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Murray Gell-Mann on the ancestor of language

Murray Gell-Mann on the ancestor of language

Joseph von Eichendorff:   Wünschelrute > Magic Wand   (Translation / Uebersetzung) But the poetry now got lost in translation, you say? Well, what else? But at least you knew your Robert Frost... Honestly, though, did you really expect me to preserve the sparkle of such a gem, through all that semantic regrinding? Really? Gee, thanks! But, honestly, you better learn German. By the way, maybe Eichendorff was talking not only about the art of the poet but also about the agony of the translator? Later, much later That simple quatrain, which I had put in this collection for my sheer love of this poem - knowing full well I couldn't do it justice - brought some unexpected responses over the past couple of years or so. Anyway, a short time ago I received two inquiries, one from a string quartett and one from a university language department. Not that trying to wave the magic wand again worked for me but, nevertheless, below you will find a slightly different version.

Reading List: The Beginning of Infinity (Fourmilog: None Dare Call It Reason) Were it possible to communicate with the shades of departed geniuses, I suspect Richard Feynman would be dismayed at the prospect of a distinguished theoretical physicist committing phil-oss-o-phy in public, while Karl Popper would be pumping his fist in exultation and shouting “Yes!”. This is a challenging book and, at almost 500 pages in the print edition, a rather long one, but it is a masterpiece well worthy of the investment in reading it, and then, after an interval to let its implications sink in, reading it again because there is so much here that you're unlikely to appreciate it all in a single reading. The author attempts nothing less ambitious than a general theory of the creation of knowledge and its implications for the future of the universe. (In what follows, I shall take a different approach than the author in explaining the argument, but I think we arrive at the same place.) Let's consider the concept of universality.

Discover Interview: The Radical Linguist Noam Chomsky | Learning For centuries experts held that every language is unique. Then one day in 1956, a young linguistics professor gave a legendary presentation at the Symposium on Information Theory at MIT. He argued that every intelligible sentence conforms not only to the rules of its particular language but to a universal grammar that encompasses all languages. Avram Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928, to William Chomsky, a Hebrew scholar, and Elsie Simonofsky Chomsky, also a scholar and an author of children’s books. Chomsky also bucked against scientific tradition by becoming active in politics. Chomsky discussed his ideas with Connecticut journalist Marion Long after numerous canceled interviews. You describe human language as a unique trait. When and how did the power of language arise? What first sparked your interest in human language? Linguists have distinguished between historical grammars and descriptive grammars. And linguists of your father’s era, what did they do?

Englishbiz - nonfiction & media © 2014 Steve Campsall Download Free Revision Guide If you are writing about a film or TV programme for coursework - click here If you are writing about a magazine or newspaper ad for coursework - click here While exam questions vary, the skills you need to write a good answer do not. As with all texts you'll be studying, it comes down to your ability to detect what effects the text is creating on its reader and to work out why these effects were created - that is, the writer's purpose. In the exam, typically, you'll be asked to analyse a pair of texts that share a common theme. There are four useful 'levels' at which you can consider texts: What the text is about- its subject matter You need to show you have understood the text's subject matter and content. Who the text has been written for- its audience This is very important: you need to consider audience with care as it will help you recognise features of style that you can discuss in your answers. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Does Your Language Shape How You Think? When these peculiarities of Guugu Yimithirr were uncovered, they inspired a large-scale research project into the language of space. And as it happens, Guugu Yimithirr is not a freak occurrence; languages that rely primarily on geographical coordinates are scattered around the world, from Polynesia to Mexico, from Namibia to Bali. For us, it might seem the height of absurdity for a dance teacher to say, “Now raise your north hand and move your south leg eastward.” But the joke would be lost on some: the Canadian-American musicologist Colin McPhee, who spent several years on Bali in the 1930s, recalls a young boy who showed great talent for dancing. As there was no instructor in the child’s village, McPhee arranged for him to stay with a teacher in a different village. So different languages certainly make us speak about space in very different ways. How does this work?

a Left-Brained Step-by-Step Writers Workshop...A Day as Your Shoes Prompt Overview: It's fun to personify articles of clothing as a means of inspiring creative writing from your students, and this mini-workshop has students a) personify their shoes (or socks) on a page in their writer's notebook, b) share their story ideas out loud, and c) follow the step-by-step instructions below to craft a story about life from their shoes' point-of-view. Mentor Texts to Consider Sharing: A good mentor text can inspire ideas and writing skills from students if used skillfully before students draft or revise their own writing. Start with a Writer's Notebook Page! There's no better way to pre-write than to have students create a fun page in their writer's notebooks. What is your shoe's personality like? (Click on the image of the notebook page to see it in larger form) Above and at left, you see a suggestion for having students partition their notebook pages for this task. Sharing Funny Ideas about Shoes Out Loud: Time to Share Student Samples?

Cultural Connectives: Understanding Arab Culture Through Typography by Maria Popova What typography has to do with cross-cultural understanding and linguistic minimalism. I’m obsessed with language, such a crucial key to both how we understand the world and how the world understands us. In today’s political and media climate, we frequently encounter the Middle East in the course of our daily media diets, but these portrayals tend to be limited, one-note and reductionist. We know precious little about Arab culture, with all its rich and layered multiplicity, and even less about its language. Both minimalist and illuminating, the book’s stunning pages map the rules of Arabic writing, grammar and pronunciation to English, using this typographic harmony as the vehicle for better understanding this ancient culture from a Western standpoint. The book jacket unfolds into a beautiful poster of a timeless quote by Gibran Khalil Gibran, rendered in Arabic: We shall never understand one another until we reduce the language to seven words.” ~ Gibran Khalil Gibran

VirtualDub - Download Études de communication - langages, information, médiations Depuis la fin des années 1950, la veille, qu’elle soit documentaire, informationnelle ou stratégique, a fait l’objet de nombreuses recherches à l’échelle nationale comme internationale. Ces recherches ont ainsi préparé à la mise en évidence et à la définition de l’intelligence économique comme objet de recherche dès le milieu des années 1990. Si l’apport spécifique des sciences de l’information et de la communication y a été important, cette nouvelle notion a aussi engendré de nombreux débats passant ainsi au second plan les recherches sur la veille et limitant souvent son étude à l’évolution des aspects techniques et professionnels.Le numéro 60 d’Études de communication vise ainsi à réinterroger la notion de veille dans ses multiples formes, pratiques, processus, stratégies. Il s’intéressera en particulier aux méthodologies, théories et épistémologies mobilisées par les SIC pour étudier les usages, les pratiques, les méthodes, les dispositifs propres à la veille.

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Eyes All Around « translinguistic other This week on the Harper’s Magazine blog, Scott Horton muses about the philosophical significance of the convex mirror at the vanishing point of Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait. Jan Van Eyck. Detail from the Arnolfini Portrait. Oil on panel, 1434. As Horton points out, the mirror in the composition reveals two additional figures: the artist and an unidentified person (the viewer?) He goes on to connect the oculus dei properties of the convex mirror to the writings of the 15th century physicist and theologian Nicolas Cusanus‘ writings on the unusual crystalline properties of beryl. Indeed, the image of a mirror figures prominently in Western occultism. Illustration from S. It is an oft-romanticized fact that Van Eyck was an alchemist. Nowhere is Van Eyck’s alchemical achievement more gloriously demonstrated than The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, the lower central panel of the Ghent Altarpiece, a painting begun by his brother Hubert and completed by Jan upon the elder Van Eyck’s death.

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