Elements of Style in English
Xah Lee
• Elements of Style in English
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/bangu/elements_of_style.html
plain text version follows.
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Elements of Style in English
Xah Lee, 2010-05-02
Was reading Wikipedia on The Elements of Style. Here's a interesting
quote:
«
Edinburgh University linguistics professor Geoffrey Pullum has
criticized The Elements of Style, saying:
The book’s toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal
eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English
grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to
notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules . . . It’s sad.
Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the
uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the result is a nation
of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure
whenever they write 'however' or 'than me' or 'was' or 'which,' but
can’t tell you why.[9]
Specifically, Pullum says Strunk and White were misguided in
identifying the passive voice as incorrect, and in proscribing
established usages such as the split infinitive and the use of "which"
in a restrictive relative clause.[9] He also frequently criticizes
Elements on Language Log, a linguists' blog focusing on portrayals of
language in the popular media, for promoting linguistic prescriptivism
and hypercorrection among English speakers,[10] referring to it as
"the book that ate America's brain".[11]
The Boston Globe's review of the 2005 illustrated edition
describes it as an "aging zombie of a book ... a hodgepodge, its now-
antiquated pet peeves jostling for space with 1970s taboos and 1990s
computer advice."[12]
»
Quite funny, and i'd agree. Much of the mouthings of the writing
establishment is shit.
But also, from this i learned the word Atavism. Also, the term
Hypercorrection. It is great to know the word hypercorrection, because
that gives me another embellished artillery against the grammarian and
pendant sophomorons.
Also, from Wikipedia's citation and references, i learned of Language
Log. Yay. A blog dedicated to fucking with pedantic idiots, which i've
been doing for the past decade. The blog itself is here:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/.
I kept on reading a bit on Wikipedia about the various style guides.
Fowler's Modern English Usage, seems like one i can endorse. There's
also The Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook, MLA. Actually, i think
most of these so-called style “guides” are much ado about nothing. The
only firm advice i can give about writing, besides knowing basic
grammar and spelling, is: Study logic and critical thinking, obtain a
analytical mind. This, will improve your writing by far, than a
writing “style” per se. As to a writing guide, the only i can firmly
recommend is: Simplified English. This is far more effective than any
established style guides. Of course, all these style talk about how to
form your words and punctuations into cogent sentences are in the
context of formal writing, in science, journal, reports,
documentations, tutorials, textbooks, as opposed to literary
tomfoolery as in essaying, novels, poetry, of which, pigs fly.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Tim Bradshaw
> I kept on reading a bit on Wikipedia about the various style guides.
> Fowler's Modern English Usage, seems like one i can endorse. There's
> also The Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook, MLA. Actually, i think
> othing. The
> only firm advice i can give about writing, besides knowing basic
> grammar and spelling, is: Study logic and critical thinking, obtain a
> analytical mind. This, will improve your writing by far, than a
> an firmly
> recommend is: Simplified English. This is far more effective than any
> established style guides. Of course, all these style talk about how to
> form your words and punctuations into cogent sentences are in the
> context of formal writing, in science, journal, reports,
> documentations, tutorials, textbooks, as opposed to literary
> tomfoolery as in essaying, novels, poetry, of which, pigs fly.
!
Raffael Cavallaro
> The
> only firm advice i can give about writing, besides knowing basic
> grammar and spelling, is
What you don't seem to realize, or possibly wilfully ignore, is that no
native speaker would want your advice on writing because almost every
post of yours betrays a faulty grasp of elementary english grammar. You
have to know the rules before you can creatively break them, and you
don't know the rules yet.
For example, your final verbal eruction, which I hesitate to call a
sentence, approaches word salad in its infelicitous disregard of
elementary grammar.
"Of course, all these style talk about how to
form your words and punctuations into cogent sentences are in the
context of formal writing, in science, journal, reports,
documentations, tutorials, textbooks, as opposed to literary
tomfoolery as in essaying, novels, poetry, of which, pigs fly."
Specifically:
two incorrect uses of the singular-plural distinction ("these style"
should be "these sytles" and "punctuations" shoud be "punctuation"),
and two verbs without a relative pronoun in:
"all these style talk about how to form your words and punctuations
into cogent sentences are in the context of formal writing"
This is not a set of powerpoint bullet items:
"all of these styles:
* talk about how to form your words and punctuation into cogent sentences
* are in the context of formal writing"
This is a prose sentece, so of course it should be:
"all of these styles, which talk about how to form your words and
punctuation into cogent sentences, are in the context of formal
writing..."
and the final, nearly incomprehensible:
"of which, pigs fly."
where the only possible formal grammatical and stylistic critique is:
WTF?!?
Simple things like this are a red flag to readers that you yourself
haven't mastered english, which is why no native speaker would seek
your advice on writing style.
At the end of the day, methinks the poster doth protest too much. If
you really feel that standard grammar and usage are an unnecessary
restriction on your expressive freedom, then write in your own
non-standard poetic style without feeling the need to justify it. The
fact that you simultaneously decry existing standards, while advising
others to learn "basic grammar" suggests that you recognize your own
failings in this regard, and rather that deal with the problem at its
source (i.e., your own failure to learn english grammar) you lash out
at some straw man of unnecessaryily restrictive style guides. I, and
others here, bend and break the rules all the time, but that is because
we already know the rules to begin with.
warmest regards,
Ralph
--
Raffael Cavallaro
Don Phillipson
news:55c53d08-3d4b-4186...@g1g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
. . .
> Was reading Wikipedia on The Elements of Style. Here's a interesting
quote:
> � Edinburgh University linguistics professor Geoffrey Pullum has
> criticized The Elements of Style, saying:
> The book's toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal
> eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar.
Pullum's polemic appeared a year ago, perhaps more, and was then
discussed in some detail. His main complaint is that American
colleges use Strunk & White as a source for grammar (despite
the title's indicating that it is about style, not grammar.) Prof. Pullum
taught linguistics in US colleges for 20 years before returning to
Britain but has no special reputation in his professional field (says
my brother, who has some eminence in the same field.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Xah Lee
<raffaelcavall...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote:
> On 2010-05-02 08:50:48 -0400, Xah Lee said:
>
> > The
> > only firm advice i can give about writing, besides knowing basic
> > grammar and spelling, is
>
> What you don't seem to realize, or possibly wilfully ignore, is that no
> native speaker would want your advice on writing because almost every
> post of yours betrays a faulty grasp of elementary english grammar. You
> have to know the rules before you can creatively break them, and you
> don't know the rules yet.
What you don't seem to realize, as with most pedants, is that writing
serves a purpose, a purpose of communication, and when a piece of
writing, communicated exactly what the writer wants the reader to
feel, understand, with no hiccups in the reading process, that writing
is successful. More over, if the style per se, persuaded the reader,
tickled his mind, hit her brain, or boiled his blood, that writing is
great.
now, my little ditty of “Elements of Style in English” is a little
essay. As you can see, the target audience are people concerned about
writing and have read one or two of the mentioned styled guides. In
general, they are college graduates, or involved in the writing
profession.
Now, consider the sentence you criticized:
«Of course, all these style talk about how to form your words and
punctuations into cogent sentences are in the context of formal
writing, in science, journal, reports, documentations, tutorials,
textbooks, as opposed to literary tomfoolery as in essaying, novels,
poetry, of which, pigs fly.»
would any in the audience have problem understanding the above
perfectly and fluently? In particular, when the “pigs fly” part hits
them?
you not only understood it perfectly, so well, in fact, you took the
time to criticize how it is ungrammatical, and accuse me of no basic
understanding of grammar. This, is the communicative success of my
little piece.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
His kennyness
Ah, Boston, that pinnacle of wicked shahhhp eleocution.
Forest. Trees. Please note order. All I remember from S&W was that it
was well-written itself and the bit about simplify, simplify, simplify.
Good advice for writing code, think to come of it.
> »
>
> Quite funny, and i'd agree. Much of the mouthings of the writing
> establishment is shit.
>
> But also, from this i learned the word Atavism. Also, the term
> Hypercorrection. It is great to know the word hypercorrection, because
> that gives me another embellished artillery against the grammarian and
> pendant sophomorons.
>
> Also, from Wikipedia's citation and references, i learned of Language
> Log. Yay. A blog dedicated to fucking with pedantic idiots, which i've
> been doing for the past decade. The blog itself is here:
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/.
>
> I kept on reading a bit on Wikipedia about the various style guides.
> Fowler's Modern English Usage, seems like one i can endorse.
"[Fowler] opposed all pedantry, and notably ridiculed artificial
grammatical rules without warrant in natural English usage — such as
bans on split infinitives and ending a sentence with a preposition,
rules on the placement of the word only, and distinctions between which
and that. "
Ewwww. Wrong, wrong, and wronger.
kt
Raffael Cavallaro
> What you don't seem to realize, as with most pedants, is that writing
> serves a purpose, a purpose of communication, and when a piece of
> writing, communicated exactly what the writer wants the reader to
> feel, understand, with no hiccups in the reading process, that writing
> is successful.
To the ear of a native speaker, your writing is filled with hiccups.
You don't realize this because you haven't internalized english grammar
and usage sufficiently to hear it. You think you're communicating in an
unimpeded flow, but a native speaker cringes when reading your posts
because of the numerous gaffes, errors that one would never hear from a
native speaker.
If you don't want to adhere to english grammar because it's too much of
an effort for you to learn its byzantine norms (and they are in large
part arbitrary and irregular), fine. There are thousands of posters on
the internet whose english is far from perfect.
> would any in the audience have problem understanding the above
> perfectly and fluently? In particular, when the "pigs fly" part hits
> them?
It isn't at all clear what you mean. "When pigs fly" means "that will
never happen." Do you mean that essays and novels will never happen? Do
you mean that poetic license makes the impossible happen? Your usage of
the phrase makes no sense in the context in which you use it. You can't
repurpose long accepted idioms and expect that readers will magically
read your mind and intuit your intended meaning. We don't live in your
head.
One problem with english being widespread is that it is a language in
which is easy to attain understandability, but very difficult to attain
comprehensive mastery of the huge laundry list of often arbitrary
grammatical and usage norms. As a result, non-native speakers often
fall into the trap of believing that it is easy to master. It is not.
Such people my go for years repeating errors without realizing it
because native speakers will understand their intended meaning, but not
correct their grammar and/or usage.
Please stop trumpeting your broken english as some sort of stylistic
choice. It's not. It's obvious to native speakers that it's not. You
don't *choose* to write "punctuations" instead of "punctuation," or
write sentences with two verbs and no relative pronoun. You just don't
know any better.
Spanish is a language with relatively few phonemes. As a result,
spanish speakers often speak other languages that have phonemes absent
from spanish with a quite noticeable accent. My brother was acquainted
with a spanish diplomat who, because of his profession, needed to be
proficient in a number of languages. He once told my brother "I espeak
eseven languages - all of them in espanish!"
There is no shame in not having mastered english grammar and usage (or
pronunciation) - I speak some spanish, french and german, but I would
never claim to have mastery of the grammar and usage of any of these.
At the same time, I don't write screeds condemning the authorities on
the standard grammar and usage of these languages.
Just be yourself without apology. At the same time, stop trying to
denigrate accepted, widely used, english grammar and style just because
you haven't mastered it. It just makes you look foolish.
Xah Lee
are a sea of them.
But is there a way to resolve our argument in a definitive way?
Yes. One simple way, is to ask expert writers, say, those who are
widely recognized as expert writers, make a judgment of my writings.
Say, my very little essay here, or others on my website. Ask them, is
these writings, clear, conveys the writer's thoughts well, fluent,
creative, and in short, rather expertly done?
You see, we can even carry this out. The question, of whether my
writings are above average among professional writers, is absolutely a
question that can be answered with a definitive yes or no. But the
question is, as with most arguments in online forums, there is no
incentive to actually resolve arguments. In the past years, i've
suggested concrete and practical ways to raise funds by both parties
to resolve questions about computer language debates. Wrote at least
twice with some 500 or so words on this that describes how this can be
done. (search google group of my post with terms paypal, argument,
expert, you'll probably find them) The closest case is someone paid me
$20 usd to resolve a argument i had with another guy. (documented
here: http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/Mathematica_optimization.html
)
So, what am i gonna do with u? what CAN i do with another online
netizen who i barely know? do i, honestly, spend the next 4 hours
digging my heart out with sincerity about a proposal to resolve a
argument, that i know, will result in nothing other than another bout
of word fight? And consider you as a person, do i really, want to go
to all this trouble that effectively in the end makes you look bad?
hum? y'know, my persona, isn't the type to be kind with words about
matters of truth or the size of my cock.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
On May 2, 7:31 pm, Raffael Cavallaro
D Herring
On 05/02/2010 06:57 PM, Xah Lee wrote:
> What you don't seem to realize, as with most pedants, is that writing
> serves a purpose, a purpose of communication, and when a piece of
> writing, communicated exactly what the writer wants the reader to
> feel, understand, with no hiccups in the reading process, that writing
> is successful. More over, if the style per se, persuaded the reader,
> tickled his mind, hit her brain, or boiled his blood, that writing is
> great.
Like most pedants, you don't realize that writing is a tool for
communication. When a written piece accurately communicates the
writer's thoughts and feelings without confounding the reader, it has
been successfully executed. Moreover, a writing style that catches
the reader's fancy, excites the mind, or stirs intense emotion may be
considered to be great.
While I am no wordsmith, I think most of your other writings could use
a similar rewrite. Your pragmatism is worthy; but a fluent, precisely
written text is a helpful prerequisite for your stated aims.
- Daniel
P.S. On a meta note, your works frequently indicate good ideas; but
these ideas are often overshadowed by a lack of example
implementations, difficulty communicating, narrow focus, or a bit of
hubris.
Raffael Cavallaro
> The question, of whether my
> writings are above average among professional writers, is absolutely a
> question that can be answered with a definitive yes or no
OK then, definitively no; they're quite amateurish, and well below the
quality produced by most professional writers.
warmest regards,
Ralph
P.S. I don't have time to keep up with your seemingly endless
outpourings of inchoate verbiage, so I'll likely make this my last
response.
--
Raffael Cavallaro
Captain Obvious
RC> You don't realize this because you haven't internalized english grammar
RC> and usage sufficiently to hear it. You think you're communicating in an
RC> unimpeded flow, but a native speaker cringes when reading your posts
RC> because of the numerous gaffes, errors that one would never hear from a
RC> native speaker.
Have you ever seen comments on Youtube?
"i was doing this when i was tired of waiting my girlfriend to arrive to
park,so i was on park road i started to paly this song from my cellphone and
started to dance then when i surely wasen't expecting...there she was right
behind me i noticed that when i made turn around move and jeesus christ she
lolled hard "
"ahah? hes a nerdd"
Or Yahoo! Answers:
"I beg you to answer. I m so desparate?"
Tim Bradshaw
> you not only understood it perfectly, so well, in fact, you took the
> time to criticize how it is ungrammatical, and accuse me of no basic
> understanding of grammar. This, is the communicative success of my
> little piece.
I didn't understand the last bit at all
Stan Brown
<raffaelc...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com>:
[addressing Xah Lee]
> Please stop trumpeting your broken english as some sort of stylistic
> choice. It's not. It's obvious to native speakers that it's not. You
> don't *choose* to write "punctuations" instead of "punctuation," or
> write sentences with two verbs and no relative pronoun. You just don't
> know any better.
I think you're being too charitable. These kinds of errors are not
matters of idiom or failing to master strange exceptions; they are
failure to master basic grammar. The difference between singular ad
plural, and the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
stuff in any European language.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...
Tim Bradshaw
> "[Fowler] opposed all pedantry, and notably ridiculed artificial
> grammatical rules without warrant in natural English usage — such as
> bans on split infinitives and ending a sentence with a preposition,
> rules on the placement of the word only, and distinctions between which
> and that. "
>
> Ewwww. Wrong, wrong, and wronger.
I have to agree with Xah here. Fowler was quite a smart person, and
he's well worth reading on split infinitives, for instance (to
mindlessly ban which is clearly silly)
Rob Warnock
+---------------
| One problem with english being widespread is that it is a language in
| which is easy to attain understandability, but very difficult to attain
| comprehensive mastery of the huge laundry list of often arbitrary
| grammatical and usage norms. As a result, non-native speakers often
| fall into the trap of believing that it is easy to master. It is not.
| Such people my go for years repeating errors without realizing it
| because native speakers will understand their intended meaning, but not
| correct their grammar and/or usage.
Heh. Sounds a lot like Common Lisp... ;-} ;-}
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
James Hogg
> Sun, 2 May 2010 22:31:36 -0400 from Raffael Cavallaro
> <raffaelc...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com>:
> [addressing Xah Lee]
>> Please stop trumpeting your broken english as some sort of stylistic
>> choice. It's not. It's obvious to native speakers that it's not. You
>> don't *choose* to write "punctuations" instead of "punctuation," or
>> write sentences with two verbs and no relative pronoun. You just don't
>> know any better.
>
> I think you're being too charitable. These kinds of errors are not
> matters of idiom or failing to master strange exceptions; they are
> failure to master basic grammar. The difference between singular ad
> plural, and the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
> stuff in any European language.
And in later semesters, students go on to learn that many languages have
subjectless verbs.
--
James
Nick
writes:
> On 2010-05-02 23:05:05 -0400, Xah Lee said:
>
>> The question, of whether my
>> writings are above average among professional writers, is absolutely a
>> question that can be answered with a definitive yes or no
>
> OK then, definitively no; they're quite amateurish, and well below the
> quality produced by most professional writers.
Agreed. OTOH if he's the same Xah Lee who wrote the web pages about
adding new major modes to Emacs, they are more than good enough to make
his pages entirely comprehensible and very useful.
> warmest regards,
>
> Ralph
>
> P.S. I don't have time to keep up with your seemingly endless
> outpourings of inchoate verbiage, so I'll likely make this my last
> response.
If "seemingly endless outpourings of inchoate verbiage" are your warmest
regards, I'd hate to be frozen out by you.
--
Online waterways route planner | http://canalplan.eu
Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk
Xah Lee
Amethyst Deceiver
wrote:
>On May 2, 9:06�am, Raffael Cavallaro
><raffaelcavall...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote:
>> On 2010-05-02 08:50:48 -0400, Xah Lee said:
>>
>> > The
>> > only firm advice i can give about writing, besides knowing basic
>> > grammar and spelling, is
>>
>> What you don't seem to realize, or possibly wilfully ignore, is that no
>> native speaker would want your advice on writing because almost every
>> post of yours betrays a faulty grasp of elementary english grammar. You
>> have to know the rules before you can creatively break them, and you
>> don't know the rules yet.
>
>What you don't seem to realize, as with most pedants, is that writing
>serves a purpose, a purpose of communication, and when a piece of
>writing, communicated exactly what the writer wants the reader to
>feel, understand, with no hiccups in the reading process, that writing
>is successful. More over, if the style per se, persuaded the reader,
>tickled his mind, hit her brain, or boiled his blood, that writing is
>great.
By that definition, you fail.
Marius Hancu
> More over, if the style per se, persuaded the reader,
> tickled his mind, hit her brain, or boiled his blood, that writing is
> great.
At Google Books:
410 on "that made his blood boil".
28 on "that boiled his blood"
is the 2nd strange only to me?
Marius Hancu
Marius Hancu
> More over, if the style per se, persuaded the reader,
> tickled his mind, hit her brain, or boiled his blood, that writing is
> great.
Also, I think that:
- "more over" should be "Moreover"
- there definitely shouldn't be a comma after "per se," as it
definitely breaks the communication
Marius Hancu
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
It is strange to me. It appears that the standard indomatic phrase has
been rearranged to mimic the structure of "tickled his mind" -
<verb>ed <personal adjective[1]> <noun>.
[1] Or whatever the technical term is.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Marius Hancu
> «Of course, all these style talk about how to form your words and
> punctuations into cogent sentences are in the context of formal
> writing, in science, journal, reports, documentations, tutorials,
> textbooks, as opposed to literary tomfoolery as in essaying, novels,
> poetry, of which, pigs fly.»
I think one should use instead:
"all this style talk ... is/exists in the context"
as "talk" is singular.
Or:
"all these style fights/conversation/disputes/(even "talks") ... exist/
take place in the context"
if a plural is wanted.
Marius Hancu
Marius Hancu
> when a piece of
> writing, communicated exactly what the writer wants the reader to
> feel, understand, with no hiccups in the reading process, that writing
> is successful.
No comma after "writing," IMO, as it breaks the flow.
Also, "communicated" should be changed to the present perfect "has
communicated," as the reference is made to events leading to the
present.
Marius Hancu
Marius Hancu
>As you can see, the target audience are people concerned about
> writing and have read one or two of the mentioned styled guides.
A relative "who" is needed:
"and _who_ have read"
or in a non-restrictive format:
", who have read ..."
> In
> general, they are college graduates, or involved in the writing
> profession.
Lack of symmetry:
"or _people_ involved in the writing profession,"
is what is needed, IMO.
"styles guides mentioned"
would flow better.
Marius Hancu
Marius Hancu
> «Of course, all these style talk about how to form your words and
> punctuations into cogent sentences are in the context of formal
> writing, in science, journal, reports, documentations, tutorials,
> textbooks, as opposed to literary tomfoolery as in essaying, novels,
> poetry, of which, pigs fly.»
>
> would any in the audience have problem understanding the above
> perfectly and fluently? In particular, when the “pigs fly” part hits
> them?
I do, in fact, have a problem with that part.
Normally, one would expect:
"of/about which one could say "pigs fly."
Your phrasing is confusing.
The quotation marks are important in order to indicate a popular
saying.
The even more confusing part is that you're using an inappropriate
idiom:
"when pigs fly" means "never" as shown here:
---
Alice's adventures in Wonderland: and, Through the looking-glass and
what ... - Page 316
Lewis Carroll - Fiction - 2003 - 356 pages
'When pigs fly' is a slang idiom meaning 'never', just as 'pigs might
fly' means
'perhaps' (Partridge, A Dictionary of Historical Slang, London, 1937).
http://tinyurl.com/24z89qt
---
One can't pop in any idiom, without regard to its recognized meaning,
in a context, and expect that it would fly, that is that it would be
accepted or understood, by readers.
Marius Hancu
Raffael Cavallaro
> If "seemingly endless outpourings of inchoate verbiage" are your warmest
> regards, I'd hate to be frozen out by you.
Not wishing you to feel frozen out by my silence, I'll reply.
;^)
He's a craftsman much of whose output is complaints about his primary
tool, complaints he wouldn't have if he took the time to master that
tool first. These frequent, ill-conceived complaints are what I
characterized, perhaps a bit uncharitably, as "seemingly endless
outpourings of inchoate verbiage." I think he would be happier, his
screeds fewer, and these fora more pleasant if he dropped his
defensiveness about his imperfect english and accepted that established
grammar and usage are facilitators of clear communication, not
impediments.
I don't hate him. I think he's creative and bright in his own way. If I
didn't care about him at all, if I thought he were beyond hope, I
wouldn't take the time to try to get him to see how he's sabotaging
himself and to change.
His kennyness
Who gets more attention than The Mighty Xah, wherever his pen treads?
hth, kxo
Tim Bradshaw
> is the 2nd strange only to me?
No: the first one is a saying, basically. I don't think it's an issue
of grammar but of recognition of that specific phrase or very minor
variants.
Tim Bradshaw
> And that is the heart of Xah's issues with everything in my experience
> going back way too many years. He is driven enough to learn quite a bit
> about a topic, but at the point where most people have an epiphany that
> this is something they really want to know well, Xah has a moment where
> he decides he is now an expert and doesn't need to learn anything else.
Since we're doing psychiatry now, this is exactly the impression I get
from Mathematica as well. That may not be coincidence.
His kennyness
The most deadly time for a motorcyclist is when they have not five miles
experience but five hundred.
hth, kzo
Tim Bradshaw
> The most deadly time for a motorcyclist is when they have not five
> miles experience but five hundred.
Most mountaineering accidents happen on the way down
Aleksej Saushev
> the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
> stuff in any European language.
Obviously, you don't know European languages.
Let's see. Search engine brings this: http://learningrussian.net/
Lessons are here: http://learningrussian.net/russian-lessons/
First lesson is about alphabet and pronounciation, nothing to look there,
the second one is about greetings:
http://learningrussian.net/hello_in_russian_greetings.php
Let's skip first trivial greetings and jump to "how are you?" section.
"О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫?"
Surprise! A sentence without verb.
"О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫?"
Surprise! Another sentence without verb.
"О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫?"
Surprise! The verb without subject.
Do you think this is exception? Alright, let's go on and find another
chapter with sentences. The next one is this:
http://learningrussian.net/hello_in_russian_greetings_grammar2.php
"О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫?" - No verb.
"О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫?" - Verb without subject.
"О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫?" - No verb.
"О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫?" - No verb.
"О©╫сё О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫." - No verb.
Maybe that's because they propose simplified language for beginners.
Alright, let's see what they propose in literature section:
http://learningrussian.net/russian-literature/
"Notes from the Underground."
"О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫..." - No verb.
"О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫." - Again no verb.
"О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫." - And again no verb.
"О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫, О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫." - Only the fourth sentence brings
subject and verb you expect.
Oh, "Anna Karenina." This one you don't need to read at all since the
first sentence is known by heart:
"О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫..." - No verb.
"...О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫-О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫." - No verb again.
--
HE CE3OH...
Peter Moylan
> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> writes:
>
>> the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
>> stuff in any European language.
>
> Obviously, you don't know European languages.
In fact, Stan's claim is easily refuted [*] by translating the English
"It's raining" into a few other languages.
*In the traditional meaning of "refuted". I haven't yet caught up with
our news reporters, who believe that "refute" means "deny".
Still, we have to remember that Stan was addressing Xah Lee's claim to
be fluent in English. In that context, he makes sense.
> Alright, let's see what they propose in literature section:
>
> http://learningrussian.net/russian-literature/
>
> "Notes from the Underground."
>
> "О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫..." - No verb.
Although I take the rest of your point, I don't think this is a good
example. It doesn't take long for the learner of any second language to
discover that his/her intuition about the verb "to be" can never be
transported from one language to another. It's an exception to the rules
about verbs in just about any language.
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Don Phillipson
> > stuff in any European language.
>
> Obviously, you don't know European languages.
>
> Let's see. Search engine brings this: http://learningrussian.net/
> Lessons are here: http://learningrussian.net/russian-lessons/
> First lesson is about alphabet and pronounciation, nothing to look there,
> the second one is about greetings:
> http://learningrussian.net/hello_in_russian_greetings.php
> Let's skip first trivial greetings and jump to "how are you?" section.
>
>
> Surprise! A sentence without verb.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Cor
wrote this mindboggling stuff:
(selectively-snipped-or-not-p)
> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> writes:
>
>> the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
>> stuff in any European language.
>
> Obviously, you don't know European languages.
>
> Let's see. Search engine brings this: http://learningrussian.net/
> Lessons are here: http://learningrussian.net/russian-lessons/
> First lesson is about alphabet and pronounciation, nothing to look there,
> the second one is about greetings:
> http://learningrussian.net/hello_in_russian_greetings.php
>
> Let's skip first trivial greetings and jump to "how are you?" section.
>
> "Как дела ?"
>
> Surprise! A sentence without verb.
oooops ....
Just to pick a nit : делаetb : is doing something,
which surely is a verb. ;-)
The standard translation is often "how are you", but "How do you do" would
be a good translation too, but I think it depends on social surrounding
and tradition etc.
But let us not forget that russian & polish are slavic languages which
do not compare with western-european like german, english and dutch from
anglo-germanic descent.
And that the southern-european like french, spanish
and italian are from a romanic descent.
All this makes europe a real heaven for multiple luanguage afficionados
(as I am), plays havoc with your style and grammar.
So, all in all, not all european languages are equal .. some are
more equal than others. ;-)
But on a lighter note, as a student in the russian-for-beginners
course once said:
I read two books , War and Peace ...
Cor
--
Join us and live in peace or face obliteration
If you hate to see my gun consider a non criminal line of work
I never threathen but merely state the consequences of your choice
Geavanceerde politieke correctheid is niet te onderscheiden van sarcasme
Peter Moylan
> But on a lighter note, as a student in the russian-for-beginners
> course once said:
> I read two books , War and Peace ...
I like both kinds of music.
James Hogg
> Some entity, AKA Aleksej Saushev <as...@inbox.ru>,
> wrote this mindboggling stuff:
> (selectively-snipped-or-not-p)
>
>> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> writes:
>>
>>> the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
>>> stuff in any European language.
>> Obviously, you don't know European languages.
>>
>> Let's see. Search engine brings this: http://learningrussian.net/
>> Lessons are here: http://learningrussian.net/russian-lessons/
>> First lesson is about alphabet and pronounciation, nothing to look there,
>> the second one is about greetings:
>> http://learningrussian.net/hello_in_russian_greetings.php
>>
>> Let's skip first trivial greetings and jump to "how are you?" section.
>>
>> "Как дела ?"
>>
>> Surprise! A sentence without verb.
>
> oooops ....
> Just to pick a nit : делаetb : is doing something,
> which surely is a verb. ;-)
Just to pick an even bigger nit:
The word дела is a neuter plural noun meaning "affairs". The question
means "How [are] things?"
--
James
Stan Brown
<gro.nalyomp@retep>:
>
> Aleksej Saushev wrote:
> > Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> writes:
> >
> >> the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
> >> stuff in any European language.
> >
> > Obviously, you don't know European languages.
>
> In fact, Stan's claim is easily refuted [*] by translating the English
> "It's raining" into a few other languages.
>
> *In the traditional meaning of "refuted". I haven't yet caught up with
> our news reporters, who believe that "refute" means "deny".
:-)
Granted, I oversimplified. Out of curiosity, though, which languages
are you thinking of?
> Still, we have to remember that Stan was addressing Xah Lee's claim to
> be fluent in English. In that context, he makes sense.
>
> > Alright, let's see what they propose in literature section:
> >
> > http://learningrussian.net/russian-literature/
> >
> > "Notes from the Underground."
> >
> > "? ??????? ???????..." - No verb.
>
> Although I take the rest of your point, I don't think this is a good
> example. It doesn't take long for the learner of any second language to
> discover that his/her intuition about the verb "to be" can never be
> transported from one language to another. It's an exception to the rules
> about verbs in just about any language.
It seems other people can see actual text -- all I see is a series of
question marks. It may be my newsreader, which occasionally shows
its age.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...
Tim Bradshaw
> You may have misunderstood modern English
> linguistics, which starts with the basic distinction between
> (1) Sentences = Grammatical constructions with verbs
> (2)�Other things written or said, which have no verb and
> need no verb.
and then (3): almost nothing that people actually say is an instance of (1).
(Though actually, they don't teach it like that at all of course.)
Cor
wrote this mindboggling stuff:
(selectively-snipped-or-not-p)
>>> "Как дела ?"
>>>
>>> Surprise! A sentence without verb.
>>
>> oooops ....
>> Just to pick a nit : делаetb : is doing something,
>> which surely is a verb. ;-)
>
> Just to pick an even bigger nit:
> The word дела is a neuter plural noun meaning "affairs". The question
> means "How [are] things?"
Yes, that too.
or, how are your 'affairs' doing ?
but which type of affair is it now ?
with te lady nextdoor, the state of your bankaccount or in general.
Like in some 'circles' in france one says: 'ca boule ?' one responds
with 'en frites', and it really has nothing to do with throwing
steel balls while munching on freedom fries. ;-)
It's context and idioms etc that drives true meaning of words in any
language wich makes translations a real hassle to get it right.
Just look at the funny/poor results of computer-translations
even we people can not get a simple greeting right in one go. ;-)
Lars Enderin
> Thu, 13 May 2010 08:56:59 +1000 from Peter Moylan
> <gro.nalyomp@retep>:
>>
>> Aleksej Saushev wrote:
>>
> It seems other people can see actual text -- all I see is a series of
> question marks. It may be my newsreader, which occasionally shows
> its age.
>
Aleksej's post has Mime headers:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=koi8-r
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
The followups respected that.
Your reader is apparently unable to cope, since it uses 7bit us-ascii. I
suggest you try Thunderbird, for example.
Peter Moylan
> Thu, 13 May 2010 08:56:59 +1000 from Peter Moylan
> <gro.nalyomp@retep>:
>> Aleksej Saushev wrote:
>>> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> writes:
>>>
>>>> the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
>>>> stuff in any European language.
>>> Obviously, you don't know European languages.
>> In fact, Stan's claim is easily refuted [*] by translating the English
>> "It's raining" into a few other languages.
>>
>> *In the traditional meaning of "refuted". I haven't yet caught up with
>> our news reporters, who believe that "refute" means "deny".
>
> :-)
>
> Granted, I oversimplified. Out of curiosity, though, which languages
> are you thinking of?
To be honest, I made the comment without thinking very hard. It's
possible that I was thinking of Esperanto, with Russian as a close second.
>>> Alright, let's see what they propose in literature section:
>>>
>>> http://learningrussian.net/russian-literature/
>>>
>>> "Notes from the Underground."
>>>
>>> "? ??????? ???????..." - No verb.
>> Although I take the rest of your point, I don't think this is a good
>> example. It doesn't take long for the learner of any second language to
>> discover that his/her intuition about the verb "to be" can never be
>> transported from one language to another. It's an exception to the rules
>> about verbs in just about any language.
>
> It seems other people can see actual text -- all I see is a series of
> question marks. It may be my newsreader, which occasionally shows
> its age.
>
I see that you are using Microplanet Gravity, about which I know almost
nothing. It seems to be using a 7-bit character encoding, which rules
out just about everything except US-ASCII. Aleksej was using Gnus, which
Windows users tend to dismiss as hopelessly old-fashioned, but which
does a much better job of understanding MIME encoding. For some reason,
the popular Windows newsreaders don't seem to be good at handling
non-USA traffic.
(The question marks were actually Cyrillic text, but I guess you've
already figured that out from Alexey's address.)
Jerry Friedman
> Thu, 13 May 2010 08:56:59 +1000 from Peter Moylan
> <gro.nalyomp@retep>:
>
>
>
> > Aleksej Saushev wrote:
>
> > >> the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
> > >> stuff in any European language.
>
> > > Obviously, you don't know European languages.
>
> > In fact, Stan's claim is easily refuted [*] by translating the English
> > "It's raining" into a few other languages.
>
> > *In the traditional meaning of "refuted". I haven't yet caught up with
> > our news reporters, who believe that "refute" means "deny".
>
> :-)
>
> Granted, I oversimplified. Out of curiosity, though, which languages
> are you thinking of?
"It's raining" in Spanish is "Llueve" (literally "Rains") or "Esta
lloviendo" (literally "Is raining").
Personal-pronoun subjects are optional in Spanish, and more often than
not are suppressed, but in expressions for weather, there's no
optional subject you can put in. Unless you hear differently from one
of the many people around who know Spanish better than I do.
--
Jerry Friedman
Pascal J. Bourguignon
Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> writes:
The fact that you don't write the subject doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It's the water droplets who are raining.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
Jerry Friedman
wrote:
The verb is singular.
For another example, when the Spanish verb "haber" corresponds to
English "there is", it has no subject, at least in standard Spanish.
The thing whose existence is exerted is the direct object. However,
it's common but non-standard to conjugate the verb to agree in number
with the thing, as if were the subject.
I'm hoping to meet a bilingual person here in New Mexico who uses the
opposite non-standard forms--"There was five frogs" and "Hubieron
cinco ranas." (Plural "hubieron" would be singular "hubo" in standard
Spanish.)
--
Jerry Friedman
Tim Bradshaw
> The verb is singular.
As in English: "it rains", "it is raining". Clearly not the droplets.
Christian Weisgerber
> > > >> the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
> > > >> stuff in any European language.
> >
> > > > Obviously, you don't know European languages.
> >
> > > In fact, Stan's claim is easily refuted [*] by translating the English
> > > "It's raining" into a few other languages.
>
> "It's raining" in Spanish is "Llueve" (literally "Rains") or "Esta
> lloviendo" (literally "Is raining").
In French, where personal-pronoun subjects are NOT optional, this
is "il pleut", with a dummy subject, just like English "it rains"
or German "es regnet".
However, German offers at least two non-elliptical sentence types
where there really is no subject.
The first kind is encountered early by beginning language learners
in expressions such as "mir ist kalt" (I'm cold). You have a dative
noun phrase, the copula, and a predicative adjective.
The seconds kind are advanced passives. In German, as in English,
when you put a sentence in the passive voice, the old (accusative)
object is promoted to subject. In German, Dative and genitive
objects remain as objects and keep their case. (No equivalent in
English.) Contrary to English, German can also put sentences into
the passive voice that do not have an (accusative) object. In that
case, there simply is no subject.
Heute arbeiten wir. (Today we work.)
=> Heute wird gearbeitet. (*Today, is worked. ~ Today work is done.)
There is no hidden subject that could be recovered. If you have
such a sentence without subject, turning it into active voice
requires a bit of imagination since you need to invent a subject
that fits the context.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
Cor
wrote this mindboggling stuff:
(selectively-snipped-or-not-p)
(snipped .....much)
>>> tickled his mind, hit her brain, or boiled his blood, that writing is
>>> great.
>>
>> By that definition, you fail.
>
> Who gets more attention than The Mighty Xah, wherever his pen treads?
To boldy re-pen what other penned before.
Pascal J. Bourguignon
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> > > >> the need for a verb to have a subject, are first-semester
>> > > >> stuff in any European language.
>> >
>> > > > Obviously, you don't know European languages.
>> >
>> > > In fact, Stan's claim is easily refuted [*] by translating the English
>> > > "It's raining" into a few other languages.
>>
>> "It's raining" in Spanish is "Llueve" (literally "Rains") or "Esta
>> lloviendo" (literally "Is raining").
>
> In French, where personal-pronoun subjects are NOT optional, this
> is "il pleut", with a dummy subject, just like English "it rains"
> or German "es regnet".
>
> However, German offers at least two non-elliptical sentence types
> where there really is no subject.
All right. I'll admit that there may be sentences with verbs without
subjects.
My question really is whether this is a bug or a feature?
That is, ontologically, is it possible to have an action without a subject?
Or is it merely quirks in the languages, because of some laziness in
finding the subjects?
Water droplets are falling. In the action described by "it rains", there
is clearly a 'ontological' subject: the water droplets.
Water droplets exists. In the action described by "there are water
droplets", there is again a clear ontological subject to the action of
existing.
So I would argue, and this was the meaning of my objection, that these
are "bugs" or irregularities of these languages.
Can anybody exibit an action without a subject?
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
Reinhold {Rey} Aman
>
> Can anybody exibit an action without a subject?
>
--
~~~ Reinhold {Rey} Aman ~~~
"El hombre es tantas veces hombre cuanto
es el n�mero de lenguas que ha aprendido".
-- Carlos I (Rey de Espa�a)
Peter Moylan
> Water droplets are falling. In the action described by "it rains", there
> is clearly a 'ontological' subject: the water droplets.
Consider expressions like "it is raining cats and dogs" or "it was
raining soup". It's clear that the things that are falling from the sky
are the objects of the verb, not the subjects.
Raffael Cavallaro
> That is, ontologically, is it possible to have an action without a subject?
Ontologically, a buddhist would say that it is not possible to have an
action *with* a subject. i.e., the supposed subject is an arbitrary
delineation within a completely interconnected continuum of phenomena:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra's_net>
"It is raining," without any real subject, is, in this view, one of the
few ontologically correct utterances one can make in english. It is the
other "normal" sentences with their putative subjects which are
ontological fictions. Everything that happens, just happens, just as
rain just falls, and the wind just blows, without any single causal
agent, other than the universe as a whole, that makes it happen. The
need for a supposed subject to be the author of an action is just a
linguistic fiction arising from the perceptual fiction of free will:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will>
Presumably this perceptual fiction arose in support of the theory of mind:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind>
which has obvious adaptive advantages for social primates, as it allows
partial prediction of the actions of others.
People who think that subjects actually exist often believe that the
past and the future exist as well; that the present is an
infinitesimally small, effectively non-existent junction between them.
In fact, it's the other way round - there is only the present; the past
is just a fragmentary and distorted recollection, not even universally
agreed upon, and the future is just an imaginal creation of even less
consensus.
warmest regards,
Ralph
--
Raffael Cavallaro
Tim Bradshaw
> My question really is whether this is a bug or a feature?
>
> That is, ontologically, is it possible to have an action without a subject?
> Or is it merely quirks in the languages, because of some laziness in
> finding the subjects?
You seem to be working from a theory that there is some underlying
language provided by nature or something, to which human languages
approximate.
Pascal J. Bourguignon
> Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
>
>> Water droplets are falling. In the action described by "it rains", there
>> is clearly a 'ontological' subject: the water droplets.
>
> Consider expressions like "it is raining cats and dogs" or "it was
> raining soup". It's clear that the things that are falling from the sky
> are the objects of the verb, not the subjects.
Yes, that's my point. There is a thing that falls. There is no action
without something that does this action, AFAIK.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
Pascal J. Bourguignon
writes:
Indeed, an ontology opposite to mine.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
Pascal J. Bourguignon
Not an underlying language, but an underlying model, in the sense of
formal semantics. Yes I assume that the languages denote some
underlying reality.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
Ilpo
> Stan Brown wrote:
>
> > Granted, I oversimplified. Out of curiosity, though, which languages
> > are you thinking of?
>
> To be honest, I made the comment without thinking very hard. It's
> possible that I was thinking of Esperanto, with Russian as a close second.
Finnish belongs to this group, too. In Finnish you could say "Sataa.",
which literally is "Rains." (there's no progressive tense in Finnish).
Normally it's used with some kind of a qualifier (outside; water,
snow; again; etc.), but a bare "Sataa." is also possible in some
situations. Omitting the subject makes sense at least to me - what is
this "it" that's raining anyway?
Raffael Cavallaro
> Not an underlying language, but an underlying model, in the sense of
> formal semantics.
This part seems to be true - i.e., all human languages, as near as I've
been able to determine, makes some sort of separation between what in
english we would call nouns and verbs - there seems to be an underlying
human cognitive model that there is a class of more temporally stable
things (nouns) and a class of more temporally transient things (verbs).
> Yes I assume that the languages denote some
> underlying reality.
It is this next step that is demonstrably false (see the wikipedia
article on the neuroscience of free will for example). Human beings
have a number of cognitive illusions that are adaptive in that they
make it easier to navigate the world, but the convenience of a
cognitive illusion does not make it congruent with underlying reality.
Bob Felts
wrote:
> On 2010-05-14 05:37:22 -0400, Pascal J. Bourguignon said:
>
[...]
>
> > Yes I assume that the languages denote some underlying reality.
>
> It is this next step that is demonstrably false (see the wikipedia
> article on the neuroscience of free will for example). Human beings
> have a number of cognitive illusions that are adaptive in that they
> make it easier to navigate the world, but the convenience of a
> cognitive illusion does not make it congruent with underlying reality.
>
First, unless you know what the underlying reality is, how do you know
which are illusions and which are real?
Second, Pascal said "some underlying reality" -- he did not say that he
knew what it really is.
Peter Moylan
On second thoughts, it sounds like something Bishop Berkeley might have
said. Water is falling down. There is no action without something that
does this action. That is, water cannot fall down unless something makes
it fall down. Therefore there must be a god to throw down the water. QED.
Perhaps I'm being too subtle here. My point is that we need to
distinguish between the subject and the object of the verb. Or, in
ontological terms, the doer and the doee. The raindrops do not throw
themselves down. They are the things acted upon. The actor is the rain
god, or gravity, or whatever other thing you think to be the cause. But,
in any case, the things falling out of the sky are not the subject of
the "is raining" verb.
Certainly you can say "rain is falling". That's a different verb,
though; one that usually does have a subject.
Jerry Friedman
<raffaelcavall...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote:
> On 2010-05-13 22:00:21 -0400, Pascal J. Bourguignon said:
>
> > That is, ontologically, is it possible to have an action without a subject?
I'm going to leave that to the ontologists.
> Ontologically, a buddhist would say that it is not possible to have an
> action *with* a subject. i.e., the supposed subject is an arbitrary
> delineation within a completely interconnected continuum of phenomena:
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra's_net>
>
> "It is raining," without any real subject, is, in this view, one of the
> few ontologically correct utterances one can make in english. It is the
> other "normal" sentences with their putative subjects which are
> ontological fictions. Everything that happens, just happens, just as
> rain just falls, and the wind just blows, without any single causal
> agent, other than the universe as a whole, that makes it happen. The
> need for a supposed subject to be the author of an action is just a
> linguistic fiction arising from the perceptual fiction of free will:
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will>
...
I don't think we see the subject as the /author/ of an action. When
we say "the rain falls" or "the wind blows", I don't see that we're
imputing any free will to the rain or the wind or anything else, or
implying a single causal agent, even though those sentences have
subjects.
--
Jerry Friedman
Raffael Cavallaro
> I don't think we see the subject as the /author/ of an action. When
> we say "the rain falls" or "the wind blows", I don't see that we're
> imputing any free will to the rain or the wind or anything else, or
> implying a single causal agent, even though those sentences have
> subjects.
My point was not about these types of degenerate sentences considered
separately. My point was that the pervasive agency seen in human
languages - the near universal grammatical division of the world into
agents, actions, and the objects of those actions - flows from the
cognitive illusion of our own agency or subjecthood.
Our languages have a grammatical notion of "subject" "verb" and
"object" because of the perceptual illusion of free will, the illusion
of our own agency. Once this became the linguistic norm, it is only
logical that expressions would arise that appear to follow this norm
grammatically (e.g., "it is raining") but obviously don't conform to
this grammatical norm semantically (i.e., there is no "it" that "does"
the raining when it rains).
Because the grammatical norm is based on a perceptual falsehood, it is,
in fact the exeptions to the grammatical norm that are more
scientifically accurate. Everything that you think you choose to do, in
fact merely happens, without your illusory agency, much as it just
rains without there being a "rainer."[1]
warmest regards,
Ralph
[1] for those reading on c.l.l., I'm not talking about Rainer Joswig here! ;^)
--
Raffael Cavallaro
Raffael Cavallaro
> First, unless you know what the underlying reality is, how do you know
> which are illusions and which are real?
It is repeatable, scientific experiments that tell us what is
ultimately "real." The point is that our naive perceptions are
demonstrably false - they do not stand experimental scrutiny.
Again, I urge all of you to read the wikipedia page on the neuroscience
of free will before making claims about the unknowability of such
things:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will>
or, for a lengthier treatment, Tor Norretranders' book _The User
Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size_
<http://www.amazon.com/User-Illusion-Cutting-Consciousness-Penguin/dp/0140230122>
These
things are in fact knowable, they just don't conform to our naive perceptions.
Bob Felts
wrote:
> On 2010-05-14 09:56:51 -0400, Bob Felts said:
>
> > First, unless you know what the underlying reality is, how do you know
> > which are illusions and which are real?
>
> It is repeatable, scientific experiments that tell us what is
> ultimately "real." The point is that our naive perceptions are
> demonstrably false - they do not stand experimental scrutiny.
Experimental scrutiny doesn't withstand experimental scrutiny, either.
If it did, you wouldn't have put "real" in quotes. Experiments show
"something", just like our sense data shows "something". The best we
can do is assume that there is a correspondence between what experiments
uncover and what is really there.
>
> Again, I urge all of you to read the wikipedia page on the neuroscience
> of free will before making claims about the unknowability of such
> things:
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will>
Man doesn't have free will.
Bob Felts
wrote:
[...]
> People who think that subjects actually exist often believe that the
> past and the future exist as well; that the present is an
> infinitesimally small, effectively non-existent junction between them.
> In fact, it's the other way round - there is only the present; the past
> is just a fragmentary and distorted recollection, not even universally
> agreed upon, and the future is just an imaginal creation of even less
> consensus.
There's actually a recent article which claims to show experimental
support for the future influencing the past, but I can't find it at the
moment. I'll ping the friend who originally sent it to me.
Raffael Cavallaro
> Experimental scrutiny doesn't withstand experimental scrutiny, either.
> If it did, you wouldn't have put "real" in quotes.
I put it in quotes because it can mean different things, specifically
what we subjectively perceive to be "real," and what we can
experimentally show to be "real," independent of our subjective
perceptions of "reality."
> Man doesn't have free will.
That is my whole point. We have the *illusion* of free will. This
illusion flows from the theory of mind. The theory of mind predates
language (because chimpanzees and other non-human species have it as
well). Language evolved in the context of an illusion of agency, so
this illusion of agency, the subject-verb-object distinction, pervades
language.
As a result, sentences which violate this illusory grammatical and
semantic norm are closer to scientific reality than sentences that obey
it.
Rather than saying "John throws the ball," it is more scientifically
accurate to say "the ball is thrown while John has the subjective
illusion of being the agent of that throwing, but really, the throwing
just happens, much as the rain just happens, or the grass just grows."
However, John would be a dreadful predictor of the actions of his
conspecifics and other creatures if his cognitive worldview began and
ended with the notion that everything just happens.
In stead, John has a firm illusion that the world is filled with agents
with goals[1], which allows John to have some predictive success in
anticipating the actions of others. He forms this theory of mind by
treating himself as an agent, and extrapolating his (fictive) free will
to others. It is a useful fiction, but a fiction nonetheless.
warmest regards,
Ralph
[1] the goals exist in the sense that organisms have neurobiological
systems that push them in various ways; the agent/author of actions
does not exist.
--
Raffael Cavallaro
RG
wr...@stablecross.com (Bob Felts) wrote:
> Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelc...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On 2010-05-14 09:56:51 -0400, Bob Felts said:
> >
> > > First, unless you know what the underlying reality is, how do you know
> > > which are illusions and which are real?
> >
> > It is repeatable, scientific experiments that tell us what is
> > ultimately "real." The point is that our naive perceptions are
> > demonstrably false - they do not stand experimental scrutiny.
>
> Experimental scrutiny doesn't withstand experimental scrutiny, either.
> If it did, you wouldn't have put "real" in quotes. Experiments show
> "something", just like our sense data shows "something". The best we
> can do is assume that there is a correspondence between what experiments
> uncover and what is really there.
Actually, we can do better than that.
http://rondam.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-i-am-not-unicornian.html
rg
Raffael Cavallaro
> There's actually a recent article which claims to show experimental
> support for the future influencing the past, but I can't find it at the
> moment.
Just wait a bit. By then the future will have influenced the past, and
you will have found it.
;^)
Vend
wrote:
But in the phrase "it is raining", which could be considered an
abbreviation of "it is raining water", "water" is the object of the
verb, not the subject. In fact, the phrase doesn't really have a
subject, "it" is merely a syntatic placeholder.
However, in Italian that phrase becomes "piove", which could be
considered an abbreviation of "piove acqua", where "acqua" (water) is
the subject of "piove" (rains).
In other languages (Hindi?) the same phrase becomes something
equivalent to "rain is happening".
Bob Felts
Been there, done that.
http://stablecross.com/files/category-dialogs.html
And with that, we've veered wildly off.
Bob Felts
wrote:
> On 2010-05-14 11:18:41 -0400, Bob Felts said:
>
> > There's actually a recent article which claims to show experimental
> > support for the future influencing the past, but I can't find it at the
> > moment.
>
> Just wait a bit. By then the future will have influenced the past, and
> you will have found it.
>
> ;^)
My friend hasn't yet responded to my ping (I suspect he's headed out for
vacation already) but, of course, Google has several pointers, e.g.
http://chapmannews.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/chapman-professor-lands-disc
over-cover-story/
Tim Bradshaw
> Second, Pascal said "some underlying reality" -- he did not say that he
> knew what it really is.
So by what magic do natural languages know this? Did God tell us?
Tim Bradshaw
> Man doesn't have free will.
I think when someone states that you know they've lost, because it's
just trivial that this is not a claim that can ever be proven or
disproven.
Bob Felts
Sorry, but to what does "this" refer?
The point that I was making is that we perceive that there is something
external to us; we can't know if our perceptions are congruent to what
is really out there.
Bob Felts
On the other hand, it's interesting that Raffael and I come to the same
conclusion from two totally different paths. In any case, did you read
the link(s) that Raffael provided?
Too, I'm very much interested in the proof of your claim that it can't
be proven or disproven. How do you know this?
Tim Bradshaw
> Sorry, but to what does "this" refer?
The underlying reality.
>
> The point that I was making is that we perceive that there is something
> external to us; we can't know if our perceptions are congruent to what
> is really out there.
I was agreeing with you! If we can't know what something is like, then
clearly natural languages can't encode that information (or, if they
do, we can't know they do), because if they did (and we knew they did)
then we could know what the thing was like.
Tim Bradshaw
> Too, I'm very much interested in the proof of your claim that it can't
> be proven or disproven. How do you know this?
I think because it is not possible to construct an experiment which
will prove or disprove the hypothesis, which means that it must remain
just that: a hypothesis.
Sorry, I should not have got drawn into this: I don't enjoy
philosophical debates, and on usenet they tend to deteriorate rapidly
into name-calling (for instance on my part in the article you responded
to, for which I apologise). So I'll not respond further, not because
I'm walking off in a huff but because I'll just end up spending too
much time and calling people names.
--tim
Bob Felts
> On 2010-05-14 19:54:44 +0100, Bob Felts said:
>
> > Too, I'm very much interested in the proof of your claim that it can't
> > be proven or disproven. How do you know this?
>
> I think because it is not possible to construct an experiment which
> will prove or disprove the hypothesis, which means that it must remain
> just that: a hypothesis.
Well, ok, but _why_ do you think it isn't possible to construct such an
experiment? After all, if we're just meat machines, we ought to be able
to reverse engineer our hardware and software. From there, we ought to
be able to determine what it is that makes us "tick". Now, maybe you
hold to the view that man's "software" cannot be reverse engineered --
perhaps because it originates from the "mind of God", and is thus (?)
beyond our reach -- so an experiment might not be possible. The
characters in a book can't directly affect the author, so maybe it's
because of this that the question isn't answerable.
Reality can be a tricky thing. ;-)
>
> Sorry, I should not have got drawn into this: I don't enjoy
> philosophical debates, and on usenet they tend to deteriorate rapidly
> into name-calling (for instance on my part in the article you responded
> to, for which I apologise). So I'll not respond further, not because
> I'm walking off in a huff but because I'll just end up spending too
> much time and calling people names.
>
Fair enough. I like these kinds of discusions; but far be it from me to
force someone into an unpleasant exchange of ideas.
R H Draney
>
>On 14 Mag, 11:34, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
>wrote:
>> Peter Moylan <gro.nalyomp@retep> writes:
>> > Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
>>
>there
>> >> is clearly a 'ontological' subject: the water droplets.
>>
>> > Consider expressions like "it is raining cats and dogs" or "it was
>> > raining soup". It's clear that the things that are falling from the sky
>> > are the objects of the verb, not the subjects.
>>
>on
>> without something that does this action, AFAIK.
>
>But in the phrase "it is raining", which could be considered an
>abbreviation of "it is raining water", "water" is the object of the
>verb, not the subject. In fact, the phrase doesn't really have a
>subject, "it" is merely a syntatic placeholder.
>
>However, in Italian that phrase becomes "piove", which could be
>considered an abbreviation of "piove acqua", where "acqua" (water) is
>the subject of "piove" (rains).
>
>In other languages (Hindi?) the same phrase becomes something
>equivalent to "rain is happening".
Two monks were arguing about a flag...one said "the flag is moving"....
The other said "the wind is moving"....
The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by...he told them "not the wind, not
the flag; mind is moving"....r
--
"Oy! A cat made of lead cannot fly."
- Mark Brader declaims a basic scientific principle
Stan Brown
<na...@mips.inka.de>:
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > [quoted text muted]
> > > > "It's raining" into a few other languages.
> >
> > "It's raining" in Spanish is "Llueve" (literally "Rains") or "Esta
> > lloviendo" (literally "Is raining").
>
> In French, where personal-pronoun subjects are NOT optional, this
> is "il pleut", with a dummy subject, just like English "it rains"
> or German "es regnet".
And in French we have "il y a une maison", again with the dummy
subject "il". But the corresponding English is "there's a house".
What is the grammatical function of "there"?
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...
Stan Brown
<p...@informatimago.com>:
> That is, ontologically, is it possible to have an action without a subject?
A good question. "Il pleut" and "it's raining" *look* like subject-
verb, but they're not really. More accurate would be "La pluie see
tombe"(*) or "Rain is occurring".
(*) I'm sure there's a better way to say that.
But I know very little of modern grammar.
Stan Brown
> But in the phrase "it is raining", which could be considered an
> abbreviation of "it is raining water", "water" is the object of the
> verb, not the subject. In fact, the phrase doesn't really have a
> subject, "it" is merely a syntatic placeholder.
I've always thought that, and a moment ago posted something to that
effect.
But maybe "it" really is a pronoun, whose antecedent is "the current
condition" or "the weather".
"What's the weather?" "It's raining."
Stan Brown
@stablecross.com>:
> There's actually a recent article which claims to show experimental
> support for the future influencing the past, but I can't find it at the
> moment. I'll ping the friend who originally sent it to me.
Won't you have to wait till he sends it? :-)
Stan Brown
<raffaelc...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com>:
> On 2010-05-14 05:37:22 -0400, Pascal J. Bourguignon said:
>
> > Not an underlying language, but an underlying model, in the sense of
> > formal semantics.
>
> This part seems to be true - i.e., all human languages, as near as I've
> been able to determine, makes some sort of separation between what in
> english we would call nouns and verbs - there seems to be an underlying
> human cognitive model that there is a class of more temporally stable
> things (nouns) and a class of more temporally transient things (verbs).
It's a common statement that Hopi doesn't make such a distinction. I
don't know whether that's actually true, because it's also a
commonplace that Eskimo(*) has hundreds of words for "snow", and
that's false.
(*) Is there even an "Eskimo" language? I suspect the Inuit have
multiple regional languages.
Raffael Cavallaro
> It's a common statement that Hopi doesn't make such a distinction. I
> don't know whether that's actually true, because it's also a
> commonplace that Eskimo(*) has hundreds of words for "snow", and
> that's false.
Benjamin Lee Whorf, of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis fame, once opined that
Hopi had no words that refer to what we know as time. This, as you
suspected, is false. It seems Whorf was possibly a bit more interested
in making a revolutionary anthropological argument than he was in
actually speaking conversational Hopi or he would have known that the
language has terms for such temporal commonplaces as "yesterday" and
"later," among others. In addition, Hopi has the (near as I've been
able to determine) universal distinction between nouns and verbs.
Peter Moylan
> Thu, 13 May 2010 20:38:05 +0000 (UTC) from Christian Weisgerber
> <na...@mips.inka.de>:
>> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> [quoted text muted]
>>>>> "It's raining" into a few other languages.
>>> "It's raining" in Spanish is "Llueve" (literally "Rains") or "Esta
>>> lloviendo" (literally "Is raining").
>> In French, where personal-pronoun subjects are NOT optional, this
>> is "il pleut", with a dummy subject, just like English "it rains"
>> or German "es regnet".
>
> And in French we have "il y a une maison", again with the dummy
> subject "il". But the corresponding English is "there's a house".
> What is the grammatical function of "there"?
>
place [1]. Grammatically, though, it's a little different, because "y"
is a dative pronoun while "there" is an adverb.
Translate back into French again, and you get "Voil� une maison". I
don't know what part of speech "voil�" is considered to be these days,
but historically it must have been an imperative. ("See there".)
All of which seems to mean that these existential expressions can occupy
any grammatical niche, depending on which language you choose and which
exact wording.
[1] That is, in the phrase "il y a", the "il" is a dummy subject, but
the "y" is not a dummy; so the informal form "Y'a une maison" is
actually more logical.
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Jerry Friedman
<raffaelcavall...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote:
> On 2010-05-14 10:06:12 -0400, Jerry Friedman said:
>
> > I don't think we see the subject as the /author/ of an action. When
> > we say "the rain falls" or "the wind blows", I don't see that we're
> > imputing any free will to the rain or the wind or anything else, or
> > implying a single causal agent, even though those sentences have
> > subjects.
>
> My point was not about these types of degenerate sentences considered
> separately. My point was that the pervasive agency seen in human
> languages - the near universal grammatical division of the world into
> agents, actions, and the objects of those actions - flows from the
> cognitive illusion of our own agency or subjecthood.
Or more precisely, from the whole universe, since it's an illusion
that the cognitive illusion of our own agency is distinct from
anything else?
> Our languages have a grammatical notion of "subject" "verb" and
> "object" because of the perceptual illusion of free will, the illusion
> of our own agency.
How would we say "The snow covered the rock" if we didn't have that
illusion? (Assuming it's an illusion. I do not choose to, or I
cannot, argue with you about free will.)
And is there any support for your claim about language?
> Once this became the linguistic norm, it is only
> logical that expressions would arise that appear to follow this norm
> grammatically (e.g., "it is raining") but obviously don't conform to
> this grammatical norm semantically (i.e., there is no "it" that "does"
> the raining when it rains).
>
> Because the grammatical norm is based on a perceptual falsehood, it is,
> in fact the exeptions to the grammatical norm that are more
> scientifically accurate. Everything that you think you choose to do, in
> fact merely happens, without your illusory agency, much as it just
> rains without there being a "rainer."[1]
>
> warmest regards,
>
> Ralph
>
> [1] for those reading on c.l.l., I'm not talking about Rainer Joswig here! ;^)
Or the illusion of him.
--
Jerry Friedman
RG
Lewis <g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:
> In message <rNOSPAMon-03F7C...@news.albasani.net>
> I am *shocked* to find no mention of the fact that the invisible
> unicorns are pink. This is fundamental knowledge!
Sorry if my background research on unicornian theology was a tad
slipshod. I'll try to do better next time.
rg
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>Fri, 14 May 2010 04:00:21 +0200 from Pascal J. Bourguignon
><p...@informatimago.com>:
>> That is, ontologically, is it possible to have an action without a subject?
>
>A good question. "Il pleut" and "it's raining" *look* like subject-
>verb, but they're not really. More accurate would be "La pluie see
>tombe"(*) or "Rain is occurring".
>
>(*) I'm sure there's a better way to say that.
>
>But I know very little of modern grammar.
Me neither.
With sentences such as "It is raining" and "It is sunny" it is possible
to describe them as ways of saying "Rain is falling" and "The sun is
shining" or something similar. How about "It is dry" and "It is dark"?
They describe a condition in the same way as the other sentences. Sun
and rain can be thought of as "substances", physical entities, which
come from somewhere. "Dry" and "dark are not "substances".
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Pascal J. Bourguignon
Ask yourself who or what is dry or dark.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
Stan Brown
<gro.nalyomp@retep>:
>
> Stan Brown wrote:
> > And in French we have "il y a une maison", again with the dummy
> > subject "il". But the corresponding English is "there's a house".
> > What is the grammatical function of "there"?
> >
> In meaning, it's the same as the "y" in the French sentence: at that
> place [1]. Grammatically, though, it's a little different, because "y"
> is a dative pronoun while "there" is an adverb.
Yes, but ...
"There" is indubitably an adverb in "A house is there". But is it
really in "there is a house"? The two sentences don't mean the same
thing: one is about location and the other about existence. We can
say "there is a good reason for granting clemency" but not "a good
reason for granting clemency is there".
In sentences of the form "there is X", what is the subject of the
sentence? If "there" is an adverb then X must be the subject, but
that seems strange to me because of the placement. I know that
sentences can be inverted, but this doesn't feel like inversion to
me, because of the difference of meanings.
Maybe I'm trying to pigeonhole something unclassifiable. When I was
in school, we diagrammed sentences, and I got the idea that every
sentence is diagrammable. "How do you do?" is, even though it would
be pretty hard to glean the actual meaning of the sentence from that
diagram. But maybe "there is a house" isn't diagrammable.
> Translate back into French again, and you get "Voil� une maison". I
> don't know what part of speech "voil�" is considered to be these days,
> but historically it must have been an imperative. ("See there".)
>
> All of which seems to mean that these existential expressions can occupy
> any grammatical niche, depending on which language you choose and which
> exact wording.
It would seem so. Or should we say "any grammatical niche, or none"?
Peter Moylan
would have to say something like "the lighting is dark".
The "it" in these sentences could be interpreted as meaning "the general
environment". It's ugly, though. Would you really be willing to accept
"the general environment is raining"?
It makes more sense, to me, to say that "It is raining" is a
hypercorrection for "Is raining", and likewise for the other examples.
The sentence "Is raining" (which is grammatical in several European
languages) has a meaning that everyone can understand. Requiring that
the verb must have a subject is an artificial constraint that, while
possibly satisfying someone's ideas about how an artificial language
should work, is entirely a grammatical constraint rather than a semantic
constraint.
In this connection, it is worth mentioning that Esperanto - an
artificial language, therefore a language supposedly free of at least
some constraints - translates "it is raining" by "pluvas": a verb
without any subject. Several other languages do the same thing, which I
think is sufficient to demonstrate that verbs without subjects are possible.
If you want to respond that something is doing the raining, I would
reply that that is a question of theology rather than language.
Peter Moylan
> Sat, 15 May 2010 12:56:16 +1000 from Peter Moylan
> <gro.nalyomp@retep>:
>> Stan Brown wrote:
>>> And in French we have "il y a une maison", again with the dummy
>>> subject "il". But the corresponding English is "there's a house".
>>> What is the grammatical function of "there"?
>>>
>> In meaning, it's the same as the "y" in the French sentence: at that
>> place [1]. Grammatically, though, it's a little different, because "y"
>> is a dative pronoun while "there" is an adverb.
>
> Yes, but ...
>
> "There" is indubitably an adverb in "A house is there". But is it
> really in "there is a house"? The two sentences don't mean the same
> thing: one is about location and the other about existence. We can
> say "there is a good reason for granting clemency" but not "a good
> reason for granting clemency is there".
Let us paraphrase, then. In such sentences "there is" is a way of saying
"exists". So "there is a house" is another way of saying "exists a
house". Some purists, I suppose, would insist that this should be "It
exists a house" - I have seen that suggestion in a forum I once
inhabited - but they end up admitting that the "it" is a dummy subject.
The only reason for introducing dummy subjects is to satisfy the rule
that - in some languages, but not in others - every verb must have a
subject. This is a particularly strong rule in French, where "il y a"
definitely requires the dummy subject "il". (A subject that is omitted
in at least some examples of "street French". L'Acad�mie might rule on
what gets into the dictionaries, but not on what is spoken.) It is a
slightly weaker rule in English; most of the time we require a dummy
subject, but I suspect that we could find counterexamples. It is not at
all a rule in Spanish, to name just one example.
I have wondered at times whether this is because English has only one
"be" verb, where some other Indo-European languages have two verbs. I
doubt that I'll ever find the answer.
Raffael Cavallaro
> How would we say "The snow covered the rock" if we didn't have that
> illusion?
"Snow on rock," (note the absence of any active agent "doing" the "covering.")
> (Assuming it's an illusion. I do not choose to, or I
> cannot, argue with you about free will.)
>
> And is there any support for your claim about language?
The claim that the subject-object distinction arises from the
perceptual fiction of free will? Hard to see what would constitute
support - hard evidence would require that we observe the evolution of
the human theory of mind and human language, and both of these things
happened a very long time ago (millions of years ago for the theory of
mind, tens if not hundreds of thousands of years ago for human
language).
I simply note that:
1. theory of mind predates language because it is present to a limited
extent in chimpanzees, and was therefore presumably present in the most
recent common ancestor of homo and pan. This most recent common
ancestor did not have either the vocal apparatus or the brain
development necessary for anything remotely approaching human language.
2. it follows that human language evolved in a cognitive context where
our ancestors believed, as we do, and chimpanzees appear to do, that
they were/are the agents/originators/causes of their actions, and
others are, by extrapolation, the agents of their actions.
3. we know from experiments in neuroscience that this perception of
free will/agency is false.
4. there are no known human languages that fail to distinguish between
what we would call verbs and nouns, or that lack any notion of agency
whatsoever (i.e., there is some notion of a "doer" or "subject" in all
languages, even if not every utterance requires an agent or subject).
5. it follows that there is a universal human cognitive base that
consists of a world of
a. relatively long lived entities corresponding to nouns
b. relatively short lived entities (i.e., actions) corresponding to verbs
c. a subset of nouns which are thought of as agents capable of
initiating actions/free will.
6. This cognitive base is scientifically false, but extremely useful
nevertheless, because it allows partial prediction of the actions of
others.
7. finally, to bring this back on topic for c.l.l., nouns correspond to
state and/or objects in programming languages, verbs correspond to
functions which *mutate* state. I say mutate, because no human language
conceives of verbs as "returning" a freshly consed noun object, but
rather, they conceive of verbs mutating existing noun objects. E.g., in
the sentence "John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln," no one understands
this to mean that the "kill" function took a live "Lincoln" as an
argument, and "returned" a separate and distinct "dead Lincoln" as a
return value. It is understood to mean that Booth, by way of the verb
"kill," mutated, changed the live Lincoln into a dead Lincoln.
This is of interest because it suggests that human beings have natural
cognitive biases in favor of state and mutation, and that programming
languages that eschew mutation deprive themselves of our obvious
facility for thinking about and dealing with mutation, likely hard
wired into our brains, and trained and refined by millennia of
evolution and lifetimes of experience. The argument that pure
functional languages are mathematically more "correct" is analogous to
the statement that our perception of free will is scientifically false,
that it is an illusion.
The point is, it doesn't matter too much what is scientifically or
mathematically correct when dealing with cognition and communication,
whether we're talking about human natural language or computer
languages. What matters is what is useful. In both cases, the "broken"
conception (as judged from the standpoint of science and mathematics),
whether it be free will in the case of natural language, or mutation of
state in the case of computer languages, is the more useful.[1]
Finally, knowing that these naive perceptions are convenient fictions
allows us to avoid scratching our heads endlessly over utterances like
"it is raining," wondering what the "it" is that is "doing" the raining.
warmest regards,
Ralph
[1] to be clear, I'm not suggesting that we jettison functional
programming altogether - it has obvious benefits for program
decomposition and analysis that I don't need to detail here - but
rather that pure functional languages are a bad idea because they
deprive us of a native cognitive skill at which we are very well
versed, and substitute a novel cognitive model (pure functions and
monads) for which our intuition is poor.
--
Raffael Cavallaro