Welcome to This week in Language Scraps. I'm not crazy about the name, so feel free to suggest alternatives in the comments. But in what will be a regular weekend post, I'll briefly review the week's postings to Language Scraps, Monday-Sunday. I hope this will encourage more participation, spark more conversation, and generally make Language Scraps a more dynamic place. (I'll refer to my posts in the third person so as not to give the impression that my posts have any sort of primacy.) Anyhow, let's get to it.
Monday was a busy day:
- Rikker dissected the "language gene" and the connection between human speech and bat echolocation
- Rikker homed in on eggcorns, a type of creative language mistake
- Torben shared an English translation of Charles Baudelaire's poem Correspondences
- Torben directed us to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell on Google Books
- Torben brought Language Scraps to a grinding halt by wondering whether we are too prolific for our own good
Wednesday:
- Rikker broke radio silence with reCAPTCHA, using anti-spam tools to digitize public domain books
- Torben stumbled upon the Phonetics Flash Animation Project
- Scott linked us to his excellent essay about postmodernity and revelation
Thursday:
- Torben excerpted an article on the Semiotics of Smoke
- JGrotegut posted a paper on the eyes of the skin and the language or architecture
Saturday:
- Torben informed us of the Modern Language Association website and its language maps of the U.S.
Remember: comment! question! discuss! disagree! All that good stuff.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
This week in Language Scraps 9/24/07—9/30/07
Friday, September 28, 2007
Modern Language Association
Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Semiotics of Smoke
In the process of hunting up illustrations for a post about the meanings of smoking I ran across an astonishing example of how a habit, and everything it represents, is systematically being erased not just from daily life — but from history. The photo on the left of Dean perched against the wall of the Dakota in New York is a copy of the original picture taken by Roy Shatt in 1954. The one on the right is the version being licensed by CMG International, the company that now owns the rights to James Dean’s image. Notice anything missing? His cigarette has been Photoshopped out of the licensed version — I assume to make his image more marketable to advertisers that would use it in a world where smoking has become a social disease. The manipulation of dead celebrities’ identities has been going on for awhile, but the irony of sanitizing the original bad boy iconoclast hero — literally pulling the cigarette from his lips forever — is particularly galling.
I’m thinking about smoke. It’s what one does while quitting. And what I’m thinking is that I miss it. Not the smoke itself, of course. The smoke itself is no more enjoyable now than it was the first time I choked on a lung full at the age of eight (don’t worry, I didn’t start smoking that young. I had asked my mother if I could take a drag on her cigarette and she — wisely — said, “Sure.” I did, almost vomited, and didn’t touch another cigarette for almost 20 years…). It’s enjoyable in the same way that the burning poisonous taste of liquor is enjoyable, which is to say: not much. No one really enjoys the medium of illicit or dangerous substances. It’s about the effects, of course, but also something more.
(More...)
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
postmodernism and revelation: will we find zion or make it
Today in the language class I ran out of time while talking about Meister Eckhart and other mystics and how they describe the experience they had with whatever they have experienced. I had planned to end the discussion by bringing up some ideas from an article I once published in Sunstone Magazine that have to do with the First Vision of Joseph Smith so important to Mormons. Smith wrote four different versions of what he saw/felt/heard, each one quite different from the others. There's a way that authenticates the experience as being with an absolutely other being. The human being struggles to make sense of the overwhelming experience and the inadequacies of language.
If you are interested further, you can find a bad copy of the whole essay at this address:
http://research.uvsc.edu/abbott/Publications/
Phonetics Flash Animation Project
I ran across this site while I was stumbling through linguistic websites. I think this is a wonderful idea, perhaps because I have benefited from anatomical diagrams before (that's how I learned to roll my R). Anyhow, below is the "about" section of their site. Check it out:This site contains animated libraries of the phonetic sounds of English, German, and Spanish. Available for each consonant and vowel is an animated articulatory diagram, a step-by-step description, and video-audio of the sound spoken in context. It is intended for students of phonetics, linguistics, and foreign language. There is also an interactive diagram of the articulatory anatomy.
This project was a collaborative effort of the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, German, Speech Pathology and Audiology, and Academic Technologies at The University of Iowa.
Stop spam! Read books! Woo hoo!
I think most everyone on the web these days is familiar with the captcha, a mechanism for proving that you are a human. The word captcha actually an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart", and they manifest themselves in the form of tests that require you to read the text in an image that has been distorted in a way that fools OCR, but doesn't fool humans. You know, these things:
It's a good idea, even if they can be annoying. (Particularly if the captcha is difficult even for a human to read).
Enter recaptcha.net. The creators of the captcha have teamed up with the Internet Archive to digitize public domain books. If you have a website, you can sign up on their website to use captchas provided by recaptcha.net. That way, when your users verify their humanness, they are also typing in a couple of words from an actual book in the Internet Archive. A few thousand users later, and you've digitized the whole book, two words at a time. To prevent error, they have words digitized more than once by different people.
It looks like this:
That is a pretty good idea. Pretty, pretty good.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Quick Blog Question For Contributors and Readers
Do you think it would be helpful to put a daily cap on posts? For example, if (decided number) posts have already been posted, we wait until tomorrow to publish our posts. I'm fine either way, but I have heard from a few contributors and readers that the amount of knowledge on here is a little overwhelming. Please comment and let me know what you think.
Charles Baudelaire - Correspondences
Nature is a temple where living pillarsMan crosses it through forests of symbols
Which watch him with intimate eyes.
Like those deep echoes that meet from afar
In a dark and profound harmony,
As vast as night and clarity,
So perfumes, colours, tones answer each other.
There are perfumes fresh as children's flesh,
Soft as oboes, green as meadows,
And others, corrupted, rich, triumphant,
Possessing the diffusion of infinite things,
Like amber, musk, incense and aromatic resin,
Chanting the ecstasies of spirit and senses.
Eggcorns! Get your eggcorns!
This blog, for all intensive purposes, is like a bunch of posts about language bound together with duck tape. But that's okay, because we can still home in on the parts of language that particularly interest us, as I am wanton to do, every once and a while. All tolled, I think it's a pretty cool blog.
Did anything in the first paragraph strike you? I hope so, because I intentionally used six (count 'em--six) eggcorns in that paragraph.
What is an eggcorn? From the Wikipedia article, an eggcorn is "an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker's dialect." That is, it's a type of language mistake that makes logical sense to the speaker. It is named for the mistake that some speakers make to call an acorn and eggcorn. In their world it makes sense, because (1) it sounds pretty much the same, (2) it's egg-shaped, and (3) there's a semantic connection with "corn" which is another type of seed. So it's an egg-shaped "corn" or seed. Eggcorns are considered distinct from other types of linguistic errors, including folk etymologies, malapropisms, and mondegreens.
The term was coined back in 2003 by linguists on the blog Language Log. Since then, Language Log has discussed scores of eggcorns. And a website to compile eggcorns was created a year or so later: The Eggcorn Database.
So did you spot all six of the eggcorns I used earlier? If not, here they are:
for all intensive purposes instead of for all intents and purposes
duck tape for duct tape (though is is a questionable eggcorn)
home in on instead of hone in on
wanton to do instead of wont to do
once and a while instead of once in a while
all tolled instead of all told
Have you thought of any eggcorns you might be using?
What's the difference between bat echolocation and human speech?
The title of this post sounds like the setup to an extremely sophisticated joke, right? Sorry to disappoint. But really, though, echolocation and human speech have something in common: they are both controlled by FOXP2, the so-called "language gene." There's a fascinating post on Babel's Dawn today, discussing recent discoveries about FOXP2.
As it turns out, besides bats, humans have one of the most developed FOXP2 genes among mammals. No other primates compare. This enables us to produce and understand minute differences in sound, like the difference between sing and zing, which is not only a minute difference, but it's said and over with in a matter of milliseconds.
Bats still apparently have better sensorimotor coordination than we do, but our abilities are nothing to scoff at.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Carving out a name for himself
Found via The Lexicographer's Rules, Centripetal Notion has posted a bunch of artwork by Brian Dettmer. He carves books into works of art, and it's just amazing:
Talk about a creative use of a dictionary!
Are we hardwired to curse?
We've had a couple of recent posts on Language Scraps about Steven Pinker's new book (which I still haven't read). I ran across a brief but interesting article about it in Wired, though, with an engaging headline:
Holy @&%*! Author Steven Pinker Thinks We're Hardwired to Curse.
"Cathartic cursing," as Pinker describes in the article, is what we do when we hit our thumb with a hammer or slam our finger in the door, etc. And he says it's similar to, say, a dog's reaction if you step on its tail. I think we all "curse" in this sense, which is to use vocalizations to respond to the pain. Is whether we say fuck or fudge or fiddlesticks really relevant?
And what drives this? Is it related to pain sensation? I get excruciating suicide headaches that usually last several hours, during the peaks of which I have trouble remaining silent. Somehow, the seemingly unbearable pain is mitigated (at least in my mind) by making some kind of noise. Moaning, groaning, anything--just nothing that requires thought. Or is it that if I don't, the feeling of helplessness to ease my misery is too overwhelming? Is it psychological or physiological? I wonder.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Lu Chi's Wen Fu
The Art of Writing (circa A.D. 300)
Based on a translation by Shih-Hsiang Chen, 1952, modified after consulting a translation by Sam Hamill, 1991.
Preface
I have often studied the works of talented men of letters and thought to myself that I obtained some insight into their minds at work. The ways of employing words and forming expressions are indeed infinitely varied. But, accordingly, the various degrees of beauty and excellence can be distinguished from what is common and weak. When by composing my own works, I become aware of the ordeal. Constantly present is the feeling of regret that the meaning falls short of the objects observed. The fact is, it is not so hard to know as it is to do.
I am therefore writing this essay on literature to tell of the glorious accomplishments of past men of letters, and to comment on the causes of failure and success in writing. Perhaps some day the secret of this most intricate art may be entirely mastered. In making an axe handle by cutting wood with an axe, the model is indeed near at hand. But the adaptability of the hand to the ever-changing circumstances and impulses in the process of creation is such as words can hardly explain. What follows is only what can be said in words.
1. The Motive
Standing erect in the center of all, the poet views the expanse of the whole universe, and in ancient masterpieces his spirit rejoices and finds nurture.
His lament for fleeting life is in observance of the four seasons as they pass, his regard for the myriad growing things inspires in him thoughts innumerable.
As with the fallen leaves in autumn's rigor his heart sinks in grief, so is each tender twig in sweet spring a source of joy.
In frost he finds sympathy at moments when his heart is all frigid purity, or far, far, into the highest clouds he makes his mind's abode.
The shining, magnanimous deeds of the world's most virtuous are substance of his song, as also the pure fragrance which the most accomplished goodness of the past yields. The flowering forest of letters and treasuries of classics are his favorite haunts, where he delights in nothing less than perfection of beauty's form and matter.
Thus moved, he will spread his paper and poise his brush
To express what he can in writing.
(Click here for translation)
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The History Of Political Symbols i.e. John McCain
When it comes to the red and blue state diagrams that we see each election, this did not start to emerge mainstream until its use in 2000. It really became standard use in the 2004 election. The red states represent states that are mainly Republican and the blue states represent the Democratic Party. (More...)
Article from Transworldnews.com:
We have all seen the symbols of the donkey and the elephant. We are smothered in newspaper ads, cartoons, and newsbreaks including these as well as the now famous red and blue states. If you have been curious as many of our Americas youth is here is the history behind these famous political symbols.
The Democrat donkey, as it’s called, came to be in the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. Jackson’s opponents began calling him a jackass (a donkey) and this lead to Jackson’s choice to use this stubborn symbol, the donkey or mule. The cartoonist, Thomas Nast used the donkey in a newspaper cartoon that made this symbol famous. Today’s democrats see the symbol of the donkey as being strong and brave. The same cartoonist, Thomas Nast, later created the Republican elephant in 1874. Today’s Republicans see the symbol of the elephant as representing strength and dignity.
Ban on Asian symbols: A Westside story of bias?
From IBN Live:
Does the wearing a burkha, nose rings or a mangalsutra undermine a modern secular society?
In England, a woman who worked at a catering services firm at Heathrow airport, was sacked for wearing a nose ring. London's Mayor Ken Livingstone says this is an attack on her right to express her religion.
Other western countries have gone a step further. France has banned the wearing of headscarves and turbans in school whereas in England a teacher was sacked for wearing a veil.
So, does the West overreact to Asian cultural symbols?
Head of Communications, London CNN News, William Higham, Senior Lawyer of Supreme Court K T S Tulsi and Fashion Designer Rina Dhaka debated the topic on Face the Nation.
(More...)
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Islamic Caligraphy
An Interpretation of Plato's Cratylus
In light of our discussion today:
Phronesis (Vol. XLV, No. 4, November 2000) pp. 284-305.
Simon Keller
There was once a BBC radio show on which celebrity guests were challenged to produce
spontaneous etymologies of common English words. A guest on the show is asked to explain the origin of the word ‘gold’. “Ah yes”, she quickly replies, “this word has its origin in the venerable custom of giving gold watches as gifts to retiring employees. When a ceremony was held to honour a retiring worker, the manager of the company would present him or her with a timepiece made of the as-yet-unnamed substance. As the watch was passed over, the manager would whisper in the ear of the former employee, ‘Gee, you’re old’. As time passed, the ritualised phrase was shortened to, ‘Gee, old’, and then, ‘Gold’. Eventually, people began referring to ‘gold watches’, and so ‘gold’ became the name of the material from which the watches were made”.
(Direct link to this full article in .pdf form)
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
English is Tough Stuff
ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF
======================
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
-- Author unknown
Lost Languages
From the New York Times:
Regions of Dying Languages Named
Filed at 2:44 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets together, there's still no one to talk to.
Native Australian Charlie Mangulda is the only person alive known to speak that language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction.
From rural Australia to Siberia to Oklahoma, languages that embody the history and traditions of people are dying, researchers said Tuesday.
While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them.
Five hotspots where languages are most endangered were listed Tuesday in a briefing by the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the National Geographic Society.
In addition to northern Australia, eastern Siberia and Oklahoma and the U.S. Southwest, many native languages are endangered in South America -- Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia -- as well as the area including British Columbia, and the states of Washington and Oregon.
Losing languages means losing knowledge, says K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College.
''When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday.''
As many as half of the current languages have never been written down, he estimated.
That means, if the last speaker of many of these vanished tomorrow, the language would be lost because there is no dictionary, no literature, no text of any kind, he said.
Harrison is associate director of the Living Tongues Institute based in Salem, Ore. He and institute director Gregory D.S. Anderson analyzed the top regions for disappearing languages.
Anderson said languages become endangered when a community decides that its language is an impediment. The children may be first to do this, he explained, realizing that other more widely spoken languages are more useful.
The key to getting a language revitalized, he said, is getting a new generation of speakers. He said the institute worked with local communities and tries to help by developing teaching materials and by recording the endangered language.
Harrison said that the 83 most widely spoken languages account for about 80 percent of the world's population while the 3,500 smallest languages account for just 0.2 percent of the world's people. Languages are more endangered than plant and animal species, he said.
The hot spots listed at Tuesday's briefing:
-- Northern Australia, 153 languages. The researchers said aboriginal Australia holds some of the world's most endangered languages, in part because aboriginal groups splintered during conflicts with white settlers. Researchers have documented such small language communities as the three known speakers of Magati Ke, the three Yawuru speakers and the lone speaker of Amurdag.
-- Central South America including Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia -- 113 languages. The area has extremely high diversity, very little documentation and several immediate threats. Small and socially less-valued indigenous languages are being knocked out by Spanish or more dominant indigenous languages in most of the region, and by Portuguese in Brazil.
-- Northwest Pacific Plateau, including British Columbia in Canada and the states of Washington and Oregon in the U.S., 54 languages. Every language in the American part of this hotspot is endangered or moribund, meaning the youngest speaker is over age 60. An extremely endangered language, with just one speaker, is Siletz Dee-ni, the last of 27 languages once spoken on the Siletz reservation in Oregon.
-- Eastern Siberian Russia, China, Japan -- 23 languages. Government policies in the region have forced speakers of minority languages to use the national and regional languages and, as a result, some have only a few elderly speakers.
-- Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico -- 40 languages. Oklahoma has one of the highest densities of indigenous languages in the United States. A moribund language of the area is Yuchi, which may be unrelated to any other language in the world. As of 2005, only five elderly members of the Yuchi tribe were fluent.
The research is funded by the Australian government, U.S. National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society and grants from foundations.
Thais' worrisome Western names: Mafia, Big, Money
Thomas Fuller, New York Times
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
(08-29) 04:00 PDT Bangkok --
America has Tom, Dick and Harry. Thailand has Pig, Money and Fat.
For as long as people here can remember, children have been given playful nicknames - classics include Shrimp, Chubby and Crab - that are carried into adulthood.
But now, to the consternation of some nickname purists, children are being given offbeat English-language nicknames such as Mafia or Seven - as in 7-Eleven, the convenience store.
The spread of foreign names mirrors a rapidly urbanizing society that has absorbed any number of influences, including Hollywood, fast-food chains and English Premier League soccer.
The trend worries Vira Rojpojchanarat, the permanent secretary of the Thai Ministry of Culture. Vira, whose nickname is the relatively unimaginative Ra, is embarking on a campaign to revive the simple and often more pastoral nicknames of yore.
"It's important because it's about the usage of the Thai language," Vira said in his office that is decorated with Thai theatrical masks and a small Buddhist altar; he is an architect by training. "We worry that Thai culture will vanish."
With help from language experts at the Royal Institute, the official arbiter of the Thai language, Vira plans to produce by the end of the year a collection of thousands of old-fashioned nicknames, listed by wholesome categories such as colors, animals and fruit and including simple favorites like Yaay (big), Ouan (fat) and Dam (black).
(More...)Monday, September 17, 2007
The Question of Usage
Is a couple a couple or is a couple a few? Are the two phrases synonymous? What say you?
Jolyn (my wife) and I have this ongoing debate over the meaning of the phrase, a couple. I believe that the phrases, a couple and a few, are synonymous. Why? One word: usage. I guess I'm just a usage kind of guy. To me, it doesn't really matter what a dictionary says. Language is created by culture and usage. People (including me) say a couple all the time when they are clearly speaking of a number larger than two. Jolyn claims that a couple means two and that a few means more than two. I disagree with her because her definition comes from the dictionary. The true meaning of a word is defined by how it is used, not by Mr. Webster. However, I do realize that my definition must include Jolyn's as well because she uses the phrases differently than me. Therefore, in terms of usage, a couple can mean two or more than two, depending on who's doing the talking.
Although the usage issue is more complex than my petty argument with Jolyn, our little debate is fun and interesting.
I just thought I should open this up for discussion.
Steven Pinker's TED talk
Following up on Scott's post last week about Steven Pinker's new book, The Stuff of Thoughts: Language as a Window into Human Nature, here's a link to the talk that Pinker gave at TED earlier this year, as a preview of his book. See what you think.
I haven't read the book, but this talk was interesting in light of the recent spat between Pinker and George Lakoff, based around a review Pinker wrote last year of Lakoff's book Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea, and Lakoff's response. Are Pinker and Lakoff really that far apart in their conceptualizations of how language and metaphor are linked in the mind? That's for someone smarter than me to decide, but you can check out some responses to the Pinker vs. Lakoff debate here, here and here. Or Google up some more.
Zohar
I'm sure I'm not the only one that was fascinated by our discussion of the Zohar today (we're not trying to exclude anyone, but there was an offline discussion about Zohar today). I thought I would gather some links to share with everyone. Let's continue our discussion, or rather, begin further discussion in the comments. Here you go:http://www.kabbalah.com/11.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zohar
Extensive Public Domain Translation of Zohar
Alfred Stieglitz Quote
"You will find as you go through life that if you ask what a thing means, a picture, or music, or whatever, you may learn something about the people you ask, but as for learning about the thing you seek to know, you will have sense it in the end through your own experience, so that you had better save your energy and not go through the world asking what cannot be communicated in words. If the artist could describe in words what he does, then he never would have created it." Alfred Stieglitz
A Visual Evolution of the Latin/English Alphabet
Click here to see a visual evolution of the Latin/English alphabet, courtesy of www.popamericana.org.Sunday, September 16, 2007
Sorted Books Project
Excerpt from http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/:
The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library's holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.
(More...)
Lacan's "The Mirror Stage" and Hofstader's "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"
I think it was the 3rd or 4th time that we met for our "Language" class...
We were talking about the specific realm/adaptation of language that humans have that no other living creature has. That is, namely, reflection and reference to past/future events rather than just copying or mimicking. Scott brought up the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his concept of “The Mirror Stage”. I thought it was so fascinating. It reminded me of the ideas in a book that my friend gave to me last Christmas called “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid”, written by a man named Douglas Hofstader (he won a Pulitzer Prize for it). I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Last night I decided to make a post on this blog about it, but I was having a hard time explaining the similarities that I saw. Then I thought “there is no possible way that I am the only person who sees this connection”, so I started searching online and found an article called “Towards a Theory of Conscious Art” by Robert Pepperell. I started to read the article and found this:
(Which appears in Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research (“Towards a Theory of Conscious Art” by Robert Pepperell) Volume 1:2, p. 117-134, 2003 Edited by Roy Ascott)
“8. Reflexive theories of consciousness:
Reflexive, self-reflecting or feedback-based models of self-consciousness, of course, are nothing especially novel in recent Occidental theories of mind. For Lacanian psychoanalysis the 'mirror stage' in childhood development is formative of the self-referential I; a theory based on observation of the pleasurable reactions of small children and certain apes when presented with their own mirror image (Lacan 1977). In Godel, Escher, Bach; Douglas Hofstadter (1980) discusses the application of what he terms 'Strange Loops' or 'Tangled Hierarchies' in modelling human thought and consciousness. Speaking from a position deeply rooted in AI research, Hofstadter draws analogies between the modes of recursion, self-reference and emergent complexity found in the works of Godel, Escher and Bach and the symbolic interaction of 'subsystems' or 'subbrains' in the production of mind. He concludes: My belief is that the explanations of "emergent" phenomena in our brains —for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness and free will —are based on a kind of Strange Loop, an interaction between levels in which the top level reaches back down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself determined by the bottom level. In other words, a self-reinforcing "resonance" between different levels—quite like the Henkin sentence which, by merely asserting its own provability, actually becomes provable. The self comes into being the moment it has the power to reflect itself. (Hofstadter 1980 p. 709)”
That is just the first two paragraphs of the eighth section of his article. There are twelve sections in his article which is about twenty pages long. The whole article is interesting, but those two paragraphs (and the whole eighth section) really applied to our in class discussions.
If you want to read the article or look at it more in depth here is a direct link to the .pdf file: robertpepperell.com/papers/Towards%20a%20Theory%20of.pdf
And here is the link to his (Robert Pepperell’s) general website (which gives access to many other articles written by him): http://robertpepperell.com
(cover of Hofstader's book)
(cool drawing of Lacan)-Travis Low-"grabloid"-
Saturday, September 15, 2007
The Future of Dictionaries.
Torben asked the other day whether Visuwords or Wiktionary were the future of dictionaries. I tend to think more like Erin McKean. We still need professional lexicographers to act as the scientists describing the language, but we are poised on the brink of doing great new things with the available technology. Check out her talk from TED in March of this year:
If there were a Fantasy Lexicography league, Erin would be on my first string. She's Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford American Dictionary at a very young 36 years of age. Impressive. And she also blogs at dictionaryevangelist.com.
[Update: Something isn't working with the embedded video. You can watch the video at the TED site here.]
Friday, September 14, 2007
Learning new languages easiest for the very, very young
Article from TheRecord.com by Luisa D'Amato:
Does the Language I Speak Influence the Way I Think?
An article from Linguistic Society of America by Betty Birner:
Is it true that the language I speak shapes my thoughts?
People have been asking this question for hundreds of years. Linguists have been paying special attention to it since the 1940's, when a linguist named Benjamin Lee Whorf studied Hopi, a Native American language spoken in northeastern Arizona. Based on his studies, Whorf claimed that speakers of Hopi and speakers of English see the world differently because of differences in their language.
What we have learned is that the answer to this question is complicated. To some extent, it's a chicken-and-egg question: Are you unable to think about things you don't have words for, or do you lack words for them because you don't think about them? Part of the problem is that there is more involved than just language and thought; there is also culture. Your culture—the traditions, lifestyle, habits, and so on that you pick up from the people you live and interact with—shapes the way you think, and also shapes the way you talk.
(More...)
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Alex the Parrot Dies
A couple of articles from The New York Times about Alex the Parrot:
Thinking about animals — and especially thinking about whether animals can think — is like looking at the world through a two-way mirror. There, for example, on the other side of the mirror, is Alex, the famous African Grey parrot who died unexpectedly last week at the age of 31. But looking at Alex, who mastered a surprising vocabulary of words and concepts, the question is always how much of our own reflection we see. What you make of Dr. Irene Pepperberg’s work with Alex depends on whether you think Alex’s cognitive presence was real or merely imitative.
(More...)
And another one...
He knew his colors and shapes, he learned more than 100 English words, and with his own brand of one-liners he established himself in television shows, scientific reports and news articles as perhaps the world’s most famous talking bird.
But last week Alex, an African gray parrot, died, apparently of natural causes, said Dr. Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Brandeis University and Harvard who studied and worked with the parrot for most of his life and published reports of his progress in scientific journals. The parrot was 31.
(More...)
Be Curious and Write
There is a poignant scene in the film Jules and Jim by Francois Truffaut, in which, one character (Jules) expresses his envy for his best friend Jim. Jim responds in a way I think we all have felt at sometime. The following is an excerpt from their conversation translated into English courtesy of script-o-rama.com:
Jules: Maybe one day...I'll write a love story...
where the characters will be insects
Jules: I have a bad tendency to overspecialise
Jules: I envy you your broad scope, Jim
Jim: Me? I'm a failure
Jim: Prof Albert Sorel taught me the little I know.
He said "You want to be what?"A diplomat.
"Are you rich? "No."
Can you legitimately add a famous name to your own
surname?"No."
"Then forget diplomacy." But what'll I become? "Curious."
That's not a profession, not yet. "Travel, write,
translate. Learn to live everywhere.Begin at once.
The future belongs to the curious.
The French have stayed behind their borders
too long. Newspapers'll pay for your escapades."
Cinematic Language
That type of visual shortcut did not always exist, however. Someone had to originate the first temporal cut, and in so doing create a language unique to cinema. In the early 1900s, filmmakers were still treating movies like moving photographs. The camera position remained fixed and there was little manipulation of the images, aside from some rudimentary special effects. It took a few innovative minds to develop the visual grammar that viewers now take for granted in Hollywood films. (More...)
The following article is from the American Film Institute. It includes a brief introduction to the fathers of cinematic language. Lilian Gish, a famous actress during the silent era (popular for her strong performances in D.W. Griffith films), once said of D.W. Griffith: "He gave us the grammar of filmmaking." Understanding the origin of cinematic language will increase your appreciation for the complexity of modern cinematic language. This article does a good job at giving a succinct introduction to the development of early film and its language --- a language full of cuts and close-ups.
Artistry and Business,
Picture this: In a movie, the first shot shows the main character stepping into an elevator, then cuts immediately to that character stepping out of the elevator four floors below. Although the camera has not stayed with the character while riding the elevator down the four floors, the audience understands that the activity has taken place; the viewer, accustomed to cinematic editing, does not feel jarred or confused by the leap in space and time.
Steven Pinker's new book: The Stuff of Thoughts: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Until 2003, he taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and Slate, and is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, and most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. This photo is from the "silly" part of his Harvard website.
In the current New York Review of Books, Colin McGinn reviews Harvard professor Steven Pinker's new book. Some of the articles in the NYRB are are online; unfortunately, not this one. Here's a taste of the review:
After a discussion of how we know, without ever learning reasons, that while we can say both Hal loaded the wagon with hay and Hal loaded hay into the wagon, we can't say John poured water into the glass but not John poured the glass with water, Pinker concludes that the way we understand systems of verbs like these means that we
must possess a language of thought that represents the world according to basic abstract categories like space, time, substance, and motion, and these categories constitute the meaning of the verb. When we use a particular verb in a sentence, we bring to bear this abstract system to 'frame' reality in certain ways, thus imposing an optional grid on the flux of experience. We observe some liquid moving into a container and we describe it either as an act of pouring or as the state of being filled. . . . The grammar of our language reflects this innate system of concepts. As Pinker is aware, this is a very Kantian picture of human cognition.
And, voila, there we are right in the middle of the eighteenth century!
Deseret Alphabet Cont'd...
Scott Abbott has posted a wonderful article about the Deseret Alphabet on his blog "The Goalie's Anxiety." Scott will soon be a contributor on this blog :) Check his article out here.
World's most semiotic nation?
Burak BEKDİL
The other day's top story in the Turkish Daily News was headlined "World's most virile nation" and naturally was referring to the Turks who, according to a study, have the highest average of partners in the world. The findings of the survey may or may not be true. But there is convincing empirical evidence that the Turks are probably the world's most "semiotic" nation.
It began with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic that is today sadly fading away according to some, and, to others, is just restoring itself. Atatürk was probably the only great leader of his time with a genuine obsession about the semiotics of headwear; so passionate of an obsession that its traces live on almost a century later.(More...)
Deseret Alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_alphabet
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/deseret.htm
http://www.deseretalphabet.com/
http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/deseretalphabet.htm
In 1950, Bradbury Thompson proposed a redesigned alphabet called Alphabet 26 that unified the characters in favor of uppercase forms with large and small variations to be used as capitals are. He argued having some letters look completely different in their upper and lowercase forms was confusing. For example, a capital "A" looks nothing like a lowercase "a", yet they're supposed to mean the same thing. (More...)