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Embodied cognition (was: Gerund abuse)

 
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Ravish: First to Map, is there any specific reason to change the Subject every alternate day ??

They require us to be good now in this forum, so I have to find relatively non-destructive ways to cause trouble.

Ernest: Ah, now there's a fun conversation to have -- about how language shapes thought.

In Japanese they don't have a word for "brother", they have two different words for "younger brother" and "older brother" (the same about sisters, if I am not mistaken). I wondered, what they do if they don't know if xxx is a younger or older brother, but then it occurred to me that as soon as they know somebody has a brother, they know if he is younger or older, so there is never a problem.
 
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Which is a worse crime : gerund abuse or abominable conjunctives ?

"I know that I have hands, but I don't know that I am not a (handless) brain in a vat," namely "I know that I have hands and I am not a brain in a vat, but I don't know that I am not a brain in a vat."

"I do know I am in Emerson Hall in Massachusetts and not in a tank on Alpha Centauri."
[ July 16, 2004: Message edited by: Helen Thomas ]
 
Mapraputa Is
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Ernest: Basically that, I suppose, but at a somewhat deeper level, which I guess I could grossly oversimplify by saying that a speech act is part of an organic whole that includes the speaker and the listener, and can't be wholly described or appreciated outside of that total system

I need to get this book. It must be complicated matter. I came across another book in Powells:

Language As a Cognitive Process: Syntax.

Amazon refuses to show even the contents, but it's all about formal rules of the language. Actually it's a textbook for CS students. He wasn't too much disappointed about formalism, I guess, only saw its limitations, perhaps.
[ July 17, 2004: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]
 
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