Difference between revisions of "Wordsmithing"

Revision as of 17:44, 20 August 2015

Let grammar, syntax, semantics, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences...

And, But and However

Do not start sentences with conjunctions such as And, But and However. According to English teachers everywhere, these should appear ONLY in the middle of a sentence, not shamefully whipped out at its beginning. That says no-thing about flaunting it as a title.

And, whenever someone says anything and you wish to add your 2 cents to the discussion, by all means, always start your sentence with "But ..." to make sure you wipe out everything anybody said before your "But ..." sentence entered the scene. "However ..." is a good alternative but not as effective as "But ..." at making others feel unheard (and therefore increasingly unwilling to listen to your additional information).

Once Upon A Time

It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times, it was the Age of Wisdom, it was the Era of Foolishness, it was the Epoch of Belief, it was the Time of Incredulity, it was the Season of Light, it was the Aeon of Darkness, it was the Spring of Decolonisation, it was the Winter of Despair ... In short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its uproariest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the inflated degree of comparison only.

An important feature of a sentence is the reaction of the writer to some reality. In declarative sentences, this active part of the writer might be said to be manifesting a certain assertiveness.

A closer examination of assertive sentences shows an overwhelming majority to contain two basic content elements: a statement and an element about which a statement is made. The element about which something is stated may be said to be the basis of the utterance or the theme, and what is stated about the basis is the nucleus of the utterance or the theme. Old news, true. That a declarative sentence can be perceived to contain these two basic elements was recognised long ago.

However, less known is that these elements are given a different meaning in psychology. The theme is often called the psychological subject and the rheme the psychological predicate. And in a narration stream the order is usually simple: the theme of the next sentence usually being the rheme of the sentence before it.

"Once upon a time there was a Queen. And the Queen had three daughters. The daughters ..."

"And the Queen had three daughters" has two parts: "the Queen" (basis) and "had three daughters" (nucleus).

But what is the situation at the beginning of a narration?

When we start to write about something which cannot yet be referred to as a known fact, then from the complex of notions included in the statement we anticipate one as given, as a notion that naturally presents itself and we make it the starting point.

It may be interesting to examine the beginnings of different narrations from this point of view, for further examination of our gut level processing.

Making Total Sense

Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A’Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past ...

Creating a fake press release

Resources

Other times

For the Aymara people living in the Andes, the past lies ahead and the future lies behind http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~nunez/web/articles/Taipei%20Times%20-%20archives.pdf
In Australia, the timeline of the Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community, runs along the east-west axis. The past is east. Time for the Pormpuraaw flows from left to right if they are facing south, right to left if they are facing north, towards the body if they are facing east, and away from the body if they are facing west. https://tylertretsven.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/time-and-space-in-pormpuraaw/
In China, Mandarin speakers sometimes represent time along a vertical axis, with the past above and the future below http://psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/mandarin-time-2010.pdf
Time for the Yupno flows uphill and is not even linear http://anthropology.net/2012/06/01/the-uphill-climb-of-time-for-the-yupno-of-papua-new-guinea/
How Languages Construct Time http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/language-time.pdf

Language creation

Language Creation Kit v2 http://www.zompist.com/kit.html

Language examples

Scripts of the Ancient World http://www.ancientscripts.com
Unifon Alphabet http://www.omniglot.com/writing/unifon.htm
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgYVk50jJFc

Measurement conversion

Online Unit Conversion (converting modern units of measurement into measurement units no longer in general use)

Underminers

Chapter Three – Who Are The Underminers? http://underminers.org/the-book/chapter-3/ (Propagating the message)

@@ Line 78: / Line 78: @@
 === Underminers ===
-* Chapter Three – Who Are The Underminers? http://underminers.org/the-book/chapter-3/
+* Chapter Three – Who Are The Underminers? http://underminers.org/the-book/chapter-3/ (Propagating the message)
 == Related ==
 * [[Controlled folly]]