I confess that I enjoy mocking creationists and their claims. I probably shouldn't, and pity them instead. But how can I resist laughing when I read jokes like the following on talk.origins?
"The presence of shells on mountain tops shows that global flood (as written in the Bible) was real," says a creationist.
Q. Where did the water go after the flood?
A. It was turned into wine.
Q. It still has to go somewhere!
A. Noah drank it. Don't you read your bible?
2008년 3월 25일 화요일
2008년 3월 21일 금요일
Anaphora
English anaphora are so inadequate. Consider a sentence, "Although the motorcycle hit the tree, it was not damaged." Is the damaged thing the motorcycle or the tree?
The teacher says that I am supposed to rewrite the sentence to either "the motorcycle was not damaged" or "the tree was not damaged". Really English is damaged. Anaphoric expressions are useless if one is forced to repeat nouns when one wants to be unambiguous.
I would like to use "the subject of the last verb was not damaged" or "the object of the last verb was not damaged". These are too verbose. Case marking can make them succinct, as in "itos was not damaged" or "itom was not damaged". Haha, they sound better to me.
Note that I marked cases according to the role the word played in the previous sentence, not in the current sentence. In both cases "it" is the subject of the predicate "was damaged". This is different from case systems of other languages. I wonder whether there is any natural language which marks cases on anaphora the way I conceived here.
The teacher says that I am supposed to rewrite the sentence to either "the motorcycle was not damaged" or "the tree was not damaged". Really English is damaged. Anaphoric expressions are useless if one is forced to repeat nouns when one wants to be unambiguous.
I would like to use "the subject of the last verb was not damaged" or "the object of the last verb was not damaged". These are too verbose. Case marking can make them succinct, as in "itos was not damaged" or "itom was not damaged". Haha, they sound better to me.
Note that I marked cases according to the role the word played in the previous sentence, not in the current sentence. In both cases "it" is the subject of the predicate "was damaged". This is different from case systems of other languages. I wonder whether there is any natural language which marks cases on anaphora the way I conceived here.
2008년 3월 3일 월요일
Replies to comments
My cunning mind told me that I could easily fill another blog entry just by replying to comments I received. And what fun is blogging, this modern form of exhibitionism, if I don't interact with its readers? I could keep a journal inside the locked drawer in my desk, instead of broadcasting my writings instantly to the world at large.
Re: Learning and Research, James wrote: "I think... this is just a semantic matter; that is, scientists must indeed love learning, else why would they bother to do the research?"
I would like to draw an analogy to the field of writing. I think most professional writers love reading. But reading is not what they are paid for; writing is. So it's safe to say that SF(Science Fiction) writers read less SF than avid SF fans; they are busy writing!
If one loves reading, more than writing, one would be a critic, an editor, or a reader; but not a writer. If one loves learning science, one would subscribe to Nature, Science, or Scientific American; one would read all popular science books by Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking; one may enjoy reading science fictions as a hobby; but one would not be a scientist. Scientists do not learn science; scientists do science.
Re: Second person, James wrote: "Where in the world did you learn so much about linguistics?"
In regard to linguistics, I'm mostly an autodidact. There are good books and internet resources you can learn from. I guess the real question is why, not where. Why on earth would one read grammar books as a hobby?
The short answer is that I am a conlanger. It means that I practice conlanging. To conlang is to construct languages. Often, it means to constuct languages as an art form, like novels, paintings, and musical compositions. It means playing with phonology and morphology and syntax and inflection of your own fictional language; devising roots and deriving words for it; constantly tweaking the language to make it beautiful; and wasting lots of time while having great fun. I know that sounds weird. I hope I can elaborate on conlanging in the future.
Re: Learning and Research, James wrote: "I think... this is just a semantic matter; that is, scientists must indeed love learning, else why would they bother to do the research?"
I would like to draw an analogy to the field of writing. I think most professional writers love reading. But reading is not what they are paid for; writing is. So it's safe to say that SF(Science Fiction) writers read less SF than avid SF fans; they are busy writing!
If one loves reading, more than writing, one would be a critic, an editor, or a reader; but not a writer. If one loves learning science, one would subscribe to Nature, Science, or Scientific American; one would read all popular science books by Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking; one may enjoy reading science fictions as a hobby; but one would not be a scientist. Scientists do not learn science; scientists do science.
Re: Second person, James wrote: "Where in the world did you learn so much about linguistics?"
In regard to linguistics, I'm mostly an autodidact. There are good books and internet resources you can learn from. I guess the real question is why, not where. Why on earth would one read grammar books as a hobby?
The short answer is that I am a conlanger. It means that I practice conlanging. To conlang is to construct languages. Often, it means to constuct languages as an art form, like novels, paintings, and musical compositions. It means playing with phonology and morphology and syntax and inflection of your own fictional language; devising roots and deriving words for it; constantly tweaking the language to make it beautiful; and wasting lots of time while having great fun. I know that sounds weird. I hope I can elaborate on conlanging in the future.
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