Babylon' Idiot

[nerdimus_prime]

While reading World War Z, I was doing some Wiki-hopping after looking up some things from the book, and landed on the entry for something that's interested me off and on for years: language isolates. I really wish I had more of a facility for languages, because I find linguistics fascinating: how languages form, migrate, evolve, group into

Comments

[thatouguy]

At least once those terms are defined, they are semi-tangible or you can at least maybe understand how they are operationalized in speech/language etc.

In my theory class, we've been going over theories of language and communication and some of the stuff is so out there. Like in "subjective referential" the mind and consciousness creates the meaning for and object/experience. That's not a chair b/c you have experienced it being a chair; instead, it's a chair because the conscious recognizes it as a chair and gives meaning to that name and physicality. I still don't really even understand it and I probably left some of it out. Jung would sort of be a subjective referentialist, the belief in the collective thought and how we all know everything we will ever know, and that we are not learning or being taught but rather we are just being reminded we already know it.

[nerdimus_prime]

*head explodes again*

[thatouguy]

*repeat head explosion every monday night 6 p.m. - 9 p.m., plus readings*

[bobzilla773]

That sounds like one of the theories of cognitive/knowledge structures. One being network based and the other based in prototypes which are then used as checks against perceptual information for goodness of fit.

[kodiakva]

*Looks at title again*

Oh... I thought you meant maybe Zack Allen or Vir Cotto.

I think this whole thread will make much more sense after another glass or two of brevari.

[nerdimus_prime]

LOL I never watched more than a couple episodes of Babylon 5, so I had to look those names up to get the reference.

[kodiakva]

I never watched more than a couple episodes of Babylon 5...

?!?!?!?

*** faints ***

[yukio20]

I recently took a certificate course on software testing, thinking I wanted to get into the computer field, and felt much the same way throughout most of it. Most of my previous educational experience has been centered on people and social experiences. You start talking about computer databases and how to localize software and my brain explodes. >.

[nerdimus_prime]

Yup, sounds like we have the same plight.

[slippe]

As a total huge language nerd I sympathize with your plight. I love those trees that show what language came from what other one, but I think linguists write babble like that just so they can feel smart. Here's a translation:

"Sumerian acts the same way as most languages Ryan may know in the first and second persons (e.g. "I beat" and "you beat") in the present and future tense, but in other forms it treats both the subject and the direct object as direct objects."

Yes that would probably make things terribly confusing to speak, but then again we don't see many Sumerians running around any more either ;)

[nerdimus_prime]

OK, that makes slightly more sense actually. :)

[bobzilla773]

Nerdimus, no doubt it would make more sense if they were naked and buff Sumerians running around....

[gearjock]

Yall need to loosin up and talk like ees a Suthnah baoooyeeee, now sit a spell and toke up a doob wit me now ya hear?