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Poetry is a form of magic, as is its close cousin, drawing. And what is magic, if not the gift outright? Here, by way of proof, is a portrait by someone whose work can take us someplace marvelous… RT
ps. i wish there were an alphabet that had this quality of drawing the viewer in…
One should never underestimate a dragon, and especially a Dragon of Grammar. Now RT must confess that when he listed out the original Dragons of Grammar, he made a serious oversight and failed to mention the Red Dragon, the Dragon of Neologisms. Personal Circumstances Be Damned! External Reality Be Burned to a Crisp! As the Red Dragon has been reminding me, the oversight really ought to be corrected.
& RT can see that he needs a break from the sturm und drang of his recent existence; so, without further ado…
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A neologism is a new word, a word that has been recently coined. Neologisms, like dandelion seeds, happen more often than one might think. Here are some examples:
* radar (1941); warp speed (1966); meme (1976); alien space bats (1998); political correctness (1970); prequel (1958); and–last but not least–Brangelina (2005).
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How are often are neologisms generated? Without getting too scientific, RT would venture that new words (and new phrases and grammatical structures) are created all the time in the spontaneous working of the mind to convey itself to others. It may even be that this spontaneous creation is a sign of mental health and energy.
So when is a neologism accepted as a word and included in (at at least some) dictionaries? The short answer is: it is accepted when it is frequently and widely used. Some words, for instance, warp-speed, doubtless found themselves almost immediately recognized–such is the power of the TV. Others quickly come into use in a certain community–as Brangelina doubtless did in the entertainment industry–but never gain usage in the broader community of speakers. Many people simply never run across the word. Others will be accepted for a time and then fade away–anyone remember guesstimate?
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It may be that some neologisms are better at conveying meaning than others. How do we distinguish the pick of the litter(s)? Some suggestions follow:
1) A neologism should fill a need or gap in communication. Radar is a good example–it names a new technology that previously was labeled with a string of words: Radio Detection and Ranging (acronym: RADAR).
2) A neologism should express the speaker’s emotional frame of mind: “Hey, he ripped me off!” You can feel just how angry the victim of robbery is…and it just plain sounds better than “he robbed me!”
3) A neologism should be easier to pronounce than the word(s) currently used to convey a thought: for instance, zeitgeist for spirit of the times or Xerox for photocopy.
4) A neologism should be eloquent: it should enrich the sound of the language. For instance, ansible.
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So there it is, folks: our lastest (and did i mention that neologisms sometimes originate as mistakes, in this case for latest) addition to the Dragons of Grammar. A final note: Wikipedia has more information about word formation. RT
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Image: Dragon Rouge; WikiCmns; Public Domain.
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Searching for the origins of human language has taken RT to some amazing places recently.
For instance, what about animal intelligence? Reading around has left me with the impression that animals are smarter than I had suspected.
Here is a list of the cognitive abilities that animals have demonstrated:
1) object recognition (the ability to pick out an object in an animal’s field of vision)
2) problem solving (the ability to use cause-and-effect reasoning to achieve goals);
3) tool-use;
4) language (the ability to communicate discrete concepts, instructions, and observations to other members of the same species);
5) cultural adaptation (the ability to create behaviors unique to a group of animals);
6) political bargaining (the ability to create alliances between certain members of a species to gain control over other members of the species) ;
7) an ability to count;
8) self-recognition; and even
9) ethical behavior.
Golly, gosh, and gee! That’s a lot of thinking going on. And many species have demonstrated at least some of these abilities, including: mammals (especially primates), birds, ants, and bees are among the animals that have shown remarkable abilities to learn, communicate, and cooperate.
And in case any of the cognitive abilities listed above seem too basic to be taken as signs of intelligence, the struggles that computer specialists have had in creating robots that mimic even the most widespread mental functions, such as touch and object recognition, tell a different story. None of these skills emerged overnight.
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But, truth be told, not many species demonstrate mental capacities that truly resemble our own. The short list: cetaceans, the great apes (chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and bonobo); and perhaps, the elephants.
Some of these animals have mastered vocabularies that include hundreds of words. And I make no extraordinary claims here–after all, a human language contains about a million words. The question then becomes: what are the differences between our conversations and talking with, say, a chimpanzee?
RT says: stay tuned for the next installment on this.
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Photo: Bottlenose Dolphin; NASA; WikiCmns; Public Domain.
Folks: Heaven & Hell down under… RT
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Yes, Mexico is home to the second-largest number of native-language speakers in the hemisphere (Peru has the largest number, at 10 mil speakers). Here are some of the Mexican stats:
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Wow! And the Dragons of Grammar have volunteered to give us a bit more information about Mexico’s indigeneous languages: in northern Mexico, languages belong to one of three language families–Algonquian, Yuman-Cochimi, and Uto-Aztecan. In southernmost Mexico, the Mayan family of languages is predominant. And just to connect some of the dots in a single case–Mayan is a language family isolate, unconnected to other known language families. Mayan languages are agglutinative and polysynthetic. Verbs are marked for aspect or tense, the person of the subject, the person of the object (in the case of transitive verbs), and for plurality of person.
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Wow! All is not tea-parties in Dragon Land! And a final note: according to AILLA, most indigenous languages in Latin America are endangered.
RT
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Map/Chart: Map of Mexican languages with More than 100,000 Speakers. WikiCmns; Public Domain.
Birdsong can be heard even as the New Year approaches. I’ve been scanning my Twitter contacts and am here offering a selection of these intrepid online poets…
Enjoy!
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1. PoetsPages: http://twitter.com/#!/PoetsPages *Poems from the U.K. & farther afield…
2. 21st Century Poets: http://twitter.com/#!/21CenturyPoets *Social networking for poets…
3. ten_ten_ten: http://twitter.com/#!/ten_ten_ten *Lyrical and perceptive micropoetry…
4. Toltec John: http://twitter.com/#!/Toltecjohn * Hardy, Frost, Ginsberg–32,000 tweets!
5. Tiny Little Poems: http://twitter.com/#!/tinylittlepoems *Performance poet from Melbourne…
6. Coyote Sings: http://twitter.com/#!/CoyoteSings *Nature, Buddhism, and ferrets…
7. byPetaL: http://twitter.com/#!/byPetaL *Photography & acerbic comments…
8. Poemwatch: http://twitter.com/#!/poemwatch *Poet, delver into archives, wanderer…
9. Yupius: http://twitter.com/#!/yupius *The real deal from Japan…
10. Dgdreamin: http://twitter.com/#!/dgdreamin *Gorgeous stuff…
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Photo: WikCmns; CC3.0 Share Alike; author: MDF.
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The days (and leaves) are falling fast in (mostly sunny) Martinsburg, and RT has been busy arranging further linguistic and grammatical explorations for friends and followers… in particular, set aside a day on your calendar for Tea-Time with the Dragons of Grammar, which promises to be a most illuminating (and mischievous) event…but for those who can’t wait for the latest hit from the Dragons, here is something feisty and fiery.
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In linguistics, a segment is any discrete unit that can be identified in the production or reception of human speech (for instance, a phone or phoneme). Suprasegmentals are phonemes that cannot be easily broken down into segments. For instance, the segments of sign language are visual–hands, face, eyes, and body gesture. Vowels and consonants are also segments, that is, discrete speech units.
On the other hand, some speech units do not exist independently from others; these are the suprasegmentals, and include such items as tone and secondary articulations (for instance, co-articulated consonants). Suprasegmentals are in essence additional and simultaneous speech information that augments or completes a speaker’s meaning or articulation.
Just imagine Mandarin Chinese without its tones; the language has been robbed of most of its articulation. That’s how important suprasegmentals are.
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As far as charting and scribing these erudite beasts, patience is in order. For English speakers, stress is a familiar concept (especially if you’re a poet) and helps structure the sound of our speech. On the other hand, no adult English speaker will be able to master the subtleties of the Chinese tones. The other marks fall somewhere in the middle in terms of familiarity…but more on that from RT in the next little while…
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Chart: WikiCmns; Authors: Grendelkhan, Nohat; Licence: CC 3.o Unported.
