Posts Tagged ‘Grumman coinage’

Entry 203 — Random Thoughts

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Random thoughts today because I want to get this entry out of the way and work on my dissertation on the evolution of intelligence, or try to do so, since I’m still not out of my null zone, unless I’m slightly out but having trouble keeping from falling back into it.

First, two new Grummanisms: “utilinguist” and “alphasemanticry.”  The first is my antonym for a previous coinage of mine, “nullinguist,” for linguist out to make language useless; ergo, a utilinguist is a linguist out to make language useful.  By trying to prevent “poetry” from meaning no more than “anything somebody thinks suggests language concerns” instead meaning, to begin with,  “something constructed of words,” before getting much more detailed, for example.

“Alphasemanticry” is my word for what”poetry” should mean if the nullinguists win: “highest use of language.”  From whence, “Visual Alphasemanticry” for a combination of graphics and words yielding significant aesthetic pleasure that is simultaneously verbal and visual.”

I popped off today against one of Frost’s “dark” poems, or maybe it is a passage from one of them:  “. . . A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead”–the kind academics bring up to show Frost was Important, after all.   “Wow,” I said, “Wow, he confronts death!  He must be major! “  I then added, “Frost is in my top ten all-time best poets in English that I’ve read but not for his Learic Poems.”

James Finnegan then corrected me, stating (I believe) that the poem didn’t confront death but showed its effects.   I replied, “Okay, a poem about the effect of death on two people.   What I would call a wisdom poem.  I’m biased against them.  I like poems that enlarge my world, not ones that repeat sentiment about what’s wrong with it, or difficult about it.   Frost knew a lot about reg’lar folks, but I never learned anything from him about them that I didn’t already know.  In other words, I’m also somewhat biased against people-centered poems.  But mostly, I don’t go to poems to learn, I go to them for pleasure.”

I would add that I’m an elitist, believing with Aristotle that the hero of a tragedy needs to be of great consequence, although I disagree with him that political leaders are that, and I would add that narrative literature of any kind requires either a hero or an anti-hero (like Falstaff) of great consequence.

I’m not big on poems of consolation, either.

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Entry 146 — Discussing Mathematics and Poetry

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino has been blogging about mathematics and poetry at his Eratio blog.  When he told me about it on the phone yesterday,  I said I’d check it out, which I’ve now done.  I left my first comment on it.  Fortunately, for once I cut what I said before hitting the button telling his blog to accept it, for my post got rejected.  I’ll try in a little while to post it again.  Meanwhile I want to post it here, to make sure it’s somewhere, and because maybe one of my two regular visitors doesn’t also read Gregory, or misses posts to it because it’s irregular, which is my excuse.

Hi, Gregory.  I’ve decided to tear into your commentary on mathematics and poetry Very Slowly, one idea at a time, to facilitate coherence.

I’ll begin with your statement that “Already (‘mathematical sentence’) (you’re) thinking analogically.”

This is where you and I first disagree, for (as revealed in our long & interesting phone conversation of yesterday) I believe numerals and mathematical symbols are part of our verbal language, just as, in my opinion, typographical symbols for punctuation or to abbreviate are.  The mathematical symbol, “+,” for instance, is just a different way of writing, “plus,” or “&.”  It therefore follows that for me, a mathematical equation is a literal sentence differing from unmathematical sentences only in the words in it.  “a – b = c,” for instance, is a very simple sentence and not significantly different from, “Mary cried when she lost her lamb.”

Obviously, it’s just a case of your opinion versus mine, but I think acceptance of my opinion makes more sense, because it keeps thing more simple than your does.  I would say that what most people mean by “words” are “general words,” while words like “sineA” or “=” are “specialized words” or mathematical words–like punctuation marks.

I think in my linguistics, these “words” are all called “textemes,” But it’s been a while since I read Grumman on the matter, so I’m not sure.

Hey, I found a glossary in which I define many terms like “texteme.”  It’s not a word but a typographical symbol: “any textual symbol, or unified combination of textual symbols–letters, punctuation marks, spaces, etc.–that is smaller than a syllable of two or more letters: e.g., ‘g,’ ‘&h(7:kk,’ ‘GH,’ ‘jd.’”  I coined the term for discussion of various odd kinds of symbols and symbol-combinations like some of those among my examples that not infrequently occur in visual or infraverbal poems.

So, I don’t have a special term for word, as I define it.  Yet.

To continue my argument in favor of my take on mathematical expression as an extension of verbal expression, not something different in kind, I would saimply ask what is special about mathematical symbols that should require us to think of them as elements of a special kind of expression?  They do nothing that ordinary verbalization can’t do, although they do it more clearly, compactly and elegantly.

Graphs would be mathematical expression–a form of visio-conceptual expression, as is written music.  Chemical diagrams but not chemical notation. . . .

I don’t see that there’s any difference between the syntax of mathematical expression (other than graphs and probably other similar things I’m not into Math enough to think of right now) and normal verbal expression.  There’s no inflection, I don’t think, in mathematical expression.  Which is a triviality.

Conclusion: we need a carefully formed taxonomy of human modes of expression.

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Entry 115 — The Knowleplex

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

The knowleplex is simply a chain of related memories–A.B.C.D.E., say–or a knowledge-chain. It is what we remember whenever we are taught anything, either formally at school (when our teacher tells us Washington is the capital of the United States, for instance) or informally during day-to-day experience (when we see our friend Sam has a pet cat).

There are three kinds: rigiplexes, flexiplexes and feebliplexes, the name depending on the strength of the knowleplex. One is too strong, one too weak, and the other just right. If we let A.B.C.D.E. stand for “one plus two is three,” then a person with a rigiplex “inscribed” with that, asked what one plus two is, will quickly answer, “three.” But if asked what one plus four is, he will give the same answer, because his rigiplex will be so strong it will become wholly active due only to “one plus.”

On the other hand, a person with a feebliplex “inscribed” with “one plus two is three,” asked what one plus two is, will answer “I dunno,” because his feebliplex will be so weak, even “one plus two is” won’t be enough for his knowlplex to become active. Ditto when asked what one plus four is. But the person whose knowleplex is just right–whose knowleplex is a flexiplex, that is–will answer the first question, “three,” and the second, “I dunno.”

Needless to say, this overview is extremely simplified. Even “one plus two is three” will form a vastly more complicated knowleplex than A.B.C.D.E. The strength of a given knowleplex will vary, too, sometimes a lot, depending on the circumstances when it is activated. And each kind of knowleplex will vary in strength, some feebliplexes being almost as strong as a flexiplex, for example. In fact, a feebliplex can, in time, become a rigiplex. For the purposes of this introduction to knowleplexes, however, all this can be ignored.

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Entry 110 — The Three Varieties of Rhyme

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

I’ve come up with new terms for two of the three kinds of rhyme in my poetics.  One is Chyme-Rhyme for standard rhyme (e.g., “bat/cat”).  The other is  Rhyle-Rhyme for the kind of rhyme I’ve called various names, “Backward Rhyme,” being the most frequent (e.g. “bat/badge”).  My name for the third kind of rhyme in my poetics is Rim-Rhyme, the perfect name coined many years ago for it (e.g. “bat/bet”).

The new names follow the logic of “Rim-Rhyme” by demonstrating the sound of the kind of rhyme they name, but not the construction, as “Rim-Rhyme” does.   The “Chyme” of regular rhyme seems fitting, too.  As for “Rhyle,” well, it’s a kind of rhyme that riles traditionalists, and I couldn’t come up with a better “rhy-consonant” word to use.

I should haven’t to explain why I consider all three of my kinds of rhyme valid rhymes, but while some accept rim-rhyme because of Wilfred Owen, I think no one has accepted rhyle-rhyme.  But it seems sensible to call such a combination a rhyme rather than an alliteration/assonance.  And it seems sensible to call any pair or great number of unidentical syllables sharing two sounds to be rhymes.

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Entry 37 — Didacticry

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

A real quickie today: just the introduction of a coinage, “didacticry” dih DAH tih kree, meaning poemlike text who main intent is clearly didactic, not aesthetic.  For example: “Early to bed. early to rise,/ Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”  Part of my campaign to limit the definition of poetry to literature, which I limit to verbal expression intended mainly to cause aesthetic pleasure.  “Early to bed,” causes some such pleasure but is mainly advocature in that it is an attempt to persuade its readers of the virtue of going to be early and rising early.

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