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61
Outside of the box / Re: "Russian" orphografy
« Last post by Rock100 on January 19, 2022, 06:55:15 PM »
> ценен + -a = ценна  /short form, feminine/
Your example does not satisfy the second criterion – the first -ен- is the part of the word’s root so it looks like _-anen but it is not. It is just the suffix -ен- there and the first -ен- is not a suffix but the part of the root <цен>.
62
Linguistics Links / Re: The Language of Thought Hypothesis
« Last post by waive15 on January 19, 2022, 08:13:26 AM »

SEMANTICS – AN INTERVIEW WITH JERRY FODOR

Jerry Fodor
Rutgers University



"...
Fodor - I’m not at all sure that I understand how Chomsky views semantics. But, as
far as I can tell, he thinks that it’s not about relations between ideas and the world,
but rather about relations among the ideas themselves
. The typical kind of semantic
relations among ideas, on that sort of view, are the ones that engender analyticities
(such as that whatever falls under the concept BACHELOR ipso facto falls under the
concept UNMARRIED MALE; see above.) There is, in philosophy a very long history
of holding such views (Hume, for example, appears to have done so; maybe Kant did
too.) Often the reasons for holding it have been epistemological. The line of thought is
something like this
: Since knowledge involves representation, one can’t know what
the world is like ‘in itself’ viz how it is independent of the ways that we represent it.
So, if representation is itself a kind of mind-world relation, we can’t know whether we
ever do succeed in thinking about the world. (/about what our words mean, etc.)
Suppose, however, that representation is constituted by relations among thoughts.
Since we can know about such relations (by introspection for example) we likewise
can know for sure such putatively analytic truths as that bachelors are unmarried,
that cats are animals, and so forth
. In effect, the proposal is to avoid skepticism about
knowledge by adopting a sort of Idealism about meaning: all our ideas are ideas
about ideas
."
page 5, last paragraph

63
Outside of the box / Re: Croatian toponyms
« Last post by FlatAssembler on January 18, 2022, 09:27:30 AM »
What do you think, is it likely that this k-r root meaning "to flow" in the Croatian toponyms is not etymological root, but rather a phonosemantic root? I don't know which claim is more extraordinary. If I claim it is an etymological root, then I am saying the mainstream interpretation of the Croatian toponyms is wildly wrong (which I am not sure is such an extraordinary claim, as the mainstream interpretation of Croatian toponyms seems to be based on groupthink more than evidence). If I claim it is a phonosemantic root, then mainstream etymology of Croatian toponyms can still be correct, but then I am saying some weak form of the phonosemantic hypothesis is correct. As far as I understand, the vast majority of linguists would consider even a weak form of the phonosemantic hypothesis a very extraordinary claim.
64
Outside of the box / Re: Jerry Fodor
« Last post by waive15 on January 16, 2022, 02:32:26 AM »

All this soap opera about mind/consciousness is about  Analysis: 

physical vs. biological

biological vs. psychological

psychological vs. economical

... (?)


There's this puzzle (for simplicity made of square tiles of same size).
Tiles are made of tiles (for simplicity square tiles are made of square tiles).
Tiles are scattered around (among other "things").
Tiles look the same (a tile made of tiles looks (in size) just as its parts (observer, event))
One wants (to see) the picture, one wants the click.

a Synthesis anyone


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X75FD8-n61w


65
Outside of the box / Re: "Russian" orphografy
« Last post by waive15 on January 15, 2022, 09:09:36 AM »

Hi, Rock100,

Here is cena:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cena

cena /Czech, Latvian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovene/

цена /Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian/

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%86%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B0#Serbo-Croatian



цена = цен- + -a

цен- + -ен = ценен  /short form, masculine/

ценен + -a = ценна  /short form, feminine/

           + -о = ценно  /short form, neuter/

           + -ы = ценны /short form, plural/

Short form is older. It does not matter which alphabet official Slavic "language"/dialect uses.


official (adj.)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/official#etymonline_v_44786


From a certain point of view German is almost Slavic. Slavic is almost Latin.

- - -

There are two things to say:

1. languages are not taught in a proper way, to say at least.
    Language as a behaviour is a matter of politics. That way (that is why) it is taught intentionally.

2. to understand official Russian dialect one simply has to look in/at the other Russian/Slavic languages/dialects (no matter (of) the alphabet).


= = =





 
66
Outside of the box / Jerry Fodor
« Last post by waive15 on January 15, 2022, 06:05:43 AM »
Hi,

= = =

Jerry Fodor

WikipediA

= = =

Jerry A Fodor Part 1/3 Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture

Elizabeth Rich/YouTube

= = =


Jerry Fodor Interview on Philosophy of Mind

Philosophy Overdose/YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gBKeYiPDgo


17:50 Consciousness


= = =

Modularity
Modularity II
Modularity III
/The modularity of mind, Jerry A. Fodor, 1983/

Edison Barrios/YouTube

= = =

...

= = =

"...
Language is nothing but a set of human habits, the purpose of which is to give
expression to thoughts and feelings, and especially to impart them to others. As with
other habits it is not to be expected that they should be perfectly consistent. No one can
speak exactly as everybody else or speak exactly in the same way under all circumstances
and at all moments, hence a good deal of vacillation here and there. The divergencies
would certainly be greater if it were not for the fact that the chief purpose of language is
to make oneself understood by other members of the same community; this presupposes
and brings about a more or less complete agreement on all essential points. The closer
and more intimate the social life of a community is, the greater will be the concordance in
speech between its members. ..."

Essentials of English Grammar, Otto Jespersen

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
last paragraph of the 1st page

https://yadi.sk/i/V0SLjxqhLIh6tw



The fact that you reply refutes the claim that language does not exist. It is self-evident that there is language. Clearly you don't mean what you say; you intend something else. I take it that you are not seriously interested in the "language of thought" claim, and would prefer to not talk about it.

--- 1st - 2nd sentences
Consciousness works (is made) in a certain way. Space(Logic/Rules) can be a thing and a thing can be Connection/Space. Probably there are other tricks.

"Language" can be "viewed" (or not) in different "ways".

--- 3rd sentence
I just talk/think. To be right or wrong is not important for me here. Let me be wrong I am not a scientist.

The goal of my work was to compile a grammar. The grammar had to be simple not right.

--- 4th sentence
Languages/grammars are my hobby.
I just like listening to intelligent people talk/speak.
 
= = =


Have a nice day.

67
Morphosyntax / Re: If-clause syntax
« Last post by panini on January 12, 2022, 11:06:25 PM »
I believe that the pedagogical emphasis on constituency tests is a response to an alternative trend to rely on semantic intuitions to arrive at constituency conclusions. I know that that is how I initially understood "constituency" in the old days, and I've seen good evidence for it in students in intro courses. Going back to the generative semantics golden era, recall (or, believe me when I say) that contrasts in constituency that tightly match contrasts in interpretation were important data that could be easily handled by determining meaning before movement (the essence of the generative semantic hypothesis). As a corrective against this methodological error, there arose a realization that the structures posited in syntax had to be motivated independent of semantics – but "independent of semantics" doesn't mean "with flagrant disregard for semantics". What made gen-sem so fun for intro students was that it was easy, you just tap in to your intuitions about meaning.

I dunno, it might be worthwhile to take some examples like  "that constituency is important will be taught in this class" and give it all (okay, many) of the possible parsings, and then have students develop arguments for one versus another. It depends on whether the students are willing to construct arguments.

68
Morphosyntax / Re: If-clause syntax
« Last post by Daniel on January 11, 2022, 11:28:50 AM »
Yes, I agree these are very important issues, but I just want to emphasize here that the basic idea of a constituent being a node/unit/part/phrase in a tree is often overlooked by beginning students too: the question here is similar to the difficulties my students have had in class trying to figure out the right labels and structure for a tree, without relying on basic ideas of constituency.* Here, the if-clause is a constituent, so after identifying that, then the only remaining question is to think about possible places to attach it.

[*This often results in a kind of "guessing" about syntactic structure that I don't fully understand in my students' work: it seems to be roughly making a guess about what some likely labels might be then filling in the parts around it in an approximate way, until the tree looks like it might be right, but without explicitly working through the constituency. If the students stop and think through the constituency, the results are much better. I've thought about whether there's some way to actually study the errors made in trees and better understand the strategies used in this "guessing" I see often, but I'm still trying to figure out the patterns. At some point that would be interesting to research specifically. A good example of this is a sentence of the format "That constituency is important will be taught in this class", where the majority of students at least start with the fundamentally wrong breakdown of the sentence, as "[that constituency] [is important will be taught in this class]". Maybe explicitly teaching more examples like that, rather than repeating more examples of the more typical kinds, would help to reinforce constituency as the first step.]
69
Morphosyntax / Re: If-clause syntax
« Last post by panini on January 11, 2022, 10:01:59 AM »
I want to add a comment about a problem with constituency argument which in my experience is not well-enough treated, at a pedagogical level. An example is in the sentence "I sent a ticket to my mother", and the question (posed by the instructor) is "is 'a ticket to my mother' a constituent?". There are many ways to frame the question. The expected answer is "No, it's not a constituent", and the test is that "You can't say 'A ticket to my mother was sent', you have to say 'A ticket was sent to my mother'". (This is a stripped-down example, admittedly clunky). The problem is that the supposedly impossible string is not ungrammatical, it simply has a different meaning, one where "ticket to X" is an NP and perhaps the guy's mother is a performance artist (and the recipient is unspecified).

The underlying problem is an unspoken assumption about constituency tests, one which I've never gotten a professional syntactician to explicitly articulate (at least since the mid 70's), that in such sentence-pairs, the meaning of the two sentences must be the same. Except, that's only true at a coarse level of semantic analysis. Sentence-pairs that we would classically treat as being related by movement often have subtle semantic differences.

As you progress in syntax, therefore, I would urge you to dedicate a small amount of your attention to the question is what implicit theory of semantics a theory requires. Scrutinize any starred sentence that you're presented with and ask yourself whether the string of words is really impossible per se, or does it involve a striking change in meaning. If the latter is  the case, what does that entail for semantic theory. In order to do syntax, you have to also have a theory of semantics.


70
Morphosyntax / Re: If-clause syntax
« Last post by Daniel on January 08, 2022, 04:10:10 PM »
Quote
In this example is 'you' an NP on its own as it could be substituted with 'one', if so could this be part of the TP?
It's the subject of the sentence, in the same position as any normal subject, within TP in most common analyses.

Quote
...if the sentence as a whole is considered TP where would this leave the CP?
Assuming the top node in a typical sentence is TP, then you will need to find a place to put the if-CP. Assuming it is an adjunct, you will need to add an adjunct position within the TP. There are slightly different styles of doing that in different versions of trees, but they're similar: you need to add an additional layer and add a branch splitting off for the adjunct. This is similar to adding an adverb in the VP or an adverb in TP, or an adjective in NP, etc. Maybe what's confusing here is that the adjunct can go at the beginning of the tree, but adjuncts generally allow relatively free ordering, and note that actually if-CPs could go at the beginning or end of a sentence, so that makes sense here.

Quote
I have also identified 'get a good mark' and 'get a good mark in the competition' as verb phrases, could I then consider only 'you will' to be the TP and how would this affect the structure of the tree?
Again, think about constituency, and also typical hierarchy in clauses: VPs go within TPs, so the whole TP would include the VP here. If "you will" is the complete TP, then there would be nowhere to add the VP! So you can't split off the VP from the TP.

Quote
I have been able to draw two separate trees for the subordinate and main clauses, but I am struggling on how to combine them to form one tree.
Right, so again remember that once you've figured out the internal structure of the elements, then you just need to find a place to attach them. Think about adding an adverb to the beginning of a sentence, like "therefore". Where could that go? Or maybe you've seen a sentence with an initial PP in your textbook, like "In the morning, I eat breakfast." The position for the if-CP could be the same.

Quote
I apologize for asking so many questions, however, I have been trying to wrap my head around this for a few days now and for some reason, it's just not clicking. I have spent many weeks on TP and CP tree structures, but have never been taught anything about conditional phrases like this example.
The questions are welcome!
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