Interpreting

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by pljames, May 1, 2013.

  1. pljames Registered Member

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    Fraggle Rocker,

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    What word, sentence or paragraph should I focus on, including the subject of the piece to (interpret) it? I've only had the experience a few times, I like it but, it still is some sort of a new experience to me. Paul
     
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  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Sorry, I don't understand your question. What "piece" are you referring to?
     
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  5. pljames Registered Member

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    Fraggle Rock,
    The word (piece) refers to the whole e-mail.

    What word, sentence or paragraph should I focus on, including the subject of the( e-mail) to (interpret) it? I've only had the experience a few times, I like it but, it still is some sort of a new experience to me. Paul
     
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  7. pljames Registered Member

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  8. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I don't know how to answer that. Reading is a complicated skill that we learn early in childhood, and it's difficult to analyze how it works.

    In fact it's been said that we overlearn it. So toward the end of life when basic skills begin to attenuate, it's one of the very last ones to be lost. Alzheimer's patients who forget what we said five minutes later remember the things we wrote on a note all day--and they still have the note to re-read tomorrow.

    When we read, we use a complicated set of tests and algorithms to tentatively divine the meaning of individual sentences, and then we tentatively assemble those meanings to begin to create a possible meaning for the entire communication.

    It really isn't much different from the way we interpret spoken language. This is why I don't quite understand the question. If you can understand what people say, then you should be able to understand what they write. And actually, writing should be easier. If you didn't quite grasp something, you can go back and read it a second time. It's a lot easier (and more polite) than interrupting a conversation with "What did you say a minute ago?"

    BTW, my screen name is Fraggle ROCKER. Fraggle ROCK is the 1980s TV show on which my name is based, a Muppet production.
     
  9. pljames Registered Member

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    83
    Fraggle Rocker,
    I apologize for getting your last name wrong. You told me about how we create the next word after the first sentence, made my year. It would seem to me the word morph comes to mind. I do not understand if that is the brain or mind and what comes first, the action of the brain to the mind or vice versa. I will give language it's due. I love words they are my way to express myself. It is said God talked to Adam and Eve telepathically and not through a language. I had a in the body experience and without any words and I knew what the experience meant totally. I agree when speaking we understand what the other person is saying by body language and tone. But when written it's just words we understand. As for me I like to give certain words (value/meaning) as to clarify the point in a word or sentence. I would also like to write and speak charismatically for my own egocentric self. Thanks for listening. Paul
     
  10. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    That's okay. It's not my real name, anyway.

    "Morph" is a very new word, invented around 1950, from Greek morphe, which means simply "form." It has very specific meanings:
    • In biology, many species are dimorphic or polymorphic, meaning that they come in two or more forms. For example, ants have three morphs: queen, worker and drone. Vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish) have only two morphs: male and female.
    • In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning (e.g., un-believ-able contains three morphemes), and the word "morph" was coined for morphemes that take more than one form (e.g., -able and -ible are the two morphs of that particular morpheme).
    "Morph" was eventually pressed into use as a verb, although a very clumsy one. Basically all it means is "to change." People get tired of using old words so they invent new ones. So instead of saying, "My child becomes unmanageable when he's sleepy," someone might say, "Little Johnny morphs into a real monster after 8pm."

    I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say that the word "morph" comes to mind, but I'd suggest that you find a different one whose meaning is better established and, therefore, clearer to the listener/reader. After all, you tell us that you are trying to become a better communicator, so clarity absolutely has to be your first goal. Don't use odd words.

    Think of the brain as hardware and the mind as software. That's a pretty decent analogy.

    As a third-generation atheist I have no formal religious training, but we're all familiar with the key passages in the Bible. It seems pretty clear to most people that God was speaking. In any case, God, Adam and Eve are all metaphors rather than actual living creatures, so anything said about them is just storytelling.

    Some of the things you say are utterly impossible to understand.

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    Not just tone, but there are many other non-verbal attributes of spoken language. Speed, loudness, length of pauses, duration of vowels, precision of diphthongs, harder or softer consonants, affectations such as baby-talk and mock or authentic foreign accents, etc.

    BTW, we usually distinguish facial expressions from the rest of body language. We have ten times as many muscles in our faces as any other mammal, and most of them serve only one purpose: communication. When people are talking to each other their vision is usually concentrated on the face so they might not notice fingers twitching or knees crossing.

    Now of course a man and a woman sitting next to each other on a park bench may notice which way they have crossed their legs, but unconsciously. If the knee points away from the other person, that slight twist of the pelvis is a subtle (and usually unconscious) way of presenting the genitalia, vs. turning them away.

    Punctuation was invented to substitute for non-verbal speech components, at least partially.

    You haven't told us how you do that. In American English we usually emphasize words by lowering the pitch and making them slightly longer. Obviously they have to do it differently in Chinese and the many other languages in which pitch is phonemic.

    You lost me completely... again. Charisma is the ability to influence or even control large numbers of people. It is usually the result of attaining a position of power in a government, business, community, family, etc. Learning to speak like Winston Churchill or James Earl Jones would help you wield that control more effectively once you have it, but without already having the authority, that fabulous speaking voice isn't going to actually help you gain control over anybody except a few devoted sycophants in your personal circle of friends.

    The word "charisma" is also used for alleged spiritual power, but all supernatural phenomena are just metaphors, as imaginary (but also just as valuable) as Adam and Eve and the snake.

    Actually I read this. I don't have SciForums' optional print-to-speech synthesizer.

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  11. pljames Registered Member

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    Fraggle Rocker,
    How do you create these squares around a paragraph, I want to do the same. Paul
     
  12. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    When you click on "Reply with Quote" the software builds them automatically. In your composition window the quoted sections begin with the word QUOTE in brackets and end with /QUOTE in brackets. When you click "Go Advanced" or "Post Reply" the software uses the QUOTE and /QUOTE as delimiters and displays them within the little boxes.

    If you want to quote just part of a post and then respond to it, you can type the QUOTE and /QUOTE in brackets yourself.

    Note that I am not typing the brackets here because the software will think it's a quote and not display it the way I want. What it really looks like is: [QU*TE]This is an example.[/QU*TE] -- I misspelled it on purpose so the software will ignore it. Notice that the first line of your quotation starts with [QU*TE=Fraggle Rocker]. That's the software's clue to print the name of the person you're quoting.

    You are probably just clicking "Reply." If you click "Reply with Quote" you automatically get the original post quoted in your post.
     
  13. pljames Registered Member

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    Understood.

     
    Last edited: May 21, 2013
  14. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    You are still not using the QUOTE command correctly. Your post was a total disaster. None of the quotes came out in their little balloons.

    Please try harder next time. You make it difficult for us to read.
     

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