Stylistic Analysis: The Wave book one

[Novelis]

Firstly, what is stylistics?

[quote author=Mick Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, Page 1]Chapter 1

Who is stylistics?

1.1 Introduction

The short answer to the question ‘Who is stylistics?’ is that she is a friend of mine, and that I hope by the end of this book she might also become a friend of yours. You will find out who she is in the course of your reading; but another question you might like to ponder while you read this introductory chapter is why I have chosen that title for this chapter. I will tell you at the end of the chapter. The beginning of an answer to the question is that stylistics is an approach to the analysis of (literary) texts using linguistic description. Thus, in a book such at this, which is devoted exclusively to the analysis of literary texts, stylistics spans the borders of the two subjects, literature and linguistics. As a result, stylistics can sometimes look like either linguistics or literary criticism, depending upon where you are standing when you are looking at it. So, some of my literary critical colleagues sometimes accuse me of being an unfeeling linguist, saying that my analyses of poems, say, are too analytical, being too full on linguistic jargon and leaving insufficient room for personal preference on the part of the reader. My linguist colleagues, on the other hand, sometimes say that I am no linguist at all, but a critic in disguise, who cannot make his descriptions of language precise enough to count as real linguistics. They think that I leave too much to intuition and that I am not analytical enough. I think I’ve got the mix just right, of course!

If you already have some basic familiarity with linguistic you should have no difficulty with the various linguistic concepts I use in this book. …[/quote]

So, basically, that explains what stylistics is, it is “an approach to the analysis of (literary) texts using linguistic description.”

Notice that the word ‘literary’ is in brackets, which means that this approach can apply to non-literary texts, like the wave, which is what we will be tackling today.

Next, the author (Mick Short) describes the essential core of literary criticism, and can be summed up thusly:

Description -> Interpretation -> Evaluation

But, for our purposes, we won’t be going deeply into that, and instead focus our attention upon the technicalities/complexities of interpretation:

[quote author=Mick Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, Page 4]…Let us take a more literary example, a metaphor:

Example 2
Come, we burn daylight, ho!
(William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, I, iv, 43)

Besides the basic kind of linguistic of the sort seen above, this time we also have to know that daylight cannot normally be the object of burn. The verb burn usually takes as its object a word or phrase which refers to something which can be burnt, but daylight does not fall into this category. It is only after deducing that what the line says cannot literally be true that we can go on to construct a non-literal interpretation for it (e.g. ‘we are wasting time’). Stylistics is thus concerned with relating linguistic facts (linguistic description) to meaning (interpretation) in as explicit a way as possible. And what is true for sentences here is also true for texts. When we read, we must intuitively analyse linguistic structure at various levels (e.g. grammar, sounds, words, textual structure) in order (again intuitively) to understand the sentences of a text and the relations between them. We usually perform this complex set of tasks so fast that we do not even notice that we are doing it, let alone how we do it. Our understanding of the linguistic form and meaning is thus implicit. But when we discuss literature, as critics do, we need to discuss meaning in an explicit fashion. Stylisticians suggest that linguistic description and its relationship with interpretation should also be discussed in as detailed a way as possible. One advantage of this is that when we disagree over the meaning to ascribe to a text or part of a text, we can use stylistic analysis as a means to help to decide which of the various suggestion are most likely. There may, of course, be more than valid interpretation, but, again, it is difficult to decide on such matters without detailed and explicit analysis. …[/quote]

The above applies to any text, but especially the C’s communication, where the questions and answers are so very open to interpretation. So, how do we come to a more objective interpretation?

[quote author=Mick Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, Page 7]Because we are all different from one another and yet agree on meaning to the extent that we do, we must have something in common that does the trick. In large part, that thing is the language we share (in this case English). But this means not just a shared knowledge of the structure of English (for example that ‘seem’ is a verb and ‘television’ is a noun; that ‘table’ is more closely connected with ‘chair’ than ‘carrot’, and so on), but also the common procedures of inference which we use in order to interpret utterances. As an example, let us return to the line from Romeo and Juliet, which we looked at earlier, Come, we burn daylight, ho! We noted before that daylight cannot normally be the object of burn. We can demonstrate this by constructing a normal paradigm (set of possible substitution instances) for the verb with which to compare the metaphorical construction:

Normal paradigm:
We burn paper
We burn wood
We burn coal
We burn oil
We burn fuel
Etc.

Abnormal paradigm:
We burn daylight

By comparing the normal with the abnormal paradigm we can begin to see how the line gets its meaning. The object of burn has to denote a concrete, combustible material or be a more general term for such materials. When it is burnt it is destroyed or used up. A likely possible meaning for the phrase could be ‘we are using up daylight’. This is still a metaphor, although one which is fairly dead in English. We cannot physically use up daylight; but of course daylight is a medium which we use to do lots of things in, and if we do not use it properly then we may run out of time to do what needs to be done. In this sense, as in my original suggested interpretation, we can waste time. This may not be the only possible interpretation, of course, but note that there are many more meanings that are not valid for the line than ones that are. For example, it cannot possibly mean ‘it is raining’ or even ‘we keep ourselves warm’.[/quote]

So, by using inferences into normal/abnormal paradigms, we can rule out what it definitely doesn’t mean and hone in to what it could possibly mean. Here is more on that:

[quote author=Mick Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, Page 8]Now let us take stock of what we have done with this line. We have compared an unusual clause with a set of constructed normal equivalents and we have used a combination of our knowledge about English and about the world in order to arrive at an interpretation. To understand the sentence completely we also have to see it in its context. In fact it is a joke in which the burning is literal and the daylight is metaphorical. It is dark at the time, and Mercutio, when he utters this sentene, is referring to the burning torches that the Montagues are holding as they go to gatecrash the Capulet ball where Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time. Thus we combine linguistic, contextual and general world knowledge, as the basis for inferring an appropriate interpretation. The meaning, then comes from the text, but notice that we cannot get at that meaning just by doing linguistic analysis (although that is an essential and important part of the process).[/quote]

The SOTT forum explicitly states (_http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,13581.0.html) that the C’s communications shouldn’t be read unless within the context of Laura’s work in works like the Wave, and I propose a systematic way of analysing the C’s communications within Laura’s own interpretation of it, where ‘we combine linguistic, contextual (Laura’s words) and general (and greater) world knowledge, as the basis for inferring an appropriate interpretation.

Let’s be more concise:

[quote author=Mick Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, Page 8]The linguistic features in the text do not constitute the meaning in themselves; rather they constrain readers from inferring unreasonable meanings and prompt them towards the reasonable ones. We can see this more obviously by changing the various kinds of information at our disposal. If we change the linguistic structure, by replacing daylight with 'torches', the line becomes literally true in this context. If we change the situational context, having the conversation take place in the day-time, the ‘joke’ interpretation is ruled out. If we change our general world knowledge (by assuming that in our world important things are always done in the dark, for example), the line might indicate that the characters are at leisure. And changing the linguistic context will also change the meaning, if we pretend that the sentence comes from a twentieth-century article on fuel conservation, the meaning which we rejected earlier, ‘we keep ourselves warm’ might be more plausible – the utterance could be understood as an injunction to use solar heating as a source of heat and light, instead of coal or oil.[/quote]

For those who want to have a little fun with these ideas, here’s an exercise:

[quote author=Mick Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, Page 9] Exercise 1

Examine the metaphor the crimson seeds/of blood in the following extract from the beginning of ‘January’ by R.S. Thomas:

The fox drags its wounded belly
Over the snow, the crimson seeds
Of blood burst with a mild explosion,
Soft as excrement, bold as roses.

Why is the phrase metaphorical? What do you understand by the phrase? Try to work out the inferential steps which you would need to use to get from the structure of the phrase to the meaning you have assigned to it.[/quote]

I will demonstrate later how I personally analysed this poem.

Now, I want to let it be known here that my analysis of the 'normality' versus the 'abnormality' of the words within the C’s communications, in order for it to be as objective as possible, will be compared against the definitions in the ‘Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary’, this is because:

[quote author=Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary, Page vii]The basis of the authority of Cobuild is the Bank Of English, part of Collins word web, still the largest collection of data of its kind in any language, and now containing 645,000,000 words. Decisions about which words to include as headwords in the dictionary, which meanings to draw attention to, which phrases to recognise as settled expressions in the language, and many other issues, are directly informed by the Bank Of English. The regular updating of this corpus ensures that this edition is up-to-date; new words and phrases constantly creep into the language, and sometimes establish themselves quickly, so the lexicographers keep a careful watch for them.

All the examples in this book are quoted from the rich selection that the corpus offers, and normally they are printed exactly as they occur in the text. In the choice of example, we pay careful attention to collocation – the significant co-occurrence of words – so that the examples are not only natural forms of expression, but also are reliable models of usage. Important collocations are also highlighted in the definitions, giving help with set lexical and grammatical patterns.

The Cobuild defining style is modeled on the way people explain the meanings of words to each other, and it is refreshingly direct, because the definitions are just normal sentences of English with the headword in bold face. This style is not only easier to understand than the usual way definitions are written, it also allows a lot of extra information to be presented in a natural way. Please read the definitions carefully and learn to take from them all the information that they provide.[/quote]

This corpus is a good representation of how English is expressed by the population that use it, while the Wave introduces the reader to a whole new world of concepts. So, in that way, the Wave is 'deviant', though without the negative connotations.

And here we have come to one of the major reasons for my sharing of this stylistic analysis. I have been keeping up to date with all the translation work going on at SOTT and Cass.org, and I sincerely want to help.

See: _http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,25460.0.html

Since I have been translating the Wave into Chinese, I have experienced for myself the immense difficulties of trying to stay as close to the original meaning as is objectively possible, and, as an English teacher, I can attest to the fact that, if your English isn’t that good, then by reading the following analysis, which will contain definitions from this dictionary, I can assure you that your English will improve significantly, and hopefully allow you to express the subtle nuances in other tongues.

Other than that, I am also doing this analysis also to meditate deeply upon the material so that my own translations can be accurate, and hopefully also to inspire others to do the same. I know this kind of painstaking detail won’t be for everybody, but I for one think it’s a great deal of fun!

Thank you for your patience, below is the stylistic analysis:
Here is my colour code:

Adjective
Adverb
Auxiliary Verb
Colour Word
Combining Form (Blank is also a highlight when everything is highlighted!)
Conjunction
Convention
Determiner
Exclamation
Fraction
Link Verb
Modal Verb
Count Noun
Collective Count Noun
Family Noun
Noun in Names
Mass Noun
Plural Noun
Proper Noun
Collective Proper Noun
Plural Proper Noun
Singular Noun
Collective Singular Noun
Title Noun
Uncount Noun
Collective Uncount Noun
Variable Noun
Collective Variable Noun
Vocative Noun
Negative
Number
Ordinal
Passive Verb
Phrasal Verb
Phrase
Predeterminer
Prefix
Preposition
Phrasal Preposition
Pronoun
Quantifier
PluralQuantifier
Question
Sound
Suffix
Verb
Link Verb
Passive Verb
Reciprocal Verb
Passive Reciprocal Verb

The first step is identifying the word groups that each word belongs to, so the sentence:

Jane pushed Tommy.

Looks like this:

Jane pushed Tommy.

Procedure

With your text in front of you, and a dictionary handy, you get a set of pencil crayons, and you just colour code all the ones you can first. I personally first highlight all the verbs, then the nouns, then the determiners, etc. Leaving blank the ones I am not so sure about (Note: Even if I’m 1% unsure, I will leave it blank, this shows me what I still need to learn), then you look in the dictionary to codify the ones you are not sure about, noting anything interesting that comes to mind as you do so (My Wave book is starting to look really colourful now!).

(Laura, I know it'll be weird to hear, but in the analysis I am be referring to you in the third person, as 'the author', if you want this changed, please let me know...)

[quote author=Laura, ‘The Wave’]The subject of The Wave has come up many times in the Cassiopaean sessions, and many people have written to me asking for more details about this mysterious event that is suggested to be a part of our future experiences.

It is such a vast subject with so many references, that I have put off dealing with it until now. But, the time is right, I think, to talk about some of these things.[/quote]

The key thing I noticed with the above section is the degree of uncertainty that is included in the passage, shown below:

But, the time is right, I think…
event that is suggested to be…
to talk about some of these things…

This shows a very careful usage of words by the author, who doesn’t want to show certainty for events that are, after all, very mysterious (…about this mysterious event…), and not to mention the vastness of the subject (…It is such a vast subject with so many references…).

I also found it interesting to note the use of the word ‘some’ highlighted above, where the author indicates that there is much more that is present in this vast subject, and these are just some of those things.

I also made a note of the phrase ‘so many’, in …with so many references…:

DEF: You use so much or so many when you are saying that there is a definite limit to something but you are not saying what the limit is.

This re-emphasises the sheer vastness of the subject, with so many references that the author doesn’t say where the limit is.

Notice also the Predeterminer ‘such’, determining ‘vast subject’.

So, from the very first paragraph, the author tries her best to impress upon the mind of the reader that the author herself finds it hard to know where the limit is to this “topic of topics”, but felt pressed enough to “give it a shot”, given the amount of questions that people have asked about the subject.

This indicates, “from the word go”, that the author has a tremendous amount of empathy for others, and works hard to give it her best.

[quote author=Laura, ‘The Wave’]In one of the earliest contacts with the Cassiopaeans, being in the “test mode,” I tossed a rather general question out one night:[/quote]

Look at the metaphor ‘toss’...

DEF: If you toss something, you throw it there lightly, often in a rather careless way.

EX: He screwed the ball into a ball and tossed it into the fire…
EX: He tossed Malone a can of beer, and took one himself.

And the author got way more than they bargained for, right? This is an interesting metaphor, and gives the impression that, from the sober attempt to share the work with everyone in the first paragraph, the author, when introducing the very first response the C’s gave regarding the Wave, didn’t really know what she was doing, thus encouraging the reader to “be prepared” for something BIG.

I also found it interesting how it wasn’t a specific contact on a specific night, but, rather, ONE of the earliest contacts, on ONE night, giving the sense that this came unexpectedly and truly “out of the blue”. This rings especially true for the latter use of ‘one’, since the date is actually printed directly below it.

Further, this double use of ‘one’ makes the sense of randomness stand out, it is ‘foregrounded’.

[quote author=Mick Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, Page 10]In fact, without giving it its technical term, I have, through the Romeo and Juliet example, introduced one of the most fundamental concepts in stylistics, namely that of linguistic deviation. Because daylight cannot normally turn up in English as object to the verb burn we can say that the line deviates from the rules of English. Poetry in particular uses much deviation, and so we will examine deviation as a key to our understanding of poems. But you should always remember that deviation turns up in other modes of literary writing, and indeed in non-literary writing as well…

Deviation, which is a linguistic phenomenon, has an important psychological effect on readers (and hearers). If a part of a poem is deviant, it becomes especially noticeable, or perceptually prominent. We call this psychological effect foregrounding. There are many ways in which poets can produce deviation and hence foregrounding, and we will shortly go on to look at some of those ways. But we will first consider the general nature of foregrounding and its textual purpose. The term foregrounding is borrowed from art criticism…

Art critics usually distinguish the foreground of a painting from its background. The foreground is that part of the painting which is in the centre and towards the bottom of the canvas. Note that the items which occur in the foreground of a painting will usually appear large in relation to the rest of the objects in the picture because of conventional perceptual ‘rules’ of perspective and so on, and will normally be thought of as constituting the subject matter of the painting….[/quote]

Now, the double use of ‘one’, and thus foregrounding it, is called ‘parallelism’…

[quote author=Mick Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, Page 13]So far I have given the impression that poets can only foreground parts of their poems by breaking the rules of language. But this is not so. Another obvious method of foregrounding is repetition, as we can see in example 4:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind
(William Shakespeare, As you like it, II, vii, 174)

It should be obvious that the repetition of blow makes it stand out, and that by inference we are likely to conclude that the wind has a greater, more prolonged force than usual, or that the speaker (Amiens) who is addressing the wind has stronger feelings about it than usual. In this case one word is repeated, but of course whole structures might be:

Example 5
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
(William Shakespeare, As you like it, II, v, 5)

Simple repetition is, however, a relatively restricted method of producing foregrounding. A much more interesting method is that of parallelism, where some features are held constant (usually structural features) while others (usually lexical items, e.g. words, idioms) are varied:

Example 6
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our inequities.
(Isaiah, 53, v)[/quote]

You might have spotted other examples of parallelism above, but I have found:

The use of Cassiopaean(s) came up twice already, but one is an adjective, ‘Cassiopaean session’, and one is a Proper noun (…with the Cassiopaeans…). These words, themselves deviations themselves in spelling (Cassiopeia is the norm) as well as form, notifies the reader from the beginning that there are unfamiliar words ahead, and that their rules for grammar are multiple, thus adding complexity.

Notice as well the fact that the word 'time' comes up twice, but refer to entirely different things. The first 'time' (come up many times...) views 'time' as being a segment of time, and the author is counting these "segments of time" and placing them in hypothetical categories.

The second 'time', by contrast, is referring to the present, ongoing moment (...the time is right...). The dictionary has 75 definitions of the word time, and sometimes it is extremely difficult to ascertain which 'time' it is!

This will become important, starting with the C's communication on page 28, September 30, 1994...

Have you also noticed the large amount of phrasal verbs? There's 'come up', 'asking for', 'put off', and 'dealing with'. These phrasal verbs are all somewhat informal, which has the affect of shortening the distance between reader and author, but this could also create distance if the reader thinks it's unprofessional... We will get to that when we investigate the author's use of American slang later.

I couldn't help but notice also that the word 'many' came up three times, although two usages were determiners (many times/many people) and one was a phrase (so many), this gives the text a sense of 'manyness', for lack of a better word...

While we are on determiners, I'd like to just point out the specific use of 'this' (this mysterious...) and 'our' (our future experiences), both being spacially closer than 'that' or 'the' (how does ...asking for more details about the mysterious event... sound in comparison?), the author could've used everybody or other possessive determiners (a part of everybody's/the human race's future experiences), but 'our' just sounds much closer, like we are all on the same journey, doesn't it?

[quote author=Laura, 'The Wave']July 23, 1994
Q: (L) What is causing the Earth Changes?
A: Electromagnetic wave changes.
Q: (L) Can you be more specific?
A: Gap in surge heliographic [i.e. relating to the Sun] field.[/quote]

Clear parallelism right there with the use of ‘changes’, it seems. Now, since the C’s didn’t answer using full sentences, it’s hard to really determine exactly what they mean, especially since their second answer, containing a very unusual word, ‘heliographic’, needed a side note!

There is ambiguity here, to be sure. However, I noticed that the term “Earth Changes” are both in capitals, and is actually one lexical item, that is, it is one word, like ‘sword fish’, for example. This would seem to point to the C’s response as being ONE lexical item too, “Electromagnetic wave changes”. It took me a long time to decide whether ‘Electromagnetic’ is an adjective or part of the lexical item, I decided on the latter because of the above observation, though other interpretations are possible.

Now, while I did colour-code every word in the above section, I decided at that point that this process, although allowing me to really get to the depths of the book, was still too time consuming, so I decided to stop colour coding the main body of text and only colour/look up the words in C’s communications, though keeping a watchful eye on the context of the whole.

I didn’t colour the hypnosis session with Candy, though I may do in the future when the book delves further into details about her specifically.

However, I did notice something very strange (And Creepy!) about something Candy said:

[quote author=The Wave, Page 27]A: All I can see is we have to get prepared.[/quote]

This sounds like ‘we’ are doing the ‘preparing’, right? The subjects are actively doing things in order to ‘get prepared’ for the wave. By the response, “How do we get prepared”, this shows that this is how the author interpreted it too.

[quote author=The Wave, Page 27]A: They are preparing us.[/quote]

Aha! We have to get prepared (BY THEM) is the real meaning! Who is ‘we’ then, exactly? I thought a lot about the meaning of that answer, it is certainly deviant in grammatical meaning, and brings up (in me) the idea of their being two types of humans on this planet, one type that rejecting the programme and thus “getting prepared”, and one that is embracing the programme and also “getting prepared”.

It’s funny how English is ambiguous in that way, and how Candy uttered those same words without real understanding of the conceptual inconsistency of what she said.

But then, I am speculating now… I am not in a position to truly understand these things yet anyway.

That’s it for now! I started this topic in order to outline the basics of stylistics, I have colour coded up to the end of the October 5, 1994 session, but it takes a long time to type up, so I hope to share more with you all at a later date.

Thanks
Robin

 

[Novelis]

Q: (L) Is it true that at regular intervals the sun radiates massive amounts of electromagnetic energy, which then causes the planets of the solar system to interact with one another to a greater or lesser extent?

What a question!

The most interesting part about this question is how many questions are actually bundled together into one, and how the author phrases it as a qualifying question, where a yes or no response is usually expected, for example:

“Is it raining?”
“Yes, it is.”

Judging by the above “rule”, the C’s would, if they were following the normal rules of language, answer (If it IS true, in every respect), “Yes, it is true that, at regular intervals the sun radiates massive amounts of electromagnetic energy, which then causes the planets of the solar
system to interact with one another to a greater or lesser extent.”

(Try saying THAT in one breath!)

The question itself is somewhat deviant in that sense, as you would never usually hear a question of that length. But how does the author link all these separate pieces together into one?

Let’s look first at the author’s conjunctive use of the word ‘that’.

You can use that after many verbs, adjectives, nouns, and expressions to introduce a clause in which you report what someone has said, or what they think or feel.

1. He called her up one day and said that he and his wife were coming to New York. 2. We were worried that she was going to die.

So, the author is, if we are to be specific, relaying a whole concept, or a ready-made hypothesis, to the C’s as a whole “chunk”, in order to verify it as true/false.

If something is true, it is based on facts rather than being invented or imagined, and is accurate and reliable.

Here, ‘it’, in ‘Is it true’, is a pronoun representing that concept.

At the same time, this question also contains many adjectives, which usually has the role of making the nouns that they are qualifying more specific.

Therefore, the author doesn’t just want to know that there are intervals where the sun radiates energy, but that the intervals are regular.

It’s not enough to ask if the sun radiates energy, the author also wants to confirm that the energy “radiated” is MASSIVE.
Not only should the C’s answer that the sun radiates energy, but the nature of the energy should also be confirmed as electromagnetic.

Finally, it isn’t enough to confirm that the planets do indeed interact, but that they interact with one another to a greater or lesser extent.

All of these specifities are to be answered in the confirmatory/negative mode, which is kind of impossible. Think about it, if I asked the question:

“Is it raining?”

That’s easily confirmed or denied, but if I ask:

“Is it true that the rain is fine, yet still heavy enough to cause the people caught in the rain to interact with each other to a greater or lesser extent?”

What if one of those details is off? What if, at the time the question is asked, it’s the middle of the night, and therefore there is nobody outside, but were it day, then people might indeed run for cover? How would you answer in a simplistic confirmatory/negative way then?

Let’s look more closely how the chunk is connected together using ‘which’:

You use which at the beginning of a relative clause when specifying the thing that you are talking about or when giving more information about it.

1.Soldiers opened fire on a car which failed to stop at an army checkpoint… 2. He’s based in Banja Luka, which is the largest city in northern Bosnia.

Adding to the confirmatory/negative clause, this word serves to give even more information!

It would, in my opinion, have worked better to split the clauses up and asked as separate questions:

1. Does the sun radiate massive amounts of electromagnetic energy at regular intervals?
2. Does this energy cause the planets of the solar system to interact with one another?

After awaiting the answers for these questions, I would then ask:

“To what extent are the planets affected due to the aforementioned interactions?”

This brings me to my final point about the length of the question. The “to a greater or lesser extent” point at the very end. As if the question wasn’t specific enough, now the author adds further possibilities within this confirmatory/negative question format.

You use or to link two or more alternatives.

“Tea or coffee, John asked.”

That’s simple enough, but given the possible alternatives already present in the question above, namely that any specific point in the question could be partially or even completely off, providing alternatives as to the extent of the interactions between the planets is quite interesting, linguistically speaking of course.

Stay tuned for the C’s response to such a plethora of concepts rolled into a simpleYes/No question. As you’ll gather from the way the C’s answer the question, they are obviously aware of all of these linguistic deviations and cues, and they answer quite brilliantly.

Robin


Mod: fixed quote box

 

[Laura]

I think this is pretty fascinating.

My intent when I write is to be as accurate as possible, even, if necessary, expressing the present condition of uncertainty and/or just assigning probabilities based on what is known to this moment. I like to leave it open that new information may change things, sometimes dramatically.

 

[Novelis]

A: Other irregular pulsations determined by external vibrational events.

Ok, firstly, this answer contains some ellipsis:

In linguistics, ellipsis means leaving out words rather than repeating them unnecessarily; for example, saying ‘I want to go but I can’t’ instead of ‘I want to go but I can’t go’.

It is quite unusual to start a sentence with ‘other’, usually there would be a subject to qualify the object, which is, in this case, the word ‘pulsations’.

Not only that, but look at how ‘pulsations’ is immediately followed by ‘determined’, this is also a form of ellipsis, and would usually contain a link between them, such as ‘that are’.

So, we might think of the answer more fully as:

A: (There are) other irregular pulsations (that are) determined by external vibrational events.

However, this is not the only possibility for interpretation. We could also add different links and interpret the answer slightly differently:

A: (The) other irregular pulsations (are) determined by external vibrational events.

This seems to me to be more unlikely than the previous interpretation, since this answer would make it seem like the C’s are answering a question specifically about These ‘Other irregular pulsations’, which wasn’t even mentioned by the author in the question, so it seems logical to deduce that the C’s are pointing the questioner away from the original subject towards something perhaps related, yet quite different.

This can also be affirmed by the fact that the C’s do not answer in either the confirmatory nor the negative, they head into a different subject entirely.

If we are to extrapolate even more from there, the full answer, without any ellipsis, would become (In my opinion, let me know if there are other possibilities):

A: (There are) other irregular pulsations determined by external vibrational events, (which then causes the planets of the solar system to interact with one another to a greater or lesser extent).

I think it is important to note here, that, number 1, the C’s did NOT follow the conventional rules of answering the question in the form that the questioner has qualified.

The questioner wanted a confirmation that a concept was factual, and the C’s headed in the direction THEY wanted to go, meaning that they are not passive participants in the discourse, that they are actively wanting to express something of their own, and when a certain ‘schema’ has been activated by the questioner, the C’s can take the schemata activated, and take the conversation in a new direction.

Number 2, it may seem obvious, but I think it is important to especially note the ellipsis as a linguistic feature that the C’s use. There must be a reason why they would use ellipsis, since we know from other answers that they can articulate themselves fully when they want to, so the reason why they used ellipsis, for now, is up for speculation.

Perhaps it’s to save energy, i.e. perhaps for certain answers, there is an imbalance of energies present, and they need to get the main points across?

Perhaps it has something to do with the complex nature of the question?

We’ll leave it for now and concentrate on other interesting features of the answer.

The first and foremost parallelism between the question and the answer is the usage of the word ‘regular’ by the questioner, then ‘irregular’ from the C’s.

The fact that they are opposite in meaning makes the word stand out in the reader’s mind, prompting us to look further.

Ok, so let us look closely at what ‘regular’ described in the question:

Regular intervals.

Well, that doesn’t give us much, ‘Is it true that at regular intervals.’ is not a complete sentence.

I think we need to take the complete clause as a model for comparison with the C’s usage of the word ‘irregular’:

‘…at regular intervals the sun radiates massive amounts of electromagnetic energy…’

Juxtaposing that with:

‘OTHER irregular pulsations…’

It seems to me that the C’s are in fact defining the process of ‘the sun radiating massive amounts of electromagnetic energy’ as a form of PULSATION!

Let’s look more closely at the word radiate:

1. If things radiate out from a place, they form a pattern that is like lines drawn from the centre of a circle to various points on its edge. 2. If something radiates heat or light, heat or light comes from it.

In other words, the sun, as the questioner is phrasing it, is an object that ‘radiates’ electromagnetic energy. This is a deviation in English, since electromagnetic energy isn’t usually thought of as something that is radiated from somewhere, as the definition shows, heat or light is usually the objects of radiation.

It is also interesting to note that both these sets of words confirm to the same rules in morphology.

Radiate => radiation
Pulsate => pulsation

They even contain the same phonetic sounds (-ate in the verb form and –ation in the noun form), which makes them a very strong parallel pair.

Since this is the case, the C’s are inviting us to also look at the word radiation:

Radiation is energy, especially heat, that comes from a particular source.

Interestingly, the dictionary doesn’t contain the word ‘pulsation’, only the word ‘pulsate’, which means that, according to corpus rules, the word doesn’t occur enough in normal everyday usage to warrant its own definition, pointing us again to the idea that this word is quite unusual, hence deviant.

If something pulsates, it beats, moves in and out, or shakes with strong, regular movements.

The examples here are also strangely fitting… (I kid you not, this is the real example in the dictionary):

…a star that pulsates. …a pulsating blood vessel.

Interesting, the primary difference between ‘radiate’ and ‘pulsate’ is that the latter’s subject is usually ALIVE.

These so-called ‘Other irregular pulsations’ are ‘alive’!

Now, let’s digress a little into the word ‘pulse’ in general, we can try to interpret “Other irregular pulsations” within these terms:

Your pulse is the regular beating of blood through your body, which you can feel when you touch particular parts of your body, especially your wrist.

This makes the “irregular pulsations” seem like an illness, since your blood pulse, by definition is regular.

In music, a pulse is a regular beat, which is often produced by a drum.

Again, an “irregular pulsation”, in terms of the “Music of the universe”, seems to be strange, unusual. How do you make music with an “irregular pulse”?

A pulse of electrical current, or sound is a temporary increase in its level.

An “irregular pulsation” is, in this sense, experienced by us as a temporary increase in energy levels…

Here is more on parallelism:

[quote author=Mick Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, Page 14]Example 6
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our inequities.
(Isaiah, 53, v)

Here, the structure of some of the words in the first clause are repeated in the second, giving us a parallel structure which is a ‘repetition’ of ‘He was Xed for our Ys’. What is interesting about parallel structures, in addition to their perceptual prominence, is that they invite the reader to search for meaning connections between the parallel structures, in particular in terms of the parts which are varied. I like to call this the ‘parallelism rule’ for interpretation (see also 2.3). In this example it is obvious that wounded and bruised are intended to be viewed as equivalent in some way, as are transgressions and iniquities. This leads us on to a more general interpretation of the two clauses, where wounding and bruising, and transgressions and iniquities, are linked. In this example the parallel meaning, promoted by the parallel structure, is obvious because of the similarity in meaning of the two pairs of words involved. Notice, however, that if you happen not to know the meaning of one of the words the parallel structure will help you to infer roughly the meaning of the word concerned. This can be seen easily in example 7, which I have constructed:

Example 7
He was kicked, beaten and lupped.

I have invented the last word in the sequence, and so you could not possibly have known what it might mean in advance. However, given the fact that it is paralleled with kicked and beaten, we are forced into deducing that it is an unpleasant, violent physical action which the person involved is subjected to. It is very unlikely to be a rough synonym of ‘kissed’![/quote]

Now, has anybody noticed the strange verb tense used by the C’s?

The author uses many verbs in the question, including:

Radiates
Causes
(To) interact (with)

All present simple tenses, whereas the C’s gave only one verb:

Determined

What affect does this have? Well, the author’s usage of simple present tenses makes the event described seem like a regularly occurring thing, independent of time and space. Look at the following example:

“I play football every day.”

This even happens at regular intervals, and the author is trying to pin this regular occurrence down as the reason for our present conditions.

But then, the C’s, by using the past tense, lets us know that what we are currently experiencing, and will experience, is due to an event, these “external vibrations” that have already been set in motion sometime in the past.

So, these “pulsations”, which the C’s portray as being “alive” in a certain sense, exist due to these “External, Vibrational Events”…

In the reader’s mind, these events are now of crucial import, no?

The trouble is, “External” relative to WHAT?

External to ourselves? Our bodies? Or, as the word ‘pulsations’ have alluded, and also the ‘body’ defined in the question, do they mean the ‘body of the solar system’?

I think the latter is likely to be the case, but I cannot be sure. Nevertheless, and more importantly, for the diligent researcher, this answer has the FUNCTION of raising curiosity, and we can now, in this time, ascertain and confirm the fruits of this curiosity in the electric universe and the twin star hypothesis, etc. Culminated in SHOTW books 1 – 3, right?

So, in that sense, maybe the ambiguity is the point of this answer? To point the questioner towards certain fields of research?

As a final point, I would like to note here as a side, that ‘external’ and ‘vibrational’ is also a parallel pairing, since, phonetically, they contain the same rime ‘-al’.

This point bears mentioning, since the word ‘vibrational’ does not occur in the dictionary at all, indicating its deviational use in this context.

Next time we’ll see how the questioner is affected by this “heading off into a new direction”. We will also look at how the questioner throws the previous question into doubt because of how the C’s deviate from the confirmatory form of questioning, and we’ll analyse what the questioner does with this information.

Thanks,
Robin

 

[Novelis]

Q: (L) Is it true that at regular intervals the sun radiates massive amounts of electromagnetic energy, which then causes the planets of the solar system to interact with one another to a greater or lesser extent?

What a question!

The most interesting part about this question is how many questions are actually bundled together into one, and how the author phrases it as a qualifying question, where a yes or no response is usually expected, for example:

“Is it raining?”
“Yes, it is.”

Judging by the above “rule”, the C’s would, if they were following the normal rules of language, answer (If it IS true, in every respect), “Yes, it is true that, at regular intervals the sun radiates massive amounts of electromagnetic energy, which then causes the planets of the solar
system to interact with one another to a greater or lesser extent.”

(Try saying THAT in one breath!)

The question itself is somewhat deviant in that sense, as you would never usually hear a question of that length. But how does the author link all these separate pieces together into one?

Let’s look first at the author’s conjunctive use of the word ‘that’.

You can use that after many verbs, adjectives, nouns, and expressions to introduce a clause in which you report what someone has said, or what they think or feel.

1. He called her up one day and said that he and his wife were coming to New York. 2. We were worried that she was going to die.

So, the author is, if we are to be specific, relaying a whole concept, or a ready-made hypothesis, to the C’s as a whole “chunk”, in order to verify it as true/false.

If something is true, it is based on facts rather than being invented or imagined, and is accurate and reliable.

Here, ‘it’, in ‘Is it true’, is a pronoun representing that concept.

At the same time, this question also contains many adjectives, which usually has the role of making the nouns that they are qualifying more specific.

Therefore, the author doesn’t just want to know that there are intervals where the sun radiates energy, but that the intervals are regular.

It’s not enough to ask if the sun radiates energy, the author also wants to confirm that the energy “radiated” is MASSIVE.
Not only should the C’s answer that the sun radiates energy, but the nature of the energy should also be confirmed as electromagnetic.

Finally, it isn’t enough to confirm that the planets do indeed interact, but that they interact with one another to a greater or lesser extent.

All of these specifities are to be answered in the confirmatory/negative mode, which is kind of impossible. Think about it, if I asked the question:

“Is it raining?”

That’s easily confirmed or denied, but if I ask:

“Is it true that the rain is fine, yet still heavy enough to cause the people caught in the rain to interact with each other to a greater or lesser extent?”

What if one of those details is off? What if, at the time the question is asked, it’s the middle of the night, and therefore there is nobody outside, but were it day, then people might indeed run for cover? How would you answer in a simplistic confirmatory/negative way then?

Let’s look more closely how the chunk is connected together using ‘which’:

You use which at the beginning of a relative clause when specifying the thing that you are talking about or when giving more information about it.

1.Soldiers opened fire on a car which failed to stop at an army checkpoint… 2. He’s based in Banja Luka, which is the largest city in northern Bosnia.

Adding to the confirmatory/negative clause, this word serves to give even more information!

It would, in my opinion, have worked better to split the clauses up and asked as separate questions:

1. Does the sun radiate massive amounts of electromagnetic energy at regular intervals?
2. Does this energy cause the planets of the solar system to interact with one another?

After awaiting the answers for these questions, I would then ask:

“To what extent are the planets affected due to the aforementioned interactions?”

This brings me to my final point about the length of the question. The “to a greater or lesser extent” point at the very end. As if the question wasn’t specific enough, now the author adds further possibilities within this confirmatory/negative question format.

You use or to link two or more alternatives.

“Tea or coffee, John asked.”

That’s simple enough, but given the possible alternatives already present in the question above, namely that any specific point in the question could be partially or even completely off, providing alternatives as to the extent of the interactions between the planets is quite interesting, linguistically speaking of course.

Stay tuned for the C’s response to such a plethora of concepts rolled into a simpleYes/No question. As you’ll gather from the way the C’s answer the question, they are obviously aware of all of these linguistic deviations and cues, and they answer quite brilliantly.

Robin

Edit=Quote

 

[Novelis]

Firstly, let me just correct myself here…

In the first post, I described the word ‘that’ in the following way:

Let’s look first at the author’s conjunctive use of the word ‘that’.

[quote author=Robin]

You can use that after many verbs, adjectives, nouns, and expressions to introduce a clause in which you report what someone has said, or what they think or feel.

1. He called her up one day and said that he and his wife were coming to New York. 2. We were worried that she was going to die.

So, the author is, if we are to be specific, relaying a whole concept, or a ready-made hypothesis, to the C’s as a whole “chunk”, in order to verify it as true/false.[/quote]

I apologise for the mistake, I coloured the word ‘that’ lime green, meaning that it is a conjunction, and while the conjunctive form does exist, in the above instance, ‘that’ is actually a pronoun:

You use that to introduce a clause which gives more information to help identify the person or thing you are talking about

…pills that will make the problem disappear. …a car that won’t start.

However, my main point that this word introduces a whole concept to the C’s still stands quite well, despite the mistake.

These words can be the trickiest to discern, the word ‘that’ has over 20 entries as a demonstrative and 4 entries as a conjunction!

Now, back to the next part of the discourse.

Q: (L) The sun is not the source of the periodicity of “dyings”?

Q: (L) The sun is not the source of the periodicity of “dyings”?

We can see from this that, even though the C’s have strayed away from answering the question in a confirmatory/negative manner, that the questioner hasn’t, and is, once again, seeking confirmation.

It is interesting that the questioner has perceived the C’s answer as a “No” to the previous question, even though it’s quite clear that the C’s didn’t confirm or deny it, giving related, yet new information.

Now the questioner tries to confirm that the previous question is indeed not true, indicating that the questioner wants to carry on with THEIR agenda, and shows an unwillingness to “go along” with the new direction offered by the C’s.

I’m sure the author had good reasons for doing so, but this new question, ironically, shows the true ‘topic’ that the questioner wanted to talk about in the first question.

The TOPIC, or what the questioner really wanted to know in the first question, is:

“What is the source of the periodicity of dyings?”

This question, if phrased in a more informal way, but keeping its function the same, would read:

“(So, what you are saying is that) the sun isn’t the source of the periodicity of “dyings”?

Now, let’s move onto the sentence structure briefly:

The sentence structure of this question is paralleled, and if we take away the nouns for the moment, has the form:

The X is not the X of the X of X.

This kind of structure, using ‘of’ to specify the attributes of the subject, could theoretically (though it’s hard, I’ve tried) go on indefinitely in English, however, the longer it goes on, the more abnormal it is going to sound, and the harder it is to comprehend the sentence, given that a pause is substituted in favour of longer breath units.

You use of to combine two nouns when the first noun identifies the feature of the second noun that you want to talk about.

1. The average age of the women interviewed was only 21.5. 2. …the population of this town… 3. The aim of the course is to help students to comprehend the structure of contemporary political and social systems.

Look at the 3rd example, which is already getting harder to “get your head around”.

Now, here are two very abnormal uses of words:

1. Periodicity

I didn’t find this word in the dictionary, indicating its deviant usage in this question. It is formed by using the root word ‘period’:

A period is a length of time.

Then changed into an adjective, ‘periodic’:

periodic events or situations happen occasionally, at fairly regular intervals.

Notice ‘regular intervals’ again? A strong theme that pops up again and again in this line of questioning.

Then, the word ‘periodic’ morphs again into a noun, ‘periodicity’, the suffix –ity (generality, superficiality, tranquillity, etc)

-ity is added to adjectives, sometimes in place of ‘-ious’ to form nouns referring to the state, quality, or behaviour described by the adjective.

1. He enjoyed the tranquillity of village life. …Life with all its contradictions and complexities.

In this case, it is the STATE of periodic “dyings” that ‘periodicity describes.

2. “dyings”

Normally you’d think of the word “extinction”, not the word “dyings”, so why is this word used here?

This word is deviational because the word dying is usually used as a verb, yet, as indicated by the plural –s added at the end of ‘dying’, it is clear that the questioner is using this word as a countable noun.

The effect of using this word has a few consequences in the minds of readers. Firstly, it is informal as compared to the word ‘extinction’, and so makes the material more accessible to ‘laypersons’ (such as myself), but may alienate or even offend readers who are more “academic”.

Secondly, the word ‘dying’ is defined this way:

A dying person or animal is very ill and likely to die soon.

In this sense, the word ‘dyings’ gives this event more of a “punch” than ‘extinction’, just like the word ‘Shell shock’ is plainer, more direct, than the word ‘Post traumatic stress disorder’ (Thank you George Carlin for the comparison). Perhaps the questioner wanted to be more simple, direct, plain, and in general, more easily understood?

The word ‘dying’ also gives it a sense of immediacy (it will happen soon), or a sense that it is happening, it is in progress.

Maybe the questioner uses this word in order to place emphasis on its duration through a definite period of time, which, as a present continuous form (eating, living, etc.)

One final thought, if the word ‘dyings’ can be used in this way, then this concept also highlights its opposite, the notion of ‘livings’, since, if there are periods of “dyings” then it logically follows that there are periods of “livings”…

Fascinating, it points to the fruits of those lines of thoughts too, towards the more contemporary ideas about “The Sixth Extinction”.
Robin

 

[Nienna]

Robin Turner, I'm not sure why you are coloring every word a different color in the sentences that you did. It probably takes a bit of time to do that. I was just wondering if you would not do that as it makes it more difficult for me to read the sentences. It is distracting, at least to me. Maybe others are not having a problem with it. But, like I said, I find it a bit distracting.

 

[Jacques]

Robin Turner, I'm not sure why you are coloring every word a different color in the sentences that you did. It probably takes a bit of time to do that. I was just wondering if you would not do that as it makes it more difficult for me to read the sentences. It is distracting, at least to me. Maybe others are not having a problem with it. But, like I said, I find it a bit distracting.

Hi Nienna,

I think that Robin was trying to illustrate something according to his colour code:

Thank you for your patience, below is the stylistic analysis:
Here is my colour code:

Adjective
Adverb
Auxiliary Verb
Colour Word
Combining Form (Blank is also a highlight when everything is highlighted!)
Conjunction
Convention
Determiner
Exclamation
Fraction
Link Verb
Modal Verb
Count Noun
Collective Count Noun
Family Noun
Noun in Names
Mass Noun
Plural Noun
Proper Noun
Collective Proper Noun
Plural Proper Noun
Singular Noun
Collective Singular Noun
Title Noun
Uncount Noun
Collective Uncount Noun
Variable Noun
Collective Variable Noun
Vocative Noun
Negative
Number
Ordinal
Passive Verb
Phrasal Verb
Phrase
Predeterminer
Prefix
Preposition
Phrasal Preposition
Pronoun
Quantifier
PluralQuantifier
Question
Sound
Suffix
Verb
Link Verb
Passive Verb
Reciprocal Verb
Passive Reciprocal Verb

The first step is identifying the word groups that each word belongs to, so the sentence:

Jane pushed Tommy.

Looks like this:

Jane pushed Tommy.

 

[Nienna]

Okay, thanks, Gandalf. I missed that.

 

[Mal7]

Now, I want to let it be known here that my analysis of the 'normality' versus the 'abnormality' of the words within the C’s communications, in order for it to be as objective as possible, will be compared against the definitions in the ‘Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary’, this is because:

Now, here are two very abnormal uses of words:

1. Periodicity

I didn’t find this word in the dictionary, indicating its deviant usage in this question. It is formed by using the root word ‘period’:

A period is a length of time.

Then changed into an adjective, ‘periodic’:

periodic events or situations happen occasionally, at fairly regular intervals.

Notice ‘regular intervals’ again? A strong theme that pops up again and again in this line of questioning.

Then, the word ‘periodic’ morphs again into a noun, ‘periodicity’, the suffix –ity (generality, superficiality, tranquillity, etc)

-ity is added to adjectives, sometimes in place of ‘-ious’ to form nouns referring to the state, quality, or behaviour described by the adjective.

1. He enjoyed the tranquillity of village life. …Life with all its contradictions and complexities.

In this case, it is the STATE of periodic “dyings” that ‘periodicity describes.

I don't think "periodicity" is an abnormal word. It is in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. I am not sure if the Cobuild is the best dictionary for determining if a word is abnormal, let alone very abnormal. Although the 645,000,000 words in the "Bank of English" (from which the Cobuild dictionary draws) is an impressive sounding figure, those are not all different words, but rather just the total word count of all the texts in the "Bank of English". So for example if the average book is 100,000 words long, the Bank of English would contain a selection of texts making up the equivalent of around 6450 books. That should be sufficient to not exclude any common words. But there would be many words left out of the bank that I would regard as "less common" rather than "abnormal".

The full non-abridged version of the Oxford English Dictionary has about 300,000 different main entries, compared with 41,000 in the Cobuild Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

 

[Novelis]

[quote author=Mal7]I don't think "periodicity" is an abnormal word.[/quote]

someone or something that is abnormal is unusual, especially in a way that is worrying.

Yes, you are right in the sense defined above, it isn’t that unusual, nor is it a cause for worry. However, the way I am using ‘abnormal’ as a word, in the context of this particular investigation, stands as a dichotomous generality, or as a normal vs abnormal paradigm.

So, used in this particular way:

The word ‘dyings’ is “adnormal” in the sense that it deviates from its “normal” grammatical formation, as described above.

The word ‘periodicity’ is “abnormal” in the sense that it is a less common word, it “deviates” from general usage, even if only slightly.

Perhaps the fact that it’s an uncommon word doesn’t warrant a special mention, but I saw its absence from the Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary as a significant fact in itself.

The purpose of collecting all this valuable data on our computers was to enable the lexicographers – the dictionary writers – to have access to as much information as possible about each of the words being defined. The corpus, and the software we use to analyse it, helps the COBUILD team to sort through the information and gain valuable insights into the way words are actually used: their meanings, their typical grammar patterns, and the ways in which they relate to other words.

When we read, we sometimes come across words that we have never seen before (Try reading Dr. Seuss for example), yet we are still able to infer its meaning thanks to our “internal dictionary” of rules pertaining to grammar, morphology, etc. Some English teachers call this an ‘internal grammar’.

Maybe the lexicographers thought that, at the advanced level of using this dictionary, the reader would be able to infer the ‘suffix –ity’ rule for themselves, and that ‘periodicity’ is too uncommon to warrant its own head word?

If we look at other ‘–ity’ words, ‘generality’ has its own definition, but ‘tranquility’ is thought of as a subsidiary of the headword ‘tranquil’ and only contains an example, no definition.

Does that say something about the relative degree of common-uncommon usage of these words? I think it’s at least worthy of mention.

Let’s use another example:

‘Sott’ stands for ‘Signs Of The Times’. By extraction, ‘Sotters’ can refer to the people who adhere to its world of values and concepts (or its culture).

People can be described as ‘Sottistic’ (Example: What a sottistic perspective!).

They can prescribe to ‘Sottism’ (Example: Sottism has taken over cybespace.).

Finally, the ‘Sottisticality’ of a person or thing can have varying degrees (Example: The sottisticality of the alternative media has increased dramatically over the years, with new emphases in objectivity and a deep concern for truth.)

You see?

I made it up, but thanks to your “internal grammar”, you “grammared” the above and arrived at an interpretation that we can all agree.

The amount of deviation can be seen as a curve in a graph:

1. Generality – Has own dictionary entry, therefore fits into the ‘normal paradigm’.

2. Tranquility – Part of ‘tranquil’ entry, so very slightly deviational from ‘normal paradigm’, already on the borderline between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’.

3. Periodicity – No dictionary entry in Cobuild, but has an entry in Concise, so it’s slightly MORE deviational than ‘tranquility’, but not AS deviational as ‘sottisticality’. I would place it in the ‘abnormal paradigm’.

4. Sottisticality – Very deviational, people who haven’t read the above would unlikely know what it means.

[quote author=Mal7]It is in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. [/quote]

I could be wrong to claim that it fits within the ‘abnormal paradigm’ then, it is, at the end of the day, my interpretation.

I cannot prove that the dictionary I am using is the most authoritative, and I thank you for bringing this point to my attention.

[quote author=Mal7]I am not sure if the Cobuild is the best dictionary for determining if a word is abnormal, let alone very abnormal.[/quote]

Agreed, if I had the time and resources, I would compare the entries of many dictionaries before forming my conclusions, but sadly, I am making do with what I’ve got.

I have considered, before partaking in this investigation, using several other dictionaries in conjunction with the one I’ve got, like the Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture:

_http://www.pearson.rs/catalogue/dictionaries/longman-dictionary-of-english-language-and-culture.html

This would offer us another perspective into how “Culturally based” the words in the Wave are, and give us new insights into how best to translate/interpret it.

[quote author=Mal7]Although the 645,000,000 words in the "Bank of English" (from which the Cobuild dictionary draws) is an impressive sounding figure, those are not all different words, but rather just the total word count of all the texts in the "Bank of English". So for example if the average book is 100,000 words long, the Bank of English would contain a selection of texts making up the equivalent of around 6450 books. That should be sufficient to not exclude any common words.[/quote]

Agreed:

The corpus lies at the heart of each entry. As a lexicographer begins writing an entry, he or she can call up onto the computer screen all the occurrences of the word in question. These appear in the form of concordance lines, and the lines can be examined in a number of different ways to show different aspects of the word’s behaviour. Many words have more than one word class at a time. Software has been developed which allows them to do this, and so helps them to make decisions about the different senses of the words, the language of the definitions, the choice of examples, and the grammatical information given. We could, of course, make statements about these things without a corpus, but having a corpus enables us to make them with confidence and accuracy. And the larger the corpus, the more confident and accurate we can be.

[quote author=Mal7]But there would be many words left out of the bank that I would regard as "less common" rather than "abnormal".[/quote]

As I explained, in the terminology used for this investigation, “less common” is seen as a form of “abnormality”, and the designation of any word into these categories is always up for discussion, especially as banks of English get larger and the software becomes more refined.

[quote author=Mal7]The full non-abridged version of the Oxford English Dictionary has about 300,000 different main entries, compared with 41,000 in the Cobuild Advanced Learner's Dictionary.[/quote]

The purpose of the Oxford English Dictionary, as far as I am gather, is to include as many words as possible, to be as up to date as possible, and the lexicographers would be deemed unprofessional if it wasn’t so. It is perhaps a better reflection of the true landscape of English in use today than the Cobuild. However:

Cobuild was the first dictionary to stress the importance of the commoner words for a learner. Dictionaries traditionally try to pack as many headwords in as possible, without always indicating which are the ones that keep coming up in speech and writing. The common vocabulary words often have several senses and are found in phrase patterns which help to distinguish the senses, and all this is carefully set out in this dictionary. Common words have diamond symbols, with a simple code to tell you approximately how common they are.

I appreciate the fact that, for this investigation, it is objectively better to compare the entries in different dictionaries, but, in terms of determining the relative ‘commonness’ of words, the Cobuild is still a valuable resource, and a good place to begin.

Other than that, the Cobuild also uses the “Bank of English” to help define words in a way that is more valuable to those learning English and for those interested in linguistics too.

Information about collocates and structures

In our definitions, we try to show the typical collocates of a word: that is, the other words that are used with the word we are defining. For example, the definition of meaning 1 of the adjective savoury says:

Savoury food has a salty or spicy flavour rather than a sweet one.

This shows that you use the adjective savoury to describe food, rather than other things. Meaning 1 of the verb wag says:

When a dog wags its tail, it repeatedly waves its tail from side to side.

This shows that the subject of meaning 1 of wag refers to a dog, and the object of the verb is ‘tail’.

This may seem obvious to native speakers, but for learners of English, it is important to know that ‘wag’ is limited to dogs. Cats can’t ‘wag’ their tails, for example.

Information about grammar

The definitions also give information about the grammatical structures that a word is used with. For example, meaning 1of the adjective candid says:

When you are candid about something or with someone, you speak honestly.

This shows that you use candid with the preposition ‘about’ with something and ‘with’ with someone.

Other definitions show other kinds of structure. Meaning 1 of the verb soften says:

If you soften something or if it softens, it becomes less hard, stiff or firm.

This shows that the verb is used both transitively and intransitively. In the transitive use, you have a human subject and a non-human object. In the intransitive use, you have a non-human subject.

Finally, meaning 1 of compel says:

If a situation, a rule, or a person compels you to do something, they force you to do it.

This shows you what kinds of subject and object to use with compel, and it also shows that you typically use the verb in a structure with a to-infinitive.

Information about context and usage

In addition to information about collocation and grammar, definitions can also be used convey your evaluation of something, for example to express your approval or disapproval. For example, here is a definition of awful:

If you say that something is awful, you mean that it is extremely unpleasant, shocking, or bad.

In this definition, the expression ‘if you say that’, and ‘you mean that’ indicate that these words are used subjectively, rather than objectively.

In other words, learners of English (and even native speakers) can learn more about collocates, structures, grammar, context and usage just by reading this investigation when compared to other dictionaries, which was also part of my overall objective in publishing this investigation – to promote Language learning.

Look at the following example for the word ‘above’:

Above 1. At a higher level than.

If one thing is Above another one, it is directly over it or higher than it.

By putting it in complete sentences, the Cobuild gives more information about the word itself, and is thus more useful for this investigation, and for learners of English IMO.

[quote author=Nienna]I was just wondering if you would not do that as it makes it more difficult for me to read the sentences. It is distracting, at least to me. Maybe others are not having a problem with it. But, like I said, I find it a bit distracting.[/quote]

I had considered this before, my wife told me that the yellow is hard to see for example. That is why, if you look at the 5th post, you’d see that I started including a colour coded version below an uncoloured version of the text in question.

Thanks for writing me,
I hope this answers your questions.

Robin

 

[John G]

"Periodicity" is quite common for math/physics and may be for scientific research papers on extinction cycles too. Laura certainly researches a lot more than the average person. "Dyings" in the transcripts had quotes so it was kind of known to be an unusual phrasing. Phrasing questions for the Cs seems like an art form of sorts. 1994 was the first year talking to the Cs so that might effect things in general. Laura did get a confirmation that the sun is one of many causes for the periodicity so the cross examination-like question was useful. The Cs kind of have their own art form for giving information in a way that doesn't violate free will or take away from the work/research that we are encouraged to do on our own. This analysis does seem to bring up some interesting things to think about.

 

[Novelis]

[quote author=Bluelamp]"Periodicity" is quite common for math/physics and may be for scientific research papers on extinction cycles too.[/quote]

Great point, I would also love to get my hands on more technical dictionaries so the analysis can be even more precise.

[quote author=Bluelamp]Laura certainly researches a lot more than the average person.[/quote]

Ditto!

[quote author=Bluelamp]"Dyings" in the transcripts had quotes so it was kind of known to be an unusual phrasing.[/quote]

Another good point, I have neglected so far to mention the punctuation. Seeing as the C's punctuate themselves, this could be of great importance, thanks!

[quote author=Bluelamp]Phrasing questions for the Cs seems like an art form of sorts.[/quote]

Yeah, I am hoping to learn more about it as we progress.

[quote author=Bluelamp]1994 was the first year talking to the Cs so that might effect things in general.[/quote]

I had this in the back of my mind, but didn't state it explicitly yet. I think it will be interesting when can compare the transcripts then and now to ascertain the differences.

[quote author=Bluelamp]Laura did get a confirmation that the sun is one of many causes for the periodicity so the cross examination-like question was useful.[/quote]

ah, ah, you are getting ahead of me now!

[quote author=Bluelamp]The Cs kind of have their own art form for giving information in a way that doesn't violate free will or take away from the work/research that we are encouraged to do on our own.[/quote]

As the details will hopefully be revealed...

[quote author=Bluelamp]This analysis does seem to bring up some interesting things to think about.[/quote]

Thank you, hopefully it could inform future questions too.

 

[Novelis]

With the following short answer, I will quote the definition of every word, as each word conveys a lot of meaning.

A: Sometimes. Many causes.

A: Sometimes. Many causes.

Here we have our first adverb from the C’s, ‘sometimes’.

You use sometimes to say that something happens on some occasions rather than all the time.

This sounds like a good confirmation, that the sun CAN be the cause of the periodicity of dyings.

There is ellipsis here though, so a fuller sentence would read:

“The sun is sometimes the source of the periodicity of dyings.”

Note also that the word ‘sometimes’ got two diamonds, which means that it is quite common.

Next:

You use many to indicate that you are talking about a large number of people or things.

Cobuild also states that ‘many’ is opposite to ‘few’, but it is interesting to note how, in English, if you write “Few causes.”, it becomes unclear if you mean:

“There are few causes for the periodicity of dyings.”

Like:

She had few friends, and was generally not very happy...

Or:

“There are a few causes for the periodicity of dyings.”

As in:

I gave a dinner party for a few close friends…

The ‘many’ in the C’s answer is the opposite of the former ‘few’, not the latter ‘few’.

It took me some time to colour code the above, since ‘many’, with the above definition, can be…

A determiner:

I don’t think many people would argue with that…

A Pronoun:

We stood up, thinking through the possibilities. There weren’t many.

A Quantifier:

So, once we have cohabited, why do many of us feel the need to get married?

And an Adjective:

Among his many hobbies was the breeding of horses.

Well, given the ellipsis from the C’s, how do we determine which class this word, in this context, belongs to?

For the determiner class, ‘many’ should be followed by a noun. If we put it into a fuller sentence, with no ellipsis, it could read:

“There are many causes for the periodicity of dyings.”

For the Pronoun form, there should be a preceding clause, for which ‘many’ can be reduced into a pronoun for:

“The sun can sometimes the cause of the periodicity of dyings. There are many.”

In the above example, ‘many’ is a pronoun, but given that the word ‘cause’ would have to be in the first clause, and the C’s put ‘causes’ after ‘many’, it would seem more likely that ‘sometimes’ refers to the source, not the cause.

This highlights how the C’s, even though only giving us three words, makes the meaning quite clear.

As for the possibility of ‘many’ being a quantifier:

A quantifier comes before of and a noun group, e.g. most of the house. If there are any restrictions on the type of noun group, this is indicated: QUANT of def -n means that the quantifier occurs before of and a definite noun group, e.g. Most of the houses in the capital have piped water.

Next to the entry for ‘many’, it says:

QUANT: QUANT of def-pl-n

This means that, if we are to get rid of the ellipsis, it would have to go before of and then a plural noun.

“There are many of causes.”

That seems unlikely, as it’s very strange. To be a quantifier, the first ‘sometimes’ clause would have to changed too:

“The sun is sometimes the cause of the periodicity of dyings. There are many of them.”

Again this is unlikely, or else the C’s would have said:

A: Sometimes causes. Many.

Finally, could it be an adjective in disguise? Well, for it to be an adjective, there would have to be a determiner before ‘many’:

“The many causes for the periodicity of dyings.”

Sounds strange to me…

Or, as an adjective, ‘many’ would have to be preceded by a linking verb, like:

“The causes are many.”

But then, if that’s the case, why didn’t the C’s say:

A: Causes many.

Therefore, I am sticking to ‘many’ being a determiner and that is that!

Finally, let’s look at ‘causes’.

Well, firstly, the C’s gave the plural form of ‘cause’ indicating that it is a noun and not a verb.

The cause of an event, usually a bad event, is te thing that makes it happen.

1. Smoking is the biggest preventable cause of death and disease… 2. The causes are a complex blend of local and national tensions.

So, according to Cobuild, it usually carries negative connotations, and is the opposite of the word ‘effect’.

I would like to note here that the C’s have not only used ellipsis before, but the previous form was:

“(There are) Other irregular pulsations determined by external vibrational events.”

Whereas this time we have:

“(The sun is) sometimes (the source of the periodicity of dyings). (There are) many causes.”

That’s twice that the ellipsis has been ‘There are’, forming a parallelism of ellipsis. This almost invites the reader to see these two answers as part of one answer. Let me try and reconstruct it…

There are two main possibilities, as far as I can see:

1. A: The sun is sometimes the source of the periodicity of dyings, but there are many causes, such as other irregular pulsations that are determined by external vibrational events.
2. A: The sun is sometimes the source of the periodicity of dyings, but there are many causes, which are other irregular pulsations that are determined by external vibrational events.

The question that this leaves me with is, are ALL of the “many causes” for the periodicity of dyings due to these so-called “other irregular pulsations”?

Or, are these “other irregular pulsations” the crucial factor, the cause out of many, but the one that the C’s are pointing towards, but still only part of a grand total of “many causes”?

Robin

 

[Mal7]

Robin, your analysis of the transcripts by looking very closely at the meaning of each word and the grammatical structure, in order to "decipher" their true objective meaning, seems similar to the movement in western literary criticism known as the "New Criticism". By literary criticism, I mean the interpretation and study of works of fiction like novels and plays as carried out e.g. by academics and their students in English departments. This movement of literary criticism was most popular in the mid-20th Century. It was seen as an attempt to make literary criticism more objective, and more "scientific" in its methods. The methodology of the "New Criticism" school was to look closely at the text itself, in order to see what effect the text achieved and how it did this. It was thought to be an improvement on the looser methods of the previous generation of literary critics, who were prone to writing in a more emotional and speculative matter about what they thought the author's intentions might have been, without looking closely at the text. There is a page on Wikipedia about the "New Criticism" here:

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism

New Critics believed the structure and meaning of the text were intimately connected and should not be analyzed separately. In order to bring the focus of literary studies back to analysis of the texts, they aimed to exclude the reader's response, the author's intention, historical and cultural contexts, and moralistic bias from their analysis.

- _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism

In literary criticism, the "New Criticism" school fell out of favour around the mid 1970s, as postmodernism and cultural relativism took over the academies. For the postmodern critic, finding the one objective meaning for a literary text is no longer seen as a worthy pursuit, as it is considered each reader will bring their own interpretation to a text and find their own meaning in it. There are still some literary critics today who deplore this shift that took place towards postmodernism, e.g. Harold Bloom.

I would like to bring up one other point about the close use of dictionaries. A dictionary aims to provide a sense of the meaning of a word, without knowing the exact phrase in which the reader has come across that word. The reader however has the whole phrase containing the word whose meaning they wish to know before them, so while the dictionary is an aid or a useful tool, I think when working out the best sense of the meaning of the word, it may be just as important, or even more important, to look at the context of where that word is found, e.g. the other words around it in the C's Transcript, and other appearances of the word in the Transcripts, and also the general meaning of the Transcripts (even if that is starting to become a "which comes first, the chicken or the egg?" kind of problem).

I think a dictionary is, in a way, forced to summarize and simplify and make a "best guess", since to provide the exact meaning of every particular use of a word in every existing phrase, the dictionary would itself have to be as large as all the texts in the world.