Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2000 21:14:00 PDT
From: "Glen Gordon" <
glengordon01@...>
Subject: Re: When obsessed mathematicians stray into the wrong areas...
Gerry:
>Never said that linguistics and equations mixed. What I do know is >that
>Neil Postman developed a set of text books on a mathematical >approach to
>linguistics which was incorporated into the California >educational system.
> Now math and linguistics as far as Noun =1; >Verb =2; Adjective =3;
>Adverb =4 seems to work.
-------------------------------
Glen:
Hmm, why is it that I also see a disproportionate amount of Proto-World
and
IE-is-a-conspiracy sites originating out of California...
Gerry, what are you trying to state here? What informed mathematics can
we
perform on "Noun=1, Verb=2, Adjective=3..."?? I rest my case.
-------------------------------
Why Glen, we can always diagram sentences! Actually the reason for my
inclusion of Postman's structural linguistics was to illustrate that yes
indeed, attempts to forge mathematics and linguistics have been
attempted and have been swallowed by *giant* states that regurgitate the
information down the ladder of school kids and grades. 'Tis a pity;
however, tis a fact. And just think of how many *intelligent* kids are
forfeited by the state school system.
Glen: By the way, the division of words into classes like noun and verb
is
arbitrary. There are languages where there is no formal distinction
between
noun and verb (aka Cantonese, Proto-Uralic, etc). What's more, in
colloquial
(and quite possibly post-modern) English, many adverbs and adjectives
are
the same form (Eg: "I went to bed quick").
In the end, I repeat, this time in a different way: Only general
linguistic
trends might be found by statistics but to use it to reconstruct a
language
is logically unfounded.
- gLeN
Gerry: Yes Glen, you speak a wise set of thoughts. And those poor
Californians who still think in terms of mathematical models when they
attempt to express a thought is mind-boggling to say the least. But if
our leading educators bought structural linguistics and fed it to the
school children, it's no wonder you see lot's of "IE is a conspiracy"
sites originating here in CA. As far as Proto World, guess that's also
wishful thinking, but with the internet dominating our lives, can't we
at least see the monitor we stare into as being something belonging to
the common good?
Gerry
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at
http://www.hotmail.com
-