2002-12-06 15:31 (UTC)
Having dissed the New Scientist version,
it turns out that there was
a
Scientific American article on the New Whorfians all along. To
say it's better would be to damn it with faint praise: it's pretty
good. It turns out that some of this research comes from the
University of Chicago, which explains a lot. If you follow the fault
lines of linguistic factionalism (you more-or-less have to to follow
the subject at all - "preparadigmic" is probably the nicest thing you
can say about linguistics as a "science") you'll know that the Chicago
posse, together with Lakoff (now at Berkeley) broke with Chomskian
orthodoxy in proposing a generative semantics. There's a book
called
The
Linguistics Wars devoted to this debate which our library doesn't have, chiz chiz,
but by all accounts it was one of the messier intellectual divorces of
our era.
After this period Chomsky announced he was quitting semantics
altogether to spend more time with his politics, and the generative
semantics crew went their various ways, outside of what continued to
be a Chomskian "mainstream" which kept pure syntax at the top of the
agenda.
From the SciAm article:
Linguists were and remain convinced by Noam Chomsky of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who discovered that however
disparate human languages seem, all share a common, basic structure,
seemingly hardwired into the brain. They reasoned this wiring would
control the grammar of speech, but was separate from other parts of
the brain, such as those that governed perception or cognition in
general--making it hard for language to have an effect on the
latter. At the same time, cognitive psychologists began to think that
words just name concepts, which come first to the mind.
Chomsky's position is one thing; the inference ("making it hard for
language to have an effect on the other") is odd - a Universal Grammar
doesn't rule out any of the positions labelled as "Whorfian" in this
article either - and the idea that "words just name concepts, which
come first to the mind" is the kind of idiocy that has done so much to
earn "cognitive scientists" the derision of right-thinking people
everywhere - it would be an achievement of perverse virtuosity to
reconcile this with Saussure, and surely impossible if you had to deal
with Jakobson, too. [Addendum: it occurs to me know that I have no non-journalist evidence that anyone actually believed any such thing.]
I suppose "Structuralism happened, cognitive scientists informed"
wouldn't make quite such an exciting headline, though.
[Permalink]
2002-12-06 14:17 (UTC)
The edition of Paris Match currently on newsstands shows no
sign of Vickan. I just hope it's the edition currently crossing the
Channel that I need - the University library foolishly neglects to
stock le Match, preferring poncey drivel like Les Temps
Moderne, so I have no access to back issues.
Elsewhere in the world, the US has decided that if Scandewegia is
having sn�kaos, it can have it too,
only
more so. (By the magic of the InterWebNet British persons such as
myself can ruminate on an entire world's worth of weather with a global,
if politely baffled, audience, hoorah!)
Further, I've run across this Mette-Marit message
board, which alerts me to the fact that you just can't rely on
VG to keep up: Mette-Marit's husband
(Kronprinswossname) did
the honours for the Trafalgar Square Twinkletree tree twinkles.
Det norske treet tok seg unektelig godt ut sammen med fontene og
bygningene rundt Trafalgar Square en f�rjulskveld
Also, the tree (which is Norwegish; hence, presumably, the invite)
looks especially nice, as does the fountain and all the buildings
around the square all lit-up and a-twinkle and that.
[Permalink]
2002-12-06 09:38
So, Vickan is donating
her royalties from the book Victoria, Victoria to Kenyan apes.
But if I find out that one of you lot knew that
Nyligen publicerade franska tidningen Paris-Match valda delar ur boken
and didn't tell me, then there'll be trouble...
[Permalink]
2002-12-05 14:09
As a professional, albeit unschooled, programmer I pretty much avoid
using Microsoft Windows at all. (I do admin chores on my Mum's Win98
box, a job which typically involves an unlovely combination of
guesswork and profanity, and preferably a self-administered alcoholic
anaesthetic.)
But there isn't really a Linux equivalent to Powerpoint, so I'm having
to learn my way around XP which I'm not enjoying this at all. But
pretending to have worthwhile things to say (and, more importantly,
colour pictures) is taking me to Florida next Wednesday for a week of
sitting around on the beach high-powered networking,
so I'm putting up with it.
It's not really in the spirit of the celebrated ceremony of Lucy the
tree elf (Next Friday! Wuhoo!), herald of the sacred Twinkletree, to
celebrate it on sun-kissed beaches, of course, but I'll manage somehow.
[Permalink]
2002-12-05 10:05 (UTC)
If this goes on I may have to appoint Expressen as
my Newspaper Of Choice: today they break the
story that Vickan can't be arsed with the nobelprizewinnersparty,
on account of as how Paris is more fun. But there's more - just
think about the implications for table placings! Exactly:
Prinsessan Christina f�r inte Nobelpristagaren i litteratur till
bordet som hon brukar. I �r f�r prinsessan Benedikte av Danmark �ran
att sitta bredvid ungerske f�rfattaren Imre Kert�sz. N�r storasyster
roar sig i Paris l�r Madeleine bli balens drottning. Till bordet f�r
hon statsminister G�ran Persson.
Christina? Benedikte? What's up with that? Are these reserve
prinsessor that are only deployed on formal occasions, or have they
just recently been found down the back of the Royal Hice's various
sofas, or what?
[Permalink]
2002-12-04 15:20 (UTC)
Whee! You can get
Shannon's
original paper on information theory from Bell Labs.
I tried reading a textbook on the subject but it was horribly broken;
this time I'm going to try the real thing.
If the base 2 is used the resulting units may be called binary digits,
or more briefly bits, a word suggested by J. W. Tukey.
(That is the Tukey of Cooley and Tukey Fast Fourier Transforms, yes.)
And Woosh! The Happy Hermeneutic Historical
Horizonator(TM) whisks us back to a world where our world is only
beginning to be imagined.
Once I've finished La Pens�e Sauvage (I looked for a link, but
there isn't one - I bought my copy in London, and I'm very glad I did,
now), I'm going to go back to phonology again, and in earnest this
time. I can't believe that it's only recently people have started to
think seriously about the links between phonology and information
theory, but however late it is it's a bandwagon I really don't want to
miss.
[Permalink]
2002-12-04 09:50 (UTC)
Le point has (in
their pay-archive, dagnabbit) a better than usual brainporn article.
Even the ritual dissing of psychoanalysis is qualified by an
acknowledgement that it has its uses. Still not much sign of an
appreciation that it's a two-way street - if brain activity (as
measured by MRI, PET or whatever) corresponds to thinking, then
experiences, words and other mental events (such as learning a skill)
affect brain structure, and we may find that the easiest way to alter
someone's neural structures is by talking to them.
There's an experiments-on-babies section, too, and after describing
the "innate arithmetic of Mickey Mouses" demonstrates by USian
researchers, and then:
Les personnages du petit th��tre d'Oliver Houd� [the featured French
researcher] sont, exception culturelle oblige, des Babar.
Heh. Anyway, both articles are lucid, provide enough historical
context, draw on more than one research group's experience, and even
provide a small but perfectly focussed list for further reading. Are
you listening, New Scientist? Even the French are doing a better job!
[Permalink]
2002-12-03 14:12
It's not just a well-known phrase or expression, you know. There
really is something different about working on the back of a big,
brown, used envelope. It's a magical place to find yourself -
unassuming, unthreatening, infinitely forgiving and tolerant.
Sometimes I wish the world were more like the back of an envelope, but
that's just silly.
[Permalink]
2002-12-03 11:29
It's December, and the age-old festival of Twinkletree approaches,
when a pine tree festooned with decorations rewards our offerings of
presents heaped at its base with its blessing for our feasts, and offers
its twinkling lights and the greenness of its boughs as a promise that
the dark of the Solstice will not endure.
But all is not well with us and amongst us, spiritually speaking.
There move among us those who would hijack this ancient and lovely festival
to the ends of their preposterous Middle-Eastern death cult, under the
blasphemous name of "Christmas".
What does this "Christmas" know of feasting, of presents, of family
squabbles, paper crackers and endless old Bond films on telly? This
year, I urge you to make a special effort to remain faithful to
the true meaning of Twinkletree.
Thank you.
[Permalink]
2002-12-02 13:02 (UTC)
For the Carl-Philip fans in the house - His Unprinsessness has
wisely
refrained from physical intimacy with the young winner of a
ponnyhoppning contest for which he was awarding the prize.
"Jag hade ju hoppats p� en kram i alla fall," she says, but
check the "You've got another think coming, 15-�riga Angelica"
expression on the His Unprinsessness's face in the foto.
(I'm invoking, here, the spurious den nya h�stprinsessan clause
which I have invented especially for the purpose.)
[Permalink]
2002-12-02 11:53
I am inclined to suspect that foreigns have had a hard time with the
concept of toast. I realise that translations of a British novel into
Foreign are not intended as ethnographic treatiseses, but still:
rostat br�d - while accurate - doesn't really convey the kind of cosy
breakfasty marmaladable goodness of the comestible in question.
Les toasts, though - how cool is that? If I had a pound for
every time I'd heard a French person seduced into the obvious "beans
on toasts" I'd have, well, two pounds actually. And if I had to pay
50p for every time I'd found this wildly amusing, I'd be seriously out
of pocket.
Sound effects, though, isn't it? Where the (lavishly produced)
Swedish contents itself with a mere Krasch! or Brak!,
the French surprised more heck out of me than I had suspected I
contained with SHPL���AANNNGGG!!!! and
BOOOOOO�����NNNNNNG!!!!. Who knew?
[Permalink]
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