best not to try.

Back to language and writing, LSD has another nasty effect. It gives schizophrenia-like symptoms. This means that your speech can go phonologically – instead of semantically – driven. In simple words, you produce verbiage. Nothing good for a writer. Writers – only some however, not all of them, or the best of them – happen to be reported to have taken drugs. The fact is that even if they did, that could have been hardly in order to write. Whatever you might think about doing in order to sit down and write, it could not be giving your brain problems with processing meaning.

Wouldn’t there be some pharmaceutical means to help writing? Legal medication shouldn’t be as bad as illegal substances – you might ask. Well, making yourself happier and more intelligent with medication… Let us think about the famous lithium. Lithium is natural and it makes you happy – the slogans have been. Why does it have effects on humans? It is a mineral of low occurrence. This means that it does not belong with the natural human chemistry. Your nervous system notices it easy. The problem is that lithium can act as a potassium antagonist.

What is it that potassium does? It is the basic mineral for the tissues, the nervous system included. Lithium already has been reported to have adverse effects. The paradox here would be that if you want to become more relaxed, a cup of tomato soup can do excellent (especially if you ‘take’ it regular ). Tomatoes include potassium. Obviously, they don’t have the placebo effect of some ‘magic’ remedy. Placebo does not work with everyone, fortunately.

Substance use among writers may have been lower than among other artists or professionals. More, it may have been lower than the average in the population. Writers are reported more than others. On the other hand, so many of them have been described as looking such ‘ordinary’ people that ‘you’d never think they are writers’. Most of them do not take substances or drink alcohol. Why?

Language and altered neural conditions do not go together well. Altered neural conditions interfere and distort the natural specificity that language skills need. Language has its rewards, on the other hand. It is the single most potent unifying factor in the brain’s working. The pleasurable rhythm the brain can go into with a good piece text may be definitely more attractive than any altered states of consciousness. More, language can be inspiration itself. Please feel welcome to see my ‘Memoir Uncouth‘ - my story, therefore not too exhibitionist and uncouth metaphorically.

Please feel welcome to see my poetry corner

https://sites.google.com/site/teresaspoetrycorner/home

my scribbling site

https://sites.google.com/site/teresasscribbling/Welcome

my other WordPress posts; they are listed at

http://teresapelka.wordpress.com/about

or go straight for the treats

http://teresapelka.wordpress.com/treats

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May 3, 2013

James 3, Taming the Tongue

James chapter 3 might be the sternest condemnation of a body part seen and heard of ever. Still, one may compare a sermon by Thomas Boston,

James’s words are fierce. The apostle yet is determined to appeal to the early Christian, a human being likely to face persecution to involve bodily damage. James’s allusion to fire is strictly metaphorical, and the apostle does not condemn language. He advises considerateness in language use.

Both texts may be appreciated for their use of metaphor. Naturally, there would not be any original Christian matter advocating fire to introduce or instill belief. The fact was recognized by John Paul II apologizing for the Inquisition.

We can find the original Christian matter in the Bible. The matter does not imply any necessity of physical restraint on speech; the metaphor shows in the variety of translations:

James 1:26

26 And if any man guesseth himself to be religious, and refraineth not his tongue, but deceiveth his heart, the religion of him is vain.

26 If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.

26 Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.

26 If anyone deludes himself by thinking he is serving God, when he has not learned to control his tongue, the service he gives is vain.

26 If a person thinks he is religious, but does not keep his tongue from speaking bad things, he is fooling himself. His religion is worth nothing.

26 Wer sich für fromm hält, aber seine Zunge nicht zügeln kann, der macht sich selbst etwas vor. Seine Frömmigkeit ist nichts wert.

26 So sich jemand unter euch läßt dünken, er diene Gott, und hält seine Zunge nicht im Zaum, sondern täuscht sein Herz, des Gottesdienst ist eitel.

Joseph Butler came closer to the literary and linguistic sense of government,

Grammar The influence of a word over the morphological inflection of another word in a phrase or sentence.

Joseph Butler says,

Frugality would be less desirable in literature and poetry, fineness not to denote prolixity.

The thought of the government also happens to bring on awkward re-phrasings,

I cannot help but disagree on inevitableness of ironic detachment, as well as identity belonging with imagination.

April 21, 2013

My dear head does not give me headaches and this is one of the reasons I literally love it. Should I write, ‘my dear Head…’ ?

Some guys will tell you to spell words with capital letters for respect. You say ‘the Queen’s English’, and you say ‘the Chairman’, the guys would argue. Well, but then you’d have to look respectful about the Nazis and the Jihad …

Human thought has had the human body in view. We humans have heads of sentences and clauses; we have heads of states. And we humans could not live without own heads cozy with own necks. This might be the reason for some singularity in the use of capital letters.

Well, plurality could come naturally cumbersome: one head not giving you headache, no one can tell what would be, should you have two …

Feel welcome to see the Word Reference forum,

April 13, 2013

Martin Buber would envision the human being in a bit of an embryonic role. I can agree that human cognition has its limitations, yet an embryonic status about human minds looks exaggerated. The matter evidently evolves round personal pronouns.

According to Buber, the world would be an It. We yet may think about a world as by a man or by a woman, in which case the semantics would play its good trick and add male or female attributes to the notion of the world. Naturally, everyone may try own perception on The World According to Garp.

Semantics is the language matter about meaning. This meaning may be not bound by singular, isolated lexical items. A “human being” may be a male or a female. A “world” can be a male or female world.

Importantly, whether fatherland or motherland, when we go back in our thoughts, we use the third person singular again, “it”. We would say, “My fatherland, it …” We would not say, “My fatherland, he …” We also can say, and the vast majority would say, “America in its time …”

June 28, 2012

‘Magic mirror on the wall,

who is the fairest of them all?’

Picture: Snow White in her glass coffin

William Butler Yeats remains consistently rumored to have had a weakness about Eva Gore Booth and Constance Markievicz. Looking to the contour of the ‘politics’, ‘seek’, ‘speak’, and ‘mix’, one might think that things were so, indeed. Overcoming is part human life.

Let me think about the language matter and Dante.

Would there be the better and prettier, or the uglier and worse — varieties of English? Could we say there is one English language, THE English language? To me, implying a superior status about any of the contemporary Englishes is like putting the Snow White in her glass coffin.

June 10, 2012

Kids may take language tasks easy. Adults might take some more time. The New Scientist of May 5th, 2012 provides an article by Catherine de Lange, ‘Mon espirit paratage – My two minds’, that proves it.

“Speaking a second language can change everything from problem-solving skills to personality. It is almost as if you are two people”, she says (or they say). The author quotes an experiment to compare the cognitive progression in monolingual and bilingual children.

A kid speaking English and French will not have pain for bread, whatever you’d feel like saying about his or her syntactic capacities. More, any attempts at negotiation could look only sick. Seriously sick. Mal a l’oreille.

Languages, Spanish included, are spoken worldwide, in various cultures and by people of different social standings. Never try to tell a Spaniard that humility would come from his or her language (!)

Feel welcome to visit my grammar blog, travelingrammar.com. My project uses virtual lexical items to enhance syntax. Virtual items do not deny sense: Form can’t be empty. You bet. A todas luces.

Important: the project is not an experiment.

May 26, 2012

When you ‘speak in tongues‘, you produce unintelligible speech. This sure is strange, as humans usually talk to tell, unless the purpose would be the word play known as poetry. Is strange behavior really divine?

Recently, a man standing in the street gave me copy of the Bible, the Recovery Version, printed by the Living Stream Ministry Anaheim, California. I have compared the passages about the Holy Spirit with the American Standard Bible, my quotes come from the latter.

“And when they lead you to judgment, and deliver you up, be not anxious beforehand what ye shall speak: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye; for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Spirit.”

“Verily I say unto you, All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and their blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: 3:29but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”

Naturally, a deity to advise damage to speech might not gain authority. What new tongues would the Bible speak about?

“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation.’ ‘And these signs shall accompany them that believe: (…) they shall speak with new tongues … “

Preaching the Gospel to new people most probably involved speaking their languages. Intelligibility not imposing any requirement to make oneself comprehensible to everyone, let us compare ‘language’ and ‘tongue’ in dictionaries.

TONGUE

Etymology: Middle English tunge, from Old English; akin to Old High German zunga tongue, Old Norse tunga, Gothic tungo, Old Latin dingua, Latin LINGUA.

LANGUAGE

Etymology: Middle English langage, language, from Old French, from langue tongue, language (from Latin LINGUA) + -age — more at TONGUE.’

(Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002.)

Etymology: Medieval Latin glossarium, from Latin GLOSSA, a difficult word requiring explanation.

A glossary can be ‘a collection of textual glosses or of terms limited to a special area of knowledge or usage.’ (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged).

The Greek item ‘lalia’ could be interpreted as ‘speaking, speech’. One could be speaking difficult words. One could be a kiddo acquiring speech. Kids begin or start ‘speaking in words’ some time in their lives. Before that, the speech of the young human may be unintelligible.

Well, there might be no reason to make the human an ugly bebe : ‘tout petit enfant; enfant dont la conduite est par trop puerile, ou adulte qui manque totalement de maturite’, says Larousse online — hot affairs are infrequent.

April 28, 2012

Non-verbal acts are not proper means or tools to convey speech and language. The Flag itself – the many the people, the many the answers; ask someone what the Flag looks like and what it symbolizes: the many answers you get, none will be identical, each with specific and individual language.

The First Amendment does not allow abridgment of free speech. Should burning the Flag be a speech act, what do you do if the Flag would be burning on a barrel saying ‘TNT’ – would putting it out be against the law? The First Amendment forbids reducing free speech.

A flag of a country obviously is worth more concern than trash you might take the care to express verbally about.

Propagating expressive disorders is not of my interest. I enclose photographs of the improper display of the flag under separate links. They might be considered parental advisory.

The Flag Code may be found here,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Flag_Code,

http://www.usflag.org/uscode36.html,

http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30243.pdf, and many other places.

I have put the American flag on my grammar book cover. My grammar project is not a napkin and it is not a sarong, regarding the US Code.

²⁶And if any man guesseth himself to be religious, and refraineth not his tongue, but deceiveth his heart, the religion of him is vain.

²⁶If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.

²⁶Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.

²⁶If anyone deludes himself by thinking he is serving God, when he has not learned to control his tongue, the service he gives is vain.

²⁶If a person thinks he is religious, but does not keep his tongue from speaking bad things, he is fooling himself. His religion is worth nothing.

²⁶Wer sich für fromm hält, aber seine Zunge nicht zügeln kann, der macht sich selbst etwas vor. Seine Frömmigkeit ist nichts wert.

²⁶So sich jemand unter euch läßt dünken, er diene Gott, und hält seine Zunge nicht im Zaum, sondern täuscht sein Herz, des Gottesdienst ist eitel.

“Verily I say unto you, All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and their blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: ^3:29but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”