Wednesday, 3 April 2024 ------------------------ Hello. All is well. In chapter seven, we take look at grammar. We've looked at phonology and morphology, but haven't thought of the order of words or how they relate to each other in a sentence. In traditional grammar, we look at parts of speech. Nouns, articles, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns. But also how the parts or the words relate or agree with each other by number, people, tense, voice, gender. There's two approaches to grammar. The descriptive approach, idealistically following the rules of the language. The prescriptive approach, pragmatically looking at how the language is used. I assume taking a mixed approach is in order. Languages in use vary quite a bit grammatically. Common rules derived from Latin aren't a fit for all. With the prescriptive approach, we do structural and constituent analysis. In practice, you can use test-forms, sentences with gaps to fill in, to spot the sequence of words in a language. In structural analysis for English, we find it's better to look at noun phrases (NO) than nouns (N) alone. A noun phrase can make up an article, adverb, adjective, and noun, e.g. "the very black piano". In traditional grammar, we separate articles, adverbs, adjectives, nouns, and see pronouns as placeholders for nouns. But we don't say "the very black its broken" when referring to the piano but "its broken"(when did it break? Notice how time is relative here... jk, but that's why it's past participle, hopefully). In constituent analysis, we look how these phrases come together, constituent order or word order. You know subject and object right? Subject (S) performs verb (V) involving object (O). Interestingly, languages order these differently. In English, the order is SVO (NP V NP), in Japanese, it's SOV. This word order pattern is part of language topology. Each pattern is a type. As secondary, I'm now reading "The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum" by Temple Grandin and Richard Panek. In the first chapter, we get a quick rundown of the history of autism. Leo Kanner, in 1943, published a report on autism, detailing autistic people's need for solitude and sameness. At the same time, Hans Asperger, laid out common symptoms shared by a group of children: A lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversations, intense absorption in special interest, and clumsy movements. This was known as Asperger syndrome, later known as high-functioning autism. Autism and Asperger would later become autism spectrum disorder (ASD), signifying its range of severity in symptoms. The author, Temple Grandin, mentions having bad short-term memory, common for autistic people. I find that relatable, but I feel as if it's improved when I take stimulants. My most recent experience is with software, unable to hold all necessary information in my head without stimulants. Probably has to do with attention more, as sometimes you have to spend 30 minutes or so to refamiliarize yourself with the codebase before making changes. Thinking back of daily life, I do find myself poor at remembering things in the moment. My phone number is too much for my short term memory. I have to recall it like I'm storing it in a linked list, beginning from the start, even if it's just the last digit I need, having said it two seconds ago. I think the more arbitrary information, like numbers, the harder it is for me. Perhaps because I have to recall it from long-term memory each time? I'm completely incapable of doing math in my head. Empathy is interesting. I'll use the dictionary definition: "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another." I think I need to consciously think. Conscious empathy, heh. I'm not in sync intuitively with people, nor are people generally in sync with other cultures, where I seem to have a slight advantage. This reminds me of boarding school, our trips to foreign countries. Many who were highly social at home, struggled abroad. But some handled both social life at home and abroad well, students and teachers. They seemed to understand me better too. Possibly seeing through my hostile facade, haha. Luckily those people are often prosocial. Generally, I think relying on intuitive empathy leads to bounded rationality, which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but we have to be mindful of it. One of the kindest people I've met was autistic. He was too generous. I got in contact with him for his system administration services. He ended up refusing payment for his work because he felt he hadn't completed it on time. He remained helpful afterwards, answering my questions with no hesitation. I had friendly conversations with him sporadically. He also had a Minecraft server at the time, I used to chat with him there. Back then I didn't know he was autistic, in hindsight, that may've been why I found him pleasant to talk with. I didn't understand much back then. A fool I was. Not knowing what's valuable in life. I was focused with my story of financial success, so I didn't keep much contact as time passed. Later one day, I found out he had committed suicide. I knew he had physical issues, he'd attend a lot of surgeries, but I hadn't a clue how much he was suffering. It's been seven years now since he was last online.