page 31
Progressive Thinkers as of 12/1/2022
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
While some people opt for easily recognizable rhymes, others may be using an unrealized rhyming technique where "sounds alike" is replaced with "looks alike", "feels alike", "tastes alike" or some other pairing of two or more similarities. Yet we also have what are called nonsense or gibberish rhymes such as those used by Lewis Carrol1.
Skilled literary nonsense verse is rare; most of it has been written for children and is modern, dating from the beginning of the 19th century. The cardinal date could be considered 1846, when The Book of Nonsense was published; this was a collection of limericks composed and illustrated by the artist Edward Lear, who first created them in the 1830s for the children of the earl of Derby. This was followed by the inspired fantasy of Lewis Carroll, whose Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872) both contain brilliant nonsense rhymes. "Jabberwocky," from Through the Looking-Glass, may be the best-known example of nonsense verse. It begins thus:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Another of Carroll's poems, The Hunting of the Snark (1876), has been called the longest and best sustained nonsense poem in the English language. ("nonsense verse." Encyclopædia Britannica)
With respect to nonsense verse ("verse" in terms of rhyming), one might also mention those expressions called clang associations as well as other word groupings not considered to be normal or typical (though I often consider this to be the case when listening to politicians and popular singers or those who "rap". Then again, since everyone I know is crazy except for myself, it's no wonder we don't understand one another... particularly siblings HA!):
Clang associations are groupings of words, usually rhyming words, that are based on similar-sounding sounds, even though the words themselves don't have any logical reason to be grouped together. A person who is speaking this way may be showing signs of psychosis in bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
In bipolar disorder, clang associations generally appear in psychotic episodes in the manic phases of the illness. In schizophrenia, clang associations are closely linked with a thought disorder, one of the hallmark features of the illness. "Clanging" also has been referred to as "glossomania" in medical literature relating to speech alterations in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Clang Association in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia by Marcia Purse Updated on November 25, 2020
In psychology and psychiatry, clanging or clang association refers to a mode of speech characterized by association of words based upon sound rather than concepts. For example, this may include compulsive rhyming or alliteration without apparent logical connection between words. This is associated with the irregular thinking apparent in psychotic mental illnesses (e.g. mania and schizophrenia).[1] Gustav Aschaffenburg found that manic individuals generated these "clang-associations" roughly 10–50 times more than non-manic individuals.[2] Aschaffenburg also found that the frequency of these associations increased for all individuals as they became more fatigued.
Clanging refers specifically to behavior that is situationally inappropriate. While a poet rhyming is not evidence of mental illness, disorganized speech that impedes the patient's ability to communicate is a disorder in itself, often seen in schizophrenia. Clanging
A Word Salad, or schizophasia, is a "confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases", most often used to describe a symptom of a neurological or mental disorder. The term schizophasia is used in particular to describe the confused language that may be evident in schizophrenia. The words may or may not be grammatically correct, but are semantically confused to the point that the listener cannot extract any meaning from them. The term is often used in psychiatry as well as in theoretical linguistics to describe a type of grammatical acceptability judgment by native speakers, and in computer programming to describe textual randomization.
In Psychiatry:
Word salad may describe a symptom of neurological or psychiatric conditions in which a person attempts to communicate an idea, but words and phrases that may appear to be random and unrelated come out in an incoherent sequence instead. Often, the person is unaware that he or she did not make sense. It appears in people with dementia and schizophrenia, as well as after anoxic brain injury. In schizophrenia it is also referred to as schizophasia. Clang associations are especially characteristic of mania, as seen in bipolar disorder, as a somewhat more severe variation of flight of ideas. In extreme mania, the patient's speech may become incoherent, with associations markedly loosened, thus presenting as a veritable word salad. It may be present as:
- Clanging, a speech pattern that follows rhyming and other sound associations rather than meaning
- Graphorrhea, a written version of word salad that is more rarely seen than logorrhea in people with schizophrenia.
- Logorrhea, a mental condition characterized by excessive talking (incoherent and compulsive)
- Receptive aphasia, fluent in speech but without making sense, often a result of a stroke or other brain injury
Deliberate use:
Narcissistic word salad is a type of purposefully confusing speech, using circular reasoning, logical fallacies and other rhetorical devices to disorient and manipulate a person or group. Some antisocial and narcissistic people use it in gaslighting their targets.
Similar textual productions or phenomena
- Dissociated press, a computer program that applies a Markov chain to generate word salad
- Gibberish, nonsensical language
- Lorem ipsum, test text that does not have any meaning
- Nonsense verse, verse which is nonsensical
- Paragrammatism, inability to produce or create grammatically correct sentences
- Thought disorder, disorder of thought
Other Considerations
\
- Glossolalia, phenomenon in which people speak in languages which are unfamiliar to them
- Mad Libs, a phrasal template word game that sometimes results in word salad
- Scat singing, vocal improvisation with nonsensical words
When looking at and for repetitions of number, one can not help to wonder how many expressions can be counted as a symbolic form of repeating number, as well as how many people are engaging in a counting behavior as they speak, walk, eat, etc., even if they aren't aware of it? And this says nothing about those who have an active pastime of counting when ever "to count" comes to mind, be it birds on a telephone wire, number of word similarities on an office chart, number of people in a waiting room, vehicles with out-of-state plates that pass by, cookies left in a bag, donuts left in a box, how much time till one's favorite television show comes on for viewing, number of sales in one day, number of customers who return items, etc... While some people count as part of a job, and they count in a similar manner to suggest a rhyming effect without the use of sound; the idea of right or wrong (for a medical reason) and the right or wrong for a given research effort (even if it is not initially provided with an hypotesis), or the right and wrong of criteria being used to identify what is being counted in a given way, are all similar behaviors.
Counting can take place in a variety of ways, whether you like the model of counting a person is engage in or not, because it doesn't fit your idea of normalcy. And normalcy can be defined differently depending on context and content. For example, a person in the very distant past may well count their sheep in a one-two, one-two, one-two rhyming fashion, even if you prefer to say six without a rhyme. Your counting technique may well signal to them that you aren't normal. Indeed, it is not known, though one might suspect, that the level of superstition and illiteracy in the distant past meant many everyday people were engaged in thoughts and thought patterns that we of today might well consider to be an indication of mental illness. While stories and movies about traveling to the past speak of some romantic notion that those of the present could fit in with those of the past, the rationality of today may well be viewed as a mental illness in the past worthy of being seen by someone who could perform the art of trephination (making a hole in one's head), either as a means of clearing one's recurring headaches away, removing some intrusive repetitive sound, or exorcising some presumed demonic possession. Indeed, imagine trying to fit in with those of the early Salem colony who believed in witches, and you claiming there is no such think as you strike a match, turn on a flashlight, or talk about pictures and voices traveling over the air... not to mention trying to discuss spacecraft, cell theory and espousing the philosophical belief of Friedrich Nietzsche that god is dead... not to mention the automobile, electric lights, toilet paper, solar panels, nutrition, airplanes, computers and the internet, and numerous other things that many of us take for granted and would never consider to define as a representation of evil thinking, techno-terrorists notwithstanding. Indeed, you might well be chained to a stake or tarred and feather for talking about cartoons or suggest that America have its own government! No less, how dare you say that woman should vote, own property and have equal rights as men! You surely must be out of your mind and must be horse whipped back into the proper frame of mind again to accept your proper station in life commensurate with slavery and indentured servitude.
While some feel that only god rhymes with god, others don't feel god should even have the designation of "god" because any such distinction is a means of limiting god, though they say nothing about the human mind even considering such a proposition. However, the point to be made in all my joking around is that the use of rhyme can be a substitution for counting, and vice versa. Then again, while we might say that infants in the past babbled the same as infants in the present (and future), we don't know this for a fact. Nor do we know if babbling is a substitute form of counting, and because counting apparently came later on the scene of human expression, it was developed as an alternative form of thinking and not the primary one... whereby we do not recognize infant babbling as an expressed enumeration. We say babbling is a precursor to words and speech, unless we want to consider babbling as words articulated within the confinement of an infant's physiological constraints. Yet, what if we instead looked at babbling as an early form of counting? Though the use of a CV (consonant/vowel) pairing might be viewed as a duality, this would be in keeping with those adult developed ideas of duality called (in the East) Yin and Yang, while in the West is called Mathematics, though it is a philosophical practice not routinely defined in terms of being a duality. Both East and West cultures had developed a philosophy with an underlying dichotomous structure, even though the Western type was camouflaged in word and thinking salads which piqued the taste buds of western minds and was only later adopted in a larger intellectual swinging pendulum effort by Asian communities.
Since we generally think that the human mind is basically similar in its developmental milestones, though some people might be delayed and others accelerated, it is often noted that the Chinese culture superseded multiple views long before other peoples did, particularly emphasized against those in the Western cultures which appear to have gotten a developmentally slow start but later over-shadowed Asian civilizations on many academic fronts. Hence, the point to be made is that the though western-styled mentality did advance ideas already in play by the Chinese, it too followed the path of a dichotomous orientation. However, instead of an exactly replicated yin/yang dualistic philosophy, it developed one with numbers. It was a philosophy of numbers which dealt with many dual aspects of Nature on a part time basis, and frequently used words to illustrate numerical concepts, whereas the more artistically inclined Chinese relied on a calligraphic means of expression. The western peoples however, began to come unto their own by developing a different, less graphic model of written expression, though pictures where used in some accounts such as the ancient Egyptians using pictures to express quantities.
However, with regard to the Chinese and their obvious head start on other peoples with respect to multiple advanced ideas, we must ask why they did not develop the use of their gunpowder invention to create projectile weapons or even think of a rocketship, though they had rockets for fireworks. And why did not the Chinese develop an advanced mathematics or some advanced science, though in comparison to Europeans the "advanced" Chinese society of old might well have been viewed as a type of Atlantis? Indeed, the perception of humanity long ago was that in viewing a place on Earth from a ship, one might well think that such an "Atlantis" as an ancient Chinese culture might be described by an appreciably ignorant European, came to "sink" into the ocean. Much like some people thought that if you traveled far enough, you would fall off the edge of the Earth and that both Mermaids and monsters were very real, as well as the possibility of making gold out of some baser metal by way of a philosopher stone using an Aqua regia. While some might want to argue it was due to Christianity and its questionable secularization of Nature (though it stole many ideas from Nature-worshiping Pagans... where the idea of the Trinity is a modernized model of Sun worship with its three dawn- noon- dusk phases); in contrast to the artistic orientation of Nature by the Chinese... my take on this is that the Chinse had warring factions taking place internally, as well as having an internalized trading system, while Europeans had combatants whose cultures and languages were different and needed a lingua franca for multiple different language encounters in an inter-territorial exchange of goods. Whereas the Chinese basically has a similar language with different dialects, Europeans had to contend with different languages which were not recognized originating from a "Mother tongue" or proto-language, proto-Indo-European or otherwise.
Aqua regia (3 to 1 ratio): mixture of concentrated nitric and hydrochloric acids, usually one part of the former to three parts of the latter by volume. This mixture was given its name (literally, "royal water") by the alchemists because of its ability to dissolve gold and other so-called noble metals.
Aqua regia and other mixtures similar to it are used in analytical procedures for the solution of certain iron ores, phosphate rocks, slags, nickel-chromium alloys, antimony, selenium, and some of the less soluble sulfides, such as those of mercury, arsenic, cobalt, and lead.
"aqua regia." Encyclopædia Britannica, 2013.
Philosopher's Stone: In Western alchemy, an unknown substance, also called "the tincture" or "the powder," sought by alchemists for its supposed ability to transform base metals into precious ones, especially gold and silver. Alchemists also believed that an elixir of life could be derived from it. Inasmuch as alchemy was concerned with the perfection of the human soul, the philosopher's stone was thought to cure illnesses, prolong life, and bring about spiritual revitalization.
The philosopher's stone, variously described, was sometimes said to be a common substance, found everywhere but unrecognized and unappreciated. The quest for the stone encouraged alchemists from the Middle Ages to the end of the 17th century to examine in their laboratories numerous substances and their interactions. The quest thereby provided a body of knowledge that ultimately led to the sciences of chemistry, metallurgy, and pharmacology.
The process by which it was hoped common metals such as iron, lead, tin, and copper could be turned into the more valuable metals involved heating the base material in a characteristic pear-shaped glass crucible (called the vase of Hermes or the philosopher's egg). Colour changes were carefully watched—black indicating the death of the old material preparatory to its revitalization; white, the colour required for change into silver; and red, the highest stage, the colour required for change into gold.
"philosopher's stone." Encyclopædia Britannica,. 2013.
As an emphasis away from pictorial writing became emphasized by being replaced with what would later become the number symbols we know today; there were those who began spending more time with numbers using such symbols and saw themselves not as philosophers, but significantly more important men of numbers. Alas, many were still being viewed as a philosopher, which many thought was tantamount to calling someone a bad name. Thus, over a period of time those who worked with numbers on a full time came to view themselves as a distinct variety of thinker that would eventually be titled a Mathematician, whereby the stigma of being some bearded loony called a philosopher they could at least be referred to as a Mr. Loony Mathematician. Indeed, they were not some lowly philosopher dabbling in various exercises involving mystical, magical and superstitious leanings, but they were men who saw themselves as serious scientist. Indeed, it is not uncommon for someone to come across this notion in the form of a phrase such as "Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences". (Analogously, some crooks prefer being called an embezzler instead of a thief, because the former is a presumptive recognition of skilled intelligence while the latter is in keeping with the idea of street thugs and back alley brigands.)
I have no idea what happened to using the view of a King as the ruling sovereign of a perspective, (since there were very many male kings... let us say dictators), though we too find the view that some people refer to their country as the "Motherland", and spaceships are sometimes referred to as "Motherships", and no less, some speak of a "Mother tongue" for one or more languages. Yet all punning aside, it is of value for us to consider all the relative tongues from the different subjects. Though one might want to consider that the idea of a "mother" figure in many references had more to do with the view of historians not yet weaned enough from their own roots in philosophy, but had no exterior club to name and call their own (like the club of "Mathematics" differentiated from the club of Philosophers using numbers as a tool of investigation); except by referring to themselves as an historian practicing a particular research interest no where near the Greek amphitheaters of Philosophy, and were therefore not to be called philosophers of history.
Then again, historians may be telling us that behind ever supposed great man was actually a woman who wore the pants in the royal family. And as a last example of using the word "mother" to infer a large area (consistent with the view that ancient peoples viewed large bodies as particularly fertile and that artists often painted portraits of plump women, (leading some commentators to say that this is how men in the past liked their women, while not discussing how plumpness might have been a sign of health in ancient times with so much impoverization); though having multiple portraits of "plus size women" may have been due to those who could afford to pay for a portrait necessarily had women who did not get much exercise and spent a lot of time indulging in multiple social repasts.) In any respect, there also is the idea of "mother earth", though I am inclined to tell such people that it is time for humanity to cut the umbilical cord and move off the Earth.
It is rather a curious observation, whether you agree with me or not that it also is fortuitous for the present Language Narrative series involving the use of patterns-of-three as a research assistant; that I have encountered several mothers under different circumstances using a 1-2-3 counting phrase when wanting to encourage or even as a veiled threat for them to do some activity. A mother might say: "I will count to three" as an expressed incentive for them to do something or else be served some unwanted alternative. The mentioning of a "threes" research assistant is in keeping with my usage of the threes phenomena placed into different positions of toolage. For example, it is a tool by which I can organize different ideas into a "lumped together" mode of generalization, or use it to specifically draw attention to the same pattern (or its absence and the presence of another pattern exists), in a single subject. "Threes" is a tool to be used also for detection, dissection and digression into different subjects, or the same subject which may have multiple divisions and subdivisions which is often the case for subjects today. Needless for me to say, but there are multiple patterns-of-three in the study of language. And for those who say there are other patterns, by all means, bring them forth into the light of day and then sit back and take stock of all the patterns in order to better realize that there are only a handful of patterns being used by the presumed intelligence of humanity, when compared to the infinity of numbers at our disposal.
Some patterns are used more often than others, but unlike those who have taken the time to note the frequency of letters in a given text, no one is taking the time to note the frequency of numbers being used as cognitive markers. The idea of letter or even word frequency for a given text can be applied as an idea using numbers. It is not that difficult to say that a given text or subject routinely uses a given quantity of number references with respect to ideas. For example, let us take a hypothetical portion of text in which Sigmund Freud is speaking about the id, ego, superego, and the unconscious, subconscious and consciousness. Such a text portion clearly indicates two examples of a pattern-of-three. There is nothing superstitious, mysterious or otherwise difficult to understand such a count. Whereas you may personally want to define it as an exercise in some model of numerology, we then have to turn our attention to all of Mathematics and make the same claim. Mathematicians play with numbers under different contexts for different reasons. Applying a similar exercise to different subjects and making comparisons is just an exercise, though I have then taken the exercise and related it to other considerations.
So what if you see or prefer to see the number 2 or patterns-of-four, or five, or six, or seven... etc... What you don't do is then take into consideration all the alternatives people might make and find which of them are found to be recurring more often than others and that out of all the non-three varieties, only a few are actually being used by humanity. But you are not interested in carrying out your objections to a fuller assessment of why you are making an objection to a "threes" research effort, because it would then describe an unwarranted disgruntling of a person who has not developed their own interest to any appreciable level of descriptive learning.
Language is the name of a fascinating journey for those who wish to partake of it. But it is not a journey suited for everyone in the same way. Some will prefer to take a leisurely hike along its trail their entire lives. Others prefer an overview like being aloft in a balloon or at an accelerated pace such as a plane, jet or even spacecraft. Others may choose some other sort of conveyance such as a raft, boat or sailing ship. The story of Noam Chomsky is one in which one might come across the short detail of having his Generative Grammar ideas influenced by time spent on a boat... at least, that is what my aging memory recalls but I have no proof of this assertion. One might say that it was a version of the Bathtub environment which is said to be a place which ideas of genius are sometimes gestated, though riding a bus works for others. (3 places where great ideas are said to be generated by geniuses: Bed - Bathtub - Breakfast). To each their own, as the saying goes.
While Chomsky argues against a behaviorist approach to understanding language, I am inclined to say that some of language is taught and is therefore linked to behaviorism... and one might even argue that transformational generative (generated) grammar is taught so well through our physiological development that any idea of behaviorism is occluded from view. Then again, I happen to like BF Skinner after reading his "Beyond freedom and dignity" many decades ago. However, in discussing the idea of an "innate language propensity", not dependent on others or a culture, it is of need to look at the verbal behavior of infants. Aside from the pre-babbling noises and bubbles, the context of babbling affords us with the first signs of intelligible speech, because they present us with patterns. These utterances are typically described as Consonant/Vowel (CV) groupings but no mention is made of a third item called Suprasegmentals:
Vowels and consonants can be considered to be the segments of which speech is composed. Together they form syllables, which in turn make up utterances. Superimposed on the syllables there are other features that are known as suprasegmentals. These include variations in stress (accent) and pitch (tone and intonation). Variations in length are also usually considered to be suprasegmental features, although they can affect single segments as well as whole syllables. All of the suprasegmental features are characterized by the fact that they must be described in relation to other items in the same utterance. It is the relative values of the pitch, length, or degree of stress of an item that are significant. The absolute values are never linguistically important, although they may be of importance paralinguistically, in that they convey information about the age and sex of the speaker, his emotional state, and his attitude. ("phonetics." Encyclopædia Britannica, 2013.)
There are typical sounds which one can use to illustrate examples, such as ba, da, ti. Each of them contain a vowel and consonant, but not all vowels nor consonants are used in infant babbling. There is an observable conservation. However, let us note the existence of utterances combined together like beads on a chain, to the extent one might hear more single forms (ba, da, ti) instead of double (ba-ba, da-da, ti-ti), or triples (ba-ba-ba, da-da-da, ti-ti-ti) or even longer strings. The development of the string lengths over time increases, but this has not been an exercised observance in most research, with an emphasis to point out the use of an underlying grouping structure which can be enumerated. In other words, there is a developmental sequence from the simple to the more complex and not the other way around. Nor do we find very long patterns such an infant babbling a single string of say one hundred groupings. Infant physiology (lung capacity) does permit such, and therefore the length of usage can have an effect on cognitive development, if there is a direct link between the cognitive areas of the brain and infant utterances, or merely a more basic brain functioning is involved indirectly linked to higher brain functions.
Infant babbling is a good site to set up one's base camp for exploring the terrains of Language.
If we view infant babbling as a middle road position for a research orientation into language, we can thus view basic biological components (such as genetics) as a bottom view point where a dominant pattern-of-three is visible called the triplet code of DNA, though one might even want to go further such as describing the three-patterned arrangements amongst atomic particles. And if we use the platform of infant babbling to proceed with an investigation into language upwards, we find that multiple ideas involving anatomy and the psychology/philosophy of the brain/mind also involves dominant three-patterned organizations. For example, with regards to anatomy, let me cite the List of threes in human anatomy by Dr. McNulty and associates.
Date of (series) Origination: Saturday, 14th March 2020... 6:11 AM
Date of Initial Posting (this page): 9th January 2023... 12:34 AM AST (Arizona Standard Time); Marana, AZ.