D - just finished Journey into Russia by Post.
Set in the 60's Soviet era.
He was shocked by how brainwashed the masses were about America.
He quoted General Gunther.
That he thought "damned English" was just one word for the longest time.
Then Post mentioned the adjective-noun or noun-noun compound nouns (not noun phrases) that were invariably invoked by Soviets.
War-mongering imperialists.
Heroic labour.
And so on.
The term war-mongering ... labour, or Soviets, et al would make no sense.
When the two words together make sense, but apart do not, I'd argue that we might as well have them portrayed as a single concept.
heroic-labour. heroiclabour.
D - why is this interesting?
It is the opposite of the type of propaganda that Noam Chomsky discusses.
He spoke of high-level single word abstracts muddying the waters of clear thought.
E.g. democracy. Versus 'popular representation'.
What we see in Rush's passage is the opposite. By connecting 2 or 3 terms into a compound noun, we find that the potential nuance and diversity those words ought to be able to portray is lost.
E.g. cowardly labour.
E.g. pacifistic imperialism.
-------------
I took liberal arts in the 90s - the heyday of political correctness.
I have remained highly sensitive to feminism and its attempt to control language.
A noun phrase stands in place any number of complex and nuanced issues.
The wage gap.
Male violence.
Though to be fair to C, equality is one of the most over-used and least helpful terms.
It reminds me of online lingo. Free... as in beer?
I see a billboard on the way to work each day. For December - the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre - somebody put up an awareness ad.
It talked about how men weren't getting involved enough.
Which seems terribly rich, given that they have been excluded from any number of memorial events and feminist locations, such as Womyn Centres on campuses.
Anyway, let's break down the term "male violence".
My observation about the importance of a brief and powerful preposition system, likely derived from the Somali system, for CVN applies here.
Male violence. Noun noun. (This will resemble my example of space man earlier.)
Here, converting them into phrases with prepositions is useful.
Violence ... for males. By males? To males? From males? With?
Inter or intra male violence? To males, to non-males?
Contrast with black violence, that would raise hackles.
In Toronto right now, it would likely be interpreted as concern for black victims of homicide. The Sun is terribly upset that they are dying in droves.
Most of the killers are also black. So black violence as a term could potentially be applied to the offender versus victim quality. But that would not be P-C.
Or female violence, which would get shoe-horned into woman-as-victim format, though the structure is identical to the opposite implication for male.
So let us revisit the terms again, with the idea of embedded prepositions or perhaps a prefix to denote more nuance.
Male violence. Intra-male. Inter-male. Inter - to males? by males?
After all the term could logically be as much a reference to how males are the main victims of violence. Also, of course, perpetrators. That's OK to say about males -just one gender mind you. Again, if we swap out gender for race (at least some), we have the opposite inferred meaning and an entirely different meme script kicks in.
I mention the wage gap since I posted a fairly minor FaceBook entry on it once.
36 hours later, and 100 posts of flame-war nature, mutual friends were calling each other Nazis and suggesting the other side supported genocide. Really. It was surreal.
Something we learned in university was the idea of operationalizing terms.
What do we mean by that? How do we measure it?
Qualify, quantify.
Of course, with propaganda of any type, this attempt at intelligent discussion will be still-born.
The discussion is not allowed to progress that far.
Male violence. Female violence?
BTW - male doesn't even denote just human. Male dogs? Cats?
Men? Boys too?
White violence? Black?
How about Christian violence? Islamic?
Straight? Gay? Bi? The list goes on.
I'd love if somebody would make a study showing tacit assumptions by subjects when these various terms are used.
My language design CVN will include very brief indicators of prefix (inter, intra) and prepositional (by, to) nature.
----------------------
Ranto.
And Espo's failure! I spent a coupla minutes trying to find the word 'belsono'.
Gradually, I realized I should not look for belson-. Though there was no way for me to know that until I knew both bel- and son- for pretty and sound respectively. I only knew one at that point.
Similarly, syllable forms such as CCV and VCC are permitted.
So if we have 2 adjacent syllables of CVC CVC construction,
we have no way to tell if we are looking at:
1) CVCC VC or
2) CV CCVC or
3) CVC CVC.
Though particular phoneme sequences may constrain this sometimes.
Point is, we're looking at the result of a mechanistic, mindless, 'clockwork morphology' loosely based on natural language.
I'd be wise to heed my own advice. The presence of both long and short vowels in CVN will result in EFLers trying to apply English-only rules to both pronunciation and stress.
Espo correlatives.
What kind -kia. Tia.
What place - kie. Tie.
D - yet the -a ending means adjective (-ly).
And -e ending means adverb! (-ily).
So kind ... adjective.
But place ... adverb!
Point is, Dr. Z did not think through this too far.
This dual use of certain endings (and word combos in other cases) is bound to trip up
those who are not fluent.
Given that the language tries to sell itself on being user-friendly, this is a serious indictment.
Instead, Espo could have more methodically used endings.
E.g. -a -e,i,o,u always meaning the same thing.
Ditto -an -en -in.
And for that matter -a, -an, -am, -ang.
Voila. And we get... CVN!
<:
Sunday, December 19, 2010
dementia and language loss
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/dementia-existing-in-isolation/article1843400/
Dementia is already an isolating disorder. But it becomes even more complicated because patients, with their memories collapsing back to childhood, often lose their ability to speak English if they learned the language later in life. In a nation where the incidence of dementia is expected to double in the next 30 years to one million people – and in which 20 per cent of an aging population has a mother tongue other than English or French – that means a huge strain on families looking for good care, and will require a radical shift in the country’s health-care.
D - my oma died about a year or two back.
My sis wanted to introduce oma to the most recent addition to the family - my sis's second daughter. Oma had been in a retirement home for many years, and was suffering from severe dementia.
She didn't know who we were. She forgot that at 98 she had spoken English since the end of WWII - half her life. She didn't understand the baby she was holding was her own great grandchild - though I think she was happy about that nonetheless.
She died shortly thereafter. I was glad to have seen her one last time.
D - learning a second childhood language has yet another benefit.
Should dementia set it, it increases the chance that caretakers will be able to communicate effectively. This is a strong argument for immersion into one's new nation if one is an immigrant.
Dementia is already an isolating disorder. But it becomes even more complicated because patients, with their memories collapsing back to childhood, often lose their ability to speak English if they learned the language later in life. In a nation where the incidence of dementia is expected to double in the next 30 years to one million people – and in which 20 per cent of an aging population has a mother tongue other than English or French – that means a huge strain on families looking for good care, and will require a radical shift in the country’s health-care.
D - my oma died about a year or two back.
My sis wanted to introduce oma to the most recent addition to the family - my sis's second daughter. Oma had been in a retirement home for many years, and was suffering from severe dementia.
She didn't know who we were. She forgot that at 98 she had spoken English since the end of WWII - half her life. She didn't understand the baby she was holding was her own great grandchild - though I think she was happy about that nonetheless.
She died shortly thereafter. I was glad to have seen her one last time.
D - learning a second childhood language has yet another benefit.
Should dementia set it, it increases the chance that caretakers will be able to communicate effectively. This is a strong argument for immersion into one's new nation if one is an immigrant.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
canada and rate of full bilingualism
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/mark_bonokoski/2010/12/14/16552231.html
The true number, said Jean-Pierre Corbeil, is 5.4 million — or 17% of the population — and not the scant 125,000 cited in the editorial I had penned on the national front to castigate a piece of legislation before the Senate that would require all future judges on the Supreme Court of Canada to be bilingual.
-------
D: if we're just restricting judge candidates to the 5mil- about 1 in 6 of us - that is noo elitist.
I am all about giving Quebec all the symbolic BS they want.
It's cheaper than money.
Canada is of 2 minds. Quebec sees us as 2 nations in the bosom of 1 state.
The rest of Canada sees us as a collection of egalitarian provinces.
Everybody tends to ignore the native issue.
Anyway, this stat shows how difficult true dual-first-languages is to obtain.
I imagine it almost requires 2 minds in one brain.
What a nice analogy for Canada.
The true number, said Jean-Pierre Corbeil, is 5.4 million — or 17% of the population — and not the scant 125,000 cited in the editorial I had penned on the national front to castigate a piece of legislation before the Senate that would require all future judges on the Supreme Court of Canada to be bilingual.
-------
D: if we're just restricting judge candidates to the 5mil- about 1 in 6 of us - that is noo elitist.
I am all about giving Quebec all the symbolic BS they want.
It's cheaper than money.
Canada is of 2 minds. Quebec sees us as 2 nations in the bosom of 1 state.
The rest of Canada sees us as a collection of egalitarian provinces.
Everybody tends to ignore the native issue.
Anyway, this stat shows how difficult true dual-first-languages is to obtain.
I imagine it almost requires 2 minds in one brain.
What a nice analogy for Canada.
motherese. baby attuned to mom's voice
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101215195234.htm
The brain signals also revealed that while the infants did react to other women's voices, these sounds only activated the voice recognition parts of the brains. "This is exciting research that proves for the first time that the newborn's brain responds strongly to the mother's voice and shows, scientifically speaking, that the mother's voice is special to babies,"
D: I explored a language idea cally Babyese.
Basically, the phonemes and syllable forms grow to express nuance.
For example, at the start, all men are daddee.
It was inspired by lifeform naming conventions and a taxonomic language approach.
Clearly, my appreciation for this was felt in Lang53/LangX.
Though, again, I think their linear mechanistic approach to reintroducing phonemes is simplistic. Plus skipping over tonemes makes no sense at later stages.
Sorry guys.
I'm having some trouble finding the particular wayback machine site.
Anyway, geocities, at dinosnider666,
childese_4_kids.html.
The brain signals also revealed that while the infants did react to other women's voices, these sounds only activated the voice recognition parts of the brains. "This is exciting research that proves for the first time that the newborn's brain responds strongly to the mother's voice and shows, scientifically speaking, that the mother's voice is special to babies,"
D: I explored a language idea cally Babyese.
Basically, the phonemes and syllable forms grow to express nuance.
For example, at the start, all men are daddee.
It was inspired by lifeform naming conventions and a taxonomic language approach.
Clearly, my appreciation for this was felt in Lang53/LangX.
Though, again, I think their linear mechanistic approach to reintroducing phonemes is simplistic. Plus skipping over tonemes makes no sense at later stages.
Sorry guys.
I'm having some trouble finding the particular wayback machine site.
Anyway, geocities, at dinosnider666,
childese_4_kids.html.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
the many faces of sign language. tower of babel.
babble Look up babble at Dictionary.com
early 13c., babeln "to prattle," akin to other Western European words for stammering and prattling (cf. Swedish babbla, O.Fr. babillier) attested from the same era, some of which probably were borrowed from others, but etymologists cannot now determine which were original. Probably imitative of baby-talk, in any case (cf. L. babulus "babbler," Gk. barbaros "non-Greek-speaking"). "No direct connexion with Babel can be traced; though association with that may have affected the senses" [OED]. Meaning "to repeat oneself incoherently, speak foolishly" is attested from early 15c. Related: Babbled; babbling.
D - by all rights, sign language should be somewhat transparent and universal. When spoken in context and a certain setting, Rand's referent-objects as well as physical actions should be iconic - mimcry, like a game of Charades.
(Aside - having learned some ASL, I cannot believe just how terrible most people are at making clear iconic signs.)
D - am reading "The Joy of Signing" to round out some gaps in my training. Chopping up a sign language dictionary for cue cards is not an ideal way to learn.
I should have just looked at the basics much more.
The foreword mentions that there are Canadian sign differences compared to ASL.
The Europeans only use one hand. ASL tends to wander between 1 and 2 hands for signs.
Some signs are already out of date - for example, showing toast over an open flame.
Others are considered politically incorrect - the deaf&dumb sign, for example.
Gestuno is a half-hearted attempt at a universal sign language. In practice, it only shares certain basic iconic signs, and otherwise each signer uses their own proprietary national signs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Sign
It can be seen as a kind of pidgin sign language, which is not as conventionalised or complex as natural sign languages and has a limited lexicon.
D: ASL often generates novel concepts, or limited subset ideas, from initializing a 'natural sign' with a letter. The Roman Alphabet and the spoken national language immediately limites how universal a sign can be.
For example, the derivations of group.
I hope my deafese may yet serve as a more ideal stand-in for a universal sign language.
Maybe a sign language based conceptually on AUI would be more ideal.
I still think AUI is fascinating.
Each sound is linked to a concept.
aUI has 42 phonemes (including nasalized variations on the vowels for numbers), each with an associated meaning:
* a (pronounced like a in about): 'space'
* e (pronounced like e in bend): 'movement'
* i (pronounced like i in win): 'light'
* u (pronounced like u in bush): 'human'
* o (pronounced like o in port): 'life'
So AUI means "space human light" - space language.
My attempt to analyze the 1000 most common English words for recurring concepts is of use here. Stuff like money, system, hierarchy. Gender/kinship.
early 13c., babeln "to prattle," akin to other Western European words for stammering and prattling (cf. Swedish babbla, O.Fr. babillier) attested from the same era, some of which probably were borrowed from others, but etymologists cannot now determine which were original. Probably imitative of baby-talk, in any case (cf. L. babulus "babbler," Gk. barbaros "non-Greek-speaking"). "No direct connexion with Babel can be traced; though association with that may have affected the senses" [OED]. Meaning "to repeat oneself incoherently, speak foolishly" is attested from early 15c. Related: Babbled; babbling.
D - by all rights, sign language should be somewhat transparent and universal. When spoken in context and a certain setting, Rand's referent-objects as well as physical actions should be iconic - mimcry, like a game of Charades.
(Aside - having learned some ASL, I cannot believe just how terrible most people are at making clear iconic signs.)
D - am reading "The Joy of Signing" to round out some gaps in my training. Chopping up a sign language dictionary for cue cards is not an ideal way to learn.
I should have just looked at the basics much more.
The foreword mentions that there are Canadian sign differences compared to ASL.
The Europeans only use one hand. ASL tends to wander between 1 and 2 hands for signs.
Some signs are already out of date - for example, showing toast over an open flame.
Others are considered politically incorrect - the deaf&dumb sign, for example.
Gestuno is a half-hearted attempt at a universal sign language. In practice, it only shares certain basic iconic signs, and otherwise each signer uses their own proprietary national signs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Sign
It can be seen as a kind of pidgin sign language, which is not as conventionalised or complex as natural sign languages and has a limited lexicon.
D: ASL often generates novel concepts, or limited subset ideas, from initializing a 'natural sign' with a letter. The Roman Alphabet and the spoken national language immediately limites how universal a sign can be.
For example, the derivations of group.
I hope my deafese may yet serve as a more ideal stand-in for a universal sign language.
Maybe a sign language based conceptually on AUI would be more ideal.
I still think AUI is fascinating.
Each sound is linked to a concept.
aUI has 42 phonemes (including nasalized variations on the vowels for numbers), each with an associated meaning:
* a (pronounced like a in about): 'space'
* e (pronounced like e in bend): 'movement'
* i (pronounced like i in win): 'light'
* u (pronounced like u in bush): 'human'
* o (pronounced like o in port): 'life'
So AUI means "space human light" - space language.
My attempt to analyze the 1000 most common English words for recurring concepts is of use here. Stuff like money, system, hierarchy. Gender/kinship.
accents and stigma. stutter in bilingual kids.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100712115058.htm
The study found that Israeli Arabs' positive associations with their own people are weaker when they are tested in Hebrew than when they are tested in Arabic.
The study used a computer test known as the Implicit Association Test, which is often used to study bias. Words flash on the computer screen, and subjects have to categorize them by pressing two keys on the keyboard as quickly as possible. It's a nearly automatic task, with no time to think about the answers. The trick is, the subjects are classifying two different kinds of words: words describing positive and negative traits and, in this case, names
The Arab Israeli volunteers found it easier to associate Arab names with "good" trait words and Jewish names with "bad" trait words than Arab names with "bad" trait words and Jewish names with "good" trait words. But this effect was much stronger when the test was given in Arabic; in the Hebrew session, they showed less of a positive bias toward Arab names over Jewish names.
D - implications for bilingualism. And regional accents. And foreign accents.
----
Stuttering.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908215938.htm
Children who are bilingual before the age of 5 are significantly more likely to stutter and to find it harder to lose their impediment, than children who speak only one language before this age, suggests new research.
There was no difference in school performance between children who stuttered, but the authors suggest that children whose native language is not English may benefit from deferring the time when they learn it. "...this reduces the chance of starting to stutter and aids the chances of recovery later in childhood," they say.
D - here in Canuck-land, this implies that learning our second official language in primary school may be ideal.
Though I never figured out why we learn Parisian French.
That is like teacher Franophones British English.
It makes no sense.
I wonder if the exception to this would be sign language.
Since it uses manual parallels to verbal signs, maybe it would not cause stuttering.
I am curious if it would result in manual accompaniment to speaking?
The study found that Israeli Arabs' positive associations with their own people are weaker when they are tested in Hebrew than when they are tested in Arabic.
The study used a computer test known as the Implicit Association Test, which is often used to study bias. Words flash on the computer screen, and subjects have to categorize them by pressing two keys on the keyboard as quickly as possible. It's a nearly automatic task, with no time to think about the answers. The trick is, the subjects are classifying two different kinds of words: words describing positive and negative traits and, in this case, names
The Arab Israeli volunteers found it easier to associate Arab names with "good" trait words and Jewish names with "bad" trait words than Arab names with "bad" trait words and Jewish names with "good" trait words. But this effect was much stronger when the test was given in Arabic; in the Hebrew session, they showed less of a positive bias toward Arab names over Jewish names.
D - implications for bilingualism. And regional accents. And foreign accents.
----
Stuttering.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908215938.htm
Children who are bilingual before the age of 5 are significantly more likely to stutter and to find it harder to lose their impediment, than children who speak only one language before this age, suggests new research.
There was no difference in school performance between children who stuttered, but the authors suggest that children whose native language is not English may benefit from deferring the time when they learn it. "...this reduces the chance of starting to stutter and aids the chances of recovery later in childhood," they say.
D - here in Canuck-land, this implies that learning our second official language in primary school may be ideal.
Though I never figured out why we learn Parisian French.
That is like teacher Franophones British English.
It makes no sense.
I wonder if the exception to this would be sign language.
Since it uses manual parallels to verbal signs, maybe it would not cause stuttering.
I am curious if it would result in manual accompaniment to speaking?
Sunday, November 14, 2010
on latex notation, text editors and keyboard design
http://porthos.ist.utl.pt/docs/revtex/manend/node3.html#SECTION00011100000000000000
D: I was impressed by how Latex allows IPA characters.
Those are some sensible keyboard shortcuts for IPA.
D: Look at a typical text editor interface.
The options available are not reflected on a standard qwerty keyboard.
The keyboard has many obscure and largely unused symbols hogging space.
(I'll look at keybaord layouts another day.)
Anyway, my Google blog has bold - italic.
My Google e-mail has bold-italic-underline- size -font- colour - highlight colour.
Hmm, it seems to get confused if I change text size after picking colours.
Which is a neat artistic result.
My point? We should have the reverse of mouse gestures.
Do with a button on the keyboard what we now need a mouse to do.
A keyboard should have those text options readily available.
It would be brilliant for math and science notation.
It would be compatible with a standard online text editor, as well as word processors.
A similar process with diacrtics would help with a generic universal Romance-language modified ROman alphabet system.
French accents:
Hmm turns out French has 5 accents.
I never did figure out what they meant.
That might explain why I nearly failed French after taking it 8 years.
I still cannot speak it.
I did memorize alt-0233 for the word resumé. I was tired of typing the verb ree-zoom.
Anyway, capital letters leave space for accents. Nor do small letters that have some upright element.
All in all, pretty poor design.
A qwerty keyboard cannot easily be reduced to half the characters.
Sure, voiced/voiceless pairs such as BP are natural candidates.
But this relationship is pretty opaque with Roman letters to most laypeople.
'
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